smile. "Well, can't you fancy then that I, too, on my way here in the
train was reckoning on you, on your telling me something new, and on my
making some profit out of you! You see what rich men we are!"

"What profit could you make?"

"How can I tell you? How do I know? You see in what a tavern I spend all
my time and it's my enjoyment, that's to say it's no great enjoyment,
but one must sit somewhere; that poor Katia now--you saw her?... If only
I had been a glutton now, a club gourmand, but you see I can eat this."

He pointed to a little table in the corner where the remnants of a
terrible-looking beef-steak and potatoes lay on a tin dish.

"Have you dined, by the way? I've had something and want nothing more.
I don't drink, for instance, at all. Except for champagne I never touch
anything, and not more than a glass of that all the evening, and even
that is enough to make my head ache. I ordered it just now to wind
myself up, for I am just going off somewhere and you see me in a
peculiar state of mind. That was why I hid myself just now like a
schoolboy, for I was afraid you would hinder me. But I believe," he
pulled out his watch, "I can spend an hour with you. It's half-past
four now. If only I'd been something, a landowner, a father, a cavalry
officer, a photographer, a journalist... I am nothing, no specialty,
and sometimes I am positively bored. I really thought you would tell me
something new."

"But what are you, and why have you come here?"

"What am I? You know, a gentleman, I served for two years in the
cavalry, then I knocked about here in Petersburg, then I married Marfa
Petrovna and lived in the country. There you have my biography!"

"You are a gambler, I believe?"

"No, a poor sort of gambler. A card-sharper--not a gambler."

"You have been a card-sharper then?"

"Yes, I've been a card-sharper too."

"Didn't you get thrashed sometimes?"

"It did happen. Why?"

"Why, you might have challenged them... altogether it must have been
lively."

"I won't contradict you, and besides I am no hand at philosophy. I
confess that I hastened here for the sake of the women."

"As soon as you buried Marfa Petrovna?"

"Quite so," Svidrigailov smiled with engaging candour. "What of it? You
seem to find something wrong in my speaking like that about women?"

"You ask whether I find anything wrong in vice?"

"Vice! Oh, that's what you are after! But I'll answer you in order,
first about women in gene