Part Three · III

“He’s well, he’s well!” Zosimov shouted cheerfully to meet them as they came in. He had arrived some ten minutes before and was sitting in his corner of the sofa from yesterday. Raskolnikov was sitting in the opposite corner, fully dressed and even carefully washed and combed, which had not happened to him for a long time. The room was full at once, but Nastasya still managed to slip in after the visitors and stood listening.

Raskolnikov really was almost well, especially compared with yesterday, only he was very pale, absent, and sullen. Outwardly he looked rather like a wounded man, or one enduring some severe physical pain: his brows were knit, his lips pressed together, his eyes inflamed. He spoke little and reluctantly, as if forcing himself or performing a duty, and a kind of restlessness showed now and then in his movements.

All that was lacking was a bandage on his arm or a taffeta sheath on his finger for a complete likeness to a man who has, for instance, a very painful abscess on his finger, or a bruised arm, or something of that sort.

However, even this pale and sullen face lit up for an instant, as if with light, when his mother and sister came in, but this only added to his expression, in place of the dreary absent-mindedness of before, a kind of more concentrated torment. The light soon faded, but the torment remained, and Zosimov, who was observing and studying his patient with all the youthful ardor of a doctor just beginning to practice, noticed with surprise in him, at the arrival of his family, instead of joy, something like a heavy, hidden resolve to endure an hour or two of torture that could no longer be avoided. He saw afterward how almost every word of the conversation that followed seemed to touch some wound of his patient’s and reopen it; but at the same time he partly marveled at the skill in mastering himself and hiding his feelings shown today by yesterday’s monomaniac, who yesterday had fallen almost into a frenzy over the slightest word.

“Yes, I can see myself now that I’m almost well,” said Raskolnikov, kissing his mother and sister in a friendly way, at which Pulcheria Alexandrovna beamed at once, “and I’m not saying it the way I did yesterday,” he added, turning to Razumikhin and pressing his hand warmly.

“And I even marveled at him today,” Zosimov began, very glad of the newcomers, because in ten minutes he had already managed to lose the thread of conversation with his patient. “In three or four days, if it goes on like this, he’ll be completely as before, that is, as he was a month ago, or two… or perhaps even three? Because this started a long way back and was a long time in preparing… eh? Will you admit now that perhaps you were to blame yourself?” he added with a cautious smile, as if still afraid of irritating him somehow.

“Very possibly,” Raskolnikov answered coldly.

“I say it,” Zosimov went on, warming to his subject, “because your complete recovery depends now, in the main, solely on you yourself. Now that one can talk with you, I should like to impress upon you that it is necessary to remove the original, so to speak, root causes that influenced the onset of your morbid condition; then you’ll be cured, otherwise it will even get worse. I don’t know these original causes, but they must be known to you. You’re an intelligent man and have, of course, observed yourself. It seems to me that the beginning of your disorder coincides in part with your leaving the university. You mustn’t remain without occupation, and so work and a firmly set goal, it seems to me, could help you a great deal.”

“Yes, yes, you’re perfectly right… I’ll just enroll in the university again as soon as I can, and then everything will go… like clockwork…”

Zosimov, who had begun his clever advice partly for effect in front of the ladies, was of course somewhat taken aback when, having finished his speech and glanced at his listener, he noticed decided mockery in his face. That lasted only an instant, however. Pulcheria Alexandrovna at once began thanking Zosimov, especially for his visit to them at the hotel last night.

“What, he came to see you at night too?” asked Raskolnikov, as if alarmed. “So you didn’t sleep either, after your journey?”

“Oh, Rodya, it was all over by two o’clock. Dunya and I never go to bed before two even at home.”

“I don’t know how to thank him either,” Raskolnikov went on, suddenly frowning and looking down. “Setting aside the question of money—forgive me for mentioning it (he turned to Zosimov)—I really don’t know how I have deserved such special attention from you? I simply don’t understand… and… and it even weighs on me, because I don’t understand it: I’m telling you frankly.”

“Now don’t get irritated,” Zosimov laughed with an effort. “Suppose you’re my first patient; well, and fellows like us, just beginning to practice, love our first patients like our own children, and some all but fall in love with them. And I’m not exactly rich in patients.”

“I won’t even speak of him,” added Raskolnikov, pointing at Razumikhin, “and he too has had nothing from me but insults and trouble.”

“Listen to him lie! What are you, in a sentimental mood today, or what?” shouted Razumikhin.

He would have seen, had he been more perceptive, that there was no sentimental mood here at all, but even something quite the opposite. But Avdotya Romanovna noticed it. She was watching her brother intently and uneasily.

“As for you, Mama, I don’t even dare to speak,” he went on, as if reciting a lesson learned that morning. “Only today have I been able to grasp at all how you must have tormented yourselves here yesterday, waiting for me to come back.” Having said this, he suddenly, silently and with a smile, held out his hand to his sister. But this time a real, unfeigned feeling flashed in the smile. Dunya at once seized the hand held out to her and pressed it warmly, glad and grateful: it was the first time he had turned to her since yesterday’s falling-out. The mother’s face lit up with rapture and happiness at the sight of this final and wordless reconciliation of brother and sister.

“That’s what I love him for!” whispered Razumikhin, who exaggerated everything, turning vigorously in his chair. “He has these impulses!…”

“And how well everything comes out with him,” the mother thought to herself, “what noble impulses he has, and how simply, how delicately he ended all that misunderstanding with his sister yesterday—just by holding out his hand at such a moment and giving her a good look… And what beautiful eyes he has, and how beautiful his whole face is!… He’s even better-looking than Dunechka… But, my God, what clothes, how terribly he’s dressed! Vasya, the errand boy in Afanasy Ivanovich’s shop, is better dressed!… And I could just, I could just rush to him, it seems, and hug him, and… cry—but I’m afraid… he’s somehow, Lord!… He talks kindly enough, and yet I’m afraid! Well, what am I afraid of?…”

“Oh, Rodya, you won’t believe,” she suddenly took up, hurrying to answer his remark, “how… unhappy Dunechka and I were yesterday! Now that it’s all past and over and we’re all happy again—I can tell you. Imagine, we run here to hug you, almost straight from the train, and that woman—ah, there she is! Hello, Nastasya!… She suddenly tells us that you’re lying in delirium tremens and have just slipped away from the doctor, delirious, out into the street, and that they’ve run off to look for you. You won’t believe what we went through! I immediately pictured how Lieutenant Potanchikov died so tragically, an acquaintance of ours, a friend of your father’s—you don’t remember him, Rodya—also in delirium tremens, and he ran out the same way and fell into the well in the yard, they could only pull him out the next day. And of course we exaggerated it even more. We were about to rush off to find Pyotr Petrovich, so that at least with his help… because, after all, we were alone, completely alone,” she drew out in a plaintive voice, and suddenly broke off altogether, remembering that it was still rather dangerous to bring up Pyotr Petrovich, in spite of the fact “that everyone was perfectly happy again.”

“Yes, yes… all that is annoying, of course…” Raskolnikov muttered in reply, but with such an absent and almost inattentive air that Dunechka looked at him in amazement.

“What else was it I wanted,” he went on, trying hard to remember, “oh, yes: please, Mama, and you, Dunechka, don’t think that I didn’t want to come to you first today and was waiting for you to come first.”

“But what are you saying, Rodya!” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna, surprised too.

“What is he doing, answering us out of duty, or what?” thought Dunechka. “He makes peace and asks forgiveness as if he were performing a service or had learned a lesson by heart.”

“I’d only just woken up and was about to go, but my clothes held me back; I forgot to tell her yesterday… Nastasya… to wash out this blood… I’ve only just now managed to get dressed.”

“Blood! What blood?” Pulcheria Alexandrovna was alarmed.

“It’s nothing… don’t worry. The blood is because yesterday, when I was wandering about somewhat delirious, I came upon a man who had been run over… a clerk…”

“Delirious? But you remember everything,” Razumikhin interrupted.

“That’s true,” Raskolnikov answered, with a sort of special care, “I remember everything, even the slightest detail, and yet just try: why I did that, and went there, and said that? I can’t really explain it anymore.”

“An all too familiar phenomenon,” Zosimov chimed in. “The execution of the act is sometimes masterly, extremely cunning, but the control of one’s actions, the origin of the actions, is disordered and depends on various morbid impressions. It resembles a dream.”

“And it’s a good thing, perhaps, that he takes me for almost a madman,” thought Raskolnikov.

“But in that case, perhaps, healthy people are the same,” remarked Dunechka, looking at Zosimov uneasily.

“A rather accurate remark,” he answered. “In that sense, indeed, all of us, and very often, are almost like madmen, with only the small difference that the ‘sick’ are somewhat madder than we are, so one has to distinguish a line here. And a harmonious man, it’s true, hardly exists at all; you meet one in tens of thousands, or perhaps in many hundreds of thousands, and even then in rather weak specimens…”

At the word “mad,” which had carelessly slipped out of Zosimov, who had got carried away chattering on his favorite subject, everyone winced. Raskolnikov sat as if paying no attention, lost in thought, with a strange smile on his pale lips. He was still working something out.

“Well, so what about the man who was run over? I interrupted you!” Razumikhin shouted quickly.

“What?” said Raskolnikov, as if waking up. “Oh, yes… well, I got stained with blood helping to carry him into his apartment… By the way, Mama, I did an unforgivable thing yesterday; I truly wasn’t in my right mind. Yesterday I gave all the money you sent me… to his wife… for the funeral. Now she’s a widow, consumptive, a pitiful woman… three little orphans, hungry… the house is empty… and there’s one more daughter… Perhaps you would have given it yourself, if you’d seen… I had no right whatever, though, I admit, especially knowing how you came by that money yourself. To help others, you must first have the right to do it, otherwise it’s Crevez chiens, si vous n’êtes pas contents!”¹ He laughed. “Isn’t that so, Dunya?”

“No, it isn’t,” Dunya answered firmly.

“Bah! so you too… have intentions!…” he muttered, looking at her almost with hatred and smiling mockingly. “I should have realized that… Well, it’s praiseworthy; so much the better for you… and you’ll reach a line such that if you don’t step over it you’ll be unhappy, and if you do step over it, perhaps you’ll be unhappier still… But all this is nonsense!” he added irritably, vexed at having been carried away in spite of himself. “I only meant to say, Mama, that I ask your forgiveness,” he concluded sharply and abruptly.

“Enough, Rodya, I’m sure everything you do is fine!” said his mother, delighted.

“Don’t be sure,” he answered, twisting his mouth into a smile. A silence followed. There was something strained in the whole conversation, and in the silence, and in the reconciliation, and in the forgiveness, and everyone felt it.

“Why, it’s as if they’re afraid of me,” Raskolnikov thought to himself, looking at his mother and sister from under his brows. Pulcheria Alexandrovna, indeed, the longer she was silent, the more timid she grew.

“And when they were away I seemed to love them so,” flashed through his head.

“You know, Rodya, Marfa Petrovna has died!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna suddenly burst out.

“What Marfa Petrovna is that?”

“Oh, my God, why, Marfa Petrovna, Svidrigailova! I wrote you so much about her.”

“A-a-ah, yes, I remember… So she’s died? Oh, really?” he suddenly roused himself, as if waking up. “Has she really died? What from?”

“Imagine, quite suddenly!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna hurried on, encouraged by his curiosity. “And just at the very time I sent you that letter, even on that very same day! Imagine, that horrible man seems to have been the cause of her death. They say he beat her terribly!”

“Did they live like that?” he asked, turning to his sister.

“No, quite the opposite, even. With her he was always very patient, even courteous. In many cases he was even too indulgent toward her character, for seven whole years… Somehow he suddenly lost patience.”

“So he’s not so horrible at all, if he held out for seven years? You seem to be justifying him, Dunechka?”

“No, no, he’s a horrible man! I can’t imagine anything more horrible,” Dunya answered almost with a shudder, knit her brows, and fell to thinking.

“It happened in the morning,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna went on hurriedly. “Afterward she ordered the horses harnessed at once, so as to drive to town right after dinner, because in such cases she always drove to town; they say she ate her dinner with a great appetite…”

“After being beaten?”

“…She always had that… habit, though, and as soon as she had dined, so as not to be late setting out, she went straight to the bathhouse… You see, she was taking some sort of bathing cure; they have a cold spring there, and she bathed in it regularly every day, and as soon as she went into the water, she suddenly had a stroke!”

“I should think so!” said Zosimov.

“And did he beat her badly?”

“It makes no difference,” Dunya responded.

“Hm! But why on earth, Mama, do you want to tell such nonsense?” Raskolnikov suddenly said irritably and as if inadvertently.

“Oh, my dear, I just didn’t know what to talk about,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna blurted out.

“What, are you all afraid of me, or what?” he said with a twisted smile.

“That’s actually true,” said Dunya, looking straight and sternly at her brother. “Coming up the stairs, Mama even crossed herself from fear.”

His face was distorted as if by a spasm.

“Oh, what are you saying, Dunya! Please don’t be angry, Rodya… Why did you, Dunya!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna began in confusion. “It’s true, coming here, the whole way, I was dreaming, in the train: how we’d see each other, how we’d tell each other everything… and I was so happy I didn’t even notice the journey! But what am I saying! I’m happy now too… You shouldn’t have, Dunya! I’m happy just to see you, Rodya…”

“Enough, Mama,” he muttered in embarrassment, not looking at her, and pressed her hand. “We’ll have time to talk our fill!”

Having said this, he was suddenly embarrassed and turned pale: again a certain recent, terrible sensation passed through his soul with a deathly chill; again it suddenly became perfectly clear and understandable to him that he had just told a terrible lie, that not only would he never have time now to talk his fill, but that he could no longer talk about anything, ever, with anyone. The impression of this agonizing thought was so strong that for an instant he almost entirely forgot himself, got up from his place, and, not looking at anyone, started to walk out of the room.

“What’s the matter with you?” shouted Razumikhin, seizing him by the arm.

He sat down again and began silently looking around; everyone was looking at him in bewilderment.

“But why are you all so dull!” he cried suddenly, quite unexpectedly. “Say something! Why sit like this, really! Come on, talk! Let’s have a conversation… We’ve gathered together and we sit in silence… Come on, anything!”

“Thank God! And I thought something like yesterday was starting with him,” said Pulcheria Alexandrovna, crossing herself.

“What is it, Rodya?” Avdotya Romanovna asked mistrustfully.

“Nothing, I just remembered something funny,” he answered, and suddenly laughed.

“Well, if it’s something funny, then all’s well! I was beginning to think myself…” muttered Zosimov, getting up from the sofa. “But it’s time I went; I’ll drop in again, perhaps… if I find you in…”

He bowed and went out.

“What a wonderful man!” remarked Pulcheria Alexandrovna.

“Yes, wonderful, excellent, educated, intelligent…” Raskolnikov suddenly began, in a sort of unexpected patter and with a sort of animation unusual for him until now. “I can’t remember where I met him before my illness… I think I met him somewhere… And here’s another good man!” he nodded at Razumikhin. “Do you like him, Dunya?” he asked her, and suddenly, for no known reason, burst out laughing.

“Very much,” answered Dunya.

“Phew, what a… swine you are!” said Razumikhin, terribly embarrassed and red in the face, and got up from his chair. Pulcheria Alexandrovna smiled slightly, and Raskolnikov roared with laughter.

“But where are you off to?”

“I too… I have to.”

“You don’t have to at all, stay! Zosimov has left, so you have to as well. Don’t go… What time is it? Is it twelve yet? What a pretty watch you have, Dunya! But why have you all gone silent again? I’m the only one talking!…”

“It’s a present from Marfa Petrovna,” answered Dunya.

“And a very expensive one,” added Pulcheria Alexandrovna.

“A-a-ah! What a big one, hardly a lady’s.”

“I like them like that,” said Dunya.

“So it’s not the fiancé’s present,” thought Razumikhin, and was glad for no known reason.

“And I thought it was a present from Luzhin,” remarked Raskolnikov.

“No, he hasn’t given Dunechka anything yet.”

“A-a-ah! And do you remember, Mama, how I was in love and wanted to get married?” he suddenly said, looking at his mother, who was struck by the unexpected turn and by the tone in which he spoke of it.

“Oh, my dear, yes!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna exchanged glances with Dunechka and Razumikhin.

“Hm! Yes! And what shall I tell you? I hardly even remember. She was such a sickly girl,” he went on, as if again suddenly lost in thought and looking down, “quite ailing; she loved giving to beggars, and was always dreaming of a convent, and once she burst into tears when she began telling me about it; yes, yes… I remember… I remember very well. Such a plain little thing… to look at. Really, I don’t know what drew me to her then, I think it was that she was always ill… If she had been lame or hunchbacked besides, I think I would have loved her even more… (He smiled pensively.) So… it was a sort of spring delirium…”

“No, it wasn’t only spring delirium,” Dunechka said with feeling.

He looked at his sister attentively and with strain, but did not hear her words, or even did not understand them. Then, deep in thought, he got up, went over to his mother, kissed her, went back to his place, and sat down.

“You love her even now!” said Pulcheria Alexandrovna, touched.

“Her? Now? Oh, yes… you mean her! No. All that is now as if in the other world… and so long ago. And everything around me, too, seems to be happening somewhere else…”

He looked at them attentively.

“You too… I look at you as if from a thousand versts away… And the devil knows why we’re talking about this! And what’s the point of asking questions?” he added with vexation, and fell silent, biting his nails and lost in thought again.

“What a wretched apartment you have, Rodya, just like a coffin,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna said suddenly, breaking the oppressive silence. “I’m sure it’s half because of the apartment that you’ve become such a melancholic.”

“The apartment?…” he answered absently. “Yes, the apartment contributed a great deal… I’ve thought about that too… But if you only knew, though, what a strange thought you’ve just expressed, Mama,” he added suddenly, with a strange smile.

A little more, and this company, this family, after a three-year separation, this familial tone of conversation, when it was utterly impossible to talk about anything at all, would finally have become absolutely unbearable to him. There was, however, one urgent matter that one way or another had to be settled today without fail—so he had decided earlier, when he woke up. Now he was glad of the matter, as a way out.

“Here’s the thing, Dunya,” he began seriously and dryly, “of course I ask your forgiveness for yesterday, but I consider it my duty to remind you again that I will not retreat from my main point. It’s me or Luzhin. I may be a scoundrel, but you mustn’t be. One of us. If you marry Luzhin, I shall at once cease to consider you my sister.”

“Rodya, Rodya! But this is all the same as yesterday,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna exclaimed sorrowfully. “And why do you keep calling yourself a scoundrel, I can’t bear it! And yesterday the same thing…”

“Brother,” Dunya answered firmly and also dryly, “there is a mistake in all this on your part. I thought it over during the night and found the mistake. It all comes down to your supposing, it seems, that I am sacrificing myself to someone and for someone. That’s not so at all. I’m simply marrying for my own sake, because things are hard for me; and then, of course, I’ll be glad if I manage to be useful to my family, but that isn’t the chief motive in my decision…”

“She’s lying!” he thought to himself, biting his nails in anger. “Proud thing! She won’t admit she wants to play the benefactress! Oh, base characters! They love as if they hate… Oh, how I… hate them all!”

“In a word, I am marrying Pyotr Petrovich,” Dunechka went on, “because of two evils I choose the lesser. I intend to fulfill honestly everything he expects of me, and therefore I’m not deceiving him… Why did you smile like that just now?”

She flushed too, and anger flashed in her eyes.

“You’ll fulfill everything?” he asked, smiling venomously.

“Up to a certain limit. Both the manner and the form of Pyotr Petrovich’s courtship showed me at once what he wants. He values himself, of course, perhaps too highly, but I hope he values me too… Why are you laughing again?”

“And why are you blushing again? You’re lying, sister, you’re lying on purpose, out of sheer feminine stubbornness, just to have your own way in front of me… You can’t respect Luzhin: I’ve seen him and talked with him. So you’re selling yourself for money, and so in any case you’re acting basely, and I’m glad that at least you can still blush!”

“It’s not true, I’m not lying!…” cried Dunechka, losing all her composure. “I won’t marry him without being convinced that he values me and holds me dear; I won’t marry him without being firmly convinced that I myself can respect him. Fortunately, I can make sure of that for certain, and even today. And such a marriage is not a vileness, as you say! And even if you were right, if I really had decided on a vileness—isn’t it merciless of you to talk to me like this? Why do you demand of me a heroism that perhaps you don’t have yourself? This is despotism, this is coercion! If I ruin anyone, it will be only myself… I haven’t put a knife into anyone yet!… Why are you looking at me like that? Why have you gone so pale? Rodya, what’s wrong? Rodya, dear!…”

“Lord! She’s made him faint!” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna.

“No, no… nonsense… it’s nothing!… My head spun a little. Not a faint at all… You and your fainting!… Hm! yes… what was it I wanted? Oh, yes: how will you make sure, today of all days, that you can respect him and that he… values you, was it, as you said? You did say today, I think? Or did I mishear?”

“Mama, show my brother Pyotr Petrovich’s letter,” said Dunechka.

Pulcheria Alexandrovna handed over the letter with trembling hands. He took it with great curiosity. But before unfolding it, he suddenly looked at Dunechka with a kind of surprise.

“Strange,” he said slowly, as if suddenly struck by a new thought, “why am I making such a fuss? What’s all the shouting for? Marry whomever you like!”

He spoke as if to himself, but said it aloud, and for some time looked at his sister as if puzzled.

At last he unfolded the letter, still keeping an air of a sort of strange surprise; then he began to read slowly and attentively, and read it twice. Pulcheria Alexandrovna was particularly uneasy; and indeed everyone was expecting something special.

“This astonishes me,” he began after some reflection, handing the letter to his mother but not addressing anyone in particular. “After all, he handles cases, he’s a lawyer, and even his conversation has a certain… flourish—and yet how illiterately he writes.”

Everyone stirred; this was not at all what they had expected.

“But they all write like that,” Razumikhin remarked abruptly.

“Have you read it, then?”

“Yes.”

“We showed it to him, Rodya, we… consulted him earlier,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna began, embarrassed.

“That’s actually legal style,” Razumikhin interrupted. “Legal papers are still written that way.”

“Legal? Yes, precisely legal, businesslike… Not exactly very illiterate, and not exactly very literary either; businesslike!”

“Pyotr Petrovich makes no secret of having been schooled on copper kopecks, and even boasts of having made his own way,” remarked Avdotya Romanovna, somewhat offended by her brother’s new tone.

“Well, if he boasts, then he has something to boast of—I don’t dispute it. You seem offended, sister, that out of the whole letter I drew such a frivolous remark, and you think I started on such trifles on purpose, to needle you out of spite. On the contrary, in connection with the style, a remark occurred to me that is far from superfluous in the present case. There is one expression there, ‘you will have only yourself to blame,’ placed very significantly and clearly, and besides that there is a threat that he will leave at once if I come. This threat to leave is the same as a threat to abandon you both if you are disobedient, and to abandon you now, when he has already summoned you to Petersburg. Well, what do you think: can one take offense at such an expression from Luzhin in just the same way as if he had written it (he pointed at Razumikhin), or Zosimov, or one of us?”

“N-no,” answered Dunechka, growing more animated, “I understood very well that it was expressed too naively and that perhaps he simply isn’t much of a writer… You’ve reasoned that well, brother. I didn’t even expect…”

“It’s expressed in legal fashion, and in legal fashion it can’t be written any other way, and it came out coarser than perhaps he intended. However, I must disappoint you somewhat: there is one more expression in this letter, one slander about me, and a rather mean one. I gave the money yesterday to the widow, consumptive and crushed, and not ‘under the pretext of the funeral,’ but simply for the funeral, and not into the hands of the daughter—a young person, as he writes, ‘of notorious behavior’ (whom I saw yesterday for the first time in my life)—but to the widow herself. In all this I see an all too hasty desire to blacken me and set me at odds with you. And again it’s expressed in legal fashion, that is, with too obvious a display of the aim and with a very naive haste. He’s an intelligent man, but to act intelligently intelligence alone is not enough. All this paints the man and… I don’t think he values you much. I tell you this solely for your edification, because I sincerely wish you well…”

Dunechka did not answer; her decision had been made earlier, she was only waiting for evening.

“So what have you decided, Rodya?” asked Pulcheria Alexandrovna, still more worried than before by his sudden, new, businesslike tone.

“What do you mean, ‘decided’?”

“Why, Pyotr Petrovich writes that you’re not to be at our place this evening and that he’ll leave… if you come. So what will you… do?”

“That, of course, isn’t for me to decide, but first of all for you, if such a demand from Pyotr Petrovich doesn’t offend you, and secondly for Dunya, if she isn’t offended either. And I’ll do whatever is best for you,” he added dryly.

“Dunechka has already decided, and I entirely agree with her,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna hastened to put in.

“I have decided to ask you, Rodya, to urge you most insistently, to be with us at that meeting without fail,” said Dunya. “Will you come?”

“I will.”

“And I ask you too to be with us at eight o’clock,” she turned to Razumikhin. “Mama, I’m inviting him too.”

“Splendid, Dunechka. Well, however you’ve decided it,” added Pulcheria Alexandrovna, “so let it be. And it’s easier for me too; I don’t like pretending and lying; better that we tell the whole truth… Be angry or not, Pyotr Petrovich, as you please!”

Notes

1. 1. French: “Die, dogs, if you’re not satisfied!”