Strona 67 z 1294

He sank into thought.

"And what if I am wrong," he cried suddenly after a moment's

thought. "What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general,

I mean, the whole race of mankind--then all the rest is

prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers

and it's all as it should be."

CHAPTER III

He waked up late next day after a broken sleep. But his sleep had

not refreshed him; he waked up bilious, irritable, ill-tempered,

and looked with hatred at his room. It was a tiny cupboard of a

room about six paces in length. It had a poverty-stricken

appearance with its dusty yellow paper peeling off the walls, and

it was so low-pitched that a man of more than average height was

ill at ease in it and felt every moment that he would knock his

head against the ceiling. The furniture was in keeping with the

room: there were three old chairs, rather rickety; a painted

table in the corner on which lay a few manuscripts and books; the

dust that lay thick upon them showed that they had been long

untouched. A big clumsy sofa occupied almost the whole of one

wall and half the floor space of the room; it was once covered

with chintz, but was now in rags and served Raskolnikov as a bed.