conscience. I speak sincerely."

Porfiry Petrovitch made a dignified pause. Raskolnikov felt a rush of
renewed alarm. The thought that Porfiry believed him to be innocent
began to make him uneasy.

"It's scarcely necessary to go over everything in detail," Porfiry
Petrovitch went on. "Indeed, I could scarcely attempt it. To begin with
there were rumours. Through whom, how, and when those rumours came to
me... and how they affected you, I need not go into. My suspicions
were aroused by a complete accident, which might just as easily not have
happened. What was it? Hm! I believe there is no need to go into that
either. Those rumours and that accident led to one idea in my mind. I
admit it openly--for one may as well make a clean breast of it--I was
the first to pitch on you. The old woman's notes on the pledges and
the rest of it--that all came to nothing. Yours was one of a hundred.
I happened, too, to hear of the scene at the office, from a man who
described it capitally, unconsciously reproducing the scene with great
vividness. It was just one thing after another, Rodion Romanovitch, my
dear fellow! How could I avoid being brought to certain ideas? From a
hundred rabbits you can't make a horse, a hundred suspicions don't make
a proof, as the English proverb says, but that's only from the rational
point of view--you can't help being partial, for after all a lawyer
is only human. I thought, too, of your article in that journal, do you
remember, on your first visit we talked of it? I jeered at you at the
time, but that was only to lead you on. I repeat, Rodion Romanovitch,
you are ill and impatient. That you were bold, headstrong, in earnest
and... had felt a great deal I recognised long before. I, too, have felt
the same, so that your article seemed familiar to me. It was conceived
on sleepless nights, with a throbbing heart, in ecstasy and suppressed
enthusiasm. And that proud suppressed enthusiasm in young people is
dangerous! I jeered at you then, but let me tell you that, as a literary
amateur, I am awfully fond of such first essays, full of the heat of
youth. There is a mistiness and a chord vibrating in the mist. Your
article is absurd and fantastic, but there's a transparent sincerity,
a youthful incorruptible pride and the daring of despair in it. It's a
gloomy article, but that's what's fine in it. I read your article and
put it aside, thinking as I did so 'that man won't go the common way.'
Well, I ask you, a