Quote Detail

Hush, Sonia! I am not laughing. I know myself that it was the devil leading me. Hush, Sonia, hush!_ he repeated with gloomy insistence. __ know it all, I have thought it all over and over and whispered it all over to myself, lying there in the dark._ I've argued it all over with myself, every point of it, and I know it all, all! And how sick, how sick I was then of going over it all! I kept wanting to forget it and make a new beginning, Sonia, and leave off thinking. And you don__ suppose that I went into it headlong like a fool? I went into it like a wise man, and that was just my destruction. And you mustn't suppose that I didn't know, for instance, that if I began to question myself whether I had the right to gain power__ certainly hadn't the right__r that if I asked myself whether a human being is a louse it proved that it wasn't so for me, though it might be for a man who would go straight to his goal without asking questions._ If I worried myself all those days, wondering whether Napoleon would have done it or not, I felt clearly of course that I wasn't Napoleon. I had to endure all the agony of that battle of ideas, Sonia, and I longed to throw it off: I wanted to murder without casuistry, to murder for my own sake, for myself alone! I didn't want to lie about it even to myself. It wasn't to help my mother I did the murder__hat__ nonsense__ didn't do the murder to gain wealth and power and to become a benefactor of mankind. Nonsense! I simply did it; I did the murder for myself, for myself alone, and whether I became a benefactor to others, or spent my life like a spider, catching men in my web and sucking the life out of men, I couldn't have cared at that moment._ And it was not the money I wanted, Sonia, when I did it. It was not so much the money I wanted, but something else._ I know it all now._ Understand me! Perhaps I should never have committed a murder again. I wanted to find out something else; it was something else led me on. I wanted to find out then and quickly whether I was a louse like everybody else or a man. Whether I can step over barriers or not, whether I dare stoop to pick up or not, whether I am a trembling creature or whether I have the right _ __o kill? Have the right to kill?_ Sonia clasped her hands. __ch, Sonia!_ he cried irritably and seemed about to make some retort, but was contemptuously silent. __on__ interrupt me, Sonia. I want to prove one thing only, that the devil led me on then and he has shown me since that I had not the right to take that path, because I am just such a louse as all the rest. He was mocking me and here I've come to you now! Welcome your guest! If I were not a louse, should I have come to you? Listen: when I went then to the old woman__ I only went to try. _ You may be sure of that!_ __nd you murdered her!_ __ut how did I murder her? Is that how men do murders? Do men go to commit a murder as I went then? I will tell you some day how I went! Did I murder the old woman? I murdered myself, not her! I crushed myself once for all, for ever._ But it was the devil that killed that old woman, not I. Enough, enough, Sonia, enough! Let me be!_ he cried in a sudden spasm of agony, __et me be!