that! I swear before God that I will so arrange that your confession shall come as a complete surprise. We will make a clean sweep of all these psychological points, of a suspicion against you, so that your crime will appear to have been something like an aberration, for in truth it was an aberration. I am an honest man, Rodion Romanovitch, and will keep my word.”
Raskolnikov maintained a mournful silence and let his head sink dejectedly. He pondered a long while and at last smiled again, but his smile was sad and gentle.
“No!” he said, apparently abandoning all attempt to keep up appearances with Porfiry, “it’s not worth it, I don’t care about lessening the sentence!”
“That’s just what I was afraid of!” Porfiry cried warmly and, as it seemed, involuntarily. “That’s just what I feared, that you wouldn’t care about the mitigation of sentence.”
Raskolnikov looked sadly and expressively at him.
“Ah, don’t disdain life!” Porfiry went on. “You have a great deal of it still before you. How can you say you don’t want a mitigation of sentence? You are an impatient fellow!”
“A great deal of what lies before me?”
“Of life. What sort of prophet are you, do you know much about it? Seek and ye shall find. This may be God’s means for bringing you to Him. And it’s not forever, the bondage. …”
“The time will be shortened,” laughed Raskolnikov.
“Why, is it the bourgeois disgrace you are afraid of? It may be that you are afraid of it without knowing it, because you are young! But anyway you shouldn’t be afraid of giving yourself up and confessing.”