door. Another half-hour passed. Raskolnikov opened his eyes, turned on
his back again, clasping his hands behind his head.

"Who is he? Who is that man who sprang out of the earth? Where was he,
what did he see? He has seen it all, that's clear. Where was he then?
And from where did he see? Why has he only now sprung out of the earth?
And how could he see? Is it possible? Hm..." continued Raskolnikov,
turning cold and shivering, "and the jewel case Nikolay found behind the
door--was that possible? A clue? You miss an infinitesimal line and you
can build it into a pyramid of evidence! A fly flew by and saw it! Is it
possible?" He felt with sudden loathing how weak, how physically weak he
had become. "I ought to have known it," he thought with a bitter smile.
"And how dared I, knowing myself, knowing how I should be, take up an
axe and shed blood! I ought to have known beforehand.... Ah, but I did
know!" he whispered in despair. At times he came to a standstill at some
thought.

"No, those men are not made so. The real _Master_ to whom all is
permitted storms Toulon, makes a massacre in Paris, _forgets_ an army in
Egypt, _wastes_ half a million men in the Moscow expedition and gets off
with a jest at Vilna. And altars are set up to him after his death, and
so _all_ is permitted. No, such people, it seems, are not of flesh but
of bronze!"

One sudden irrelevant idea almost made him laugh. Napoleon, the
pyramids, Waterloo, and a wretched skinny old woman, a pawnbroker with
a red trunk under her bed--it's a nice hash for Porfiry Petrovitch to
digest! How can they digest it! It's too inartistic. "A Napoleon creep
under an old woman's bed! Ugh, how loathsome!"