At moments he felt he was raving. He sank into a state of feverish
excitement. "The old woman is of no consequence," he thought, hotly and
incoherently. "The old woman was a mistake perhaps, but she is not
what matters! The old woman was only an illness.... I was in a hurry to
overstep.... I didn't kill a human being, but a principle! I killed the
principle, but I didn't overstep, I stopped on this side.... I was
only capable of killing. And it seems I wasn't even capable of that...
Principle? Why was that fool Razumihin abusing the socialists? They are
industrious, commercial people; 'the happiness of all' is their case.
No, life is only given to me once and I shall never have it again; I
don't want to wait for 'the happiness of all.' I want to live myself,
or else better not live at all. I simply couldn't pass by my mother
starving, keeping my rouble in my pocket while I waited for the
'happiness of all.' I am putting my little brick into the happiness of
all and so my heart is at peace. Ha-ha! Why have you let me slip? I only
live once, I too want.... Ech, I am an æsthetic louse and nothing
more," he added suddenly, laughing like a madman. "Yes, I am certainly a
louse," he went on, clutching at the idea, gloating over it and playing
with it with vindictive pleasure. "In the first place, because I can
reason that I am one, and secondly, because for a month past I have been
troubling benevolent Providence, calling it to witness that not for
my own fleshly lusts did I undertake it, but with a grand and noble
object--ha-ha! Thirdly, because I aimed at carrying it out as justly as
possible, weighing, measuring and calculating. Of all the lice I picked
out the most useless one and proposed to take from her only as much as I
needed for the first step, no more nor less (so the rest would have gone
to a monastery, according to her will, ha-ha!). And what shows that I
am utterly a louse," he added, grinding his teeth, "is that I am
perhaps viler and more loathsome than the louse I killed, and _I felt
beforehand_ that I should tell myself so _after_ killing her. Can