Part Five · III

“Pyotr Petrovich!” she cried. “You at least protect me! Make this stupid creature understand that she dare not treat a noble lady in misfortune like this, that there are courts for this… I’ll go to the governor-general himself… She’ll answer for it… Remember my father’s bread and salt, and protect the orphans.”

“Excuse me, madam… Excuse me, excuse me, madam,” Pyotr Petrovich warded her off. “Your papa, as you yourself know, I never had the honor of knowing at all… excuse me, madam! (someone laughed loudly) and I have no intention of taking part in your endless squabbles with Amalia Ivanovna, ma’am… I have come on business of my own… and I wish to have a word, immediately, with your stepdaughter, Sofya… Ivanovna… I believe that’s right, ma’am? Allow me to pass, ma’am…”

And Pyotr Petrovich, edging sideways around Katerina Ivanovna, made for the opposite corner, where Sonya was.

Katerina Ivanovna stayed just where she stood, as if thunderstruck. She could not understand how Pyotr Petrovich could disown her papa’s bread and salt. Having once invented this bread and salt, she now believed in it devoutly. She was struck, too, by Pyotr Petrovich’s businesslike, dry tone, full even of a sort of contemptuous menace. And indeed everyone had somehow fallen quiet little by little at his appearance. Apart from the fact that this “businesslike and serious” man was all too sharply out of harmony with the whole company, apart from that it was evident that he had come about something important, that probably some extraordinary reason alone could have drawn him into such company, and that, consequently, something was about to happen, something was coming. Raskolnikov, who was standing beside Sonya, moved aside to let him pass; Pyotr Petrovich seemed not to notice him at all. A minute later Lebezyatnikov too appeared on the threshold; he did not come into the room, but stopped there, also with a sort of peculiar curiosity, almost with surprise; he was listening, but for a long time, it seemed, could not make something out.

“Forgive me if I am perhaps interrupting, but the matter is rather important, ma’am,” Pyotr Petrovich remarked, somehow generally, not addressing anyone in particular. “I am even glad to have the public present. Amalia Ivanovna, I most humbly request you, in your capacity as mistress of the apartment, to pay attention to the conversation I am about to have with Sofya Ivanovna. Sofya Ivanovna,” he went on, turning straight to the extremely astonished and already frightened Sonya, “from my table, in the room of my friend Andrei Semyonovich Lebezyatnikov, immediately after your visit, there disappeared a state credit note belonging to me, of the denomination of one hundred roubles. If in any way whatsoever you know, and will show us, where it is now, then I assure you on my word of honor, and I take everyone as my witness, that the matter will end there. Otherwise I shall be compelled to resort to very serious measures, and then… you will have only yourself to blame, ma’am!”

Total silence fell in the room. Even the crying children grew quiet. Sonya stood deathly pale, looking at Luzhin, and could make no answer. It was as if she did not yet even understand. Several seconds passed.

“Well, ma’am, how is it to be, ma’am?” asked Luzhin, looking at her intently.

“I don’t know… I don’t know anything…” Sonya said at last in a weak voice.

“No? You don’t know?” Luzhin asked again, and was silent for several seconds more. “Think, mademoiselle,” he began sternly, but still as though admonishing her, “consider it; I am willing to give you more time for reflection. Kindly see, ma’am: if I were not so certain, then of course, with my experience, I would not have risked accusing you so directly; for an accusation of this kind, direct and public, but false or even merely mistaken, I am myself, in a certain sense, answerable. I know that, ma’am. This morning I changed, for my own needs, several five-percent bonds, to the nominal sum of three thousand roubles. The account is written down in my pocketbook. On coming home, I—Andrei Semyonovich is witness to this—began counting the money, and, having counted out two thousand three hundred roubles, I put them away in my pocketbook, and the pocketbook in the side pocket of my frock coat. On the table there remained about five hundred roubles, in credit notes, and among them three notes of a hundred roubles each. At that moment you arrived (at my summons)—and the whole time you were with me afterward you were in extreme embarrassment, so much so that three times, in the middle of our conversation, you even got up and for some reason hurried to leave, though our conversation was not yet finished. Andrei Semyonovich can testify to all this. Probably you yourself, mademoiselle, will not refuse to confirm and declare that I had summoned you, through Andrei Semyonovich, solely and only in order to talk with you about the orphaned and helpless situation of your relative, Katerina Ivanovna (whose funeral dinner I was unable to attend), and about how useful it would be to arrange something for her benefit, in the way of a subscription, a lottery, or the like. You thanked me and even shed tears (I am telling everything just as it was, first, to remind you, and second, to show you that not the slightest detail has been effaced from my memory). Then I took a ten-rouble credit note from the table and handed it to you, in my own name, for the benefit of your relative and by way of initial assistance. Andrei Semyonovich saw all this. Then I saw you to the door—you being still in the same embarrassment—after which, being left alone with Andrei Semyonovich and having talked with him for about ten minutes, Andrei Semyonovich went out, and I turned again to the table with the money lying on it, with the aim of counting it and setting it aside separately, as I had intended earlier. To my surprise, one hundred-rouble note among the rest was missing. Kindly judge for yourself: suspect Andrei Semyonovich I certainly cannot, ma’am; I am ashamed even of the supposition. Nor could I have made a mistake in the count, because a minute before you came, having finished all my accounts, I found the total correct. You must agree yourself that, recalling your embarrassment, your haste to leave, and the fact that you kept your hands on the table for some time; taking into consideration, finally, your social position and the habits connected with it, I was, so to speak, with horror and even against my will, compelled to settle upon a suspicion—cruel, of course, but—just, ma’am! I will add, and repeat, that despite all my evident certainty I understand that there is still, in my present accusation, a certain risk for me. But, as you see, I have not let it rest; I have taken a stand, and I will tell you why: solely, madam, solely because of your blackest ingratitude! What? I invite you in the interests of your most destitute relative, I present you with my humble alms of ten roubles, and you, right then and there, at once, repay me for all this with such an act! No, ma’am, that is not nice, ma’am! A lesson is necessary, ma’am. Consider, then; what is more, as your true friend I beg you (for you can have no better friend at this moment), come to your senses! Otherwise I shall be implacable! Well, ma’am, and so?”

“I didn’t take anything from you,” Sonya whispered in horror. “You gave me ten roubles, here, take them.” Sonya took her handkerchief from her pocket, found the knot, untied it, took out the ten-rouble note, and held out her hand to Luzhin.

“And the remaining hundred roubles you still won’t confess to?” he said reproachfully and insistently, not taking the note.

Sonya looked around. Everyone was gazing at her with such terrible, stern, mocking, hateful faces. She glanced at Raskolnikov… he stood by the wall, his arms folded, and was looking at her with a fiery gaze.

“Oh, Lord!” broke from Sonya.

“Amalia Ivanovna, the police will have to be notified, and therefore I most humbly ask you to send for the caretaker in the meantime,” Luzhin said quietly and even kindly.

“Gott der Barmherzige! I knew it, that she has stealed!” Amalia Ivanovna threw up her hands.

“You knew it?” Luzhin caught her up. “Then you must already have had at least some grounds before for drawing such a conclusion. I ask you, most worthy Amalia Ivanovna, to remember your words, which, by the way, were spoken before witnesses.”

On all sides a loud hubbub suddenly arose. Everyone began to stir.

“Wha-a-at!” Katerina Ivanovna suddenly cried, coming to her senses, and, as if she had broken loose, rushed at Luzhin. “What! You accuse her of theft? Sonya? Oh, the scoundrels, the scoundrels!” And rushing to Sonya, she clasped her as in a vise in her wasted arms.

“Sonya! How dared you take ten roubles from him! Oh, you silly girl! Give it here! Give me those ten roubles this minute—there!”

And, snatching the note from Sonya, Katerina Ivanovna crumpled it in her hands and flung it backhand straight into Luzhin’s face. The little wad hit him in the eye and bounced onto the floor. Amalia Ivanovna rushed to pick up the money. Pyotr Petrovich grew angry.

“Restrain this madwoman!” he shouted.

In the doorway, at that moment, several more faces appeared beside Lebezyatnikov, among whom the two out-of-town ladies were peeking in as well.

“What! A madwoman? I’m a madwoman, am I? Fool!” shrieked Katerina Ivanovna. “You’re a fool yourself, you pettifogging shyster, you low man! Sonya, Sonya would take his money! Sonya a thief! Why, she’d sooner give you money, you fool!” And Katerina Ivanovna laughed hysterically. “Have you ever seen such a fool?” she darted in every direction, pointing Luzhin out to everyone. “What! You too?” She caught sight of the landlady. “You too, you sausage-seller, you join in and confirm that she ‘has stealed,’ you vile Prussian chicken leg in a crinoline! Oh, you people! Oh, you! Why, she never even left the room, and as soon as she came back from you, you scoundrel, she sat down right here beside Rodion Romanovich!… Search her! If she didn’t go anywhere, then the money must be on her! Go on, search, search, search! Only if you don’t find it, then, excuse me, my dear man, you’ll answer for it! To the sovereign, to the sovereign, to the merciful Tsar himself I’ll run, I’ll throw myself at his feet, right now, this very day! I am an orphan! They’ll let me in! You think they won’t let me in? You lie, I’ll get there! I’ll get the-e-ere! Were you counting on her being meek? Was that what you relied on? Well, I, my friend, am not so meek! You’ll break your neck! Go on, search! Search, search, go on, search!!”

And Katerina Ivanovna, in a frenzy, kept pulling at Luzhin, dragging him toward Sonya.

“I am ready, ma’am, and I answer for it… but calm yourself, madam, calm yourself! I see all too well that you are not meek!… This… this… how is this to be, ma’am?” Luzhin muttered. “This ought to be done in the presence of the police, ma’am… although, as it is, there are more than enough witnesses now… I am ready, ma’am… But in any case it is awkward for a man… on account of sex… If with the help of Amalia Ivanovna… although that’s not how things are done… How is this to be, ma’am?”

“Anyone you like! Let anyone who wants to search her!” Katerina Ivanovna was shouting. “Sonya, turn your pockets out for them! There, there! Look, you monster, here, it’s empty, the handkerchief was here, the pocket’s empty, you see! Here’s the other pocket, here, here! You see, you see!”

And Katerina Ivanovna did not so much turn out as simply yank out both pockets, one after the other. But from the second, the right-hand pocket, a piece of paper suddenly jumped out and, describing a parabola in the air, fell at Luzhin’s feet. Everyone saw it; many cried out. Pyotr Petrovich bent down, picked up the paper from the floor with two fingers, raised it for all to see, and unfolded it. It was a hundred-rouble credit note, folded in eight. Pyotr Petrovich swept his hand around in a circle, showing everyone the note.

“Thief! Out of apartment! Polizei, Polizei!” howled Amalia Ivanovna. “Them must to Siberia be chased! Out!”

Exclamations flew from all sides. Raskolnikov was silent, never taking his eyes off Sonya, shifting them now and then, but quickly, to Luzhin. Sonya stood in the same place, as if senseless: she was hardly even surprised. Suddenly color flooded her whole face; she cried out and covered her face with her hands.

“No, it wasn’t me! I didn’t take it! I don’t know!” she cried with a heartrending wail, and rushed to Katerina Ivanovna. The latter seized her and pressed her tightly to herself, as if wishing to shield her from everyone with her own breast.

“Sonya! Sonya! I don’t believe it! You see, I don’t believe it!” Katerina Ivanovna kept crying (despite all the evidence), shaking her in her arms like a child, kissing her countless times, catching her hands and kissing them, simply clinging to them with her lips. “As if you would take it! What stupid people these are! Oh, Lord! You’re stupid, stupid,” she shouted, turning to them all, “you don’t know yet, you don’t know what a heart this is, what a girl this is! She’d take it, she would! Why, she’d strip off her last dress, sell it, go barefoot, and give it to you if you needed it, that’s what she’s like! She even got the yellow ticket because my own children were dying of hunger, she sold herself for us!… Ah, my poor dead husband, my poor dead husband! Ah, my poor dead husband, my poor dead husband! Do you see? Do you see? There’s a funeral dinner for you! Lord! Why don’t you defend her, why are you all just standing there! Rodion Romanovich! Why don’t you stand up for her? Do you believe it too? You’re not worth her little finger, all of you, all, all, all! Lord! Defend her, then, at last!”

The weeping of poor, consumptive, orphaned Katerina Ivanovna seemed to produce a strong effect on the public. There was so much that was pitiful, so much suffering, in this wasted consumptive face twisted with pain, in these parched lips caked with blood, in this hoarsely shouting voice, in this sobbing, so like a child’s crying, in this trustful, childlike, and at the same time desperate plea for protection, that everyone, it seemed, felt sorry for the unfortunate woman. Pyotr Petrovich, at least, at once felt sorry.

“Madam! Madam!” he exclaimed in an impressive voice. “This fact does not concern you! No one would venture to accuse you of intent or collusion, the more so as it was you yourself who brought it to light by turning out the pocket: therefore you suspected nothing. I am most, most ready to feel sorry if, so to speak, poverty drove Sofya Semyonovna to it too, but why, mademoiselle, would you not confess? Afraid of the disgrace? The first step? Lost your head, perhaps? An understandable thing, ma’am; very understandable, ma’am… But still, why go in for such doings! Ladies and gentlemen!” he addressed all those present. “Ladies and gentlemen! Feeling pity and, so to speak, compassion, I am perhaps prepared to forgive, even now, despite the personal insults I have received. May your present shame, mademoiselle, serve you as a lesson for the future,” he turned to Sonya, “and I shall let the rest go and, so be it, I drop the matter. Enough!”

Pyotr Petrovich glanced sidelong at Raskolnikov. Their eyes met. Raskolnikov’s burning gaze was ready to reduce him to ashes. Meanwhile Katerina Ivanovna seemed to hear nothing more: she was hugging and kissing Sonya like a madwoman. The children too had flung their little arms around Sonya from all sides, while Polechka—who did not quite understand, however, what it was all about—seemed simply drowning in tears, breaking down in sobs, her pretty little face, swollen with crying, hidden on Sonya’s shoulder.

“How low this is!” a loud voice suddenly rang out in the doorway.

Pyotr Petrovich quickly looked around.

“What baseness!” Lebezyatnikov repeated, looking him intently in the eye.

Pyotr Petrovich even seemed to give a start. Everyone noticed it. (They recalled it afterward.) Lebezyatnikov stepped into the room.

“And you dared to call me as your witness?” he said, going up to Pyotr Petrovich.

“What does this mean, Andrei Semyonovich? What are you talking about?” Luzhin muttered.

“It means that you are… a slanderer, that’s what my words mean!” Lebezyatnikov said hotly, looking at him sternly with his weak-sighted little eyes. He was terribly angry. Raskolnikov fixed his eyes on him, as if catching and weighing every word. Once again silence fell. Pyotr Petrovich almost lost his head, especially at the first instant.

“If that is meant for me…” he began, stammering, “but what’s the matter with you? Are you in your right mind?”

“I’m in my right mind, sir, but you are… a swindler! Oh, how low this is! I’ve been listening to everything, I was purposely waiting the whole time so as to understand it all, because, I confess, even now it isn’t quite logical… But why you did all this—I don’t understand.”

“But what have I done! Will you stop talking in your nonsensical riddles! Or have you been drinking, perhaps?”

“It’s you, you low man, who drink perhaps, not I! I never even drink vodka, because it isn’t in my convictions! Imagine, he, he himself, with his own hands, gave this hundred-rouble note to Sofya Semyonovna—I saw it, I’m a witness, I’ll take an oath! He did, he did!” Lebezyatnikov kept repeating, turning to each and every one.

“Have you gone out of your mind or not, you milksop?” Luzhin shrieked. “She is here herself before you, in person—she herself, here, just now, in front of everyone, confirmed that apart from ten roubles she received nothing from me. How then could I have given it to her, after that?”

“I saw it, I saw it!” Lebezyatnikov kept shouting and affirming. “And though it’s against my convictions, I am ready this very hour to take any oath you like in court, because I saw how you slipped it to her on the sly! Only I, like a fool, thought you’d slipped it to her out of charity! In the doorway, as you were saying good-bye to her, when she turned and you were shaking her hand with one hand, with the other, the left, you quietly put the note into her pocket. I saw it! I saw it!”

Luzhin turned pale.

“What lies you’re telling!” he cried insolently. “And how could you, standing by the window, make out a note? You imagined it… with your weak eyes. You’re raving!”

“No, I didn’t imagine it! And though I was standing far off, I saw everything, everything, and though from the window it really is hard to make out a note—you’re right about that—I knew for certain, owing to a special circumstance, that it was precisely a hundred-rouble note, because when you began giving Sofya Semyonovna the ten-rouble note—I saw it myself—you took a hundred-rouble note from the table at the same time (that I saw, because I was standing near then, and since a certain thought occurred to me at once, that’s why I didn’t forget that you had the note in your hand). You folded it and kept it squeezed in your hand the whole time. Then I had forgotten about it again, but when you began to get up, you shifted it from your right hand to your left and nearly dropped it; then I remembered again, because the same thought came to me again, namely that you wanted to do her a kindness without my knowing. You can imagine how I began watching—and I saw how you managed to slip it into her pocket. I saw it, I saw it, I’ll take an oath!”

Lebezyatnikov was nearly choking. On all sides various exclamations began to be heard, most of them expressing surprise; but exclamations taking on a menacing tone were heard as well. Everyone crowded toward Pyotr Petrovich. Katerina Ivanovna rushed to Lebezyatnikov.

“Andrei Semyonovich! I was wrong about you! Protect her! You alone are on her side! She’s an orphan, God has sent you! Andrei Semyonovich, my dear, my good man!”

And Katerina Ivanovna, hardly aware of what she was doing, threw herself on her knees before him.

“Drivel!” howled Luzhin, enraged to the point of fury. “It’s drivel you keep grinding out, sir. ‘I forgot, I remembered, I forgot’—what is all this! So I planted it on her on purpose, did I? Why? With what aim? What have I in common with this…”

“Why? That’s just what I don’t understand myself, but that I’m telling a true fact, that much is certain! So far am I from mistaken, you vile, criminal man, that I remember precisely how a question about it came into my head at once, right at the time when I was thanking you and shaking your hand. Why exactly had you put it into her pocket by stealth? That is, why precisely by stealth? Could it be only because you wanted to hide it from me, knowing that I hold opposite convictions and reject private charity, which cures nothing radically? Well, and I decided that you really were ashamed in front of me to hand out such sums, and besides, perhaps, I thought, he wants to give her a surprise, to astonish her when she finds a whole hundred roubles in her pocket. (Because some benefactors are very fond of spreading out their good deeds like that; I know.) Then it also occurred to me that you wanted to test her, that is, whether she would come to thank you when she found it? Then, that you wanted to avoid gratitude and so that, well, how does the saying go: so that the right hand, or something, shouldn’t know… in a word, something of the sort… Well, so many thoughts came into my head then that I decided to think it all over later, but all the same I considered it indelicate to reveal to you that I knew the secret. But then another question came into my head again at once: that Sofya Semyonovna, before she noticed it, might, heaven forbid, lose the money; that’s why I decided to come here, call her out, and inform her that a hundred roubles had been put in her pocket. But on the way I first dropped in at the Kobilatnikov ladies’ room to take them The General Conclusion of the Positive Method and particularly recommend Piderit’s article (and Wagner’s too, by the way); then I come here, and look what a business is going on! Now could I, could I have had all these thoughts and reflections if I really hadn’t seen you put a hundred roubles in her pocket?”

When Andrei Semyonovich had finished his long-winded reasonings, with such a logical deduction at the close of his speech, he was terribly tired, and sweat was even running down his face. Alas, he could not even express himself properly in Russian (not knowing, however, any other language), so that he was quite exhausted all at once, somehow, and even seemed to have grown thinner after his feat of advocacy. Nevertheless his speech produced an extraordinary effect. He had spoken with such heat, with such conviction, that everyone evidently believed him. Pyotr Petrovich felt that things were going badly.

“What is it to me that some stupid questions came into your head!” he cried. “That is no proof, sir! You could have dreamed all that up in your sleep, and that’s all, sir! And I tell you that you are lying, sir! You are lying and slandering out of some spite against me, and precisely out of pique because I would not agree to your freethinking and godless social proposals, that’s what it is, sir!”

But this dodge did Pyotr Petrovich no good. On the contrary, a murmur arose on all sides.

“Ah, so that’s what you’re driving at!” cried Lebezyatnikov. “You lie! Call the police, and I’ll take an oath! There’s only one thing I can’t understand: why he risked such a low act! Oh, pitiful, vile man!”

“I can explain why he risked such an act, and, if need be, I will take an oath myself!” Raskolnikov said at last in a firm voice, and stepped forward.

He was, to all appearances, firm and calm. It somehow became clear to everyone, at a single glance at him, that he really did know what the matter was, and that things had come to their denouement.

“Now I have made it all completely clear to myself,” Raskolnikov went on, turning straight to Lebezyatnikov. “From the very beginning of this business I began to suspect some vile trick here; I began to suspect it because of certain special circumstances, known to me alone, which I will now explain to everyone: the whole thing lies in them! But you, Andrei Semyonovich, with your precious testimony, have made everything finally clear to me. I ask everyone, everyone, to listen: this gentleman (he pointed at Luzhin) was recently engaged to a certain young lady, namely, my sister, Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova. But, having arrived in Petersburg, he quarreled with me the day before yesterday, at our first meeting, and I threw him out of my room, for which there are two witnesses. This man is very spiteful… The day before yesterday I did not yet know that he was staying here in these rooms, with you, Andrei Semyonovich, and that, consequently, on the very same day we quarreled, that is, the day before yesterday, he witnessed how I gave some money, as a friend of the late Mr. Marmeladov, to his wife Katerina Ivanovna for the funeral. He at once wrote a note to my mother and informed her that I had given all the money not to Katerina Ivanovna but to Sofya Semyonovna, and in doing so he referred in the vilest terms to… to the character of Sofya Semyonovna, that is, he hinted at the character of my relations with Sofya Semyonovna. All this, as you understand, with the aim of setting me at odds with my mother and sister, by suggesting to them that I was squandering, for ignoble purposes, their last money, with which they help me. Last night, in the presence of my mother and sister, and in his presence, I established the truth, proving that I had given the money to Katerina Ivanovna for the funeral, and not to Sofya Semyonovna, and that the day before yesterday I was not even acquainted with Sofya Semyonovna and had not yet even seen her face. To this I added that he, Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin, with all his merits, was not worth Sofya Semyonovna’s little finger, of whom he speaks so ill. To his question whether I would seat Sofya Semyonovna beside my sister, I answered that I had already done so, that same day. Infuriated that my mother and sister would not quarrel with me on the strength of his slanders, he began, one word leading to another, to say unpardonably insolent things to them. A final break took place, and he was thrown out of the house. All this happened last night. Now I ask for your special attention: imagine that if he had now succeeded in proving that Sofya Semyonovna is a thief, then, first, he would have proved to my sister and mother that he had been almost right in his suspicions; that he had been justly angry at my putting my sister and Sofya Semyonovna on the same footing; that, in attacking me, he was therefore defending and safeguarding the honor of my sister, his fiancée. In a word, through all this he might even have set me at odds with my family again and, of course, he hoped to get back into their good graces. Not to mention that he was taking revenge on me personally, because he has grounds for supposing that the honor and happiness of Sofya Semyonovna are very dear to me. There’s his whole calculation! That’s how I understand this business! There is the whole reason, and there can be no other!”

So, or almost so, Raskolnikov ended his speech, which was frequently interrupted by exclamations from the public, who, however, listened very attentively. But despite all the interruptions he spoke sharply, calmly, precisely, clearly, firmly. His sharp voice, his tone of conviction, and his stern face produced an extraordinary effect on everyone.

“Yes, yes, that’s it!” Lebezyatnikov confirmed in rapture. “It must be so, because he asked me, precisely, as soon as Sofya Semyonovna came into our room, ‘are you here? hadn’t I seen you among Katerina Ivanovna’s guests?’ He called me over to the window for that and asked me there on the quiet. So it was absolutely necessary to him that you should be here! That’s it, that’s exactly it!”

Luzhin was silent and smiled contemptuously. He was very pale, however. He seemed to be pondering how to wriggle out of it. Perhaps he would gladly have dropped the whole thing and left, but at the present moment that was almost impossible; it would mean openly admitting the justice of the charges brought against him and that he really had slandered Sofya Semyonovna. Besides, the public, already tipsy as it was, was much too agitated. The commissariat man, though he did not understand everything, was shouting louder than anyone and proposing certain measures very unpleasant for Luzhin. But there were sober people too; they had come and gathered from all the rooms. All three little Poles were terribly heated and kept shouting at him: “Panie łajdak!”¹ and muttering some threats in Polish besides. Sonya listened with strained attention, but as if she too did not understand everything, as if she were coming out of a faint. She simply did not take her eyes off Raskolnikov, feeling that all her protection lay in him. Katerina Ivanovna was breathing with difficulty and a rasp and seemed to be in terrible exhaustion. Most stupid of all stood Amalia Ivanovna, her mouth open, understanding absolutely nothing. She only saw that Pyotr Petrovich had somehow been caught. Raskolnikov asked to speak again, but they would not let him finish: everyone was shouting and crowding around Luzhin with curses and threats. But Pyotr Petrovich did not lose his nerve. Seeing that the case against Sonya was completely lost, he resorted to sheer insolence.

“Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, excuse me; don’t crowd, let me pass!” he said, making his way through the throng. “And do me the favor of not making threats; I assure you that nothing will come of it, you’ll do nothing, I’m not the timid sort, sir, and on the contrary, it is you, ladies and gentlemen, who will answer for having covered up a criminal case by force. The thief has been more than exposed, and I shall prosecute, sir. In court they are not so blind and… not so drunk, sir, and they will not believe two notorious atheists, agitators, and freethinkers, who accuse me out of personal revenge, which they themselves, in their stupidity, admit… Yes, sir, allow me, sir!”

“Not another trace of you in my room, this instant; kindly move out, and everything is over between us! And when I think how I was knocking myself out, explaining things to him… for two whole weeks!…”

“But I told you myself, Andrei Semyonovich, a while ago, that I was moving out, when you were still trying to keep me; now I will only add that you are a fool, sir. I wish you a cure for your mind and your weak eyes. Allow me, ladies and gentlemen, sir!”

He squeezed his way through; but the commissariat man did not want to let him go so easily, with nothing but curses: he seized a glass from the table, swung his arm, and hurled it at Pyotr Petrovich; but the glass flew straight at Amalia Ivanovna. She shrieked, and the commissariat man, losing his balance from the swing, fell heavily under the table. Pyotr Petrovich went to his room, and half an hour later he was no longer in the house. Sonya, timid by nature, had known even before that she could be ruined more easily than anyone else, and that anyone at all could wrong her almost with impunity. But all the same, up to this very minute, it had seemed to her that disaster could somehow be avoided—by caution, by meekness, by submissiveness to each and every one. Her disillusionment was too heavy. She could, of course, bear everything with patience and almost without a murmur—even this. But in the first minute it was just too hard. Despite her triumph and her vindication—when the first fright and the first stupor had passed, when she understood and grasped it all clearly—a feeling of helplessness and humiliation wrung her heart painfully. She went into hysterics. At last, unable to bear it, she rushed out of the room and ran home. This was almost immediately after Luzhin left. Amalia Ivanovna, when the glass struck her amid the loud laughter of those present, could not stand it either, being left with the hangover from someone else’s feast. Shrieking, like a madwoman, she flew at Katerina Ivanovna, considering her to blame for everything:

“Out of apartment! This minute! March!” And with these words she began seizing whatever of Katerina Ivanovna’s things came to hand and throwing them on the floor. Already all but done for, nearly fainting, gasping for breath, pale, Katerina Ivanovna jumped up from the bed (on which she had collapsed in exhaustion) and threw herself at Amalia Ivanovna. But the struggle was too unequal; the latter pushed her away like a feather.

“What! Not enough that she’s been godlessly slandered—this creature turns on me! What! On the day of my husband’s funeral, they drive me out of my lodging, after my bread and salt, into the street, with the orphans! But where will I go!” wailed the poor woman, sobbing and gasping for breath. “Lord!” she suddenly cried out, her eyes flashing. “Can it be there’s no justice! Whom are you to protect, if not us, the orphans? But we’ll see! There is judgment and truth in the world, there is, I’ll find it! Right now, wait, you godless creature! Polechka, stay with the children, I’ll be back. Wait for me, out in the street if need be! We’ll see whether there’s truth in the world!”

And, throwing over her head that same green drap-de-dames shawl that the late Marmeladov had mentioned in his story, Katerina Ivanovna pushed her way through the disorderly and drunken crowd of lodgers who were still thronging the room and ran out into the street with wailing and tears—with the vague aim of finding justice somewhere, right now, immediately, and at any cost. Polechka, terrified, huddled with the children in the corner on the trunk, where, hugging the two little ones and trembling all over, she began waiting for her mother to come back. Amalia Ivanovna was rushing about the room, shrieking, lamenting, flinging everything she came across onto the floor, and raging. The lodgers were bawling, each to his own tune—some were finishing what they had to say, as best they could, about what had happened; others were quarreling and swearing; some had struck up songs…

“And now it’s my time too!” thought Raskolnikov. “Well now, Sofya Semyonovna, let’s see what you’ll have to say now!”

And he set off for Sonya’s lodging.

Notes

1. 1. Polish: “You scoundrel, sir!”