Thanks to the official's efforts, this plan was adopted, the policeman even helping to carry Katerina Ivanovna. She was carried to Sonia's room, almost unconscious, and laid on the bed. The blood was still flowing, but she seemed to be coming to herself.
Raskolnikov, Lebeziatnikov, and the official accompanied Sonia into the room and were followed by the policeman, who first drove back the crowd which followed to the very door. Polenka came in holding Kolya and Lida, who were trembling and weeping. Several persons came in too from the Kapernaumovs' room; the landlord, a lame one-eyed man of strange appearance with whiskers and hair that stood up like a brush, his wife, a woman with an everlastingly scared expression, and several open-mouthed children with wonder-struck faces. Among these, Svidrigailov suddenly made his appearance. Raskolnikov looked at him with surprise, not understanding where he had come from and not having noticed him in the crowd. A doctor and priest wore spoken of.
The official whispered to Raskolnikov that he thought it was too late now for the doctor, but he ordered him to be sent for.
Kapernaumov ran himself.
Meanwhile Katerina Ivanovna had regained her breath. The bleeding ceased for a time. She looked with sick but intent and penetrating eyes at Sonia, who stood pale and trembling, wiping the sweat from her brow with a handkerchief. At last she asked to be raised. They sat her up on the bed, supporting her on both sides.
"Where are the children?" she said in a faint voice. "You've brought them, Polenka? Oh the sillies! Why did you run away.... Och!"
Once more her parched lips were covered with blood. She moved her eyes, looking about her.
"So that's how you live, Sonia! Never once have I been in your room."
She looked at her with a face of suffering.
"We have been your ruin, Sonia. Polenka, Lida, Kolya, come here!
Well, here they are, Sonia, take them all! I hand them over to you, I've had enough! The ball is over. (Cough!) Lay me down, let me die in peace."
They laid her back on the pillow.
"What, the priest? I don't want him. You haven't got a rouble to spare. I have no sins. God must forgive me without that. He knows how I have suffered.... And if He won't forgive me, I don't care!"
She sank more and more into uneasy delirium. At times she shuddered, turned her eyes from side to side, recognised every one for a minute, but at once sank into delirium again. Her breathing was hoarse and difficult, there was a sort of rattle in her throat.
"I said to him, your excellency," she ejaculated, gasping after each word. "That Amalia Ludwigovna, ah! Lida, Kolya, hands on your hips, make haste! Glissez, glissez! pas de basque! Tap with your heels, be a graceful child!
-
Du hast Diamanten und Perlen
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What next? That's the thing to sing.
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Du hast die schonsten Augen Madchen, was willst du mehr?
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"What an idea! Was willst du mehr. What things the fool invents! Ah, yes!
-
In the heat of midday in the vale of Dagestan.
-
"Ah, how I loved it! I loved that song to distraction, Polenka! Your father, you know, used to sing it when we were engaged.... Oh those days! Oh that's the thing for us to sing! How does it go? I've forgotten. Remind me! How was it?"
She was violently excited and tried to sit up. At last, in a horribly hoarse, broken voice, she began, shrieking and gasping at every word, with a look of growing terror.
"In the heat of midday!... in the vale!... of Dagestan!... With lead in my breast!..."
