on made of Lazarus?" asked
he abruptly.

Sonia, looking hard on the ground, preserved silence, whilst moving
somewhat from the table.

"Where is mention made of the resurrection of Lazarus? Find me the
passage, Sonia."

The latter looked askance at her interlocutor. "That is not the
place--it is the Fourth Gospel," said she dryly, without moving from
the spot.

"Find me the passage and read it out!" he repeated, and sitting down
again rested his elbow on the table, his head on his hand, and
glancing sideways with gloomy look, prepared to listen.

Sonia at first hesitated to draw nearer to the table. The singular
wish uttered by Raskolnikoff scarcely seemed sincere. Nevertheless she
took the book. "Have you ever read the passage?" she asked him,
looking at him from out the corners of her eyes. Her voice was getting
harder and harder.

"Once upon a time. In my childhood. Read!"

"Have you never heard it in church?"

"I--I never go there. Do you go often yourself?"

"No," stammered Sonia.

Raskolnikoff smiled. "I understand, then, you won't go tomorrow to
your father's funeral service?"

"Oh, yes! I was at church last week. I was present at a requiem mass."

"Whose was that?"

"Elizabeth's. She was assassinated by means of an axe."

Raskolnikoff's nervous system became more and more irritated. He was
getting giddy. "Were you friends with her?"

"Yes. She was straightforward. She used to come and see me--but not
often. She was not able. We used to read and chat. She sees God."

Raskolnikoff became thoughtful. "What," asked he himself, "could be
the meaning of the mysterious interviews of two such idiots as Sonia
and Elizabeth? Why, I should go mad here myself!" thought he. "Madness
seems to be in the atmosphere of the place!--Read!" he cried all of a
sudden, irritably.

Sonia kept hesitating. Her heart beat loud. She seemed afraid to read.
He considered "this poor demented creature" with an almost sad
expression. "How can that interest you, since you do not believe?" she
muttered in a choking voice.

"Read! I insist upon it! Used you not to read to Elizabeth?"

Sonia opened the book and looked for the passage. Her hands trembled.
The words stuck in her throat. Twice did she try to read without being
able to utter the first syllable.

"Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany," she read, at
last, with an effort; but suddenly, at the third word, her voice grew
wheezy, and gave way like