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- 284 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
way. Solely by her exertions and sacrifices, a criminal charge,
involving an element of fantastic and homicidal brutality for
which he might well have been sentenced to Siberia, was hushed
up. That's the sort of man he is, if you care to know."
"Good heavens!" cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna. Raskolnikov
listened attentively.
"Are you speaking the truth when you say that you have
good evidence of this?" Dounia asked sternly and emphatically.
"I only repeat what I was told in secret by Marfa Petrovna.
I must observe that from the legal p>oint of view the case was
far from clear. There was, and I believe still is, living here a
woman called Resslich, a foreigner, who lent small sums of
money at interest, and did other commissions, and with this
woman Svidrigailov had for a long while close and mysterious
relations. She had a relation, a niece I believe, living with her,
a deaf and dumb girl of fifteen, or perhaps not more than four-
teen. Resslich hated this girl, and grudged her every crust; she
used to beat her mercilessly. One day the girl was found hanging
in the garret. At the inquest the verdict was suicide. After the
usual proceedings the matter ended, but, later on, information
was given that the child had been . . . cruelly outraged by Svi-
drigailov. Itis true, this was not clearly established, the in-
formation was given by another German woman of loose
character whose word could not be trusted; no statement was
actually made to the police, thanks to Marfa Petrovna's money
and exertions; it did not get beyond gossip. And yet the story is
a very significant one. You heard, no doubt, Avdotya Roma-
novna, when you were with them the story of the servant Philip
who died of ill treatment he received six years ago, before the
abolition of serfdom."
"I heard on the contrary that this Philip hanged himself."
"Quite so, but what drove him, or rather perhaps disposed
him, to suicide, was the systematic persecution and severity of
Mr. Svidrigailov."
"I don't know that," answered Dounia, drily. "I only heard
a queer story that Philip was a sort of hypochondriac, a sort of
domestic philosopher, the servants vised to say, 'he read him-
self silly,* and that he hanged himself partly on account of Mr.
Svidrigailov's mockery of him and not his blows. When I was
there he behaved well to the servants, and they were actually
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