II + 

Here was my problem. It was necessary not only that I should kill Alexis, but that Tatiana Nikolavevna should know that I had slain her husband and that I should evade the punishment provided by the law. Aside from the fact that it might give Tatiana Nikolayevna another occasion for mirth, the idea of penal servitude did not at all appeal to me. I love life exceedingly. + 

I love to see the golden wine play in the thin glass; I love, when weary, to drag myself towards the clean bed; I love to breathe in the pure air of the springtime, to see the beautiful sunset, to read interesting and clever books. I love myself, the strength of my muscles, the strength of my thought, clear and exact. I am happy that I am alone, and that not a single curious look has penetrated the depth of my soul with its dark caves and abysses, at the edge of which the head grows dizzy. Never have I understood or known that which people call the weariness of life. Life is interesting, and I love it for the grand mystery imprisoned within it; I love it even for its rigors, for its ferocious vindictiveness and its satanically-gay play with people and events. + 

I was the sole person whom I respected. How then could I risk to send this person off to prison, where he would be deprived of all possibility to lead the so-essential to him, variegated, complete and deep existence? Even from your viewpoint I was right in desiring to escape prison. I am good at doctoring. Having means, I cured many poor people. I am useful⁠—surely more useful than the murdered Saveloff. + 

It would not have been difficult to have escaped punishment. A thousand devices exist whereby to kill a man unnoticed, and I, in my physician’s role, could have resorted easily to one of these. Among my thought out and discarded plans, which consumed a great deal of time, was this one: to inoculate Alexis with an incurable and loathsome disease. The objections to the plan are evident: the lingering sufferings of the victim himself, the something ugly about it all, its coarseness, and its somewhat too⁠—well, it’s not exactly clever; and finally, not even the illness of her husband would have deprived Tatiana of joy. One imperative demand of my problem was that Tatiana should know whose hand smote her husband. Only cowards shrink before obstacles; such as I they only draw on. + 

An accident, that great ally of able men, came to my help. And I wish to call your especial attention, gentlemen experts, to this detail: Precisely an accident, i.е., something external, not depending upon me, served as the basis and motive for what followed. In a newspaper I stumbled upon an item concerning a cashier, or some clerk or other, (the clipping is probably at my home or in the district attorney’s office), who simulated a fit of epilepsy and made a pretense of having lost money during the attack⁠—actually, of course, having stolen it. The clerk proved a coward, and confessed, revealing even the place of the stolen money; but the idea itself was not stupid but could be realized. To simulate insanity and kill Alexis in a moment of aberration, and then “to become cured”⁠—this was the plan which, conceived in a moment, needed much time and labor to assume a more definite and concrete form. At that time I was acquainted with psychiatry only superficially, like any physician not a specialist, and I spent about a year in consulting authorities and in reflection. In the end I became convinced that my plan was altogether feasible. First of all, the attention of the experts should be directed to hereditary influences⁠—and my heritage, to my great joy, seemed altogether consistent. My father was a drunkard; one uncle, his brother, ended his life in the hospital for the insane, and finally, my only sister, Anna, now dead, suffered from epilepsy. It is true, that on my mother’s side all were healthy; still a single drop of the poison of madness is sufficient to affect several generations. In physical health I resembled my mother, but I was possessed of some harmless eccentricities which could be depended upon to do me service. My relative unsociableness; which is simply an indication of a healthy mind, preferring to spend its time in solitude, with self and books, rather than upon idle and empty chatter; could be misinterpreted as an unhealthy misanthropy; my soberness of temperament⁠—non-seeking coarse, sensual pleasures⁠—as a manifestation of degeneracy. My stubbornness itself in reaching a once resolved upon goal⁠—plenty examples could be drawn upon in my rich life⁠—would have received, in the language of the experts, the terrible name of monomania, the domination of fixed ideas. + 

The ground for simulation was, therefore, unusually favorable⁠—the statics of madness were upon the face of things, it remained for dynamics to do the work. To the unintentional touches of nature it would be necessary to add two or three successful brush strokes to make the picture of madness complete. And I delineated very clearly to myself how it should all be, not with programmic thoughts, but with live images: even though I do not write stupid stories, I am far from deficient in artistic sense and imagination. + 

I saw that I was in a position to enact my role. A tendency to dissemble has been always in my character and was one of the forms whereby I strove to inner freedom. Yet in the gymnasia I simulated friendship: walked the corridor embracing someone, as do real friends, artfully making a frank, friendly utterance, and at the same time sounding the fellow. When the softened comrade revealed himself entirely, I cast aside from me his little soul and walked away with the proud consciousness of my own strength and inner freedom. This same duality maintained at home among kin; as a home of the Starover sect has special dishes for strangers, so I also had everything special for various people⁠—a special smile, special conversations and candor. I observed that people commit against themselves much that is stupid, injurious and unnecessary, and it seemed to me that if I should begin to tell the truth about myself, I would become, as they, and all this stupidity and superficiality would dominate me. + 

It has pleased me always to be deferential towards those whom I despised and to kiss those whom I abhorred, which made me free and a lord over others. Hence, I never was conscious of a lie before myself⁠—that more general and lowest form of human subjection. The more I lied to people the more unsparingly just I became before myself⁠—a dignity at which few have arrived. + 

Generally speaking, I think that within me was concealed an uncommon actor, capable of enacting the naturalness of the play⁠—reaching at times a complete merging with the character personified⁠—with an indefatigable, cold control of mind. Even when reading a book I would enter entirely into the psychology of the represented character, and⁠—would you believe it?⁠—grown man that I am, I have wept bitter tears over Uncle Tom’s Cabin. How wonderful this faculty of the supple, sharpened, cultured mind⁠—that of reincarnation! You live through a thousand lives; now you descend into the darkness of Hades; now you ascend the clear mountain heights; with one glance you observe the infinite universe. If man is destined to become a God, his throne shall be a book⁠ ⁠… + 

Yes. That is how it is. Incidentally, I wish to make a complaint about the rules here. They put me to bed when I wish to write, when I must write. The doors are permitted to remain open, and I am compelled to listen how some madman bawls. He bawls and he bawls: it is simply unendurable. Here you really can make a man go out of his mind, and then say that he was insane previously. And have they no extra candle that I must injure my eyes with electric light? + 

Well then. I once even thought of going on the stage, but cast aside the stupid idea: simulation, which everyone knows to be simulation, has little value. Likewise, the cheap laurels of the official actor on government pay attracted me but little. As to the quality of my art you can judge from the fact that many donkeys consider me even now the most sincere and veracious of men. And what is strange: I have been always successful in deceiving not so much the donkeys⁠—I said that in haste⁠—as especially clever people; on the other hand, there exist two classes of beings of a lower order, whose confidence I never could succeed in obtaining. I refer to women and dogs. + 

Do you know that the respectable Tatiana Nikolayevna never believed in my love, and does not yet believe in it, I think, even after I had killed her husband. According to her logic I did not love her, but killed Alexis because she loved him. And this nonsense, doubtless, seems to her sound and convincing. Yet she is a clever woman! + 

The role of a madman did not strike me as being very difficult of enactment. Some of the necessary directions I got from books; others I had to obtain⁠—like any actor worthy of the name⁠—through my own creative faculty; the rest had to be left to be recreated by the public itself, whose emotions had been developed through constant contact with books and the theatre, where, by means of two or three vague contours, it had been taught to recreate live types. There still remained certain gaps to be filled; there was the prospect of a stern and erudite investigation by experts to which I should be subjected, but I looked for no serious danger even here. The extensive realm of psychopathology has been so little explored; there is yet so much that is dark and accidental, so much freedom for the imagination and subjectivity, that I boldly committed my fate into your hands, gentlemen experts. I trust I have not offended you. I do not wish to reflect upon your scholarly authority, and am confident that you will coincide with me, as men accustomed to conscientious scientific thought. + 

… At last that fellow has ceased bawling. It is simply unendurable. + 

During the period that my plan still remained a project, a thought struck me, which hardly could have penetrated an insane mind. This thought was concerning the danger of my experiment. Do you comprehend? Madness is a fire dangerous for jesting. Having thrown a match into a powder magazine, one may feel greater safety than if but the slightest thought of madness should steal into one’s head. And I knew this, I knew⁠—yet did danger ever daunt a brave man? + 

Moreover, was I not conscious of my thought, firm and clear, as of hammered steel, and absolutely obedient to me? As a rapier of keen edge, it bent, pricked, bit, pierced through the web of facts; truly, as a serpent it glided noiselessly in unexplored and dark depths, concealed for ages from the light of day; I held its hilt in my hand; it was the iron hand of a deft and experienced fencer. How obedient, expeditious and rapid was my thought, and how I loved it, my slave, my terrible power, my sole treasure! + 

… He howls again, and I am unable to continue. How awful to hear a man howl. I have heard many terrible sounds, but none so terrible as this, none so awful. There is nothing it resembles⁠—it is the voice of a wild animal, passing through a human throat. It is something ferocious and frightened; free and yet piteous to abjectness. The mouth twists to one side, the muscles of the face become rigid, like ropes, the teeth show, doglike, and from the dark opening of the mouth issues forth this disgusting, bellowing, whistling, laughing, wailing sound⁠ ⁠… + 

Yes. Yes. Such was my idea. Incidentally you will direct your attention, doubtless, to my handwriting, and I request you not to attach significance to the fact that at times it trembles and seems to change. It is a long time since I have written; certain recent occurrences and insomnia have weakened me⁠—whence the hand trembles occasionally. It is something which used to occur even before. + 