oney from her, Sonia, to have
his own tea every day. He begged her not to trouble about anything else,
declaring that all this fuss about him only annoyed him. Sonia wrote
further that in prison he shared the same room with the rest, that she
had not seen the inside of their barracks, but concluded that they were
crowded, miserable and unhealthy; that he slept on a plank bed with a
rug under him and was unwilling to make any other arrangement. But that
he lived so poorly and roughly, not from any plan or design, but simply
from inattention and indifference.

Sonia wrote simply that he had at first shown no interest in her visits,
had almost been vexed with her indeed for coming, unwilling to talk and
rude to her. But that in the end these visits had become a habit and
almost a necessity for him, so that he was positively distressed when
she was ill for some days and could not visit him. She used to see him
on holidays at the prison gates or in the guard-room, to which he was
brought for a few minutes to see her. On working days she would go to
see him at work either at the workshops or at the brick kilns, or at the
sheds on the banks of the Irtish.

About herself, Sonia wrote that she had succeeded in making some
acquaintances in the town, that she did sewing, and, as there
was scarcely a dressmaker in the town, she was looked upon as an
indispensable person in many houses. But she did not mention that the
authorities were, through her, interested in Raskolnikov; that his task
was lightened and so on.

At last the news came (Dounia had indeed noticed signs of alarm and
uneasiness in the preceding letters) that he held aloof from everyone,
that his fellow prisoners did not like him, that he kept silent for days
at a time and was becoming very pale. In the last letter Sonia wrote
that he had been taken very seriously ill and was in the convict ward of
the hospital.

II

He was ill a long time. But it was not the horrors of prison life, not
the hard labour, the bad food, the shaven head, or the patched clothes
that crushed him. What did he care for all those trials and hardships!
he was even glad of the hard work. Physically exhausted, he could at
least reckon on a few hours of quiet sleep. And what was the food to
him--the thin cabbage soup with beetles floating in it? In the past as a
student he had often not had even that. His clothes were warm and suited
to his manner of life. He did not even feel the fetters