Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Impressions of Russian Literature - VI
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cannot pay his rent and is frequently hungry. In the long
winter evenings he has no light and lies in the dark, and
at last does not even try to get a light; on his table his
college text-books are covered with thick dust. He
dreams, dreams continually....
He dreams of a horrible old pawnbroker-woman, very
rich and miserly, from whom he has had a loan now and
then, and of a conversation about her to which he had
once listened in a restaurant. A student sitting there
said: “I should like to kill the old crone and sack her,
and I assure you that I could do it without the least sting
of conscience.” He said it indeed as a joke, but
continued seriously: “On the one hand, a stupid, wretched,
malicious old crone, who not only never gives anything
away, but does harm to everybody she comes in contact
with; on the other hand, fresh, young powers, who fail
for want of means of support, and that by the thousands;
hundreds, perhaps thousands of existences, which might
be brought on the right path, dozens of families which
could be saved from wretchedness, from debauchery,
from loathsome disease, — all for the money of this old
crone.... And, after all, what weight on the universal
scales of life has the life of this swindling, stupid,
malicious crone? Not more than a louse’s life or a
cockroach’s, and not even so much, — for the old woman does
much more harm, for she undermines the life of others.”
The words take root in Raskolnikof’s mind, just
because the same thought is ready to be developed in his
head, peeps forth from his brain like a chicken from the
shell, and especially because to his own wretchedness is
added that of others who are dearest to him. His old
mother, who is living in her country village on an annuity
of one hundred and twenty rubles a year, and who by
knitting and embroidery, which is spoiling her poor
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