صفحة 554 من 1294

He said this as though to himself, but said it aloud, and looked

for some time at his sister, as though puzzled. He opened the

letter at last, still with the same look of strange wonder on his

face. Then, slowly and attentively, he began reading, and read it

through twice. Pulcheria Alexandrovna showed marked anxiety, and

all indeed expected something particular.

"What surprises me," he began, after a short pause, handing the

letter to his mother, but not addressing anyone in particular,

"is that he is a business man, a lawyer, and his conversation is

pretentious indeed, and yet he writes such an uneducated letter."

They all started. They had expected something quite different.

"But they all write like that, you know," Razumihin observed,

abruptly.

"Have you read it?"

"Yes."

"We showed him, Rodya. We... consulted him just now," Pulcheria

Alexandrovna began, embarrassed.

"That's just the jargon of the courts," Razumihin put in. "Legal

documents are written like that to this day."