“Did you know, by-the-by, that I called on you the night before last?” continued Porphyrius, looking about.  “I was in this very room.  I happened to be coming this way, just as I am going to-day, and the idea struck me to drop in.  Your door was open—­I entered, hoping to see you in a few minutes, but went away again without leaving my name with your servant.  Do you never shut your place?”

Raskolnikoff’s face grew gloomier and gloomier.  Porphyrius Petrovitch evidently guessed what the latter was thinking about.

“You did not expect visitors, Rodion Romanovitch?” said Porphyrius, smiling graciously.

“I have called just to clear things up a bit.  I owe you an explanation,” he went on, smiling and gently slapping the young man on the knee; but almost at the self-same moment his face assumed a serious and even sad expression, to Raskolnikoff’s great astonishment, to whom the magistrate appeared in quite a different light.  “At our last interview, an unusual scene took place between us, Rodion.  I somehow feel that I did not behave very well to you.  You remember, I dare say, how we parted; we were both more or less excited.  I fear we were wanting in the most common courtesy, and yet we are both of us gentlemen.”

“What can he be driving at now?” Raskolnikoff asked himself, looking inquiringly at Porphyrius.

“I have come to the conclusion that it would be much better for us to be more candid to one another,” continued the magistrate, turning his head gently aside and looking on the ground, as if he feared to annoy his former victim by his survey.  “We must not have scenes of that kind again.  If Mikolka had not turned up on that occasion, I really do not know how things would have ended.  You are naturally, my dear Rodion, very irritable, and I must own that I had taken that into consideration, for, when driven in a corner, many a man lets out his secrets.  ‘If,’ I said to myself, ’I could only squeeze some kind of evidence out of him, however trivial, provided it were real, tangible, and palpable, different from all my psychological inferences!’ That was my idea.  Sometimes we succeed by some such proceeding, but unfortunately that does not happen every day, as I conclusively discovered on the occasion in question, I had relied too much on your character.”

“But why tell me all this now?” stammered Raskolnikoff, without in any way understanding the object of his interlocutor’s question.  “Does he, perhaps, think me really innocent?”

“You wish to know why I tell you this?  Because I look upon it as a sacred duty to explain my line of action.  Because I subjected you, as I now fully acknowledge, to cruel torture.  I do not wish, my dear Rodion, that you should take me for an ogre.  Hence, by way of justification, I purpose explaining to you what led up to it.  I think it needless to account for the nature and origin of the reports which circulated originally, as also why you were connected with them.  There