“The killer was certainly one of her clients!” Zossimov was saying assertively.

“Certainly one of her clients!” Razumikhin echoed. “Porfiry doesn't give away his thoughts, but all the same he's interrogating the clients . . .”

“Interrogating the clients?” Raskolnikov asked loudly.

“Yes. What of it?”

“Nothing.”

“How does he get hold of them?” asked Zossimov.

“Koch has led him to some; the names of others were written on the paper the articles were wrapped in; and some came on their own when they heard...”

“Must be a cunning and experienced rogue! What boldness! What determination!”

“But he's not, that's precisely the point!” Razumikhin interrupted. “That's what throws you all off. I say he was not cunning, not experienced, and this was certainly his first attempt! Assume calculation and a cunning rogue, and it all looks improbable. Assume an inexperienced man, and it looks as if he escaped disaster only by chance, and chance can do all sorts of things! Good God, maybe he didn't even foresee any obstacles! And how does he go about the business? He takes things worth ten or twenty roubles, stuffs his pockets with them, rummages in a woman's trunk, among her rags—while in the chest, in the top drawer, in a strongbox, they found fifteen hundred roubles in hard cash, and notes besides! He couldn't even rob, all he could do was kill! A first attempt, I tell you, a first attempt; he lost his head! And he got away not by calculation, but by chance!”

“It seems you're referring to the recent murder of the official's old widow,” Pyotr Petrovich put in, addressing Zossimov. He was already standing, hat and gloves in hand, but wished to drop a few more clever remarks before leaving. He was obviously anxious to make a favorable impression, and vanity overcame his good sense.

“True. Have you heard about it?”

“Of course. It was in the neighborhood.”

“You know the details?”

“I cannot say that I do; but there is another circumstance in it that interests me—a whole question, so to speak. I am not even referring to the fact that crime has been increasing among the lower classes over the past five years; I am not referring to the constant robberies and fires everywhere; what is most strange to me is that crime has been increasing among the upper classes as well, and in a parallel way, so to speak. In one place they say a former student intercepted mail on the highway; in another, people of advanced social position have been counterfeiting banknotes; then, in Moscow, a whole band is caught making forged tickets for the latest lottery—and among the chief participants is a lecturer in world history; then one of our embassy secretaries is murdered abroad, for reasons mysterious and monetary..^.[59] And now, if this old pawnbroker was killed by one of her clients, it follows that he is a man of higher society—because peasants do not pawn gold objects—and what, then, explains this licentiousness, on the one hand, in the civilized part of our society?”

“There have been many economic changes . . .” Zossimov responded.

“What explains it?” Razumikhin took up. “It might be explained precisely by an all too inveterate impracticality.”

“How do you mean that, sir?”

“It's what your Moscow lecturer answered when he was asked why he forged lottery tickets: 'Everybody else is getting rich one way or another, so I wanted to get rich quickly, too.' I don't remember his exact words, but the meaning was for nothing, quickly, without effort. We're used to having everything handed to us, to pulling ourselves up by other men's bootstraps, to having our food chewed for us. Well, and when the great hour struck, everyone showed what he was made of . . .”

“But morality, after all? The rules, so to speak...”

“What are you so worried about?” Raskolnikov broke in unexpectedly. “It all went according to your theory!”

“How according to my theory?”

“Get to the consequences of what you've just been preaching, and it will turn out that one can go around putting a knife in people.”

“Good God!” cried Luzhin.

“No, that's not so,” echoed Zossimov.

Raskolnikov was lying pale on the sofa, his upper lip trembling; he was breathing heavily.

“There is measure in all things,” Luzhin continued haughtily. “An economic idea is not yet an invitation to murder, and if one simply supposes . . .”

“And is it true,” Raskolnikov again suddenly interrupted, his voice, trembling with anger, betraying a certain joy of offense, “is it true that you told your fiancée...at the same time as you received her consent, that above all you were glad she was poor...because it's best to take a wife up from destitution, so that you can lord it over her afterwards...and reproach her with having been her benefactor? . . .”

“My dear sir!” Luzhin, all flushed and confused, cried out angrily and irritably, “my dear sir...to distort a thought in such a fashion! Excuse me, but I must tell you that the rumors which have reached you, or, better, which have been conveyed to you, do not have even the shadow of a reasonable foundation, and I...suspect I know...in short...this barb...your mama, in short. . . Even without this, she seemed to me, for all her excellent qualities, incidentally, to be of a somewhat rapturous and romantic cast of mind...But all the same I was a thousand miles from supposing that she could understand and present the situation in such a perversely fantastic form...And finally...finally . . .”

“And do you know what?” Raskolnikov cried out, raising himself on his pillow and looking point-blank at him with piercing, glittering eyes, “do you know what?”

“What, sir?” Luzhin stopped and waited, with an offended and defiant air. The silence lasted a few seconds.

“Just this, that if you dare...ever again...to mention my mother...even a single word...I'll send you flying down the stairs!”

“What's got into you!” cried Razumikhin.

“Ah, so that's how it is, sir!” Luzhin became pale and bit his lip. “Listen to me, sir,” he began distinctly, restraining himself as much as he could, but still breathless, “even earlier, from the first moment, I guessed at your hostility, but I remained here on purpose to learn still more. I could forgive much in a sick man, and a relation, but now...you...never, sir . . .”

“I am not sick!” Raskolnikov cried out.

“So much the worse, sir . . .”

“Get the hell out of here!”

But Luzhin was already leaving on his own, without finishing his speech, again squeezing between the table and the chair; this time Razumikhin stood to let him pass. Without looking at anyone, without even nodding to Zossimov, who for a long time had been shaking his head at him to leave the sick man alone, Luzhin went out, cautiously raising his hat just to shoulder height and ducking a little as he stepped through the doorway. And even the curve of his back at that moment seemed expressive of the terrible insult he was bearing away with him.

“Impossible, simply impossible!” the bewildered Razumikhin said, shaking his head.

“Leave me, leave me, all of you!” Raskolnikov cried out frenziedly. “Will you tormentors never leave me! I'm not afraid of you! I'm not afraid of anyone now, not of anyone! Away from me! Alone, I want to be alone, alone, alone!”

“Come on!” said Zossimov, nodding to Razumikhin.

“Good God, can we leave him like this?”

“Come on!” Zossimov repeated insistently, and he walked out. Razumikhin thought a little and ran after him.

“It might get worse if we don't do as he says,” Zossimov said, already on the stairs. “He shouldn't be irritated . . .”

“What is it with him?”

“He needs some sort of favorable push, that's all! He was strong enough today...You know, he's got something on his mind! Something fixed, heavy...That I'm very much afraid of; most assuredly!”