Crime and Punishment

“And you dare hold me up as a witness?” he said, approaching Pyotr Petrovich.

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

“I mean that you are...a slanderer, that is what my words mean!” Lebezyatnikov said hotly, giving him a stern look with his weak-sighted eyes. He was terribly angry. Raskolnikov simply fastened his eyes on him, as though catching and weighing every word. Again there was another silence. Pyotr Petrovich was even almost at a loss, especially for the first moment.

“If it's me you are...” he began, stammering, “but what's the matter with you? Have you lost your mind?”

“I haven't lost my mind, and you are...a swindler! Ah, how vile of you! I kept listening, I kept listening on purpose, so as to understand it all, because, I must admit, even now it doesn't seem quite logical...But what you did it for, I ca

“But what have I done? Will you stop talking in these nonsensical riddles? Or maybe you've been drinking?”

“Maybe you drink, you vile man, but not me! I never even touch vodka, because it's against my convictions! Imagine, he, he himself, with his own hands, gave that hundred-rouble bill to Sofya Semyo-novna—I saw it, I am a witness, I'll swear an oath to it! He, he did it!” Lebezyatnikov repeated, addressing one and all.

“Are you cracked or what, you milksop!” Luzhin shrieked. “She herself, in person, right in front of you—she herself, here and now, in front of everyone, confirmed that she received nothing but ten roubles from me. How, in that case, could I have given it to her?”

“I saw it, I saw it!” Lebezyatnikov exclaimed and insisted. “And though it's against my convictions, I'm ready to go this very minute and swear whatever oath you like in court, because I saw you slip it to her on the sly! Only, like a fool, I thought you were slipping it to her out of philanthropy! At the door, as you were saying good-bye to her, when she turned away and you were shaking her hand, with your other hand, your left hand, you put a piece of paper into her pocket on the sly. I saw it! I did!”

Luzhin went pale.

“What lies!” he exclaimed boldly. “And besides, how could you make out a piece of paper, when you were standing by the window? You imagined it...with your weak-sighted eyes. You're raving!”

“No, I didn't imagine it! I saw everything, everything, even though I was standing far away; and though it is indeed difficult to make out a piece of paper from the window—you're right about that—in this particular case I knew for certain that it was precisely a hundred-rouble note, because when you went to give Sofya Semyonovna the ten-rouble bill—I saw this myself—you took a hundred-rouble note from the table at the same time (I saw it because I was standing up close then, and since a certain idea immediately occurred to me, I didn't forget that you had the note in your hand). You folded it and kept it clutched in your hand all the time. Then I forgot about it for a while, but when you were getting up, you passed it from your right hand to your left and nearly dropped it; then I remembered again, because then the same idea came to me—namely, that you wanted to be philanthropic to her in secret from me. You can imagine how I began watching—and so I saw how you managed to slip it into her pocket. I saw it, I did, I'll swear an oath to it!”

Lebezyatnikov was almost breathless. Various exclamations began coming from all sides, mostly indicating surprise, but some of the exclamations also took on a menacing tone. Everyone pressed towards Pyotr Petrovich. Katerina Ivanovna rushed to Lebezyatnikov.

“Andrei Semyonovich! I was mistaken about you! Defend her! You alone are on her side! She's an orphan; God has sent you! Andrei Semyonovich, you dear, sweet man!”

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

“Hogwash!” screamed Luzhin, enraged to the point of fury. “You're pouring out hogwash, sir! 'I forgot, I remembered, I forgot'— what is all that! You mean I slipped it to her on purpose? Why? With what aim? What do I have in common with this . . .”

“Why? That I myself don't understand, but it's certain that I'm telling a true fact! I'm so far from being mistaken—you loathsome, criminal man—that I remember precisely how a question occurred to me at once in this co

“What do I care if some foolish questions came into your head?” he cried out. “That is no proof, sir! You may have raved it all up in a dream, that's all! And I tell you that you are lying, sir! Lying and slandering because of some grudge against me, and, namely, because you're angry at my disagreeing with your freethinking and godless social proposals, that's what, sir!”

But this dodge proved useless to Pyotr Petrovich. On the contrary, murmuring was heard on all sides.

“Ah, so you're off on that track now!” cried Lebezyatnikov. “Lies! Call the police, and I'll swear an oath to it! The one thing I can't understand is why he risked such a base act! Oh, you vile, pathetic man!”

“I can explain why he risked such an act, and if need be I'll swear an oath to it myself!” Raskolnikov spoke finally in a firm voice, stepping forward.

He appeared firm and calm. It somehow became clear to everyone at a glance that he really knew what it was all about and that the denouement had arrived.

“It's all perfectly clear to me now,” Raskolnikov went on, addressing Lebezyatnikov directly. “From the very begi

121

See Matthew 6:3: "But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth . . ."

122

The General Conclusion of the Positive Method was a collection of articles on various scientific subjects, mainly physiology and psychology, translated from German into Russian and published in 1866. Piederit was a German medical writer; Adolf Wagner, a follower of Quételet, was a proponent of "moral statistics" (see Part One, note 33).