surprising expression of simplicity. “You know, there’s hardly anything I take interest in,” he went on, as it were dreamily, “especially now, I’ve nothing to do. … You are quite at liberty to imagine though that I am making up to you with a motive, particularly as I told you I want to see your sister about something. But I’ll confess frankly, I am very much bored. The last three days especially, so I am delighted to see you. … Don’t be angry, Rodion Romanovitch, but you seem to be somehow awfully strange yourself. Say what you like, there’s something wrong with you, and now, too … not this very minute, I mean, but now, generally. … Well, well, I won’t, I won’t, don’t scowl! I am not such a bear, you know, as you think.”
Raskolnikov looked gloomily at him.
“You are not a bear, perhaps, at all,” he said. “I fancy indeed that you are a man of very good breeding, or at least know how on occasion to behave like one.”
“I am not particularly interested in anyone’s opinion,” Svidrigaïlov answered, dryly and even with a shade of haughtiness, “and therefore why not be vulgar at times when vulgarity is such a convenient cloak for our climate … and especially if one has a natural propensity that way,” he added, laughing again.
“But I’ve heard you have many friends here. You are, as they say, ‘not without connections.’ What can you want with me, then, unless you’ve some special object?”
“That’s true that I have friends here,” Svidrigaïlov admitted, not replying to the chief point. “I’ve met some already. I’ve been lounging about for the last three days, and I’ve seen them, or they’ve seen me. That’s a matter of course. I am well dressed and reckoned not a poor man; the emancipation of the serfs hasn’t affected me; my property consists chiefly of forests and water meadows. The revenue has not fallen off; but … I am