"And you remember, of course, Mr. Razoumikhin's chattering? We had purposely informed him of some of our suspicions, hoping that he might make you uneasy, for we knew perfectly well that Razoumikhin would not be able to contain his indignation. Zametoff, in particular, had been struck by your boldness, and it certainly was a bold thing for a person to exclaim all of a sudden in an open traktir: 'I am an assassin!' That was really too much of a good thing. Well, I waited for you with trusting patience, and, lo and behold, Providence sends you! How my heart did beat when I saw you coming! Now, I ask you, where was the need of your coming at that time at all? If you remember, you came in laughing immoderately.
That laughter gave me food for thought, but, had I not been very prejudiced at the time, I should have taken no notice of it. And as for Mr. Razoumikhin on that occasion--ah! the stone, the stone, you will remember, under which the stolen things are hidden? Ifancy I can see it from here; it is somewhere in a kitchen garden--it was a kitchen garden you mentioned to Zametoff, was it not? And then, when your article was broached, we fancied we discovered a latent thought beneath every word you uttered. That was the way, Rodion Romanovitch, that my conviction grew little by little. 'And yet,' said I to myself, 'all that may be explained in quite a different way, and perhaps more rationally. After all, a real proof, however slight, would be far more valuable.' But, when Iheard all about the bell-ringing, my doubts vanished; I fancied Ihad the indispensable proof, and did not seem to care for further investigation.
"We are face to face with a weird and gloomy case--a case of a contemporary character, if I may say so--a case possessing, in the fullest sense of the word, the hallmark of time, and circumstances pointing to a person and life of different surroundings. The real culprit is a theorist, a bookworm, who, in a tentative kind of way, has done a more than bold thing; but this boldness of his is of quite a peculiar and one-sided stamp; it is, after a fashion, like that of a man who hurls himself from the top of a mountain or church steeple. The man in question has forgotten to cut off evidence, and, in order to work out a theory, has killed two persons. He has committed a murder, and yet has not known how to take possession of the pelf; what he has taken he has hidden under a stone. The anguish he experienced while hearing knocking at the door and the continued ringing of the bell, was not enough for him:
no, yielding to an irresistible desire of experiencing the same horror, he has positively revisited the empty place and once more pulled the bell. Let us, if you like, attribute the whole of this to disease--to a semidelirious condition--by all means; but there is another point to be considered: he has committed a murder, and yet continues to look upon himself as a righteous man!"Raskolnikoff trembled in every limb. "Then, who--who is it--that has committed the murder?" he stammered forth, in jerky accents.
The examining magistrate sank back in his chair as though astonished at such a question. "Who committed the murder?" he retorted, as if he could not believe his own ears. "Why, you--you did, Rodion Romanovitch! You!--" he added, almost in a whisper, and in a tone of profound conviction.
Raskolnikoff suddenly rose, waited for a few moments, and sat down again, without uttering a single word. All the muscles of his face were slightly convulsed.
"Why, I see your lips tremble just as they did the other day,"observed Porphyrius Petrovitch, with an air of interest. "You have not, I think, thoroughly realized the object of my visit, Rodion Romanovitch," he pursued, after a moment's silence, "hence your great astonishment. I have called with the express intention of plain speaking, and to reveal the truth.""It was not I who committed the murder," stammered the young man, defending himself very much like a child caught in the act of doing wrong.
"Yes, yes, it was you, Rodion Romanovitch, it was you, and you alone," replied the magistrate with severity. "Confess or not, as you think best; for the time being, that is nothing to me. In either case, my conviction is arrived at.""If that is so, why have you called?" asked Raskolnikoff angrily.
