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, after that as a preliminary, how could I help being carried away by what followed?
Oh, dear, I am not saying anything, I am not making any statement now.
I simply noted it at the time.
What is there in it?
I reflected. There's nothing in it, that is really nothing and perhaps absolutely nothing.
And it's not at all the thing for the prosecutor to let himself be carried away by notions: here I have Nikolay on my hands with actual evidence against him--you may think what you like of it, but it's evidence.
He brings in his psychology, too; one has to consider him, too, for it's a matter of life and death.
Why am I explaining this to you?
That you may understand, and not blame my malicious behaviour on that occasion.
It was not malicious, I assure you, he-he!
Do you suppose I didn't come to search your room at the time?
I did, I did, he-he! I was here when you were lying ill in bed, not officially, not in my own person, but I was here.
Your room was searched to the last thread at the first suspicion; but _umsonst_!
I thought to myself, now that man will come, will come of himself and quickly, too; if he's guilty, he's sure to come.
Another man wouldn't, but he will.
And you remember how Mr. Razumihin began discussing the subject with you?
We arranged that to excite you, so we purposely spread rumours, that he might discuss the case with you, and Razumihin is not a man to restrain his indignation.
Mr. Zametov was tremendously struck by your anger and your open daring. Think of blurting out in a restaurant
'I killed her.'
It was too daring, too reckless. I thought so myself, if he is guilty he will be a formidable opponent.
That was what I thought at the time.
I was expecting you.
But you simply bowled Zametov over and... well, you see, it all lies in this--that this damnable psychology can be taken two ways!
Well, I kept expecting you, and so it was, you came!
My heart was fairly throbbing.
Ach!
"Now, why need you have come?
Your laughter, too, as you came in, do you remember? I saw it all plain as daylight, but if I hadn't expected you so specially, I should not have noticed anything in your laughter.
You see what influence a mood has!
Mr. Razumihin then--ah, that stone, that stone under which the things were hidden! I seem to see it somewhere in a kitchen garden.
It was in a kitchen garden, you told Zametov and afterwards you repeated that in my office?
And when we began picking your article to pieces, how you explained it! One could take every word of yours in two senses, as though there were another meaning hidden.
"So in this way, Rodion Romanovitch, I reached the furthest limit, and knocking my head against a post, I pulled myself up, asking myself what I was about.
After all, I said, you can take it all in another sense if you like, and it's more natural so, indeed. I couldn't help admitting it was more natural.
I was bothered!
'No, I'd better get hold of some little fact' I said.
So when I heard of the bell-ringing, I held my breath and was all in a tremor.
'Here is my little fact,' thought I, and I didn't think it over, I simply wouldn't.
I would have given a thousand roubles at that minute to have seen you with my own eyes, when you walked a hundred paces beside that workman, after he had called you murderer to your face, and you did not dare to ask him a question all the way.
And then what about your trembling, what about your bell-ringing in your illness, in semi-delirium?
"And so, Rodion Romanovitch, can you wonder that I played such pranks on you?
And what made you come at that very minute?
Someone seemed to have sent you, by Jove! And if Nikolay had not parted us... and do you remember Nikolay at the time?