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- 392 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
funny? Yes, Sonia, the fiinniest thing of all is that perhaps
that's just how it was."
Sonia did not think it at all funny.
"You had better tell me straight out . . . without examples,"
she begged, still more timidly and scarcely audibly.
He turned to her, looked sadly at her and took her hands.
"You are right again, Sonia. Of course that's all nonsense,
it's almost all talk! You see, you know of course that my mother
has scarcely anything, my sister happened to have a good educa-
tion and was condemned to drudge as a governess. All their
hopes were centered on me. I was a student, but I couldn't keep
myself at the university and was forced for a time to leave it.
Even if I had Ungered on like that, in ten or twelve years I
might (with luck) hope to be some sort of teacher or clerk with
a salary of a thousand roubles" (he repeated it as though it were
a lesson) "and by that time my mother would be worn out
with grief and anxiety and I could not succeed in keeping her
in comfort while my sister . . . well, my sister might well have
fared worse! And it's a hard thing to pass everything by all one's
life, to turn one's back upon everything, to forget one's mother
and decorously accept the insults inflicted on one's sister. Whyshould one? When one has buried them to burden oneself with
others — wife and children — and to leave them again without
a farthing? So I resolved to gain possession of the old woman's
money and to use it for my first years without worrying my
mother, to keep myself at the university and for a little while
after leaving it— and to do this all on a broad, thorough scale,
so as to build up a completely new career and enter upon a new
life of independence. . . . Well . . . that's all. . . . Well, of course
in killing the old woman I did wrong. . . . Well, that's enough."
He struggled to the end of his speech in exhaustion and let
his head sink.
"Oh, that's not it, that's not it," Sonia cried in distress. "How
could one . . . no, that's not right, not right."
"You see yourself that it's not right. But I've spoken truly,
it's the truth."
"As though that could be the truth! Good God!"
"I've only killed a louse, Sonia, a useless, loathsome, harmful
creature."
"A human being — a louse!"
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