Crime and Punishment

freely. Anyhow, this was what he hoped for.

“No, I see you don’t believe me, you think I am playing a harmless joke
on you,” Porfiry began again, getting more and more lively, chuckling
at every instant and again pacing round the room. “And to be sure you’re
right: God has given me a figure that can awaken none but comic ideas in
other people; a buffoon; but let me tell you, and I repeat it, excuse
an old man, my dear Rodion Romanovitch, you are a man still young, so to
say, in your first youth and so you put intellect above everything, like
all young people. Playful wit and abstract arguments fascinate you and
that’s for all the world like the old Austrian _Hof-kriegsrath_, as
far as I can judge of military matters, that is: on paper they’d beaten
Napoleon and taken him prisoner, and there in their study they worked it
all out in the cleverest fashion, but look you, General Mack surrendered
with all his army, he-he-he! I see, I see, Rodion Romanovitch, you are
laughing at a civilian like me, taking examples out of military history!
But I can’t help it, it’s my weakness. I am fond of military science.
And I’m ever so fond of reading all military histories. I’ve certainly