lder.

"How vile!" a loud voice cried suddenly in the doorway.

Pyotr Petrovitch looked round quickly.

"What vileness!" Lebeziatnikov repeated, staring him straight in the
face.

Pyotr Petrovitch gave a positive start--all noticed it and recalled it
afterwards. Lebeziatnikov strode into the room.

"And you dared to call me as witness?" he said, going up to Pyotr
Petrovitch.

"What do you mean? What are you talking about?" muttered Luzhin.

"I mean that you... are a slanderer, that's what my words mean!"
Lebeziatnikov said hotly, looking sternly at him with his short-sighted
eyes.

He was extremely angry. Raskolnikov gazed intently at him, as though
seizing and weighing each word. Again there was a silence. Pyotr
Petrovitch indeed seemed almost dumbfounded for the first moment.

"If you mean that for me,..." he began, stammering. "But what's the
matter with you? Are you out of your mind?"

"I'm in my mind, but you are a scoundrel! Ah, how vile! I have heard
everything. I kept waiting on purpose to understand it, for I must own
even now it is not quite logical.... What you have done it all for I
can't understand."

"Why, what have I done then? Give over talking in your nonsensical
riddles! Or maybe you are drunk!"

"You may be a drunkard, perhaps, vile man, but I am not! I never touch
vodka, for it's against my convictions. Would you believe it, he, he
himself, with his own hands gave Sofya Semyonovna that hundred-rouble
note--I saw it, I was a witness, I'll take my oath! He did it, he!"
repeated Lebeziatnikov, addressing all.

"Are you crazy, milksop?" squealed Luzhin. "She is herself before
you--she herself here declared just now before everyone that I gave her
only ten roubles. How could I have given it to her?"

"I saw it, I saw it," Lebeziatnikov repeated, "and though it is against
my principles, I am ready this very minute to take any oath you like
before the court, for I saw how you slipped it in her pocket. Only
like a fool I thought you did it out of kindness! When you were saying
good-bye to her at the door, while you held her hand in one hand, with
the other, the left, you slipped the note into her pocket. I saw it, I
saw it!"

Luzhin turned pale.

"What lies!" he cried impudently, "why, how could you, standing by the
window, see the note? You fancied it with your short-sighted eyes. You
are raving!"

"No, I didn't fancy it. And though I was standing some way off, I saw
it all. And thou