Part Three · I

Raskolnikov raised himself and sat up on the sofa.

He waved weakly at Razumikhin, to stop the whole torrent of incoherent and fervent consolations he was pouring out to his mother and sister, took them both by the hand, and for about two minutes looked silently from one to the other. His mother was frightened by his look. In that look shone a feeling strong to the point of suffering, but at the same time there was something fixed in it, even something that seemed insane. Pulcheria Alexandrovna began to cry.

Avdotya Romanovna was pale; her hand trembled in her brother’s.

“Go home… with him,” he said in a broken voice, pointing at Razumikhin, “till tomorrow; tomorrow everything… Have you been here long?”

“Since this evening, Rodya,” answered Pulcheria Alexandrovna. “The train was terribly late. But, Rodya, nothing will make me leave you now! I’ll spend the night here, beside…”

“Don’t torment me!” he said, waving his hand irritably.

“I’ll stay with him!” cried Razumikhin. “I won’t leave him for a minute, and to the devil with all my lot back there, let them climb the walls! My uncle’s presiding.”

“How, how can I ever thank you!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna began, pressing Razumikhin’s hands again, but Raskolnikov interrupted her once more:

“I can’t, I can’t,” he kept repeating irritably. “Don’t torment me! Enough, go away… I can’t!…”

“Come, Mama, let’s at least go out of the room for a minute,” whispered Dunya, frightened. “We’re killing him, you can see it.”

“But am I not even to look at him, after three years!” wept Pulcheria Alexandrovna.

“Wait!” he stopped them again. “You keep interrupting, and my thoughts get muddled… Have you seen Luzhin?”

“No, Rodya, but he already knows we’ve come. We heard, Rodya, that Pyotr Petrovich was so kind as to visit you today,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna added, with some timidity.

“Yes… so kind… Dunya, a while ago I told Luzhin I’d throw him down the stairs, and I chased him off to the devil…”

“Rodya, what are you saying! Surely you… you don’t mean to say,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna began in alarm, but she stopped, looking at Dunya.

Avdotya Romanovna was gazing intently at her brother, waiting for what came next. Both of them had already been told of the quarrel by Nastasya, as far as she had been able to understand and pass it on, and they had worn themselves out with bewilderment and suspense.

“Dunya,” Raskolnikov went on with an effort, “I don’t want this marriage, and so tomorrow, at the very first word, you must refuse Luzhin, so that there isn’t even a whiff of him left.”

“My God!” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna.

“Brother, think what you’re saying!” Avdotya Romanovna began hotly, but she checked herself at once. “Perhaps you’re not in a fit state just now, you’re tired,” she said gently.

“Delirious? No… You’re marrying Luzhin for my sake. And I don’t accept the sacrifice. And so, by tomorrow, write a letter… a refusal… Let me read it in the morning, and that’s the end of it!”

“I can’t do that!” cried the offended girl. “By what right…”

“Dunechka, you’re hot-tempered too, stop it, tomorrow… Don’t you see…” said her mother in a fright, rushing to Dunya. “Oh, let’s just go, it’s better!”

“He’s raving!” shouted the tipsy Razumikhin. “Otherwise how would he dare! Tomorrow all this nonsense will have popped right out of him… But today he really did throw him out. That’s just how it was. Well, and the other one got angry… Held forth here, showed off his learning, and then off he went with his tail between his legs…”

“So it’s true?” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna.

“Till tomorrow, brother,” said Dunya with compassion. “Come, Mama… Goodbye, Rodya!”

“Do you hear, sister,” he repeated after them, gathering his last strength, “I’m not delirious; this marriage is a vileness. I may be a scoundrel, but you mustn’t… one of us at least… and though I’m a scoundrel, I won’t consider a sister like that my sister. It’s me or Luzhin! Go…”

“You’ve gone out of your mind! Despot!” roared Razumikhin, but Raskolnikov no longer answered, and perhaps no longer had the strength to answer. He lay down on the sofa and turned to the wall, utterly exhausted. Avdotya Romanovna looked at Razumikhin with curiosity; her black eyes flashed: Razumikhin even started under that look. Pulcheria Alexandrovna stood as if thunderstruck.

“Nothing could make me go!” she whispered to Razumikhin, almost in despair. “I’ll stay here, somewhere… you see Dunya home.”

“And ruin the whole thing!” Razumikhin whispered back, beside himself. “Let’s at least go out on the stairs. Nastasya, a light! I swear to you,” he went on in a half whisper, already on the stairs, “a while ago he nearly beat us, me and the doctor! Do you understand that? The doctor himself! And the doctor gave in, so as not to irritate him, and left, and I stayed downstairs to keep watch, and meanwhile he got dressed and slipped out. And he’ll slip out now too, if you irritate him, at night, and do something to himself…”

“Oh, what are you saying!”

“And Avdotya Romanovna can’t possibly be alone in those rooms without you! Think where you’re staying! That scoundrel Pyotr Petrovich, couldn’t he have found you better lodgings… But anyway, you know, I’m a little drunk, and so I… swore; don’t pay…”

“But I’ll go to the landlady here,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna insisted. “I’ll beg her to give Dunya and me a corner for tonight. I can’t leave him like this, I can’t!”

As they said this, they were standing on the stairs, on the landing, right in front of the landlady’s door. Nastasya was lighting them from the bottom step. Razumikhin was in an extraordinary state of excitement. Half an hour before, as he was seeing Raskolnikov home, he had been overly talkative, it is true, and was aware of it, but perfectly brisk and almost fresh, in spite of the terrible quantity of wine he had drunk that evening. Now, though, his state resembled a kind of rapture, even, and at the same time it was as if all the wine he had drunk had rushed to his head again, all at once and with double force. He stood with the two ladies, having seized them both by the hand, persuading them and laying out his reasons with astonishing frankness, and, probably to be all the more convincing, at almost every word he squeezed both their hands hard, as in a vise, till it hurt, and he seemed to be devouring Avdotya Romanovna with his eyes, without the least embarrassment about it. Sometimes, from the pain, they tore their hands out of his huge, bony paw, but he not only failed to notice what was the matter, he pulled them still closer to him. If they had told him that minute, as a service to them, to throw himself headfirst down the stairs, he would have done it at once, without reasoning and without a doubt. Pulcheria Alexandrovna, all alarm at the thought of her Rodya, though she felt that the young man was very eccentric indeed and was squeezing her hand very painfully indeed, nevertheless, since at the same time he was Providence to her, did not want to notice all these eccentric details. But Avdotya Romanovna, in spite of the same alarm, and though she was not of a timid character, met the looks of her brother’s friend, flashing with a wild fire, with amazement and almost with fright, and only the boundless trust inspired by Nastasya’s stories about this strange man kept her from attempting to run away from him and drag her mother after her. She understood, too, that now, perhaps, they could not even run away from him. In ten minutes or so, however, she had grown considerably calmer: Razumikhin had the quality of expressing himself wholly and in an instant, whatever mood he was in, so that everyone very soon knew whom they were dealing with.

“The landlady’s impossible, and the most awful nonsense!” he cried, persuading Pulcheria Alexandrovna. “Mother or not, if you stay you’ll drive him into a frenzy, and then the devil knows what will happen! Listen, here’s what I’ll do: Nastasya will sit with him now, and I’ll take you both to your place, because you can’t go through the streets alone; here in Petersburg, on that score… Well, to hell with it!… Then from your place I’ll run straight back here, and in a quarter of an hour, on my most honest word, I’ll bring you a report: how he is, asleep or not, and all the rest. Then, listen! Then from you, in a flash, to my place—I have guests there, all drunk—I grab Zosimov—that’s the doctor who’s treating him, he’s at my place now, not drunk; he isn’t drunk, he’s never drunk! I drag him to Rodka and then straight to you, so within the hour you’ll get two reports on him—and one from the doctor, you understand, from the doctor himself; that’s not the same as from me! If it’s bad, I swear, I’ll bring you here myself, and if it’s good, then you go to bed. And I’ll spend the whole night here, in the passage, he won’t even hear me, and I’ll tell Zosimov to sleep at the landlady’s, so he’s at hand. Well, what’s better for him now, you or the doctor? The doctor’s more useful, after all, more useful. Well, then go home! And the landlady’s impossible; it’s possible for me, but impossible for you: she won’t let you in, because… because she’s a fool. She’ll be jealous of me over Avdotya Romanovna, if you want to know, and over you too… And over Avdotya Romanovna without fail. That’s a completely, completely unexpected character! However, I’m a fool too… To hell with it! Let’s go! Do you trust me? Well, do you trust me or not?”

“Let’s go, Mama,” said Avdotya Romanovna. “He’ll surely do as he promises. He has brought my brother back to life already, and if it’s true that the doctor will agree to spend the night here, what could be better?”

“There, you… you… understand me, because you’re an angel!” cried Razumikhin in rapture. “Let’s go! Nastasya! Upstairs this minute, and sit there with him, with a light; I’ll be back in a quarter of an hour…”

Pulcheria Alexandrovna, though not entirely convinced, resisted no longer. Razumikhin took them both by the arm and hauled them down the stairs. All the same, he worried her: “He may be quick and kind, but is he capable of doing what he promises? In the state he’s in!…”

“Ah, I understand, you think I’m in such a state!” Razumikhin broke in on her thoughts, guessing them, and striding along the sidewalk with his enormous strides, so that both ladies could hardly keep up with him, which, however, he did not notice. “Nonsense! That is… I’m drunk as a dolt, but that’s not the point; I’m not drunk from wine. It was seeing you that went to my head… But to hell with me! Don’t pay any attention: I’m talking rubbish; I’m unworthy of you… I am in the highest degree unworthy of you!… And as soon as I’ve taken you home, in a flash, right here in the canal, I’ll pour two tubs of water over my head, and I’m ready… If only you knew how I love you both!… Don’t laugh and don’t be angry!… Be angry with everyone, but don’t be angry with me! I’m his friend, and therefore your friend. That’s how I want it… I had a presentiment of it… last year, there was a moment like that… But no, I didn’t have any presentiment at all, because you dropped as if from the sky. And I, very likely, won’t sleep all night… That Zosimov was afraid a while ago that he might go out of his mind… That’s why he mustn’t be irritated…”

“What are you saying!” cried the mother.

“Did the doctor himself really say that?” asked Avdotya Romanovna, frightened.

“He said it, but it’s not that, not that at all. He even gave him some medicine, a powder, I saw it, and then you arrived… Eh!… You’d have done better to come tomorrow! It’s good that we left. And in an hour Zosimov himself will report to you about everything. Now he isn’t drunk! And I won’t be drunk… And why did I get so soused? Because they dragged me into an argument, the damned lot! And I’d sworn an oath not to argue!… Such drivel they spout! I nearly got into a fight! I left my uncle there, as chairman… Well, would you believe it: they demand complete impersonality and find it simply delicious! Anything not to be oneself, anything to be as little like oneself as possible! That’s what they consider the very highest progress. And if only they talked rubbish in their own way, but as it is…”

“Listen,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna interrupted timidly, but this only added fuel to the fire.

“What do you think?” shouted Razumikhin, raising his voice still higher. “You think I’m against them because they talk rubbish? Nonsense! I love it when people talk rubbish! Talking rubbish is man’s one privilege over all other organisms. Talk rubbish and you’ll get to the truth! I’m a man because I talk rubbish. Not one truth has ever been reached without first talking rubbish fourteen times, or maybe a hundred and fourteen, and that’s honorable in its way; well, but we can’t even talk rubbish with our own minds! Talk rubbish to me, but talk it in your own way, and I’ll kiss you for it. Talking rubbish in your own way is almost better than the truth in somebody else’s; in the first case you’re a man, and in the second you’re no more than a bird! The truth won’t run away, but life can be nailed shut; there have been examples. Well, what are we now? All of us, every last one of us, in the matter of science, development, thought, invention, ideals, desires, liberalism, reason, experience, and everything, everything, everything, everything, everything, we’re all still sitting in the first preparatory class of the gymnasium! We’ve taken a liking to living off other people’s minds—we’re steeped in it! Isn’t that so? Isn’t what I say so?” shouted Razumikhin, shaking and squeezing both ladies’ hands. “Isn’t it?”

“Oh, my God, I don’t know,” said poor Pulcheria Alexandrovna.

“It is, it is… though I don’t agree with you in everything,” Avdotya Romanovna added seriously, and at once cried out, so painfully had he squeezed her hand this time.

“It is? You say it is? Well, after that you… you…” he cried in rapture, “you are a fountain of goodness, purity, reason, and… perfection! Give me your hand, give it… you give me yours too, I want to kiss your hands, here, now, on my knees!”

And he knelt down in the middle of the sidewalk, which was, fortunately, deserted at that moment.

“Stop it, I beg you, what are you doing?” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna, alarmed in the extreme.

“Get up, get up!” Dunya laughed, alarmed too.

“Not for anything, not until you give me your hands! There, and that’s enough, and I’m up, and let’s go! I’m a miserable dolt, I’m unworthy of you, and drunk, and ashamed… I’m unworthy of loving you, but to bow down before you is the duty of every man who isn’t a complete brute! And so I bowed down… And here are your rooms, and for this alone Rodion was right to throw out your Pyotr Petrovich this afternoon! How dared he put you up in rooms like these? It’s a scandal! Do you know who they let in here? And you’re a bride! You are a bride, aren’t you? Well, then I tell you your fiancé is a scoundrel after this!”

“Listen, Mr. Razumikhin, you’re forgetting yourself…” Pulcheria Alexandrovna began.

“Yes, yes, you’re right, I forgot myself, I’m ashamed!” Razumikhin caught himself. “But… but… you can’t be angry with me for talking like this! Because I’m speaking sincerely, and not because… hm! that would be vile; in a word, not because I’ve… for you… hm!… well, all right, no need, I won’t say why, I don’t dare!… But we all understood this afternoon, the moment he came in, that this man isn’t one of us. Not because he came in curled at the barber’s, not because he was in a hurry to show off his intelligence, but because he’s a spy and a speculator; because he’s a Jew and a mountebank, and you can see it. You think he’s clever? No, he’s a fool, a fool! Well, is he a match for you? Oh, my God! You see, ladies,” he stopped suddenly, already going up the stairs to the rooms, “though my lot back there are all drunk, they’re all honest, and though we talk rubbish, because I talk rubbish too, we’ll talk our way through to the truth in the end, because we’re on the noble road, and Pyotr Petrovich… isn’t on the noble road. I cursed them up and down just now, but I respect them all; even Zametov, if I don’t respect him, I love him, because—he’s a puppy! Even that brute Zosimov, because—he’s honest and knows his business… But enough, all said and forgiven. Forgiven? Is that so? Well, let’s go. I know this corridor, I’ve been here; right here, in number three, there was a scandal… Well, where are you? Which number? Eight? Well, then lock yourselves in for the night, don’t let anyone in. In a quarter of an hour I’ll be back with news, and then in another half hour with Zosimov, you’ll see! Goodbye, I’m running!”

“My God, Dunechka, what will come of this?” said Pulcheria Alexandrovna, turning anxiously and fearfully to her daughter.

“Calm yourself, Mama,” answered Dunya, taking off her hat and little mantle. “God himself has sent us this gentleman, even if he has come straight from some drinking party. He can be relied on, I assure you. And everything he’s already done for my brother…”

“Oh, Dunechka, God knows whether he’ll come! And how could I bring myself to leave Rodya!… And not at all, not at all how I imagined I’d find him! How stern he was, as if he weren’t glad to see us…”

Tears showed in her eyes.

“No, that’s not so, Mama. You didn’t look closely, you were crying the whole time. He’s very shaken from a serious illness—that’s the reason for everything.”

“Oh, this illness! What will come of it, what will come of it! And the way he talked to you, Dunya!” said the mother, looking timidly into her daughter’s eyes to read all her thoughts, and already half comforted that Dunya herself was defending Rodya and must therefore have forgiven him. “I’m sure he’ll think better of it tomorrow,” she added, sounding her out to the end.

“And I’m quite sure that tomorrow, too, he’ll be saying the same thing… about that,” Avdotya Romanovna cut her off, and this, of course, was the snag, because here was the point that Pulcheria Alexandrovna was now too much afraid to raise. Dunya went over and kissed her mother. Her mother embraced her tightly, without a word. Then she sat down in anxious expectation of Razumikhin’s return and began timidly to watch her daughter, who, arms folded, and waiting too, had begun walking up and down the room, thinking to herself. Such walking from corner to corner, deep in thought, was Avdotya Romanovna’s usual habit, and her mother was always somehow afraid to disturb her thoughtfulness at such times.

Razumikhin, of course, was ridiculous with his sudden passion for Avdotya Romanovna, kindled by drink; but looking at Avdotya Romanovna, especially now, as she walked about the room with her arms folded, sad and thoughtful, perhaps many people would have excused him, to say nothing of his eccentric condition. Avdotya Romanovna was remarkably good-looking—tall, wonderfully slender, strong, self-assured—which showed in her every gesture and which, however, took nothing at all from the softness and grace of her movements. In face she resembled her brother, but she could even be called a beauty. Her hair was dark brown, a little lighter than her brother’s; her eyes almost black, flashing, proud, and at the same time sometimes, for moments, extraordinarily kind. She was pale, but not sickly pale; her face shone with freshness and health. Her mouth was rather small, and her lower lip, fresh and scarlet, protruded just slightly, along with her chin—the only irregularity in that beautiful face, but one that gave it a particular character and, among other things, a kind of haughtiness. The expression of her face was always more serious than gay, thoughtful; but then how a smile suited that face, how laughter suited her, gay, young, wholehearted laughter! It was understandable that the hot, frank, somewhat simple, honest, drunk Razumikhin, strong as a hero of the old ballads, who had never seen anything like her, lost his head at first sight. Besides, chance, as if on purpose, had shown him Dunya for the first time in a beautiful moment of love and joy at meeting her brother. Then he had seen her lower lip quiver with indignation in answer to her brother’s insolent and ungratefully cruel commands—and he could not hold out.

He had told the truth, however, when he blurted out drunkenly on the stairs a while ago that Raskolnikov’s eccentric landlady, Praskovya Pavlovna, would be jealous of him not only over Avdotya Romanovna but perhaps even over Pulcheria Alexandrovna herself. Although Pulcheria Alexandrovna was already forty-three, her face still kept the traces of its former beauty, and besides, she looked much younger than her years, as is almost always the case with women who have kept clarity of spirit, freshness of impressions, and an honest, pure ardor of heart into old age. Let us say in parentheses that to keep all this is the only means of not losing one’s beauty even in old age. Her hair was already beginning to turn gray and thin, little radiating wrinkles had long since appeared around her eyes, her cheeks were sunken and dried out from care and grief, and all the same this face was beautiful. It was a portrait of Dunechka’s face, only twenty years later, and except for the expression of the lower lip, which in her did not protrude. Pulcheria Alexandrovna was sensitive, though not to the point of sentimentality, timid and yielding, but only up to a certain line: she could yield a great deal, could agree to a great deal, even to things that went against her convictions, but there was always a line of honesty, principle, and deepest conviction that no circumstances could make her step over.

Exactly twenty minutes after Razumikhin left, there came two quiet but hurried knocks at the door; he had come back.

“I won’t come in, no time!” he said in a rush when they opened the door. “He’s sleeping like a log, splendidly, peacefully, and God grant he sleeps ten hours. Nastasya’s with him; I told her not to leave till I come. Now I’ll drag Zosimov over, he’ll report to you, and then you hit the hay; you’re worn out past all bearing, I can see.”

And he set off from them down the corridor.

“What a quick and… devoted young man!” exclaimed Pulcheria Alexandrovna, exceedingly delighted.

“He seems a splendid person!” Avdotya Romanovna answered with some warmth, beginning to walk up and down the room again.

Almost an hour later there were footsteps in the corridor and another knock at the door. Both women were waiting, this time fully believing in Razumikhin’s promise; and indeed he had managed to drag Zosimov along. Zosimov had agreed at once to abandon the feast and go and look at Raskolnikov, but he came to the ladies reluctantly and with great suspicion, not trusting the drunken Razumikhin. But his vanity was at once soothed and even flattered: he understood that they really had been waiting for him as for an oracle. He stayed exactly ten minutes and fully succeeded in convincing and calming Pulcheria Alexandrovna. He spoke with extraordinary sympathy, but with reserve and with a kind of strained seriousness, exactly like a twenty-seven-year-old doctor at an important consultation, and not once did he stray from the subject or show the slightest wish to enter into more personal and private relations with the two ladies. Having noticed as soon as he came in how dazzlingly good-looking Avdotya Romanovna was, he at once did his best not even to notice her at all, for the whole length of the visit, and addressed himself solely to Pulcheria Alexandrovna. All this gave him extraordinary inner satisfaction. Of the patient himself he said that he found him at the present moment in a highly satisfactory condition. According to his observations, the patient’s illness, apart from the bad material circumstances of the last months of his life, had certain moral causes as well; it “is, so to speak, the product of many complex moral and material influences, anxieties, apprehensions, worries, certain ideas… and so forth.” Noticing in passing that Avdotya Romanovna had begun to listen with particular attention, Zosimov expanded somewhat further on this theme. To Pulcheria Alexandrovna’s anxious and timid question about “some supposed suspicions of insanity” he answered with a calm and candid smile that his words had been greatly exaggerated; that of course one could observe in the patient a certain fixed idea, something indicating monomania—since he, Zosimov, was now following this extremely interesting branch of medicine especially closely—but one must remember, after all, that almost right up to today the patient had been delirious, and… and, of course, the arrival of his family would strengthen him, distract him, and have a saving effect, “if only new and particular shocks can be avoided,” he added significantly. Then he got up, took his leave in a solid and cordial manner, accompanied by blessings, warm gratitude, entreaties, and even the little hand of Avdotya Romanovna, held out to him for a handshake without his seeking it, and went out extremely pleased with his visit and even more with himself.

“And we’ll talk tomorrow; go to bed, right now, without fail!” Razumikhin clinched it, leaving with Zosimov. “Tomorrow, as early as possible, I’ll be here with a report.”

“But what a delightful girl, that Avdotya Romanovna!” observed Zosimov, all but licking his lips, when they had both come out into the street.

“Delightful? You said delightful!” roared Razumikhin, and suddenly he flung himself on Zosimov and seized him by the throat. “If you ever dare… Understand? Understand?” he shouted, shaking him by the collar and pinning him to the wall. “Did you hear?”

“Let go, you drunken devil!” Zosimov fought him off, and then, when Razumikhin had already let him go, he looked at him intently and suddenly burst out laughing. Razumikhin stood before him, arms hanging, in gloomy and serious thought.

“Of course I’m an ass,” he said, gloomy as a thundercloud, “but then… so are you.”

“Oh no, brother, not so at all. I don’t dream about foolishness.”

They walked on in silence, and only as they were approaching Raskolnikov’s lodgings did Razumikhin, deeply preoccupied, break the silence.

“Listen,” he said to Zosimov, “you’re a fine fellow, but besides all your nasty qualities, you’re a skirt-chaser too, that I know, and one of the dirty kind. You’re a nervous, flabby piece of trash, you’re capricious, you’ve grown fat and can’t deny yourself anything—and that’s what I call dirt, because it leads straight to dirt. You’ve coddled yourself so much that, I confess, what I understand least of all is how you can be, with all that, a good and even self-sacrificing physician. Sleeps on a featherbed (a doctor!), and gets up at night for a patient! In three years or so you won’t be getting up for a patient anymore… Well, yes, the devil, that’s not the point, the point is this: tonight you sleep in the landlady’s apartment (I barely talked her into it!), and I sleep in the kitchen: here’s your chance to get better acquainted! Not what you think! There’s not a shadow of that here, brother…”

“But I’m not thinking anything at all.”

“Here, brother, it’s modesty, silence, bashfulness, fierce chastity, and with all that—sighs, and she melts like wax, simply melts! Get me out of it, for the sake of all the devils in the world! She’s as charming as can be!… I’ll make it up to you, I’ll make it up with my head!”

Zosimov guffawed harder than before.

“You’ve really got it bad! But what do I want her for?”

“I assure you, it’s little trouble, just say whatever twaddle you like, just sit down beside her and talk. Besides, you’re a doctor, start treating her for something. I swear you won’t regret it. She has a clavichord; you know I strum a little; I have a little song there, a Russian one, a real one: ‘I shall drown in burning tears…’ She loves the real ones—well, it started with the song; and you’re a virtuoso on the pianoforte, a maître, a Rubinstein… I assure you, you won’t regret it!”

“What, have you been making her promises of some kind? A signed pledge, all in due form? Promised to marry her, maybe…”

“Nothing, nothing, nothing of the sort at all! And she isn’t that kind at all; Chebarov tried to get at her…”

“Well, then drop her!”

“But I can’t just drop her like that!”

“Why on earth not?”

“Well, somehow I just can’t, and that’s all! There’s something here, brother, that draws you in.”

“Then why did you lead her on?”

“But I didn’t lead her on at all, maybe I’m the one who’s been led on, out of my own stupidity, and it’ll make absolutely no difference to her, you or me, as long as somebody sits beside her and sighs. Here, brother… I can’t express it to you, here—well, look, you know mathematics well, and you still study it now, I know… well, start teaching her the integral calculus, by God I’m not joking, I’m serious, it’ll make absolutely no difference to her: she’ll look at you and sigh, and so on for a whole year on end. Among other things, I talked to her for a very long time, two days or so running, about the Prussian House of Lords (because what else is there to talk to her about?)—she just sighed and sweltered! Only don’t start talking about love—she’s bashful to the point of convulsions—but do show that you can’t tear yourself away—well, and that’s enough. Awfully comfortable; just like home—read, sit, lie down, write… You can even kiss her, carefully…”

“But what do I need her for?”

“Eh, I just can’t explain it to you! Look: you two are a perfect match! I thought of you before, too… You’re going to end up this way anyhow! So isn’t it all the same to you—sooner or later? Here, brother, there lies a sort of featherbed principle—eh! and not only a featherbed one! It draws you in; here is the end of the world, an anchor, a quiet haven, the navel of the earth, the three fishes the world stands on, the essence of pancakes, of rich kulebyaka pies, of the evening samovar, of quiet sighs and warm quilted jackets, of heated stove-benches—well, just as if you’d died, and at the same time you’re alive, both advantages at once! Well, brother, the devil, I’ve rattled on, time for bed! Listen: I sometimes wake up at night, well, and go down to look in on him. Only it’s nothing, nonsense, everything’s fine. Don’t you worry especially either, but if you like, go and look in once too. But if you notice the least thing, delirium, for instance, or fever, or anything, wake me at once. Though it can’t be…”