Текст книги "Crime and Punishment"

Автор книги: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Соавторы: Fyodor Dostoevsky
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Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 44 страниц)

“I came to talk about business,” Raskolnikov suddenly spoke loudly, and, frowning, he rose and went to Sonya. She looked up at him silently. His face was especially stern, and some wild resolution was expressed in it.

“I left my family today,” he said, “my mother and sister. I won't go to them now. I've broken with everything there.”

“Why?” Sonya asked, as if stunned. Her meeting earlier with his mother and sister had left an extraordinary impression on her, though one not yet clear to herself. She heard the news of the break almost with horror.

“I have only you now,” he added. “Let's go together...I've come to you. We're cursed together, so let's go together!”

His eyes were flashing. “He's crazy,” Sonya thought in her turn.

“Go where?” she asked in fear, and involuntarily stepped back.

“How do I know? I only know that it's on the same path, I know it for certain—that's all. One goal!”

She went on looking at him, understanding nothing. She understood only that he was terribly, infinitely unhappy.

“None of them will understand anything, if you start talking with them,” he continued, “but I understand. I need you, and so I've come to you.”

“I don't understand . . .” Sonya whispered.

“You'll understand later...Haven't you done the same thing? You, too, have stepped over...were able to step over. You laid hands on yourself, you destroyed a life... your own(it's all the same!). You might have lived by the spirit and reason, but you'll end up on the Haymarket... But you can't endure it, and if you remain alone,you'll lose your mind, like me. You're nearly crazy already; so we must go together, on the same path! Let's go!”

“Why? Why do you say that?” Sonya said, strangely and rebelliously stirred by his words.

“Why? Because it's impossible to remain like this—that's why! It's necessary finally to reason seriously and directly, and not weep and cry like a child that God will not allow it! What if you are indeed taken to the hospital tomorrow? That woman is out of her mind and consumptive, she'll die soon, and the children? Won't Polechka be destroyed? Haven't you seen children here on the street corners, sent out by their mothers to beg? I've learned where these mothers live, and in what circumstances. Children cannot remain children there. There a seven-year-old is depraved and a thief. But children are the image of Christ: 'Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.' <sup>[99]99
  An imprecise quotation of Matthew 19:14.


[Закрыть]</sup> He taught us to honor and love them, they are the future mankind . . .”

“But what, what can be done, then?” Sonya repeated, weeping hysterically and wringing her hands.

“What can be done? Smash what needs to be smashed, once and for all, and that's it—and take the suffering upon ourselves! What? You don't understand? You'll understand later...Freedom and power, but above all, power! Over all trembling creatures, over the whole ant-heap! ... That is the goal! Remember it! This is my parting word to you! I may be talking to you for the last time. If I don't come tomorrow, you'll hear about everything yourself, and then remember these present words. And sometime later, years later, as life goes on, maybe you'll understand what they meant. But if I come tomorrow, I'll tell you who killed Lizaveta. Good-bye!”

Sonya shuddered all over with fear.

“You mean you know who killed her?” she asked, frozen in horror and looking at him wildly.

“I know and I'll tell...you, you alone! I've chosen you. I won't come asking forgiveness, I'll simply tell you. I chose you long ago to tell it to, back when your father was talking about you and Lizaveta was still alive, I thought of it then. Good-bye. Don't give me your hand. Tomorrow!”

He went out. Sonya looked at him as at a madman; but she herself was as if insane, and she felt it. Her head was spinning. “Lord! How does he know who killed Lizaveta? What did those words mean? It's frightening!” But at the same time the thoughtwould not enter her mind. No, no, it would not! ... ”Oh, he must be terribly unhappy! ... He's left his mother and sister. Why? What happened? And what are his intentions? What was it he had said to her? He had kissed her foot and said...said (yes, he had said it clearly) that he now could not live without her...Oh, Lord!”

Sonya spent the whole night in fever and delirium. She jumped up every now and then, wept, wrung her hands, then dropped into feverish sleep again, and dreamed of Polechka, of Katerina Ivanovna, of Lizaveta, of reading the Gospel, and of him...him, with his pale face, his burning eyes...He was kissing her feet, weeping...Oh, Lord!

Beyond the door to the right, the door that separated Sonya's apartment from the apartment of Gertrude Karlovna Resslich, there was an intervening room, long empty, which belonged to Mrs. Resslich's apartment and was up for rent, as signs on the gates and notices pasted to the windows facing the canal announced. Sonya had long been used to considering this room uninhabited. And meanwhile, all that time, Mr. Svidrigailov had been standing by the door in the empty room and stealthily listening. When Raskolnikov left, he stood for a while, thought, then went on tiptoe into his room, adjacent to the empty room, took a chair, and inaudibly brought it close to the door leading to Sonya's room. He had found the conversation amusing and bemusing, and he had liked it very, very much—so much that he even brought a chair, in order not to be subjected again in the future, tomorrow, for instance, to the unpleasantness of standing on his feet for a whole hour, but to settle himself more comfortably and thus treat himself to a pleasure that was full in all respects.

V

When, at exactly eleven o'clock the next morning, Raskolnikov entered the building that housed the —y police station, went to the department of the commissioner of investigations, and asked to be announced to Porfiry Petrovich, he was even surprised at how long they kept him waiting: at least ten minutes went by before he was summoned. Whereas, according to his calculations, it seemed they ought to have pounced on him at once. Meanwhile he stood in the waiting room, and people came and went who apparently were not interested in him at all. In the next room, which looked like an office, several scriveners sat writing, and it was obvious that none of them had any idea who or what Raskolnikov was. With an uneasy and mistrustful look he glanced around, trying to see if there were not at least some guard, some mysterious eyes, appointed to watch that he not go away. But there was nothing of the kind: all he saw were some pettily occupied office faces, then some other people, and none of them had any need of him: he could have gone four ways at once. A thought was becoming more and more firmly established in him: if that mysterious man yesterday, that ghost who had come from under the ground, indeed knew everything and had seen everything—would they let him, Raskolnikov, stand here like this and wait quietly? And would they have waited for him here until eleven o'clock, until he himself saw fit to come? It followed that the man either had not denounced him yet, or...or simply did not know anything, had not seen anything himself, with his own eyes (and how could he have?), and, consequently, the whole thing that he, Raskolnikov, had gone through yesterday was again a phantom, exaggerated by his troubled and sick imagination. This surmise had begun to strengthen in him even yesterday, during the most intense anxiety and despair. As he thought it all over now and made ready for a new battle, he suddenly felt himself trembling—and indignation even boiled up in him at the thought that he was trembling with fear before the hateful Porfiry Petrovich. It was most terrible for him to meet this man again; he hated him beyond measure, infinitely, and was even afraid of somehow giving himself away by his hatred. And so strong was this indignation that it immediately stopped his trembling; he made ready to go in with a cold and insolent air, and vowed to be silent as much as possible, to look and listen attentively, and, if only this once at least, to overcome his morbidly irritated nature, cost what it might. Just then he was called in to see Porfiry Petrovich.

It turned out that Porfiry Petrovich was alone in his office at the moment. His office was a room neither large nor small; in it stood a big writing desk in front of a sofa upholstered in oilcloth, a bureau, a cabinet in the corner, and a few chairs—all institutional furniture, of yellow polished wood. In the corner of the back wall—or, better, partition—was a closed door; beyond it, behind the partition, there must consequently have been other rooms. When Raskolnikov came in, Porfiry Petrovich immediately closed the door through which he had come, and they remained alone. He met his visitor with an apparently quite cheerful and affable air, and only several minutes later did Raskolnikov notice in him the signs of something like embarrassment—as if he had suddenly been put out, or caught doing something very solitary and secretive.

“Ah, my esteemed sir! Here you are...in our parts . . .” Porfiry began, reaching out both hands to him. “Well, do sit down, my dear! Or perhaps you don't like being called esteemed and...dear—so, tout court? <sup>[100]100
  "Simply" or "without adornments" (French).


[Закрыть]</sup> Please don't regard it as familiarity...Over here, sir, on the sofa.”

Raskolnikov sat down without taking his eyes off him.

“In our parts,” the apology for being familiar, the French phrase “ tout court,“ and so on—these were all typical signs. “He reached out both hands to me, and yet he didn't give me either, he drew them back in time,” flashed in him suspiciously. Each of them was watching the other, but as soon as their eyes met, quick as lightning they would look away.

“I've brought you this little paper...about the watch...here, sir. Is that all right, or shall I copy it over?”

“What? A little paper? Right, right...don't worry, it's quite all right, sir,” Porfiry Petrovich said, as if he were hurrying somewhere, and after saying it, he took the paper and looked it over. “Quite all right, sir. Nothing more is needed,” he confirmed in the same patter, and put the paper on the desk. Then, a minute later, already speaking of something else, he took it up again and put it on the bureau.

“You seemed to be saying yesterday that you wished to ask me...formally...about my acquaintance with this...murdered woman?” Raskolnikov tried to begin again. “Why did I put in that seemed?”flashed in him like lightning. “And why am I so worried about having put in that seemed?”a second thought immediately flashed in him like lightning.

And he suddenly felt that his insecurity, from the mere contact with Porfiry, from two words only, from two glances only, had bushed out to monstrous proportions in a moment...and that it was terribly dangerous—frayed nerves, mounting agitation. “It's bad! It's bad! ... I'll betray myself again.”

“Yes, yes, yes! Don't worry! It will keep, it will keep, sir,” Porfiry Petrovich muttered, moving back and forth by the desk, but somehow aimlessly, as if darting now to the window, now to the bureau, then back to the desk, first avoiding Raskolnikov's suspicious eyes, then suddenly stopping dead and staring point-blank at him. His plump, round little figure gave it all an extremely strange effect, like a ball rolling in different directions and bouncing off all the walls and corners.

“We'll have time, sir, we'll have time! ... Do you smoke, by chance? Have you got your own? Here, sir, take a cigarette...” he continued, offering his visitor a cigarette. “You know, I'm receiving you here, but my apartment is right there, behind the partition...government quarters, sir, but just now I'm renting another for a while. They've been doing a bit of renovating here. It's almost ready now...a government apartment is a fine thing, eh? What do you think?”

“Yes, a fine thing,” Raskolnikov answered, looking at him almost mockingly.

“A fine thing, a fine thing . . .” Porfiry Petrovich kept repeating, as if he had suddenly begun thinking of something quite different; “yes, a fine thing!” he all but shouted in the end, suddenly fixing his eyes on Raskolnikov and stopping two steps away from him. This silly, multiple repetition that a government apartment is a fine thing was too contradictory, in its triteness, to the serious, reflective, and enigmatic look that he now directed at his visitor.

But this only made Raskolnikov's anger boil the more, and he was no longer able to refrain from making a mocking and rather imprudent challenge.

“You know what,” he suddenly asked, looking at him almost insolently, and as if enjoying his own insolence, “it seems there exists a certain legal rule, a certain legal technique—for all possible investigators—to begin from afar at first, with little trifles, or even with something serious but quite unrelated, in order to encourage, so to speak, or, better, to divert the person being interrogated, to lull his prudence, and then suddenly, in the most unexpected way, to stun him right on the head with the most fatal and dangerous question—is it so? I suppose it's mentioned religiously to this day in all the rule books and manuals?”

“Well, well...so you think I've been using this government apartment to get you to...eh?” And having said this, Porfiry Petrovich squinted, winked; something merry and sly ran across his face, the little wrinkles on his forehead smoothed out, his little eyes narrowed, his features stretched out, and he suddenly dissolved into prolonged, nervous laughter, heaving and swaying with his whole body, and looking straight into Raskolnikov's eyes. The latter began to laugh himself, somewhat forcedly; but when Porfiry, seeing that he was also laughing, went off into such gales of laughter that he almost turned purple, Raskolnikov's loathing suddenly went beyond all prudence; he stopped laughing, frowned, and stared at Porfiry long and hatefully, not taking his eyes off him during this whole long and as if deliberately unceasing fit of laughter. The imprudence, however, was obvious on both sides: it appeared that Porfiry Petrovich was laughing in the face of his visitor, who was meeting his laughter with hatred, and that he was hardly embarrassed by this circumstance. Raskolnikov found the last fact very portentous: he realized that Porfiry Petrovich had certainly also not been at all embarrassed earlier, but on the contrary, that he himself, Raskolnikov, had perhaps stepped into a trap; that evidently there was something here that he was unaware of, some goal; that everything was perhaps prepared already, and now, this minute, would be revealed and come crashing down . . .

He went straight to the point at once, rose from his place, and took his cap.

“Porfiry Petrovich,” he began resolutely, but with rather strong irritation, “yesterday you expressed a wish that I come for some sort of interrogations” (he put special emphasis on the word interrogations).“I have come. If there is anything you need to ask, ask it; if not, allow me to withdraw. I have no time, I have things to do...I have to be at the funeral of that official who was run over, about whom...you also know...” he added, and at once became angry for having added it, and therefore at once became more irritated. “I am quite sick of it all, sir, do you hear? And have been for a long time...that is partly what made me ill...In short,” he almost shouted, feeling that the phrase about his illness was even more inappropriate, “in short, kindly either ask your questions or let me go, right now...and if you ask, do so not otherwise than according to form, sir! I will not allow it otherwise; and so, good-bye for now, since there's nothing for the two of us to do here.”

“Lord! What is it? What is there to ask?” Porfiry Petrovich suddenly began clucking, immediately changing his tone and aspect, and instantly ceasing to laugh. “Don't worry, please,” he fussed, again rushing in all directions, then suddenly trying to sit Raskolnikov down, “it will keep, it will keep, sir, and it's all just trifles, sir! I am, on the contrary, so glad that you have finally come to us...I am receiving you as a guest. And excuse me, dear Rodion Romanovich, for this cursed laughter. Rodion Romanovich—is that right?... I'm a nervous man, sir, and you made me laugh by the wittiness of your remark; sometimes, really, I start shaking like a piece of gum rubber and can't stop for half an hour...I laugh easily, sir. With my constitution I'm even afraid of a stroke. But do sit down, won't you?...Please, my dear, or I'll think you're angry . . .”

Raskolnikov kept silent, listened, and watched, still frowning wrathfully. He sat down nonetheless, but without letting the cap out of his hands.

“I'll tell you one thing about myself, dear Rodion Romanovich, in explanation of my personal characteristics, so to speak,” Porfiry Petrovich went on, fussing about the room, and, as before, seeming to avoid meeting his visitor's eyes. “I am, you know, a bachelor, an unworldly and unknowing man, and, moreover, a finished man, a frozen man, sir, gone to seed, and...and...and have you noticed, Rodion Romanovich, that among us—that is, in our Russia, sir, and most of all in our Petersburg circles—if two intelligent men get together, not very well acquainted yet, but, so to speak, mutually respecting each other, just like you and me now, sir, it will take them a whole half hour to find a topic of conversation—they freeze before each other, they sit feeling mutually embarrassed. Everybody has topics for discussion—ladies, for instance...worldly men, for instance, of a higher tone, always have a topic for discussion, c'est de rigueur <sup>[101]101
  "It's obligatory" (French).


[Закрыть]</sup> —but people of the neuter kind, like us, are all easily embarrassed and have trouble talking...the thinking ones, I mean. Why do you suppose that is, my dear? Do we have no social interests, or is it that we're too honest and don't want to deceive each other, I don't know. Eh? What do you think? And do put your cap aside, sir, it's as if you were just about to leave, really, it's awkward looking at you...On the contrary, I'm so glad, sir . . .”

Raskolnikov put down the cap, but remained silent and went on listening seriously and frowningly to Porfiry's empty and inconsistent babble. “What is he trying to do, divert my attention with his silly babble, or what?”

“I won't offer you coffee, sir, this is no place for it; but why shouldn't one sit down for five little minutes with a friend, as a diversion,” Porfiry continued in a steady stream, “and you know, sir, all these official duties...you won't be offended, my dear, that I keep pacing back and forth like this; excuse me, my dear, I'm so afraid of offending you, but it's simply necessary for me to move, sir. I sit all the time, and I'm so glad to be able to walk around for five minutes or so...hemorrhoids, sir...I keep thinking of trying gymnastics as a treatment; they say there are state councillors, senior state councillors, even privy councillors, happily skipping rope, sir; that's how it is, this science, in our age, sir... yes, sir... But concerning these duties here, interrogations, and all these formalities...now you, my dear, were just so good as to mention interrogations yourself...and you know, really, my dear Rodion Romanovich, these interrogations frequently throw off the interrogator himself more than the one who is being interrogated...As you, my dear, so justly and wittily remarked a moment ago.” (Raskolnikov had made no such remark.) “One gets mixed up, sir! Really mixed up! And it's all the same thing, all the same thing, like a drum! Now that the reform is coming, they'll at least change our title, heh, heh, heh! <sup>[102]102
  The judicial reforms of 1864 introduced, among many more important changes, a new nomenclature for police and court personnel.


[Закрыть]</sup> And concerning our legal techniques—as you were pleased to put it so wittily—there I agree with you completely, sir. Tell me, really, who among all the accused, even the most cloddish peasant, doesn't know, for instance, that they will first lull him with unrelated questions (to use your happy expression) and then suddenly stun him right on the head, with an axe, sir—heh, heh, heh!—right on the head, to use your happy comparison, heh, heh! So you really thought I was talking about this apartment to make you...heh, heh! Aren't you an ironical man. Very well, I'll stop! Ah, yes, incidentally, one word calls up another, one thought evokes another– now, you were just pleased to mention form, with regard to a bit of interrogating, that is...But what is it about form? You know, sir, in many cases form is nonsense. Oftentimes one may just have a friendly talk, and it's far more advantageous. Form won't run away, allow me to reassure you on that score, sir; but, I ask you, what is form essentially? One cannot bind the investigator with form at every step. The investigator's business is, so to speak, a free art, in its own way, or something like that...heh, heh, heh!”

Porfiry Petrovich paused for a moment to catch his breath. The talk was simply pouring out of him, now in senselessly empty phrases, then suddenly letting in some enigmatic little words, and immediately going off into senselessness again. He was almost running back and forth now, moving his fat little legs quicker and quicker, looking down all the time, with his right hand behind his back and his left hand constantly waving and performing various gestures, each time remarkably unsuited to his words. Raskolnikov suddenly noticed that as he was running back and forth he twice seemed almost to pause for a moment by the door, as if he were listening...”Is he waiting for something, or what?”

“And you really are entirely right, sir,” Porfiry picked up again, looking at Raskolnikov merrily and with remarkable simple-heartedness (which startled him and put him on his guard at once), “really, you're right, sir, in choosing to laugh so wittily at our legal forms, heh, heh! Because these profoundly psychological techniques of ours (some of them, naturally) are extremely funny, and perhaps even useless, sir, when they're too bound up with form. Yes, sir...I'm talking about form again: well, if I were to regard, or, better, to suspect this, that, or the other person of being a criminal, sir, in some little case entrusted to me...You're preparing to be a lawyer, are you not, Rodion Romanovich?”

“Yes, I was . . .”

“Well, then, here you have a little example, so to speak, for the future—I mean, don't think I'd be so bold as to teach you, you who publish such articles on crime! No, sir, but I'll be so bold as to offer you a little example, simply as a fact—so, if I were to regard, for example, this, that, or the other person as a criminal, why, I ask you, should I trouble him before the time comes, even if I have evidence against him, sir? There may be a man, for example, whom it is my duty to arrest quickly, but another man may have a different character, really, sir; and why shouldn't I let him walk around town, heh, heh, sir! No, I can see you don't quite understand, so let me present it to you more clearly, sir: if I were to lock him up too soon, for example, I might thereby be lending him, so to speak, moral support, heh, heh! You laugh?” (Raskolnikov had not even thought of laughing; he was sitting with compressed lips, not taking his feverish gaze from the eyes of Porfiry Petrovich.) “And yet it really is so, sir, particularly with some specimens, because people are multifarious, sir, and there is one practice over all. Now, you were just pleased to mention evidence; well, suppose there is evidence, sir, but evidence, my dear, is mostly double-ended, and I am an investigator and therefore, I confess, a weak man: I would like to present my investigation with, so to speak, mathematical clarity; I would like to get hold of a piece of evidence that's something like two times two is four! Something like direct and indisputable proof! But if I were to lock him up at the wrong time—even though I'm sure it was him—I might well deprive myself of the means for his further incrimination. Why? Because I would be giving him, so to speak, a definite position; I would be, so to speak, defining him and reassuring him psychologically, so that he would be able to hide from me in his shell: he would understand finally that he is under arrest. They say that in Sebastopol, right after Alma, intelligent people were oh so afraid that the enemy might attack any moment in full force and take Sebastopol at once; but when they saw that the enemy preferred a regular siege and was digging the first parallel, the intelligent people were ever so glad and reassured, sir: it meant the thing would drag on for at least two months, because who knew when they'd manage to take it by regular siege! <sup>[103]103
  During the Crimean War (1853-56), after defeating the Russian army at the Alma River (September 8,1854), the allied forces (England, France, Turkey, the Piedmont) laid siege to Sebastopol, finally taking the city eleven months later.


[Закрыть]</sup> Again you laugh? Again you don't believe me? And right you are, of course. You are, sir, yes, you are! These are all particular cases, I agree; the case in point is indeed a particular one, sir! But at the same time, my good Rodion Romanovich, it must be observed that the general case, the one to which all legal forms and rules are suited, and on the basis of which they are all worked out and written down in the books, simply does not exist, for the very reason that every case, let's say, for instance, every crime, as soon as it actually occurs, turns at once into a completely particular case, sir; and sometimes, just think, really completely unlike all the previous ones, sir. The most comical occurrences sometimes occur this way, sir. But if I were to leave some gentleman quite alone, not bring him in or bother him, but so that he knows every hour and every minute, or at least suspects, that I know everything, all his innermost secrets, and am watching him day and night, following him vigilantly, if I were to keep him consciously under eternal suspicion and fear, then, by God, he might really get into a whirl, sir, he might come himself and do something that would be like two times two, so to speak, something with a mathematical look to it—which is quite agreeable, sir. It can happen even with a lumpish peasant, and all the more so with our sort, the contemporarily intelligent man, and developed in a certain direction to boot! Because, my dear, it's quite an important thing to understand in which direction a man is developed. And nerves, sir, nerves—you've forgotten about them, sir! Because all of that is so sick, and bad, and irritated nowadays! ... And there's so much bile, so much bile in them all! I'll tell you, it's a sort of gold mine on occasion, sir! And why should I worry that he's walking around town unfettered! Let him, let him walk around meanwhile, let him; I know all the same that he's my dear little victim and that he won't run away from me! Where is he going to run to, heh, heh! Abroad? A Pole would run abroad, but not him,especially since I'm watching and have taken measures. Is he going to flee to the depths of the country? Butonly peasants live there—real, cloddish, Russian peasants; now, a contemporarily developed man would sooner go to prison than live with such foreigners as our good peasants, heh, heh! But that's all nonsense, all external. What is it, to run away! A mere formality; that's not the main thing; no, he won't run away from me, not just because he has nowhere to run to: psychologicallyhe won't run away on me, heh, heh! A nice little phrase! He won't run away on me by a law of nature, even if he has somewhere to run to. Have you ever seen a moth near a candle? Well, so he'll keep circling around me, circling around me, as around a candle; freedom will no longer be dear to him, he'll fall to thinking, get entangled, he'll tangle himself all up as in a net, he'll worry himself to death! ... What's more, he himself will prepare some sort of mathematical trick for me, something like two times two—if I merely allow him a slightly longer intermission . .. And he'll keep on, he'll keep on making circles around me, narrowing the radius more and more, and—whop! He'll fly right into my mouth, and I'll swallow him, sir, and that will be most agreeable, heh, heh, heh! You don't believe me?”

Raskolnikov did not reply; he was sitting pale and motionless, peering with the same strained attention into Porfiry's face.

“A good lesson!” he thought, turning cold. “This isn't even like cat and mouse anymore, as it was yesterday. And it's not for something so useless as to make a show of his strength and...let me know it: he's more intelligent than that! There's some other goal here, but what? Eh, it's nonsense, brother, this dodging and trying to scare me! You have no proofs, and that man yesterday doesn't exist! You simply want to throw me off, to irritate me beforehand, and when I'm irritated, whop me—only it's all lies, you won't pull it off, you won't! But why, why let me know so much?...Are we counting on bad nerves, or what?...No, brother, it's all lies, you won't pull it off, whatever it is you've got prepared...Well, we shall see what you've got prepared.”

And he braced himself with all his strength, preparing for the terrible and unknown catastrophe. At times he wanted to hurl himself at Porfiry and strangle him on the spot. He had been afraid of this anger from the moment he entered. He was aware that his lips were dry, his heart was pounding, there was foam caked on his lips. But he was still determined to be silent and not say a word until the time came. He realized that this was the best tactic in his position, because he not only would not give anything away, but, on the contrary, would exasperate the enemy with his silence, and perhaps make him give something away himself. At least he hoped for that.

“No, I see you don't believe me, sir; you keep thinking I'm just coming out with harmless jokes,” Porfiry picked up, getting merrier and merrier, ceaselessly chuckling with pleasure, and beginning to circle the room again, “and of course you're right, sir; even my figure has been so arranged by God Himself that it evokes only comic thoughts in others; a buffoon, sir; but what I shall tell you, and repeat again, sir, is that you, my dear Rodion Romanovich—you'll excuse an old man—you are still young, sir, in your first youth, so to speak, and therefore you place the most value on human intelligence, following the example of all young men. A playful sharpness of wit and the abstract arguments of reason are what seduce you, sir. Which is exactly like the former Austrian Hofkriegsrat,for example, insofar, that is, as I am able to judge of military events: on paper they had Napoleon crushed and taken prisoner, it was all worked out and arranged in the cleverest manner in their study, and then, lo and behold, General Mack surrenders with his entire army, heh, heh, heh! <sup>[104]104
  The Hofkriegsratwas the supreme military council of Austria. Field Marshal Karl Mack (1752-1828) was surrounded by the French army at Ulm in 1805 and surrendered his 30,000 men to Napoleon without a fight. Mack's arrival at Russian headquarters after this defeat is described in Tolstoy's War and Peace,in a chapter published in The Russian Herald(1866, No. 2), between the publication in the same magazine of the first and the remaining parts of C&P.


[Закрыть]</sup> I see, I see, Rodion Romanovich, my dear, you're laughing that such a civilian as I should keep picking little examples from military history. A weakness, I can't help it, I love the military profession, and I do so love reading all these military accounts...I've decidedly missed my career. I should be serving in the military, really, sir. I might not have become a Napoleon, perhaps, but I'd be a major at least, heh, heh, heh! Well, my dearest, now I'll tell you the whole detailed truth—about that particular case,I mean: reality and human nature, sir, are very important things, and oh how they sometimes bring down the most perspicacious calculations! Eh, listen to an old man, I say it seriously, Rodion Romanovich” (as he spoke, the barely thirty-five-year-old Porfiry Petrovich indeed seemed to grow old all at once; his voice even changed, and he became all hunched over); “besides, I'm a sincere man, sir...Am I a sincere man, or am I not? What do you think? I'd say I'm completely sincere: I'm telling you all this gratis, and ask no reward for it, heh, heh! Well, sir, to go on: wit, in my opinion, is a splendid thing, sir; it is, so to speak, an adornment of nature and a consolation of life; and what tricks it can perform, it seems, so that some poor little investigator is hard put to figure them out, it seems, since he also gets carried away by his own fantasy, as always happens, because he, too, is a man, sir! But it's human nature that helps the poor investigator out, sir, that's the trouble! And that is what doesn't occur to the young people, carried away by their own wit, 'stepping over all obstacles' (as you were pleased to put it in a most witty and cunning way). Suppose he lies—our man, I mean, this particular case,sir, this incognito—and lies splendidly, in the most cunning way; here, it seems, is a triumph; go and enjoy the fruits of your wit; but then—whop! he faints, in the most interesting, the most scandalous place. Suppose he's ill, and the room also happens to be stuffy, but even so, sir! Even so, it makes one think! He lied incomparably, but he failed to reckon on his nature. There's the perfidy, sir! Another time, carried away by the playfulness of his wit, he starts making a fool of a man who suspects him, and turns pale as if on purpose, as if in play, but he turns pale too naturally,it's too much like the truth, so again it makes one think! He might hoodwink him to begin with, but overnight the man will reconsider, if he's nobody's fool. And so it is at every step, sir! And that's not all: he himself starts running ahead, poking his nose where no one has asked him, starting conversations about things of which he ought, on the contrary, to keep silent, slipping in various allegories, heh, heh! He'll come himself and start asking why he wasn't arrested long ago, heh, heh, heh! And it can happen with the wittiest man, a psychologist and a writer, sir! Human nature is a mirror, sir, the clearest mirror! Look and admire—there you have it, sir! But why are you so pale, Rodion Romanovich? Is there not enough air? Shall I open the window?”