?"

"No, I am only wondering at your being too adaptable a man."

"Because I am not offended at the rudeness of your questions? Is that
it? But why take offence? As you asked, so I answered," he replied,
with a surprising expression of simplicity. "You know, there's
hardly anything I take interest in," he went on, as it were dreamily,
"especially now, I've nothing to do.... You are quite at liberty to
imagine though that I am making up to you with a motive, particularly as
I told you I want to see your sister about something. But I'll confess
frankly, I am very much bored. The last three days especially, so I am
delighted to see you.... Don't be angry, Rodion Romanovitch, but you
seem to be somehow awfully strange yourself. Say what you like, there's
something wrong with you, and now, too... not this very minute, I mean,
but now, generally.... Well, well, I won't, I won't, don't scowl! I am
not such a bear, you know, as you think."

Raskolnikov looked gloomily at him.

"You are not a bear, perhaps, at all," he said. "I fancy indeed that
you are a man of very good breeding, or at least know how on occasion to
behave like one."

"I am not particularly interested in anyone's opinion," Svidrigailov
answered, dryly and even with a shade of haughtiness, "and therefore why
not be vulgar at times when vulgarity is such a convenient cloak for our
climate... and especially if one has a natural propensity that way," he
added, laughing again.

"But I've heard you have many friends here. You are, as they say, 'not
without connections.' What can you want with me, then, unless you've
some special object?"

"That's true that I have friends here," Svidrigailov admitted, not
replying to the chief point. "I've met some already. I've been lounging
about for the last three days, and I've seen them, or they've seen me.
That's a matter of course. I am well dressed and reckoned not a poor
man; the emancipation of the serfs hasn't affected me; my property
consists chiefly of forests and water meadows. The revenue has not
fallen off; but... I am not going to see them, I was sick of them long
ago. I've been here three days and have called on no one.... What a town
it is! How has it come into existence among us, tell me that? A town of
officials and students of all sorts. Yes, there's a great deal I didn't
notice when I was here eight years ago, kicking up my heels.... My only
hope now is in anatomy, by Jove, it is!"

"Anatomy?"

"But