plain truths to your faces, and then you shall find out my real opinion about you!” He had some difficulty in breathing.  “But supposing that all this is pure fancy?—­a kind of mirage?  Suppose I had misunderstood?  Let me try and keep up my nasty part, and not commit myself, like the fool, by blind anger!  Ought I to give them credit for intentions they have not?  Their words are, in themselves, not very extraordinary ones—­so much must be allowed; but a double meaning may lurk beneath them.  Why did Porphyrius, in speaking of the old woman, simply say ‘At her place?’ Why did Zametoff observe that I had spoken very sensibly?  Why their peculiar manner?—­yes, it is this manner of theirs.  How is it possible that all this cannot have struck Razoumikhin?  The booby never notices anything!  But I seem to be feverish again!  Did Porphyrius give me a kind of wink just now, or was I deceived in some way?  The idea is absurd!  Why should he wink at me?  Perhaps they intend to upset my nervous organization, and, by so doing, drive me to extremes!  Either the whole thing is a phantasmagoria, or—­they know!”

These thoughts flashed through his mind with the rapidity of lightning.  Porphyrius Petrovitch came back a moment afterwards.  He seemed in a very good temper.  “When I left your place yesterday, old fellow, I was really not well,” he commenced, addressing Razoumikhin with a cheeriness which was only just becoming apparent, “but that is all gone now.”

“Did you find the evening a pleasant one?  I left you in the thick of the fun; who came off best?”

“Nobody, of course.  They caviled to their heart’s content over their old arguments.”

“Fancy, Rodia, the discussion last evening turned on the question:  ‘Does crime exist?  Yes, or No.’  And the nonsense they talked on the subject!”

“What is there extraordinary in the query?  It is the social question without the charm of novelty,” answered Raskolnikoff abruptly.

“Talking of crime,” said Porphyrius Petrovitch, speaking to Raskolnikoff, “I remember a production of yours which greatly interested me.  I am speaking about your article on crime.  I don’t very well remember the title.  I was delighted in reading it two months ago in the Periodical Word."

“But how do you know the article was mine?  I only signed it with an initial.”

“I discovered it lately, quite by chance.  The chief editor is a friend of mine; it was he who let out the secret of your authorship.  The article has greatly interested me.”

“I was analyzing, if I remember rightly, the psychological condition of a criminal at the moment of his deed.”

“Yes, and you strove to prove that a criminal, at such a moment, is always, mentally, more or less unhinged.  That point of view is a very original one, but it was not this part of your article which most interested me.  I was particularly struck by an idea at the end of the article, and which, unfortunately, you have touched upon too cursorily.  In a word, if you remember, you maintained that there are men in existence who can, or more accurately, who have an absolute right to commit all kinds of wicked and criminal acts—­men for whom, to a certain extent, laws do not exist.”