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CHAPTER V
Lebeziatnikov looked perturbed.
"I've come to you, Sofya Semyonovna," he began. "Excuse me . . . I
thought I should find you," he said, addressing Raskolnikov suddenly,
"that is, I didn't mean anything . . . of that sort . . . But I just
thought . . . Katerina Ivanovna has gone out of her mind," he blurted
out suddenly, turning from Raskolnikov to Sonia.
Sonia screamed.
"At least it seems so. But . . . we don't know what to do, you see!
She came back--she seems to have been turned out somewhere, perhaps
beaten. . . . So it seems at least, . . . She had run to your father's
former chief, she didn't find him at home: he was dining at some other
general's. . . . Only fancy, she rushed off there, to the other
general's, and, imagine, she was so persistent that she managed to get
the chief to see her, had him fetched out from dinner, it seems. You
can imagine what happened. She was turned out, of course; but,
according to her own story, she abused him and threw something at him.
One may well believe it. . . . How it is she wasn't taken up, I can't
understand! Now she is telling everyone, including Amalia Ivanovna;
but it's difficult to understand her, she is screaming and flinging
herself about. . . . Oh yes, she shouts that since everyone has
abandoned her, she will take the children and go into the street with
a barrel-organ, and the children will sing and dance, and she too, and
collect money, and will go every day under the general's window . . .
'to let everyone see well-born children, whose father was an official,
begging in the street.' She keeps beating the children and they are
all crying. She is teaching Lida to sing 'My Village,' the boy to
dance, Polenka the same. She is tearing up all the clothes, and making
them little caps like actors; she means to carry a tin basin and make
it tinkle, instead of music. . . . She won't listen to anything. . . .
Imagine the state of things! It's beyond anything!"
Lebeziatnikov would have gone on, but Sonia, who had heard him almost
breathless, snatched up her cloak and hat, and ran out of the room,
putting on her things as she went. Raskolnikov followed her and
Lebeziatnikov came after him.
"She has certainly gone mad!" he said to Raskolnikov, as they went out
into the street. "I didn't want to frighten Sofya Semyonovna, so I
said 'it seemed like it,' but there isn't a doubt of it. They say that
in consumption the tubercles sometimes occur in the brain; it's a pity
I know nothing of medicine. I did try to persuade her, but she
wouldn't listen."
"Did you talk to her about the tubercles?"
"Not precisely of the tubercles. Besides, she wouldn't have
understood! But what I say is, that if you convince a person logically
that he has nothing to cry about, he'll stop crying. That's clear. Is
it your conviction that he won't?"
"Life would be too easy if it were so," answered Raskolnikov.
"Excuse me, excuse me; of course it would be rather difficult for
Katerina Ivanovna to understand, but do you know that in Paris they
have been conducting serious experiments as to the possibility of
curing the insane, simply by logical argument? One professor there, a
scientific man of standing, lately dead, believed in the possibility
of such treatment. His idea was that there's nothing really wrong with
the physical organism of the insane, and that insanity is, so to say,
a logical mistake, an error of judgment, an incorrect view of things.
He gradually showed the madman his error and, would you believe it,
they say he was successful? But as he made use of douches too, how far
success was due to that treatment remains uncertain. . . . So it seems
at least."
Raskolnikov had long ceased to listen. Reaching the house where he
lived, he nodded to Lebeziatnikov and went in at the gate.
Lebeziatnikov woke up with a start, looked about him and hurried on.
Raskolnikov went into his little room and stood still in the middle of
it. Why had he come back here? He looked at the yellow and tattered
paper, at the dust, at his sofa. . . . From the yard came a loud
continuous knocking; someone seemed to be hammering . . . He went to
the window, rose on tiptoe and looked out into the yard for a long
time with an air of absorbed attention. But the yard was empty and he
could not see who was hammering. In the house on the left he saw some
open windows; on the window-sills were pots of sickly-looking
geraniums. Linen was hung out of the windows . . . He knew it all by
heart. He turned away and sat down on the sofa.
Never, never had he felt himself so fearfully alone!
Yes, he felt once more that he would perhaps come to hate Sonia, now
that he had made her more miserable.
"Why had he gone to her to beg for her tears? What need had he to
poison her life? Oh, the meanness of it!"
"I will remain alone," he said resolutely, "and she shall not come to
the prison!"
Five minutes later he raised his head with a strange smile. That was a
strange thought.
"Perhaps it really would be better in Siberia," he thought suddenly.
He could not have said how long he sat there with vague thoughts
surging through his mind. All at once the door opened and Dounia came
in. At first she stood still and looked at him from the doorway, just
as he had done at Sonia; then she came in and sat down in the same
place as yesterday, on the chair facing him. He looked silently and
almost vacantly at her.
"Don't be angry, brother; I've only come for one minute," said Dounia.
Her face looked thoughtful but not stern. Her eyes were bright and
soft. He saw that she too had come to him with love.
"Brother, now I know all, /all/. Dmitri Prokofitch has explained and
told me everything. They are worrying and persecuting you through a
stupid and contemptible suspicion. . . . Dmitri Prokofitch told me
that there is no danger, and that you are wrong in looking upon it
with such horror. I don't think so, and I fully understand how
indignant you must be, and that that indignation may have a permanent
effect on you. That's what I am afraid of. As for your cutting
yourself off from us, I don't judge you, I don't venture to judge you,
and forgive me for having blamed you for it. I feel that I too, if I
had so great a trouble, should keep away from everyone. I shall tell
mother nothing /of this/, but I shall talk about you continually and
shall tell her from you that you will come very soon. Don't worry
about her; /I/ will set her mind at rest; but don't you try her too
much--come once at least; remember that she is your mother. And now I
have come simply to say" (Dounia began to get up) "that if you should
need me or should need . . . all my life or anything . . . call me,
and I'll come. Good-bye!"
She turned abruptly and went towards the door.
"Dounia!" Raskolnikov stopped her and went towards her. "That
Razumihin, Dmitri Prokofitch, is a very good fellow."
Dounia flushed slightly.
"Well?" she asked, waiting a moment.
"He is competent, hardworking, honest and capable of real love. . . .
Good-bye, Dounia."
Dounia flushed crimson, then suddenly she took alarm.
"But what does it mean, brother? Are we really parting for ever that
you . . . give me such a parting message?"
"Never mind. . . . Good-bye."
He turned away, and walked to the window. She stood a moment, looked
at him uneasily, and went out troubled.
No, he was not cold to her. There was an instant (the very last one)
when he had longed to take her in his arms and /say good-bye/ to her,
and even /to tell/ her, but he had not dared even to touch her hand.
"Afterwards she may shudder when she remembers that I embraced her,
and will feel that I stole her kiss."
"And would /she/ stand that test?" he went on a few minutes later to
himself. "No, she wouldn't; girls like that can't stand things! They
never do."
And he thought of Sonia.
There was a breath of fresh air from the window. The daylight was
fading. He took up his cap and went out.
He could not, of course, and would not consider how ill he was. But
all this continual anxiety and agony of mind could not but affect him.
And if he were not lying in high fever it was perhaps just because
this continual inner strain helped to keep him on his legs and in
possession of his faculties. But this artificial excitement could not
last long.
He wandered aimlessly. The sun was setting. A special form of misery
had begun to oppress him of late. There was nothing poignant, nothing
acute about it; but there was a feeling of permanence, of eternity
about it; it brought a foretaste of hopeless years of this cold leaden
misery, a foretaste of an eternity "on a square yard of space."
Towards evening this sensation usually began to weigh on him more
heavily.
"With this idiotic, purely physical weakness, depending on the sunset
or something, one can't help doing something stupid! You'll go to
Dounia, as well as to Sonia," he muttered bitterly.
He heard his name called. He looked round. Lebeziatnikov rushed up to
him.
"Only fancy, I've been to your room looking for you. Only fancy, she's
carried out her plan, and taken away the children. Sofya Semyonovna
and I have had a job to find them. She is rapping on a frying-pan and
making the children dance. The children are crying. They keep stopping
at the cross-roads and in front of shops; there's a crowd of fools
running after them. Come along!"
"And Sonia?" Raskolnikov asked anxiously, hurrying after
Lebeziatnikov.
"Simply frantic. That is, it's not Sofya Semyonovna's frantic, but
Katerina Ivanovna, though Sofya Semyonova's frantic too. But Katerina
Ivanovna is absolutely frantic. I tell you she is quite mad. They'll
be taken to the police. You can fancy what an effect that will have.. . They are on the canal bank, near the bridge now, not far from
Sofya Semyonovna's, quite close."
On the canal bank near the bridge and not two houses away from the one
where Sonia lodged, there was a crowd of people, consisting
principally of gutter children. The hoarse broken voice of Katerina
Ivanovna could be heard from the bridge, and it certainly was a
strange spectacle likely to attract a street crowd. Katerina Ivanovna
in her old dress with the green shawl, wearing a torn straw hat,
crushed in a hideous way on one side, was really frantic. She was
exhausted and breathless. Her wasted consumptive face looked more
suffering than ever, and indeed out of doors in the sunshine a
consumptive always looks worse than at home. But her excitement did
not flag, and every moment her irritation grew more intense. She
rushed at the children, shouted at them, coaxed them, told them before
the crowd how to dance and what to sing, began explaining to them why
it was necessary, and driven to desperation by their not
understanding, beat them. . . . Then she would make a rush at the
crowd; if she noticed any decently dressed person stopping to look,
she immediately appealed to him to see what these children "from a
genteel, one may say aristocratic, house" had been brought to. If she
heard laughter or jeering in the crowd, she would rush at once at the
scoffers and begin squabbling with them. Some people laughed, others
shook their heads, but everyone felt curious at the sight of the
madwoman with the frightened children. The frying-pan of which
Lebeziatnikov had spoken was not there, at least Raskolnikov did not
see it. But instead of rapping on the pan, Katerina Ivanovna began
clapping her wasted hands, when she made Lida and Kolya dance and
Polenka sing. She too joined in the singing, but broke down at the
second note with a fearful cough, which made her curse in despair and
even shed tears. What made her most furious was the weeping and terror
of Kolya and Lida. Some effort had been made to dress the children up
as street singers are dressed. The boy had on a turban made of
something red and white to look like a Turk. There had been no costume
for Lida; she simply had a red knitted cap, or rather a night cap that
had belonged to Marmeladov, decorated with a broken piece of white
ostrich feather, which had been Katerina Ivanovna's grandmother's and
had been preserved as a family possession. Polenka was in her everyday
dress; she looked in timid perplexity at her mother, and kept at her
side, hiding her tears. She dimly realised her mother's condition, and
looked uneasily about her. She was terribly frightened of the street
and the crowd. Sonia followed Katerina Ivanovna, weeping and
beseeching her to return home, but Katerina Ivanovna was not to be
persuaded.
"Leave off, Sonia, leave off," she shouted, speaking fast, panting and
coughing. "You don't know what you ask; you are like a child! I've
told you before that I am not coming back to that drunken German. Let
everyone, let all Petersburg see the children begging in the streets,
though their father was an honourable man who served all his life in
truth and fidelity, and one may say died in the service." (Katerina
Ivanovna had by now invented this fantastic story and thoroughly
believed it.) "Let that wretch of a general see it! And you are silly,
Sonia: what have we to eat? Tell me that. We have worried you enough,
I won't go on so! Ah, Rodion Romanovitch, is that you?" she cried,
seeing Raskolnikov and rushing up to him. "Explain to this silly girl,
please, that nothing better could be done! Even organ-grinders earn
their living, and everyone will see at once that we are different,
that we are an honourable and bereaved family reduced to beggary. And
that general will lose his post, you'll see! We shall perform under
his windows every day, and if the Tsar drives by, I'll fall on my
knees, put the children before me, show them to him, and say 'Defend
us father.' He is the father of the fatherless, he is merciful, he'll
protect us, you'll see, and that wretch of a general. . . . Lida,
/tenez vous droite/! Kolya, you'll dance again. Why are you
whimpering? Whimpering again! What are you afraid of, stupid?
Goodness, what am I to do with them, Rodion Romanovitch? If you only
knew how stupid they are! What's one to do with such children?"
And she, almost crying herself--which did not stop her uninterrupted,
rapid flow of talk--pointed to the crying children. Raskolnikov tried
to persuade her to go home, and even said, hoping to work on her
vanity, that it was unseemly for her to be wandering about the streets
like an organ-grinder, as she was intending to become the principal of
a boarding-school.
"A boarding-school, ha-ha-ha! A castle in the air," cried Katerina
Ivanovna, her laugh ending in a cough. "No, Rodion Romanovitch, that
dream is over! All have forsaken us! . . . And that general. . . . You
know, Rodion Romanovitch, I threw an inkpot at him--it happened to be
standing in the waiting-room by the paper where you sign your name. I
wrote my name, threw it at him and ran away. Oh, the scoundrels, the
scoundrels! But enough of them, now I'll provide for the children
myself, I won't bow down to anybody! She has had to bear enough for
us!" she pointed to Sonia. "Polenka, how much have you got? Show me!
What, only two farthings! Oh, the mean wretches! They give us nothing,
only run after us, putting their tongues out. There, what is that
blockhead laughing at?" (She pointed to a man in the crowd.) "It's all
because Kolya here is so stupid; I have such a bother with him. What
do you want, Polenka? Tell me in French, /parlez-moi français/. Why,
I've taught you, you know some phrases. Else how are you to show that
you are of good family, well brought-up children, and not at all like
other organ-grinders? We aren't going to have a Punch and Judy show in
the street, but to sing a genteel song. . . . Ah, yes, . . . What are
we to sing? You keep putting me out, but we . . . you see, we are
standing here, Rodion Romanovitch, to find something to sing and get
money, something Kolya can dance to. . . . For, as you can fancy, our
performance is all impromptu. . . . We must talk it over and rehearse
it all thoroughly, and then we shall go to Nevsky, where there are far
more people of good society, and we shall be noticed at once. Lida
knows 'My Village' only, nothing but 'My Village,' and everyone sings
that. We must sing something far more genteel. . . . Well, have you
thought of anything, Polenka? If only you'd help your mother! My
memory's quite gone, or I should have thought of something. We really
can't sing 'An Hussar.' Ah, let us sing in French, 'Cinq sous,' I have
taught it you, I have taught it you. And as it is in French, people
will see at once that you are children of good family, and that will
be much more touching. . . . You might sing 'Marlborough s'en va-t-en
guerre,' for that's quite a child's song and is sung as a lullaby in
all the aristocratic houses.
"/Marlborough s'en va-t-en guerre
Ne sait quand reviendra/ . . ."
she began singing. "But no, better sing 'Cinq sous.' Now, Kolya, your
hands on your hips, make haste, and you, Lida, keep turning the other
way, and Polenka and I will sing and clap our hands!
"/Cinq sous, cinq sous
Pour monter notre menage."
(Cough-cough-cough!) "Set your dress straight, Polenka, it's slipped
down on your shoulders," she observed, panting from coughing. "Now
it's particularly necessary to behave nicely and genteelly, that all
may see that you are well-born children. I said at the time that the
bodice should be cut longer, and made of two widths. It was your
fault, Sonia, with your advice to make it shorter, and now you see the
child is quite deformed by it. . . . Why, you're all crying again!
What's the matter, stupids? Come, Kolya, begin. Make haste, make
haste! Oh, what an unbearable child!
"Cinq sous, cinq sous.
"A policeman again! What do you want?"
A policeman was indeed forcing his way through the crowd. But at that
moment a gentleman in civilian uniform and an overcoat--a solid-
looking official of about fifty with a decoration on his neck (which
delighted Katerina Ivanovna and had its effect on the policeman)--
approached and without a word handed her a green three-rouble note.
His face wore a look of genuine sympathy. Katerina Ivanovna took it
and gave him a polite, even ceremonious, bow.
"I thank you, honoured sir," she began loftily. "The causes that have
induced us (take the money, Polenka: you see there are generous and
honourable people who are ready to help a poor gentlewoman in
distress). You see, honoured sir, these orphans of good family--I
might even say of aristocratic connections--and that wretch of a
general sat eating grouse . . . and stamped at my disturbing him.
'Your excellency,' I said, 'protect the orphans, for you knew my late
husband, Semyon Zaharovitch, and on the very day of his death the
basest of scoundrels slandered his only daughter.' . . . That
policeman again! Protect me," she cried to the official. "Why is that
policeman edging up to me? We have only just run away from one of
them. What do you want, fool?"
"It's forbidden in the streets. You mustn't make a disturbance."
"It's you're making a disturbance. It's just the same as if I were
grinding an organ. What business is it of yours?"
"You have to get a licence for an organ, and you haven't got one, and
in that way you collect a crowd. Where do you lodge?"
"What, a license?" wailed Katerina Ivanovna. "I buried my husband
to-day. What need of a license?"
"Calm yourself, madam, calm yourself," began the official. "Come
along; I will escort you. . . . This is no place for you in the crowd.
You are ill."
"Honoured sir, honoured sir, you don't know," screamed Katerina
Ivanovna. "We are going to the Nevsky. . . . Sonia, Sonia! Where is
she? She is crying too! What's the matter with you all? Kolya, Lida,
where are you going?" she cried suddenly in alarm. "Oh, silly
children! Kolya, Lida, where are they off to? . . ."
Kolya and Lida, scared out of their wits by the crowd, and their
mother's mad pranks, suddenly seized each other by the hand, and ran
off at the sight of the policeman who wanted to take them away
somewhere. Weeping and wailing, poor Katerina Ivanovna ran after them.
She was a piteous and unseemly spectacle, as she ran, weeping and
panting for breath. Sonia and Polenka rushed after them.
"Bring them back, bring them back, Sonia! Oh stupid, ungrateful
children! . . . Polenka! catch them. . . . It's for your sakes
I . . ."
She stumbled as she ran and fell down.
"She's cut herself, she's bleeding! Oh, dear!" cried Sonia, bending
over her.
All ran up and crowded around. Raskolnikov and Lebeziatnikov were the
first at her side, the official too hastened up, and behind him the
policeman who muttered, "Bother!" with a gesture of impatience,
feeling that the job was going to be a troublesome one.
"Pass on! Pass on!" he said to the crowd that pressed forward.
"She's dying," someone shouted.
"She's gone out of her mind," said another.
"Lord have mercy upon us," said a woman, crossing herself. "Have they
caught the little girl and the boy? They're being brought back, the
elder one's got them. . . . Ah, the naughty imps!"
When they examined Katerina Ivanovna carefully, they saw that she had
not cut herself against a stone, as Sonia thought, but that the blood
that stained the pavement red was from her chest.
"I've seen that before," muttered the official to Raskolnikov and
Lebeziatnikov; "that's consumption; the blood flows and chokes the
patient. I saw the same thing with a relative of my own not long ago. . nearly a pint of blood, all in a minute. . . . What's to be done
though? She is dying."
"This way, this way, to my room!" Sonia implored. "I live here! . . .
See, that house, the second from here. . . . Come to me, make haste,"
she turned from one to the other. "Send for the doctor! Oh, dear!"
Thanks to the official's efforts, this plan was adopted, the policeman
even helping to carry Katerina Ivanovna. She was carried to Sonia's
room, almost unconscious, and laid on the bed. The blood was still
flowing, but she seemed to be coming to herself. Raskolnikov,
Lebeziatnikov, and the official accompanied Sonia into the room and
were followed by the policeman, who first drove back the crowd which
followed to the very door. Polenka came in holding Kolya and Lida, who
were trembling and weeping. Several persons came in too from the
Kapernaumovs' room; the landlord, a lame one-eyed man of strange
appearance with whiskers and hair that stood up like a brush, his
wife, a woman with an everlastingly scared expression, and several
open-mouthed children with wonder-struck faces. Among these,
Svidrigaïlov suddenly made his appearance. Raskolnikov looked at him
with surprise, not understanding where he had come from and not having
noticed him in the crowd. A doctor and priest wore spoken of. The
official whispered to Raskolnikov that he thought it was too late now
for the doctor, but he ordered him to be sent for. Kapernaumov ran
himself.
Meanwhile Katerina Ivanovna had regained her breath. The bleeding
ceased for a time. She looked with sick but intent and penetrating
eyes at Sonia, who stood pale and trembling, wiping the sweat from her
brow with a handkerchief. At last she asked to be raised. They sat her
up on the bed, supporting her on both sides.
"Where are the children?" she said in a faint voice. "You've brought
them, Polenka? Oh the sillies! Why did you run away. . . . Och!"
Once more her parched lips were covered with blood. She moved her
eyes, looking about her.
"So that's how you live, Sonia! Never once have I been in your room."
She looked at her with a face of suffering.
"We have been your ruin, Sonia. Polenka, Lida, Kolya, come here! Well,
here they are, Sonia, take them all! I hand them over to you, I've had
enough! The ball is over." (Cough!) "Lay me down, let me die in
peace."
They laid her back on the pillow.
"What, the priest? I don't want him. You haven't got a rouble to
spare. I have no sins. God must forgive me without that. He knows how
I have suffered. . . . And if He won't forgive me, I don't care!"
She sank more and more into uneasy delirium. At times she shuddered,
turned her eyes from side to side, recognised everyone for a minute,
but at once sank into delirium again. Her breathing was hoarse and
difficult, there was a sort of rattle in her throat.
"I said to him, your excellency," she ejaculated, gasping after each
word. "That Amalia Ludwigovna, ah! Lida, Kolya, hands on your hips,
make haste! /Glissez, glissez! pas de basque!/ Tap with your heels, be
a graceful child!
"/Du hast Diamanten und Perlen/
"What next? That's the thing to sing.
"/Du hast die schonsten Augen
Madchen, was willst du mehr?/
"What an idea! /Was willst du mehr?/ What things the fool invents! Ah,
yes!
"In the heat of midday in the vale of Dagestan.
"Ah, how I loved it! I loved that song to distraction, Polenka! Your
father, you know, used to sing it when we were engaged. . . . Oh those
days! Oh that's the thing for us to sing! How does it go? I've
forgotten. Remind me! How was it?"
She was violently excited and tried to sit up. At last, in a horribly
hoarse, broken voice, she began, shrieking and gasping at every word,
with a look of growing terror.
"In the heat of midday! . . . in the vale! . . . of Dagestan! . . .
With lead in my breast! . . ."
"Your excellency!" she wailed suddenly with a heart-rending scream and
a flood of tears, "protect the orphans! You have been their father's
guest . . . one may say aristocratic. . . ." She started, regaining
consciousness, and gazed at all with a sort of terror, but at once
recognised Sonia.
"Sonia, Sonia!" she articulated softly and caressingly, as though
surprised to find her there. "Sonia darling, are you here, too?"
They lifted her up again.
"Enough! It's over! Farewell, poor thing! I am done for! I am broken!"
she cried with vindictive despair, and her head fell heavily back on
the pillow.
She sank into unconsciousness again, but this time it did not last
long. Her pale, yellow, wasted face dropped back, her mouth fell open,
her leg moved convulsively, she gave a deep, deep sigh and died.
Sonia fell upon her, flung her arms about her, and remained motionless
with her head pressed to the dead woman's wasted bosom. Polenka threw
herself at her mother's feet, kissing them and weeping violently.
Though Kolya and Lida did not understand what had happened, they had a
feeling that it was something terrible; they put their hands on each
other's little shoulders, stared straight at one another and both at
once opened their mouths and began screaming. They were both still in
their fancy dress; one in a turban, the other in the cap with the
ostrich feather.
And how did "the certificate of merit" come to be on the bed beside
Katerina Ivanovna? It lay there by the pillow; Raskolnikov saw it.
He walked away to the window. Lebeziatnikov skipped up to him.
"She is dead," he said.
"Rodion Romanovitch, I must have two words with you," said
Svidrigaïlov, coming up to them.
Lebeziatnikov at once made room for him and delicately withdrew.
Svidrigaïlov drew Raskolnikov further away.
"I will undertake all the arrangements, the funeral and that. You know
it's a question of money and, as I told you, I have plenty to spare. I
will put those two little ones and Polenka into some good orphan
asylum, and I will settle fifteen hundred roubles to be paid to each
on coming of age, so that Sofya Semyonovna need have no anxiety about
them. And I will pull her out of the mud too, for she is a good girl,
isn't she? So tell Avdotya Romanovna that that is how I am spending
her ten thousand."
"What is your motive for such benevolence?" asked Raskolnikov.
"Ah! you sceptical person!" laughed Svidrigaïlov. "I told you I had no
need of that money. Won't you admit that it's simply done from
humanity? She wasn't 'a louse,' you know" (he pointed to the corner
where the dead woman lay), "was she, like some old pawnbroker woman?
Come, you'll agree, is Luzhin to go on living, and doing wicked things
or is she to die? And if I didn't help them, Polenka would go the same
way."
He said this with an air of a sort of gay winking slyness, keeping his
eyes fixed on Raskolnikov, who turned white and cold, hearing his own
phrases, spoken to Sonia. He quickly stepped back and looked wildly at
Svidrigaïlov.
"How do you know?" he whispered, hardly able to breathe.
"Why, I lodge here at Madame Resslich's, the other side of the wall.
Here is Kapernaumov, and there lives Madame Resslich, an old and
devoted friend of mine. I am a neighbour."
"You?"
"Yes," continued Svidrigaïlov, shaking with laughter. "I assure you on
my honour, dear Rodion Romanovitch, that you have interested me
enormously. I told you we should become friends, I foretold it. Well,
here we have. And you will see what an accommodating person I am.
You'll see that you can get on with me!"
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