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- CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 425
firy Petrovitch went on. "Indeed I could scarcely attempt it.
To begin with there were rumours. Through whom, how, and
when those rumours came to me . . . and how they afifected
you, I need not go into. My suspicions were aroused by a
complete accident, which might just as easily not have hap-
pened. What was it? Hm! I believe there is no need to go into
that either. Those rumours and that accident led to one idea in
my mind. I admit it openly — for one may as well make a clean
breast of it— I,was the first to pitch on you. The old woman's
notes on the pledges and the rest of it— that all came to nothing.
Yours was one of a hundred. I happened, too, to hear of the
scene at the office, from a man who described it capitally, un-
consciously reproducing the scene with great vividness. It was
just one thing after another, Rodion Romanovitch, my dear
fellow! How could I avoid being brought to certain ideas? From
a hundred rabbits you can't make a horse, a hundred suspicions
don't make a proof, as the English proverb says, but that's only
from the rational point of view — you can't help being partial,
for after all a lawyer is only human. I thought, too, of your
article in that journal, do you remember, on your first visit we
talked of it? I jeered at you at the time, but that was only to
lead you on. I repeat, Rodion Romanovitch, you are ill and
impatient. That you were bold, headstrong, in earnest and . . .
had felt a great deal I recognised long before. I, too, have felt
the same, so that yovir article seemed familiar to me. It was
conceived on sleepless nights, with a throbbing heart, in ecstasy
and suppressed enthusiasm. And that proud suppressed enthu-
siasm inyoung people is dangerous! I jeered at you then, but let
me tell you that, as a literary amateur, I am awfully fond of
such first essays, full of the heat of youth. There is a mistiness
and a chord vibrating in the mist. Your article is absurd and
fantastic, but there's a transparent sincerity, a youthful incor-
ruptible pride and the daring of despair in it. It's a gloomy
article, but that's what's fine in it. I read your article and put
it aside, thinking as I did so 'that man won't go the commou
way.' Well, I ask you, after that as a preliminary, how could
I help being carried away by what followed? Oh, dear, I am not
saying anything, I am not making any statement now. I simply
noted it at the time. What is there in it? I reflected. There's
nothing in it, that is really nothing and perhaps absolutely
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