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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 325
my dear Rodion Romanovitch, you are a man still young, so to
say, in your first youth and so you put intellect above every-
thing, like all young people. Playful wit and abstract arguments
fascinate you and that's for all the world like the old Austrian
Hof-kriegsrath, as far as I can judge of military matters that is:
on paper they'd beaten Napoleon and taken him prisoner, and
there in their study they worked it all out in the cleverest
fashion, but look you. General Mack surrendered with all his
army, he-he-he! I see, I see, Rodion Romanovitch, you are
laughing at a civilian like me, taking examples out of military
history! But I can't help it, it's my weakness. I am fond of mili-
tary science. And I'm ever so fond of reading all military his-
tories. I've certainly missed my proper career. I ought to have
been in the army, upon my word I ought. I shouldn't have been
a Napoleon, but I might have been a major, he-he-he! Well, I'll
tell you the whole truth, my dear fellow, about this special case,
I mean: actual fact and a man's temperament, my dear sir, are
weighty matters and it's astonishing how they sometimes de-
ceive the sharpest calculation! I— listen to an old man — am
speaking seriously, Rodion Romanovitch (as he said this Porfiry
Petrovitch who was scarcely five and thirty actually seemed to
have grown old ; even his voice changed and he seemed to shrink
together) moreover, I'm a candid man . . . am I a candid man or
not? What do you say? I fancy I really am: I tell you these
things for nothing and don't even expect a reward for it, he-he!
Well, to proceed, wit in my opinion is a splendid thing, it is, so
to say, an adornment of nature and a consolation of life, and
what tricks it can play! So that it sometimes is hard for a poor
examining lawyer to know where he is, especially when he's
liable to be carried away by his owq fancy, too, for you know he
is a man after all. But the poor fellow is saved by the crimi-
nal's temperament, worse luck for him! But young people car-
ried away by their own wit don't think of that 'when they
overstep all obstacles' as you wittily and cleverly expressed it
yesterday. He will lie— that is the man who is a special case, the
incognito, and he will lie well, in the cleverest fashion; you
might think he would triumph and enjoy the fruits of his wit,
but at the most interesting, the most flagrant moment he will
faint. Of course there may be illness and a stuffy room as well,
but anyway! Anyway he's given us the idea! He lied incom-
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