“Rodion Romanovich, my dear! but you'll drive yourself out of your mind this way, I assure you, a-ah! Do drink! A little sip, at least!”

He succeeded after all in making him take the glass of water in his hands. Raskolnikov mechanically brought it to his lips, but then, recollecting himself, set it on the table with loathing.

“Yes, sir, a fit, that's what we've just had, sir! Go on this way, my dear, and you'll have your former illness back,” Porfiry Petrovich began clucking in friendly sympathy, though he still looked somewhat at a loss. “Lord! How is it you take no care of yourself at all? Then, too, Dmitri Prokofych came to see me yesterday—I agree, I agree, I have a caustic nature, a nasty one, but look what he deduced from it! ... Lord! He came yesterday, after you, we were having dinner, he talked and talked, I just threw up my hands; well, I thought... ah, my Lord! Don't tell me you sent him! But sit down, my dear, do sit down, for Christ's sake!”

“No, I didn't send him. But I knew he went to you and why he went,” Raskolnikov replied sharply.

“You knew?”

“Yes. What of it?”

“Here's what, my dear Rodion Romanovich—that this is not all I know about your exploits; I've been informed of everything, sir! I know about how you went to rent the apartment, just at nightfall, when it was getting dark, and began ringing the bell and asking about blood, which left the workmen and caretakers perplexed. I quite understand what state you were in at the time...but even so, you'll simply drive yourself out of your mind this way, by God! You'll get yourself into a whirl! You're boiling too much with indignation, sir, with noble indignation, sir, at being wronged first by fate and then by the police, and so you rush here and there, trying, so to speak, to make everyone talk the sooner and thus put an end to it all at once, because you're sick of these stupidities and all these suspicions. Isn't that so? I've guessed your mood, haven't I?...Only this way it's not just yourself but also Razumikhin that you'll get into a whirl on me; because he's too kind a man for this, you know it yourself. You are ill, but he is a virtuous man, and so the illness is catching for him...I'll explain, my dear, when you're calmer...but do sit down, for Christ's sake! Please rest, you look awful; do sit down.”

Raskolnikov sat down; his trembling was going away and he was beginning to feel hot all over. In deep amazement, tensely, he listened to the alarmed and amiably solicitous Porfiry Petrovich. But he did not believe a word he said, though he felt some strange inclination to believe. Porfiry's unexpected words about the apartment thoroughly struck him. “So he knows about the apartment, but how?” suddenly crossed his mind. “And he tells it to me himself!”

“Yes, sir, we had a case almost exactly like that in our legal practice, a psychological case, a morbid one, sir,” Porfiry went on pattering. “There was a man who also slapped a murder on himself, sir, and how he did it! He came out with a whole hallucination, presented facts, described circumstances, confused and bewildered us one and all—and why? Quite unintentionally, he himself had been partly the cause of the murder, but only partly, and when he learned that he had given a pretext to the murderers, he became anguished, stupefied, began imagining things, went quite off his head, and convinced himself that he was the murderer! But the governing Senate finally examined the case and the unfortunate man was acquitted and put under proper care. Thanks to the governing Senate! Ah, well, tsk, tsk, tsk! So, what then, my dear? This way you may get yourself into a delirium, if you have such urges to irritate your nerves, going around at night ringing doorbells and asking about blood! I've studied all this psychology in practice, sir. Sometimes it can drive a man to jump out the window or off a bell-tower, and it's such a tempting sensation, sir. The same with doorbells, sir...An illness, Rodion Romanovich, an illness! You've been neglecting your illness too much, sir. You ought to get the advice of an experienced physician—what use is this fat fellow of yours! ... You're delirious! You're doing all this simply and solely in delirium! . . .”

For a moment everything started whirling around Raskolnikov.

“Can it be, can it be,” flashed in him, “that he's lying even now? Impossible, impossible!” He pushed the thought away from him, sensing beforehand to what degree of rage and fury it might lead him, sensing that he might lose his mind from rage.

“It was not in delirium, it was in reality!” he cried out, straining all the powers of his reason to penetrate Porfiry's game. “In reality, in reality! Do you hear?”

“Yes, I understand, and I hear, sir! Yesterday, too, you said it was not in delirium, you even especially stressed that it was not in delirium!

Everything you can say, I understand, sir! Ahh! ... But Rodion Romanovich, my good man, at least listen to the following circumstances. If you were indeed a criminal in reality, or somehow mixed up in this cursed case, well, for heaven's sake, would you yourself stress that you were doing it all not in delirium but, on the contrary, in full consciousness? And stress it especially, stress it with such special obstinacy—now, could that be, could it be, for heaven's sake? Quite the opposite, I should think. Because if there really was anything to it, you would be bound precisely to stress that it was certainly done in delirium! Right? Am I right?”

Something sly could be heard in the question. Raskolnikov drew all the way back on the sofa, away from Porfiry, who was leaning towards him, and stared at him silently, point-blank, in bewilderment.

“Or else, to do with Mr. Razumikhin—to do, that is, with whether he came to talk yesterday on his own or at your instigation—you ought precisely to have said that he came on his own, and to have concealed that it was at your instigation! But you're not concealing it! You precisely stress that it was at your instigation!”

Raskolnikov had done no such thing. A chill ran down his spine.

“You keep lying,” he said slowly and weakly, his lips twisted into a pained smile. “You want to show me again that you know my whole game, that you know all my answers beforehand,” he said, himself almost aware that he was no longer weighing his words as he should. “You want to bully me...or else you're simply laughing at me.”

He continued to stare at him point-blank as he said this, and suddenly a boundless anger again flashed in his eyes.

“You keep lying!” he cried out. “You know perfectly well that the criminal's best dodge is to conceal as little as possible of what need not be concealed. I don't believe you!”

“You're quite a dodger yourself!” Porfiry tittered. “There's just no getting along with you, my dear; you've got some monomania sitting in you. So you don't believe me? But I shall tell you that you do in fact believe me, you've already believed me for a foot, and I'm going to get you to believe me for a whole yard, because I'm genuinely fond of you and sincerely wish you well.”

Raskolnikov's lips trembled.

“Yes, I do, sir, and I'll tell you one last thing, sir,” he went on, taking Raskolnikov lightly and amiably by the arm, a little above the elbow, “I'll tell you one last thing, sir: watch out for your illness. Besides, your family has now come to you; give a thought to them. You ought to soothe them and pamper them, and all you do is frighten them . . .”

“What's that to you? How do you know it? Why are you so interested? It means you're spying on me and want me to see it?”

“But, my dear, I learned it all from you, from you yourself! You don't even notice that in your excitement you're the first one to tell everything, both to me and to others. I also learned many interesting details yesterday from Mr. Razumikhin, Dmitri Prokofych. No, sir, you interrupted me just now, but I shall tell you that, for all your wit, your insecurity has made you lose a sober view of things. Here's an example, on that same theme, to do with the doorbells: I let you have such a precious thing, such a fact (it is a complete fact, sir!), just like that, lock, stock, and barrel—I, an investigator! And you see nothing in it? But, if I had even the slightest suspicion of you, is that how I ought to have acted? On the contrary, I ought first to have lulled your suspicions, giving no sign that I was already informed of this fact; to have thus diverted you in the opposite direction; and then suddenly to have stunned you on the head as with an axe (to use your own expression): 'And what, sir, were you pleased to be doing in the murdered woman's apartment at ten o'clock in the evening, or even almost eleven? And why were you ringing the bell? And why did you ask about the blood? And why did you bewilder the caretakers and incite them to go to the police station, to the lieutenant of the precinct?' That's how I ought to have acted, if I had even the slightest suspicion of you. I ought to have taken your evidence in accordance with all the forms, made a search, and perhaps have arrested you as well. . . Since I have acted otherwise, it follows that I have no suspicions of you! But you've lost a sober view and don't see anything, I repeat, sir!”