ultimate cause. But these moments, these glimpses were still only a presentiment of that ultimate second (never more than a second) from which the fit itself began. That second was, of course, unbearable. Reflecting on that moment afterwards, in a healthy state, he had often said to himself that all those flashes and glimpses of a higher self-sense and self-awareness, and therefore of the "highest being," were nothing but an illness, a violation of the normal state, and if so, then this was not the highest being at all but, on the contrary, should be counted as the very lowest. And yet he finally arrived at an extremely paradoxical conclusion: "So what if it is an illness?" he finally decided. "Who cares that it's an abnormal strain, if the result itself, if the moment of the sensation, remembered and examined in a healthy state, turns out to be the highest degree of harmony, beauty, gives a hitherto unheard-of and unknown feeling of fullness, measure, reconciliation, and an ecstatic, prayerful merging with the highest synthesis of life?" These vague expressions seemed quite comprehensible to him, though still too weak. That it was indeed "beauty and prayer," that it was indeed "the highest synthesis of life," he could not doubt, nor could he admit of any doubts. Was he dreaming some sort of abnormal and nonexistent visions at that moment, as from hashish, opium, or wine, which humiliate the reason and distort the soul? He could reason about it sensibly once his morbid state was over. Those moments were precisely only an extraordinary intensification of self-awareness— if there was a need to express this condition in a single word— self-awareness and at the same time a self-sense immediate in the highest degree. If in that second, that is, in the very last conscious moment before the fit, he had happened to succeed in saying clearly and consciously to himself: "Yes, for this moment one could give one's whole life!"—then surely this moment in itself was worth a whole life.²² However, he did not insist on the dialectical part of his reasoning: dullness, darkness of soul, idiocy stood before him as the clear consequence of these "highest moments." Naturally, he was not about to argue in earnest. His reasoning, that is, his evaluation of this moment, undoubtedly contained an error, but all the same he was somewhat perplexed by the actuality of the sensation. What, in fact, was he to do with this actuality? Because it had happened, he had succeeded in saying to himself in that very second, that this second, in its boundless happiness, which he fully experienced, might perhaps be worth his whole life. "At that moment," as he had once said to Rogozhin in Moscow, when

they got together there, "at that moment I was somehow able to understand the extraordinary phrase that time shall be no more.²³ Probably," he had added, smiling, "it's the same second in which the jug of water overturned by the epileptic Muhammad did not have time to spill, while he had time during the same second to survey all the dwellings of Allah."²⁴ Yes, in Moscow he and Rogozhin had often gotten together and talked not only about that. "Rogozhin just said I was like a brother to him then; he said it today for the first time," the prince thought to himself.

He thought about that, sitting on a bench under a tree in the Summer Garden. It was around seven o'clock. The garden was deserted; something dark veiled the setting sun for a moment. It was sultry; it was like the distant foreboding of a thunderstorm. There was a sort of lure in his contemplative state right then. His memories and reason clung to every external object, and he liked that: he kept wanting to forget something present, essential, but with the first glance around him he at once recognized his dark thought again, the thought he had wanted so much to be rid of. He remembered talking earlier with a waiter in the hotel restaurant, over dinner, about an extremely strange recent murder, which had caused much noise and talk. But as soon as he remembered it, something peculiar suddenly happened to him again.

An extraordinary, irrepressible desire, almost a temptation, suddenly gripped his whole will. He got up from the bench and walked out of the garden straight to the Petersburg side. Earlier, on the Neva embankment, he had asked some passerby to point out to him the Petersburg side across the river. It had been pointed out to him, but he had not gone there then. And in any case there was no point in going today; he knew that. He had long known the address; he could easily find the house of Lebedev's relation; but he knew almost certainly that he would not find her at home. "She must have gone to Pavlovsk; otherwise Kolya would have left something at the Scales, as we arranged." And so, if he set off now, it was not, of course, in order to see her. A different, dark, tormenting curiosity tempted him. A new, sudden idea had come into his head . . .

But for him it was all too sufficient that he had set off and knew where he was going: a moment later he was walking along again, almost without noticing the way. It at once became terribly disgusting and almost impossible for him to think further about his "sudden idea." With tormentingly strained attention, he peered into

everything his eyes lighted upon, he looked at the sky, at the Neva. He addressed a little child he met. It may have been that his epileptic state was intensifying more and more. The thunderstorm, it seemed, was actually approaching, though slowly. Distant thunder had already begun. It was becoming very sultry . . .

For some reason, just as one sometimes recalls an importunate musical tune, tiresome to the point of silliness, he now kept recalling Lebedev's nephew, whom he had seen earlier. The strange thing was that he kept coming to his mind as the murderer Lebedev had mentioned when introducing the nephew to him. Yes, he had read about that murderer very recently. He had read and heard a great deal about such things since his arrival in Russia; he followed them persistently. And earlier he had even become much too interested in his conversation with the waiter about that murder of the Zhemarins. The waiter had agreed with him, he remembered that. He remembered the waiter, too. He was by no means a stupid fellow, grave and cautious, but "anyhow, God knows what he is. It's hard to figure out new people in a new land." He was beginning, however, to believe passionately in the Russian soul. Oh, he had endured so much, so much that was quite new to him in those six months, and unlooked-for, and unheard-of, and unexpected! But another man's soul is murky, and the Russian soul is murky; it is so for many. Here he had long been getting together with Rogozhin, close together, together in a "brotherly" way—but did he know Rogozhin? And anyhow, what chaos, what turmoil, what ugliness there sometimes is in all that! But even so, what a nasty and all-satisfied little pimple that nephew of Lebedev's is! But, anyhow, what am I saying? (the prince went on in his reverie). Was it he who killed those six beings, those six people? I seem to be mixing things up . . . how strange it is! My head is spinning . . . But what a sympathetic, what a sweet face Lebedev's elder daughter has, the one who stood there with the baby, what an innocent, what an almost childlike expression, and what almost childlike laughter! Strange that he had almost forgotten that face and remembered it only now. Lebedev, who stamps his feet at them, probably adores them all. But what is surest of all, like two times two, is that Lebedev also adores his nephew!

But anyhow, what was he doing making such a final judgment of them—he who had come only that day, what was he doing passing such verdicts? Lebedev himself had set him a problem today: had he expected such a Lebedev? Had he known such a