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- CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 391
• Again a wave of the same feeling surged into his heart, and
again for an instant softened it.
"Sonia, I have a bad heart, take note of that. It may explain
a great deal. I have come because I am bad. There are men
who wouldn't have come. But I am a coward and ... a mean
wretch. But . . . never mind! That's not the point. I must speak
now, but I don't know how to begin."
He paused and sank into thought.
"Ach, we are so different," he cried again, "we are not alike.
And why, why did I come? I shall never forgive myself that."
"No, no, it was a good thing you came," cried Sonia. "It's
better I should know, far better!"
He looked at her with anguish.
"What if it were really that?" he said, as though reaching a
conclusion. "Yes, that's what it was! I wanted to become a
Napoleon, that is why I killed her. . . . Do you understand now?"
"N-no," Sonia whispered naively and timidly. "Only speak,
speak, ,1 shall understand, I shall understand in myself!" she
kept begging him.
"You'll understand? Very well, we shall see!" He pausedand was for some time lost in meditation.
"It was like this: I asked myself one day this question — what
if Napoleon, for instance, had happened to be in my place,
and if he had not had Toulon nor Egypt nor the passage of Mont
Blanc to begin his career with, but instead of all those pic-
turesque and monumental things, there had simply been some
ridiculous old hag, a pawnbroker, who had to be murdered too
to get money from her trunk (for his career, you understand).
Well, would he have brought himself to that, if there had been
no other means? Wouldn't he have felt a pang at its being so
far from monumental and . . . and sinful, too? Well, I must tell
you that I worried myself fearfully over that 'question' so that
I was awfully ashamed when I guessed at last (all of a sudden,
somehow) that it would not have given him the least pang, that
it would not even have struck him that it was not monumental
. . . that he would not have seen that there was anything in it
to pause over, and that, if he had had no other way, he would
have strangled her in a minute without thinking about it! Well,
I too . . . left off thinking about it . . . murdered her, following
his example. And that's exactly how it was! Do you think it
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