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- CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 323
evidence against him. And how? By giving him, so to speak,
a definite position, I shall put him out of suspense and set his
mind at rest, so that he will retreat into his shell. They say that
at Sevastopol, soon after Alma, the clever people were in a ter-
rible fright that the enemy would attack openly and take Sevas-
topol at once. But when they saw that the enemy preferred a
regular siege, they were delighted, I am told and reassured, for
the thing would drag on for two months at least. You're laugh-
ing, you don't believe me again? Of course, you're right, too.
You're right, you're right. These are all special cases, I admit.
But you must observe this, my dear Rodion Romanovitch, the
general case, the case for which all legal forms and rules are
intended, for which they are calculated and laid down in books,
does not exist at all, for the reason that every case, every crime
for instance, so soon as it actually occurs, at once becomes a
thoroughly special case and sometimes a case unlike any that's
gone before. Very comic cases of that sort sometimes occur.
If I leave one man quite alone, if I don't touch him and don't
worry him, but let him know or at least suspect every moment
that I know all about it and am watching him day and night,
and if he is in continual suspicion and terror, he'll be bound
to lose his head. He'll come of himself, or maybe <do something
which will make it as plain as twice two are four — it's delight-
ful. It may be so with a simple peasant, "but with one of our
sort, an intelligent man cultivated on a certain side, it's a dead
certainty. For, my dear fellow, it's a very important matter toknow on what side a man is cultivated. And then there are
nerves, there are nerves, you have overlooked them! Why, they
are all sick, nervous and irritable! . . . And then how they all
sufiFer from spleen! That I assure you is a regular gold mine for
us. And it's no anxiety to me, his running about the town free!
Let him, let him walk about for a bit! I know well enough that
I've caught him and that he won't escape me. Where could he
escape to, he-he? Abroad, perhaps? A Pole will escape abroad,
but not here, especially as I am watching and have taken
measures. Will he escape into the depths of the country perhaps?
But you know, peasants live there, real rude Russian peasants. A
modern cultivated man would prefer prison to living with such
strangers as our peasants. He-he! But that's all nonsense, and on
the surface. It's not merely that he has nowhere to run to, he is
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