Porfiry Petrovich paused for a moment to catch his breath. The talk was simply pouring out of him, now in senselessly empty phrases, then suddenly letting in some enigmatic little words, and immediately going off into senselessness again. He was almost running back and forth now, moving his fat little legs quicker and quicker, looking down all the time, with his right hand behind his back and his left hand constantly waving and performing various gestures, each time remarkably unsuited to his words. Raskolnikov suddenly noticed that as he was running back and forth he twice seemed almost to pause for a moment by the door, as if he were listening...”Is he waiting for something, or what?”
“And you really are entirely right, sir,” Porfiry picked up again, looking at Raskolnikov merrily and with remarkable simple-heartedness (which startled him and put him on his guard at once), “really, you're right, sir, in choosing to laugh so wittily at our legal forms, heh, heh! Because these profoundly psychological techniques of ours (some of them, naturally) are extremely funny, and perhaps even useless, sir, when they're too bound up with form. Yes, sir...I'm talking about form again: well, if I were to regard, or, better, to suspect this, that, or the other person of being a criminal, sir, in some little case entrusted to me...You're preparing to be a lawyer, are you not, Rodion Romanovich?”
“Yes, I was . . .”
“Well, then, here you have a little example, so to speak, for the future—I mean, don't think I'd be so bold as to teach you, you who publish such articles on crime! No, sir, but I'll be so bold as to offer you a little example, simply as a fact—so, if I were to regard, for example, this, that, or the other person as a criminal, why, I ask you, should I trouble him before the time comes, even if I have evidence against him, sir? There may be a man, for example, whom it is my duty to arrest quickly, but another man may have a different character, really, sir; and why shouldn't I let him walk around town, heh, heh, sir! No, I can see you don't quite understand, so let me present it to you more clearly, sir: if I were to lock him up too soon, for example, I might thereby be lending him, so to speak, moral support, heh, heh! You laugh?” (Raskolnikov had not even thought of laughing; he was sitting with compressed lips, not taking his feverish gaze from the eyes of Porfiry Petrovich.) “And yet it really is so, sir, particularly with some specimens, because people are multifarious, sir, and there is one practice over all. Now, you were just pleased to mention evidence; well, suppose there is evidence, sir, but evidence, my dear, is mostly double-ended, and I am an investigator and therefore, I confess, a weak man: I would like to present my investigation with, so to speak, mathematical clarity; I would like to get hold of a piece of evidence that's something like two times two is four! Something like direct and indisputable proof! But if I were to lock him up at the wrong time—even though I'm sure it was him—I might well deprive myself of the means for his further incrimination. Why? Because I would be giving him, so to speak, a definite position; I would be, so to speak, defining him and reassuring him psychologically, so that he would be able to hide from me in his shelclass="underline" he would understand finally that he is under arrest. They say that in Sebastopol, right after Alma, intelligent people were oh so afraid that the enemy might attack any moment in full force and take Sebastopol at once; but when they saw that the enemy preferred a regular siege and was digging the first parallel, the intelligent people were ever so glad and reassured, sir: it meant the thing would drag on for at least two months, because who knew when they'd manage to take it by regular siege! [103] Again you laugh? Again you don't believe me? And right you are, of course. You are, sir, yes, you are! These are all particular cases, I agree; the case in point is indeed a particular one, sir! But at the same time, my good Rodion Romanovich, it must be observed that the general case, the one to which all legal forms and rules are suited, and on the basis of which they are all worked out and written down in the books, simply does not exist, for the very reason that every case, let's say, for instance, every crime, as soon as it actually occurs, turns at once into a completely particular case, sir; and sometimes, just think, really completely unlike all the previous ones, sir. The most comical occurrences sometimes occur this way, sir. But if I were to leave some gentleman quite alone, not bring him in or bother him, but so that he knows every hour and every minute, or at least suspects, that I know everything, all his innermost secrets, and am watching him day and night, following him vigilantly, if I were to keep him consciously under eternal suspicion and fear, then, by God, he might really get into a whirl, sir, he might come himself and do something that would be like two times two, so to speak, something with a mathematical look to it—which is quite agreeable, sir. It can happen even with a lumpish peasant, and all the more so with our sort, the contemporarily intelligent man, and developed in a certain direction to boot! Because, my dear, it's quite an important thing to understand in which direction a man is developed. And nerves, sir, nerves—you've forgotten about them, sir! Because all of that is so sick, and bad, and irritated nowadays! ... And there's so much bile, so much bile in them all! I'll tell you, it's a sort of gold mine on occasion, sir! And why should I worry that he's walking around town unfettered! Let him, let him walk around meanwhile, let him; I know all the same that he's my dear little victim and that he won't run away from me! Where is he going to run to, heh, heh! Abroad? A Pole would run abroad, but not him,especially since I'm watching and have taken measures. Is he going to flee to the depths of the country? Butonly peasants live there—real, cloddish, Russian peasants; now, a contemporarily developed man would sooner go to prison than live with such foreigners as our good peasants, heh, heh! But that's all nonsense, all external. What is it, to run away! A mere formality; that's not the main thing; no, he won't run away from me, not just because he has nowhere to run to: psychologicallyhe won't run away on me, heh, heh! A nice little phrase! He won't run away on me by a law of nature, even if he has somewhere to run to. Have you ever seen a moth near a candle? Well, so he'll keep circling around me, circling around me, as around a candle; freedom will no longer be dear to him, he'll fall to thinking, get entangled, he'll tangle himself all up as in a net, he'll worry himself to death! ... What's more, he himself will prepare some sort of mathematical trick for me, something like two times two—if I merely allow him a slightly longer intermission . .. And he'll keep on, he'll keep on making circles around me, narrowing the radius more and more, and—whop! He'll fly right into my mouth, and I'll swallow him, sir, and that will be most agreeable, heh, heh, heh! You don't believe me?”
103
During the Crimean War (1853-56), after defeating the Russian army at the Alma River (September 8,1854), the allied forces (England, France, Turkey, the Piedmont) laid siege to Sebastopol, finally taking the city eleven months later.