From time to time he came across shop signs and read each carefully.
At last he reached the end of the wooden pavement and came to a big stone house.
A dirty, shivering dog crossed his path with its tail between its legs.
A man in a greatcoat lay face downwards; dead drunk, across the pavement.
He looked at him and went on.
A high tower stood up on the left.
"Bah!" he shouted, "here is a place. Why should it be Petrovsky?
It will be in the presence of an official witness anyway...."
He almost smiled at this new thought and turned into the street where there was the big house with the tower.
At the great closed gates of the house, a little man stood with his shoulder leaning against them, wrapped in a grey soldier's coat, with a copper Achilles helmet on his head.
He cast a drowsy and indifferent glance at Svidrigailov.
His face wore that perpetual look of peevish dejection, which is so sourly printed on all faces of Jewish race without exception.
They both, Svidrigailov and Achilles, stared at each other for a few minutes without speaking.
At last it struck Achilles as irregular for a man not drunk to be standing three steps from him, staring and not saying a word.
"What do you want here?" he said, without moving or changing his position.
"Nothing, brother, good morning," answered Svidrigailov.
"This isn't the place."
"I am going to foreign parts, brother."
"To foreign parts?"
"To America."
"America."
Svidrigailov took out the revolver and cocked it.
Achilles raised his eyebrows.
"I say, this is not the place for such jokes!"
"Why shouldn't it be the place?"
"Because it isn't."
"Well, brother, I don't mind that.
It's a good place. When you are asked, you just say he was going, he said, to America."
He put the revolver to his right temple.
"You can't do it here, it's not the place," cried Achilles, rousing himself, his eyes growing bigger and bigger.
Svidrigailov pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER VII
The same day, about seven o'clock in the evening, Raskolnikov was on his way to his mother's and sister's lodging--the lodging in Bakaleyev's house which Razumihin had found for them.
The stairs went up from the street.
Raskolnikov walked with lagging steps, as though still hesitating whether to go or not.
But nothing would have turned him back: his decision was taken.
"Besides, it doesn't matter, they still know nothing," he thought, "and they are used to thinking of me as eccentric."
He was appallingly dressed: his clothes torn and dirty, soaked with a night's rain.
His face was almost distorted from fatigue, exposure, the inward conflict that had lasted for twenty-four hours.
He had spent all the previous night alone, God knows where.
But anyway he had reached a decision.
He knocked at the door which was opened by his mother.
Dounia was not at home.
Even the servant happened to be out.
At first Pulcheria Alexandrovna was speechless with joy and surprise; then she took him by the hand and drew him into the room.
"Here you are!" she began, faltering with joy.
"Don't be angry with me, Rodya, for welcoming you so foolishly with tears: I am laughing not crying.
Did you think I was crying?
No, I am delighted, but I've got into such a stupid habit of shedding tears.
I've been like that ever since your father's death. I cry for anything.