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- CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 39S
going over it all! I have kept wanting to forget it and make a
new beginning, Sonia, and leave off thinking. And you don't
suppose that I went into it headlong like a fool? I went into it
like a wise man, and that was just my destruction. And you
mustn't suppose that I didn't know, for instance, that if I began
to question myself whether I had the right to gain power —
I certainly hadn't the right — or that if I asked myself whether
a human being is a louse it proved that it wasn't so for me,
though it might be for a man who would go straight to his goal
without asking questions. ... If I worried myself all those days,
wondering whether Napoleon would have done it or not, I felt
clearly of course that I wasn't Napoleon. I had to endure all
the agony of that battle of ideas, Sonia, and I longed to throw
it off: I wanted to murder without casuistry, to murder for my
own sake, for myself alone! I didn't want to lie about it even
to myself. It wasn't to help my mother I did the murder — that's
nonsense — I didn't do the murder to gain wealth and power and
to become a benefactor of mankind. Nonsense! I simply did it;
I did the murder for myself, for myself alone, and whether I
became a benefactor to others, or spent my life like a spider
catching men in my web and sucking the life out of men,
I couldn't have cared at that moment. . . . And it was not the
money I wanted, Sonia, when I did it. It was not so much the
money I wanted, but something else. ... I know it all now. . . .
Understand me! Perhaps I should never have committed a
murder again. I wanted to find out something else; it was
something else led me on. I wanted to find out then and quickly
whether I was a louse like everybody else or a man. Whether
I can step over barriers or not, whether I dare stoop to pick up
or not, whether I am a trembling creature or whether I have
the right . . ."
"To kill? Have the right to kill?" Sonia clasped her hands.
"Ach, Sonia!" he cried irritably and seemed about to make
some retort, but was contemptuously silent. "Don't interrupt
me, Sonia. I want to prove one thing only, that the devil led
me on then and he has shown me since that I had not the right
to take that path, because I am just such a louse as all the rest.
He was mocking me and here I've come to you now! Welcome
your guest! If I were not a louse, should I have come to you?
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