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- JOS CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
unwilling to talk and rude to her. But that in the end these visits
had become a habit and almost a necessity for him, so that he
was positively distressed when she was ill for some days and
could not visit him. She used to see him on holidays at the prison
gates or in the guard-room, to which he was brought for a few
minutes to see her. On working days she would go to see him
at work either at the workshops or at the brick kilns, or at the
sheds on the banks of the Irtish.
About herself, Sonia wrote that she had succeeded in making
some acquaintances in the town, that she did sewing, and, as
there was scarcely a dressmaker in the town, she was looked
upon as an indispensable person in many houses. But she did not
mention that the authorities were, through her, interested in
Raskolnikov; that his task was lightened and so on.
At last the news came (Dounia had indeed noticed signs of
alarm and uneasiness in the preceding letters) that he held aloof
from every one, that his fellow prisoners did not like him, that
he kept silent for days at a time and was becoming very pale.
In the last letter Sonia wrote that he had been taken very seri-
ously illand was in the convict ward of the hospital.
II
He was ill a long time. But it was not the horrors of prison life,
not the hard labour, the bad food, the shaven head, or the
patched clothes that crushed him. What did he care for all those
trials and hardships! he was even glad of the hard work. Physi-
cally exhausted, he could at least reckon on a few hours of quiet
sleep. And what was the food to him — the thin cabbage soup
with beetles floating in it? In the past as a student he had often
not had even that. His clothes were warm and suited to his man-
ner of life. He did not even feel the fetters. Was he ashamed of
his shaven head and parti-coloured coat? Before whom? Before
Sonia? Sonia was afraid of him, how could he be ashamed before
her? And yet he was ashamed even before Sonia, whom he tor-
tured because of it with his contemptuous rough manner. But
it was not his shaven head and his fetters he was ashamed of: his
pride had been stung to the quick. It was wounded pride that
made him ill. Oh, how happy he would have been if he could
have blamed himself! He could have borne anything then, even
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