“She isn’t, is she?” cried Razumihin, delighted to get an answer out of him. “But she is not very clever either, eh? She is essentially, essentially an unaccountable character! I am sometimes quite at a loss, I assure you. … She must be forty; she says she is thirty-six, and of course she has every right to say so. But I swear I judge her intellectually, simply from the metaphysical point of view; there is a sort of symbolism sprung up between us, a sort of algebra or whatnot! I don’t understand it! Well, that’s all nonsense. Only, seeing that you are not a student now and have lost your lessons and your clothes, and that through the young lady’s death she has no need to treat you as a relation, she suddenly took fright; and as you hid in your den and dropped all your old relations with her, she planned to get rid of you. And she’s been cherishing that design a long time, but was sorry to lose the I.O.U. , for you assured her yourself that your mother would pay.”
“It was base of me to say that. … My mother herself is almost a beggar … and I told a lie to keep my lodging … and be fed,” Raskolnikov said loudly and distinctly.
“Yes, you did very sensibly. But the worst of it is that at that point Mr. Tchebarov turns up, a business man. Pashenka would never have thought of doing anything on her own account, she is too retiring; but the business man is by no means retiring, and first thing he puts the question, ‘Is there any hope of realising the I.O.U. ?’ Answer: there is, because he has a mother who would save her Rodya with her hundred and twenty-five roubles pension, if she has to starve herself; and a sister, too, who would go into bondage for his sake. That’s what he was building upon. … Why do you start? I know all the ins and outs of your affairs now, my dear boy—it’s not for nothing that you were so open with Pashenka when you were her prospective son-in-law, and I say all this as a friend. … But I tell you what it is; an honest and sensitive man is open; and a business man ‘listens and goes on eating’ you up. Well, then she gave the I.O.U. by way of payment to this Tchebarov, and without