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- 38' CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
history, but so many events have happened! And now, my
precious Rodya, I embrace you and send you a mother's bless-
ing till we meet. Love Dounia your sister, Rodya; love her as
she loves you and understand that she loves you beyond every-
thing, more than herself. She is an angel and you, Rodya, you
are everything to us — our one hope, our one consolation. If
only you are happy, we shall be happy. Do you still say your
prayers, Rodya, and believe in the mercy of our Creator and our
Redeemer? I am afraid in my heart that you may have been
visited by the new spirit of infidelity that is abroad to-day! If
it is so, I pray for you. Remember, dear boy, how in your child-
hood, when your father was living, you used to lisp your prayers
at my knee, and how happy we all were in those days. Good-bye,
till we meet then — ^I embrace you warmly, warmly, with many
kisses.
"Yours till death
"PULCHERIA RaSKOLNIKOV."
Almost from the first, while he read the letter, Raskolnikov's
face was wet with tears; but when he finished it, his face was
pale and distorted and a bitter, wrathful and malignant smile
was on his lips. He laid his head down on his threadbare dirty
pillow and pondered, pondered a long time. His heart was beat-
ing violently, and his brain was in a turmoil. At last he felt
cramped and stifled in the little yellow room that was like a
cupboard or a box. His eyes and his mind craved for space. He
took up his hat and went out, this time without dread of meet-
ing any one; he had forgotten his dread. He turned in the direc-
tion of the Vassilyevsky Ostrov, walking along Vassilyevsky
Prospect, as though hastening on some business, but he walked,
as his habit was, without noticing his way, muttering and even
speaking aloud to himself, to the astonishment of the passers-by.
Many of them took him to be drunk.
CHAPTER IV
His mother's letter had been a torture to him, but as regards the
chief fact in it, he had felt not one moment's hesitation, even
whilst he was reading the letter. The essential question was
settled, and irrevocably settled, in his mind: "Never such a mar-
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