Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky(page 12)

‘What nonsense he is talking! Why, you are in a
sentimental mood to-day, are you?’ shouted Razumihin.
If he had had more penetration he would have seen
that there was no trace of sentimentality in him, but
something indeed quite the opposite. But Avdotya
Romanovna noticed it. She was intently and uneasily
watching her brother.
‘As for you, mother, I don’t dare to speak,’ he went on,
as though repeating a lesson learned by heart. ‘It is only
to-day that I have been able to realise a little how
distressed you must have been here yesterday, waiting for
me to come back.’
When he had said this, he suddenly held out his hand
to his sister, smiling without a word. But in this smile
there was a flash of real unfeigned feeling. Dounia caught
it at once, and warmly pressed his hand, overjoyed and
thankful. It was the first time he had addressed her since
their dispute the previous day. The mother’s face lighted
up with ecstatic happiness at the sight of this conclusive
unspoken reconciliation. ‘Yes, that is what I love him for,’
Razumihin, exaggerating it all, muttered to himself, with a
vigorous turn in his chair. ‘He has these movements.’
‘And how well he does it all,’ the mother was thinking
to herself. ‘What generous impulses he has, and how
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Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky(page 11)

without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a
hundred and fourteen. And a fine thing, too, in its way;
but we can’t even make mistakes on our own account!
Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I’ll kiss
you for it. To go wrong in one’s own way is better than
to go right in someone else’s. In the first case you are a
man, in the second you’re no better than a bird. Truth
won’t escape you, but life can be cramped. There have
been examples. And what are we doing now? In science,
development, thought, invention, ideals, aims, liberalism,
judgment, experience and everything, everything,
everything, we are still in the preparatory class at school.
We prefer to live on other people’s ideas, it’s what we are
used to! Am I right, am I right?’ cried Razumihin, pressing
and shaking the two ladies’ hands.
‘Oh, mercy, I do not know,’ cried poor Pulcheria
Alexandrovna.
‘Yes, yes … though I don’t agree with you in
everything,’ added Avdotya Romanovna earnestly and at
once uttered a cry, for he squeezed her hand so painfully.
‘Yes, you say yes … well after that you … you …’ he
cried in a transport, ‘you are a fount of goodness, purity,
sense … and perfection. Give me your hand … you give
me yours, too! I want to kiss your hands here at once, on
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my knees …’ and he fell on his knees on the pavement,
fortunately at that time deserted.
‘Leave off, I entreat you, what are you doing?’
Pulcheria Alexandrovna cried, greatly distressed.
‘Get up, get up!’ said Dounia laughing, though she,

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky(page 10)

Kozel’s house was thirty yards away. Raskolnikov
walked behind, carefully holding Marmeladov’s head and
showing the way.
‘This way, this way! We must take him upstairs head
foremost. Turn round! I’ll pay, I’ll make it worth your
while,’ he muttered.
Katerina Ivanovna had just begun, as she always did at
every free moment, walking to and fro in her little room
from window to stove and back again, with her arms
folded across her chest, talking to herself and coughing. Of
late she had begun to talk more than ever to her eldest
girl, Polenka, a child of ten, who, though there was much
she did not understand, understood very well that her
mother needed her, and so always watched her with her
big clever eyes and strove her utmost to appear to
understand. This time Polenka was undressing her little
brother, who had been unwell all day and was going to
bed. The boy was waiting for her to take off his shirt,
which had to be washed at night. He was sitting straight
and motionless on a chair, with a silent, serious face, with
his legs stretched out straight before him —heels together
and toes turned out.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky(page 8)

Though who can tell, maybe it’s sometimes for the worse.
Will you take it?’
Raskolnikov took the German sheets in silence, took
the three roubles and without a word went out.
Razumihin gazed after him in astonishment. But when
Raskolnikov was in the next street, he turned back,
mounted the stairs to Razumihin’s again and laying on the
table the German article and the three roubles, went out
again, still without uttering a word.
‘Are you raving, or what?’ Razumihin shouted, roused
to fury at last. ‘What farce is this? You’ll drive me crazy
too … what did you come to see me for, damn you?’
‘I don’t want … translation,’ muttered Raskolnikov
from the stairs.
‘Then what the devil do you want?’ shouted
Razumihin from above. Raskolnikov continued
descending the staircase in silence.
‘Hey, there! Where are you living?’
No answer.
‘Well, confound you then!’
But Raskolnikov was already stepping into the street.
On the Nikolaevsky Bridge he was roused to full
consciousness again by an unpleasant incident. A
coachman, after shouting at him two or three times, gave
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him a violent lash on the back with his whip, for having

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky(page 9)

‘Do you like street music?’ said Raskolnikov,
addressing a middle-aged man standing idly by him. The
man looked at him, startled and wondering.
‘I love to hear singing to a street organ,’ said
Raskolnikov, and his manner seemed strangely out of
keeping with the subject—‘I like it on cold, dark, damp
autumn evenings—they must be damp—when all the
passers-by have pale green, sickly faces, or better still when
wet snow is falling straight down, when there’s no wind—
you know what I mean?—and the street lamps shine
through it …’
‘I don’t know…. Excuse me …’ muttered the stranger,
frightened by the question and Raskolnikov’s strange
manner, and he crossed over to the other side of the street.
Raskolnikov walked straight on and came out at the
corner of the Hay Market, where the huckster and his
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wife had talked with Lizaveta; but they were not there
now. Recognising the place, he stopped, looked round
and addressed a young fellow in a red shirt who stood
gaping before a corn chandler’s shop.
‘Isn’t there a man who keeps a booth with his wife at
this corner?’

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky(page 7)

Though who can tell, maybe it’s sometimes for the worse.
Will you take it?’
Raskolnikov took the German sheets in silence, took
the three roubles and without a word went out.
Razumihin gazed after him in astonishment. But when
Raskolnikov was in the next street, he turned back,
mounted the stairs to Razumihin’s again and laying on the
table the German article and the three roubles, went out
again, still without uttering a word.
‘Are you raving, or what?’ Razumihin shouted, roused
to fury at last. ‘What farce is this? You’ll drive me crazy
too … what did you come to see me for, damn you?’
‘I don’t want … translation,’ muttered Raskolnikov
from the stairs.
‘Then what the devil do you want?’ shouted
Razumihin from above. Raskolnikov continued
descending the staircase in silence.
‘Hey, there! Where are you living?’
No answer.
‘Well, confound you then!’
But Raskolnikov was already stepping into the street.
On the Nikolaevsky Bridge he was roused to full
consciousness again by an unpleasant incident. A
coachman, after shouting at him two or three times, gave
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Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky(page 6)

‘He’s downright ill!’ observed Nastasya, not taking her
eyes off him. The porter turned his head for a moment.
‘He’s been in a fever since yesterday,’ she added.
Raskolnikov made no response and held the paper in
his hands, without opening it. ‘Don’t you get up then,’
Nastasya went on compassionately, seeing that he was
letting his feet down from the sofa. ‘You’re ill, and so
don’t go; there’s no such hurry. What have you got
there?’
He looked; in his right hand he held the shreds he had
cut from his trousers, the sock, and the rags of the pocket.
So he had been asleep with them in his hand. Afterwards
reflecting upon it, he remembered that half waking up in
his fever, he had grasped all this tightly in his hand and so
fallen asleep again.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky(page 5)

One trifling circumstance upset his calculations, before
he had even left the staircase. When he reached the
landlady’s kitchen, the door of which was open as usual,
he glanced cautiously in to see whether, in Nastasya’s
absence, the landlady herself was there, or if not, whether
the door to her own room was closed, so that she might
not peep out when he went in for the axe. But what was
his amazement when he suddenly saw that Nastasya was
not only at home in the kitchen, but was occupied there,
taking linen out of a basket and hanging it on a line.
Seeing him, she left off hanging the clothes, turned to him
and stared at him all the time he was passing. He turned
away his eyes, and walked past as though he noticed
nothing. But it was the end of everything; he had not the
axe! He was overwhelmed.
‘What made me think,’ he reflected, as he went under
the gateway, ‘what made me think that she would be sure
not to be at home at that moment! Why, why, why did I
assume this so certainly?’

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky(page 4)

Chapter V
‘Of course, I’ve been meaning lately to go to
Razumihin’s to ask for work, to ask him to get me lessons
or something …’ Raskolnikov thought, ‘but what help
can he be to me now? Suppose he gets me lessons,
suppose he shares his last farthing with me, if he has any
farthings, so that I could get some boots and make myself
tidy enough to give lessons … hm … Well and what then?
What shall I do with the few coppers I earn? That’s not
what I want now. It’s really absurd for me to go to
Razumihin….’
The question why he was now going to Razumihin
agitated him even more than he was himself aware; he
kept uneasily seeking for some sinister significance in this
apparently ordinary action.
‘Could I have expected to set it all straight and to find a
way out by means of Razumihin alone?’ he asked himself
in perplexity.
He pondered and rubbed his forehead, and, strange to
say, after long musing, suddenly, as if it were
spontaneously and by chance, a fantastic thought came
into his head.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky(page 3)

unexpectedly. We thought and talked it
over the whole day. He is a well-to-do
man, to be depended upon, he has two
posts in the government and has already
made his fortune. It is true that he is fortyfive
years old, but he is of a fairly
prepossessing appearance and might still be
thought attractive by women, and he is
altogether a very respectable and
presentable man, only he seems a little
morose and somewhat conceited. But
possibly that may only be the impression he
makes at first sight. And beware, dear
Rodya, when he comes to Petersburg, as
he shortly will do, beware of judging him
too hastily and severely, as your way is, if
there is anything you do not like in him at
first sight. I give you this warning, although
I feel sure that he will make a favourable
impression upon you. Moreover, in order

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky(page 2)

Katerina Ivanovna and she laid thirty roubles on the table
before her in silence. She did not utter a word, she did not
even look at her, she simply picked up our big green drap
de dames shawl (we have a shawl, made of drap de dames),
put it over her head and face and lay down on the bed
with her face to the wall; only her little shoulders and her
body kept shuddering…. And I went on lying there, just
as before…. And then I saw, young man, I saw Katerina
Ivanovna, in the same silence go up to Sonia’s little bed;
she was on her knees all the evening kissing Sonia’s feet,
and would not get up, and then they both fell asleep in
each other’s arms … together, together … yes … and I …
lay drunk.’
Marmeladov stopped short, as though his voice had
failed him. Then he hurriedly filled his glass, drank, and
cleared his throat.
‘Since then, sir,’ he went on after a brief pause—‘Since
then, owing to an unfortunate occurrence and through
information given by evil- intentioned persons—in all
which Darya Frantsovna took a leading part on the pretext
that she had been treated with want of respect—since then
my daughter Sofya Semyonovna has been forced to take a
yellow ticket, and owing to that she is unable to go on

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky(page 1)

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TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
A few words about Dostoevsky himself may help the
English reader to understand his work.
Dostoevsky was the son of a doctor. His parents were
very hard- working and deeply religious people, but so
poor that they lived with their five children in only two
rooms. The father and mother spent their evenings in
reading aloud to their children, generally from books of a
serious character.
Though always sickly and delicate Dostoevsky came
out third in the final examination of the Petersburg school
of Engineering. There he had already begun his first work,
‘Poor Folk.’
This story was published by the poet Nekrassov in his
review and was received with acclamations. The shy,
unknown youth found himself instantly something of a
celebrity.