“If such a course succeeds with an uncultured moujik, it is equally efficacious when it concerns an enlightened, intelligent, or even distinguished man.  For the main thing, my dear friend, is to determine in what sense a man is developed.  The man, I mean, is intelligent, but he has nerves which are over-strung.  And as for bile—­the bile you are forgetting, that plays no small part with similar folk!  Believe me, here we have a very mine of information!  And what is it to me whether such a man walk about the place in perfect liberty?  Let him be at ease—­I know him to be my prey, and that he won’t escape me!  Where, I ask you, could he go to?  You may say abroad.  A Pole may do so—­but my man, never! especially as I watch him, and have taken steps in consequence.  Is he likely to escape into the very heart of our country?  Not he! for there dwell coarse moujiks, and primitive Russians, without any kind of civilization.  My educated friend would prefer going to prison, rather than be in the midst of such surroundings.  Besides, what I have been saying up to the present is not the main point—­it is the exterior and accessory aspect of the question.  He won’t escape—­not only because he won’t know where to go to, but especially, and above all, because he is mine from the psychological point of view.  What do you think of this explanation?  In virtue of a natural law, he will not escape, even if he could do so!  Have you ever seen a butterfly close to the candle?  My man will hover incessantly round me in the same way as the butterfly gyrates round the candle-light.  Liberty will have no longer charms for him; he will grow more and more restless, more and more amazed—­let me but give him plenty of time, and he will demean himself in a way to prove his guilt as plainly as that twice two our four!  Yes, he will keep hovering about me, describing circles, smaller and smaller, till at last—­bang!  He has flown into my clutches, and I have got him.  That is very nice.  You don’t think so, perhaps?”

Raskolnikoff kept silent.  Pale and immovable, he continued to watch Porphyrius’s face with a labored effort of attention.  “The lesson is a good one!” he reflected.  “But it is not, as yesterday, a case of the cat playing with the mouse.  Of course, he does not talk to me in this way for the mere pleasure of showing me his hand; he is much too intelligent for that.  He must have something else in view—­what can it be?  Come, friend, what you do say is only to frighten me.  You have no kind of evidence, and the man of yesterday does not exist!  All you wish is to perplex me—­to enrage me, so as to enable you to make your last move, should you catch me in such a mood, but you will not; all your pains will be in vain!  But why should he speak in such covert terms?  I presume he must be speculating on the excitability of my nervous system.  But, dear friend, that won’t go down, in spite of your machinations.  We will try and find out what you really have been driving at.”