“He was rather unwell!  A pretty expression, to be sure!” exclaimed Razoumikhin.  “The fact is that up to yesterday he has been almost unconscious.  Would you believe it, Porphyrius?  Yesterday, when he could hardly stand upright, he seized the moment when we had just left him, to dress, to be off by stealth, and to go loafing about, Heaven only knows where, till midnight, being, all the time, in a completely raving condition.  Can you imagine such a thing?  It is a most remarkable case!”

“Indeed!  In a completely raving state?” remarked Porphyrius, with the toss of the head peculiar to Russian rustics.

“Absurd!  Don’t you believe a word of it!  Besides, I need not urge you to that effect—­of course you are convinced,” observed Raskolnikoff, beside himself with passion.  But Porphyrius Petrovitch did not seem to hear these singular words.

“How could you have gone out if you had not been delirious?” asked Razoumikhin, getting angry in his turn.  “Why have gone out at all?  What was the object of it?  And, above all, to go in that secret manner?  Come, now, make a clean breast of it—­you know you were out of your mind, were you not?  Now that danger is gone by, I tell you so to your face.”

“I had been very much annoyed yesterday,” said Raskolnikoff, addressing the magistrate, with more or less of insolence in his smile, “and, wishing to get rid of them, I went out to hire lodgings where I could be sure of privacy, to effect which I had taken a certain amount of money.  Mr. Zametoff saw what I had by me, and perhaps he can say whether I was in my right senses yesterday or whether I was delirious?  Perhaps he will judge as to our quarrel.”  Nothing would have pleased him better than there and then to have strangled that gentleman, whose taciturnity and equivocal facial expression irritated him.

“In my opinion, you were talking very sensibly and even with considerable shrewdness; only I thought you too irritable,” observed Zametoff off-handedly.

“Do let us have some tea!  We are as dry as fishes!” exclaimed Razoumikhin.

“Good idea!  But perhaps you would like something more substantial before tea, would you?”

“Look alive, then!”

Porphyrius Petrovitch went out to order tea.  All kinds of thoughts were at work in Raskolnikoff’s brain.  He was excited.  “They don’t even take pains to dissemble; they certainly don’t mince matters as far as I am concerned:  that is something, at all events!  Since Porphyrius knew next to nothing about me, why on earth should he have spoken with Nicodemus Thomich Zametoff at all?  They even scorn to deny that they are on my track, almost like a pack of hounds!  They certainly speak out plainly enough!” he said, trembling with rage.  “Well, do so, as bluntly as you like, but don’t play with me as the cat would with the mouse!  That’s not quite civil, Porphyrius Petrovitch; I won’t quite allow that yet!  I’ll make a stand and tell you some