“What do you mean? What are you talking about?” muttered Luzhin.

“I mean that you⁠ ⁠… are a slanderer, that’s what my words mean!” Lebeziatnikov said hotly, looking sternly at him with his shortsighted eyes.

He was extremely angry. Raskolnikov gazed intently at him, as though seizing and weighing each word. Again there was a silence. Pyotr Petrovitch indeed seemed almost dumbfounded for the first moment.

“If you mean that for me,⁠ ⁠…” he began, stammering. “But what’s the matter with you? Are you out of your mind?”

“I’m in my mind, but you are a scoundrel! Ah, how vile! I have heard everything. I kept waiting on purpose to understand it, for I must own even now it is not quite logical.⁠ ⁠… What you have done it all for I can’t understand.”

“Why, what have I done then? Give over talking in your nonsensical riddles! Or maybe you are drunk!”