life is only given to me once and I shall never have it again; I don’t want to wait for ‘the happiness of all.’ I want to live myself, or else better not live at all. I simply couldn’t pass by my mother starving, keeping my rouble in my pocket while I waited for the ‘happiness of all.’ I am putting my little brick into the happiness of all and so my heart is at peace. Ha-ha! Why have you let me slip? I only live once, I too want. … Ech, I am an aesthetic louse and nothing more,” he added suddenly, laughing like a madman. “Yes, I am certainly a louse,” he went on, clutching at the idea, gloating over it and playing with it with vindictive pleasure. “In the first place, because I can reason that I am one, and secondly, because for a month past I have been troubling benevolent Providence, calling it to witness that not for my own fleshly lusts did I undertake it, but with a grand and noble object— ha-ha! Thirdly, because I aimed at carrying it out as justly as possible, weighing, measuring and calculating. Of all the lice I picked out the most useless one and proposed to take from her only as much as I needed for the first step, no more nor less (so the rest would have gone to a monastery, according to her will, ha-ha!). And what shows that I am utterly a louse,” he added, grinding his teeth, “is that I am perhaps viler and more loathsome than the louse I killed, and I felt beforehand that I should tell myself so after killing her. Can anything be compared with the horror of that? The vulgarity! The abjectness! I understand the ‘prophet’ with his sabre, on his steed: Allah commands and ‘trembling’ creation must obey! The ‘prophet’ is right, he is right when he sets a battery across the street and blows up the innocent and the guilty without deigning to explain! It’s for you to obey, trembling creation, and not to have desires, for that’s not for you! … I shall never, never forgive the old woman!”

His hair was soaked with sweat, his quivering lips were parched, his eyes were fixed on the ceiling.

“Mother, sister—how I loved them! Why do I hate them now? Yes, I hate them, I feel a physical hatred for them, I can’t bear them near me. … I went up to my mother and kissed her, I remember. … To embrace her and think if she only knew … shall I tell her then? That’s just what I might do. … She must be the same as I am,” he added, straining himself to think, as it were struggling with delirium. “Ah, how I hate the old woman now! I feel I should kill her again if she came to life! Poor Lizaveta! Why did she come in? … It’s strange though, why is it I scarcely ever think of her, as though I hadn’t killed her? Lizaveta! Sonia! Poor gentle things, with gentle eyes. … Dear women! Why don’t they weep? Why don’t they moan? They give up everything … their eyes are soft and gentle. … Sonia, Sonia! Gentle Sonia!”

He lost consciousness; it seemed strange to him that he didn’t remember how he got into the street. It was late evening. The twilight had fallen and the full moon was shining more and more brightly; but there was a peculiar breathlessness in the air. There were crowds of people in the street; workmen and business people were making their way home; other people had come out for a walk; there was a smell of mortar, dust and stagnant water. Raskolnikov walked along, mournful and anxious; he was distinctly aware of having come out with a purpose, of having to do something in a hurry, but what it was he had forgotten. Suddenly he stood still and saw a man standing on the other side of the street, beckoning to him. He crossed over to him, but at once the man turned and walked away with his head hanging, as though he had made no sign to him. “Stay, did he really beckon?” Raskolnikov wondered, but he tried to overtake him. When he was within ten paces he recognised him and was frightened; it was the same man with stooping shoulders in the long coat. Raskolnikov followed him at a distance; his heart was beating; they went down a turning; the man still did not look round. “Does he know I am following him?” thought Raskolnikov. The man went into the gateway of a big house. Raskolnikov hastened to the gate and looked in to see whether he would look round and sign to him. In the court-yard the man did turn round and again seemed to beckon him. Raskolnikov at once followed him into the yard, but the man was gone. He must have gone up the first staircase. Raskolnikov rushed after him. He heard slow measured steps two flights above. The staircase seemed strangely familiar. He reached the window on the first floor; the moon shone through the panes with a melancholy and mysterious light; then he reached the second floor. Bah! this is the flat where the painters were at work … but how was it he did not recognise it at once? The steps of the man above had died away. “So he must have stopped or hidden somewhere.” He reached the third storey, should he go on? There was a stillness that was dreadful. … But he went on. The sound of his own footsteps scared and frightened him. How dark it was! The man must be hiding in some corner here. Ah! the flat was standing wide open, he hesitated and went