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 ful