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- CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 445
voman was your sister. May I tell you? It will help to spend
the time."
"Tell me, but I trust that you . . ."
"Oh, don't be uneasy. Besides, even in a worthless low fellow
like me, Avdotya Romanovna can only excite the deepest
respect."
CHAPTER IV
"You know perhaps — ^yes, I told you myself," began Svidrigai-
lov, "that I was in the debtors' prison here, for an immense sum,
and had not any expectation of being able to pay it. There's no
need to go into particulars of how Marfa Petrovna bought me
out; do you know to what a point of insanity a woman can
sometimes love? She was an honest woman, and very sensible,
although completely uneducated. "Would you believe that this
honest and jealous woman, after many scenes of hysterics and
reproaches, condescended to enter into a kind of contract with
me which she kept throughout our married life. She was con-
siderably older than I, and besides, she always kept a clove or
something in her mouth. There was so much swinishness in my
soul and honesty too, of a sort, as to tell her straight out that I
couldn't be absolutely faithful to her. This confession drove her
to frenzy, but yet she seems in a way to have liked my brutal
frankness. She thought it showed I was unwilling to deceive
her if I warned her like this beforehand and for a jealous woman,
you know, that's the first consideration. After many tears an
imwritten contract was drawn up between us: first, that I
would never leave Marfa Petrovna and would always be her
husband; secondly, that I would never absent myself without
her permission; thirdly, that I would never set up a permanent
mistress; fourthly, in return for this, Marfa Petrovna gave me
a free hand with the maid servants, but only with her secret
knowledge; fifthly, God forbid my falling in love with a woman
of our class; sixthly, in case I— which God forbid — should be
visited by a great serious passion I was bound to reveal it to
Marfa Petrovna. On this last score, however, Marfa Petrovna
was fairly at ease. She was a sensible woman and so she could
not help looking upon me as a dissolute profligate incapable of
real love. But a sensible woman and a jealous woman are two
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