With slow, weakened steps, with trembling knees and as if terribly cold, Raskolnikov returned and went upstairs to his closet. He took off his cap, put it on the table, and stood motionlessly beside it for about ten minutes. Then, powerless, he lay down on the sofa and painfully, with a weak moan, stretched out on it; his eyes were closed. He lay that way for about half an hour.

He was not thinking of anything. There were just some thoughts, or scraps of thoughts, images without order or connection—the faces of people he had seen as a child, or had met only once somewhere, and whom he would never even have remembered; the belfry of the V------y Church; the billiard table in some tavern, an officer by the billiard table, the smell of cigars in a basement tobacco shop, a pothouse, a back stairway, completely dark, all slopped with swill and strewn with eggshells, and from somewhere the sound of Sunday bells ringing...One thing followed another, spinning like a whirlwind. Some he even liked, and he clung to them, but they would die out, and generally something weighed on him inside, but not very much. At times he even felt good...The slight chill would not go away, but that, too, felt almost good.

He heard Razumikhin's hurrying steps and his voice, closed his eyes, and pretended to be asleep. Razumikhin opened the door and for a while stood as if hesitating in the doorway. Then he stepped quietly into the room and cautiously approached the sofa. Nastasya could be heard whispering:

“Don't rile him; let him get some sleep; he can eat later.”

“Right you are,” answered Razumikhin.

They both went out cautiously and closed the door. Another half hour or so passed. Raskolnikov opened his eyes and heaved himself over on his back again, his arms flung behind his head . . .

“Who is he? Who is this man who came from under the ground? Where was he and what did he see? He saw everything, there's no doubt of it. But where was he standing then, where was he watching from? Why did he come from under the floor only now? And how could he have seen—how is it possible?...Hm . . .” Raskolnikov went on, turning cold and shuddering, “and the case that Nikolai found behind the door—how was that possible? Evidence? One little thing in a hundred thousand overlooked—and here's evidence as big as an Egyptian pyramid! A fly flew by and saw it! Is it possible this way?”

And he suddenly felt with loathing how weak he had become, physically weak.

“I should have known,” he thought, with a bitter smile, “and how, knowing myself, anticipating myself, did I dare take an axe and bloody my hands! I had to have known beforehand...Eh! but I did know beforehand! . . .” he whispered in despair.

At times he stopped still at some thought.

“No, those people are made differently; the true master, to whom all is permitted, sacks Toulon, makes a slaughterhouse of Paris, forgets an army in Egypt, expends half a million men in a Moscow campaign, and gets off with a pun in Vilno; and when he dies they set up monuments to him—and thus everything is permitted.^[81] No, obviously such men are made not of flesh but of bronze!”

All at once a sudden, extraneous thought almost made him laugh:

“Napoleon, pyramids, Waterloo—and a scrawny, vile registrar's widow, a little old crone, a moneylender with a red trunk under her bed—well, how is Porfiry Petrovich, for instance, going to digest that! ... It's not for them to digest! ... Aesthetics will prevent them: would Napoleon, say, be found crawling under some 'little old crone's' bed! Eh, but what rot! . . .”

There were moments when he felt he was almost raving; he would fall into a feverishly ecstatic mood.

“The little old crone is nonsense!” he thought, ardently and impetuously. “The old woman was a mistake perhaps, but she's not the point! The old woman was merely a sickness...I was in a hurry to step over...it wasn't a human being I killed, it was a principle! So I killed the principle, but I didn't step over, I stayed on this side...All I managed to do was kill. And I didn't even manage that, as it turns out...A principle? Why was that little fool Razumikhin abusing the socialists today? They're hardworking, commercial people, concerned with 'universal happiness'...No, life is given to me only once, and never will be again—I don't want to sit waiting for universal happiness. I want to live myself; otherwise it's better not to live at all. And so? I just didn't want to pass by my hungry mother, clutching my rouble in my pocket, while waiting for 'universal happiness.' To say, 'I'm carrying a little brick for universal happiness, and so there's a feeling of peace in my heart.'^[82] Ha, ha! But why did you leave me out? I have only one life; I, too, want...Eh, an aesthetic louse is what I am, and nothing more,” he added, suddenly bursting into laughter like a madman. “Yes, I really am a louse,” he went on, gloatingly seizing upon the thought, rummaging in it, playing and amusing himself with it, “if only because, first, I'm now reasoning about being a louse; second, because I've been troubling all-good Providence for a whole month, calling it to witness that I was undertaking it not to satisfy my own flesh and lust, but with a splendid and agreeable goal in mind—ha, ha! Third, because I resolved to observe all possible justice in carrying it out, weight, measure, arithmetic: I chose the most useless louse of all and, having killed her, decided to take from her exactly as much as I needed for the first step, no more and no less (and the rest would thus simply go to the monastery, according to her will—ha, ha!)...And ultimately, ultimately I am a louse,” he added, grinding his teeth, “because I myself am perhaps even more vile and nasty than the louse I killed, and I had anticipated beforehand that I would tell myself so after I killed her. Can anything compare with such horror! Oh, triteness! Oh, meanness! ... Oh, how well I understand the 'prophet' with his sabre, on his steed. Allah commands—obey, 'trembling' creature!^[83]He's right, the 'prophet' is right when he sets up a first-rate battery across a street somewhere and blasts away at the innocent and the guilty, without even stooping to explain himself! Obey, trembling creature and—forget your wishes, because—that's none of your business! ... Oh, nothing, nothing will make me forgive the old crone!”

His hair was damp with sweat, his trembling lips were parched, his fixed eyes were turned up to the ceiling.

“My mother, my sister, how I loved them! Why do I hate them now? Yes, I hate them, hate them physically, I cannot bear having them near me...I went over and kissed mother this morning, I remember...To embrace her and think that if she found out, she...should I tell her, then? That would be just like me...Hm! She must be the same as I am,” he added, making an effort to think, as though struggling against the delirium that was taking hold of him. “Oh, how I hate that little old crone now! If she recovered, I think I'd kill her again! Poor Lizaveta! Why did she have to turn up there! ... Strange, though; why is it that I almost never think of her, as if I hadn't killed her?...Lizaveta! Sonya! Poor, meek ones, with meek eyes...Dear ones! ... Why don't they weep? Why don't they moan?...They give everything...their eyes are meek and gentle...Sonya, Sonya! Gentle Sonya! . . .”

He became oblivious; it seemed strange to him that he did not remember how he could have ended up in the street. It was already late evening. The twilight was thickening, the full moon shone brighter and brighter, but the air was somehow especially stifling. People moved in crowds along the street; artisans and office workers were going home, others were out for a stroll; there was a smell of lime, dust, stagnant water. Raskolnikov walked along sad and preoccupied; he remembered very well that he had left the house with some purpose, that he had to do something, and quickly, but precisely what—he had forgotten. Suddenly he stopped and noticed that a man standing on the sidewalk across the street was waving to him with his hand. He started across the street towards him, but the man suddenly turned and went on as though nothing had happened, with his head down, not looking back or showing any sign that he had called him. “But did he call me, really?” Raskolnikov thought, and nevertheless started after him. When he was about ten steps away, he suddenly recognized the man— and was frightened: it was today's tradesman, in the same smock, hunched over as before. Raskolnikov stayed some distance behind him; his heart was pounding; they turned down a side street—he still refused to look back. “Does he know I'm following him?” thought Raskolnikov. The tradesman walked through the gates of a big house. Raskolnikov hastened up to the gates and looked in to see if he would turn and call him. Indeed, having passed under the gateway and on into the courtyard, he suddenly turned around and again seemed to wave to him. Raskolnikov immediately went through the gateway, but the tradesman was no longer in the courtyard. That meant he had gone straight up the first stairway. Raskolnikov rushed after him. He could indeed hear someone's steady, unhurried steps two flights above. Strangely, the stairway seemed familiar! Here was the first-floor window; moonlight shone sadly and mysteriously through the glass; here was the second floor. Hah! It was the same apartment where the painters had been working...How had he not recognized it at once? The steps of the man ahead of him faded away: “that means he has stopped or is hiding somewhere.” Here was the third floor; should he go any farther? How silent it was, even frightening...But he went on. The sound of his own steps scared and alarmed him. God, how dark! The tradesman was probably lurking somewhere here in a corner. Ah! The apartment door was standing wide open; he thought a moment and went in. The entryway was very dark and empty, not a soul, as though everything had been taken out; quietly, on tiptoe, he moved on into the living room: the whole room was brightly flooded with moonlight; everything here was as it had been: the chairs, the mirror, the yellow sofa, the pictures in their frames. A huge, round, copper-red moon was looking straight in the window. “It's because of the moon that it's so silent,” thought Raskolnikov, “asking some riddle, no doubt.” He stood and waited, waited a long time, and the more silent the moon was, the harder his heart pounded—it was even becoming painful. And still the same silence. Suddenly there came a brief, dry crack like the snapping of a twig; then everything was still again. An awakened fly suddenly swooped and struck against the window, buzzing plaintively. At the same moment he made out what seemed to be a woman's wrap hanging in the corner between a small cupboard and the window. “Why is that wrap here?” he thought, “it wasn't here before...” He approached quietly and realized that someone seemed to be hiding there behind the wrap. He cautiously moved the wrap aside with his hand and saw a chair standing there, and on the chair, in the corner, sat the little old crone, all hunched up, with her head bent down so that there was no way he could see her face—but it was she. He stood over her. “Afraid!” he thought, and he quietly freed the axe from its loop and struck the old woman on the crown of the head, once and then again. But, strangely, she did not even stir under his blows, as though she were made of wood. He became frightened, bent closer, and began looking at her, but she also bent her head still lower. Then he bent down all the way to the floor and peeked into her face from below, peeked and went dead: the little old crone was sitting there laughing—simply dissolving in soft, inaudible laughter, trying her best not to let him hear her. He suddenly fancied that the door to the bedroom had opened a little, and there also seemed to be laughter and whispering there. Rage overcame him: he began hitting the old woman on the head with all his strength, but at every blow of the axe the laughing and whispering from the bedroom grew stronger and louder, and the little crone heaved all over with laughter. He wanted to run away, but now the whole entryway is full of people, all the doors to the stairs are wide open, and on the landings, on the stairway, farther down there are people, head to head, all looking—but all hushed and waiting, silent... His heart shrank, his feet became rooted and refused to move...He tried to cry out—and woke up.