Raskolnikoff staggered for a moment, but quickly recovered. The visit did not dismay him. "Perhaps this is the finale, but why does he come upon me like a cat, with muffled tread? Can he have been listening?" "I have been thinking for a long time of calling on you, and, as I was passing, I thought I might drop in for a few minutes. Where are you off to? I won't detain you long, only the time to smoke a cigarette, if you will allow me?" "Be seated, Porphyrius Petrovitch, be seated," said Raskolnikoff to his guest, assuming such an air of friendship that he himself could have been astonished at his own affability. Thus the victim, in fear and trembling for his life, at last does not feel the knife at his throat. He seated himself in front of Porphyrius, and gazed upon him without flinching. Porphyrius blinked a little, and commenced rolling his cigarette. "Speak! speak!" Raskolnikoff mutely cried in his heart. "What are you going to say?" "Oh, these cigarettes!" Porphyrius Petrovitch commenced at last, "they'll be the death of me, and yet I can't give them up! I am always coughing--a tickling in the throat is setting in, and I am asthmatical. I have been to consult Botkine of late; he examines every one of his patients at least half an hour at a time. After having thumped and bumped me about for ever so long, he told me, amongst other things: 'Tobacco is a bad thing for you--your lungs are affected.' That's all very well, but how am I to go without my tobacco? What am I to use as a substitute? Unfortunately, I can't drink, hah! hah! Everything is relative, I suppose, Rodion Romanovitch?" "There, he is beginning with some more of his silly palaver!" Raskolnikoff growled to himself. His late interview with the magistrate suddenly occurred to him, at which anger affected his mind. "Did you know, by-the-by, that I called on you the night before last?" continued Porphyrius, looking about. "I was in this very room. I happened to be coming this way, just as I am going to-day, and the idea struck me to drop in. Your door was open--I entered, hoping to see you in a few minutes, but went away again without leaving my name with your servant. Do you never shut your place?" Raskolnikoff's face grew gloomier and gloomier. Porphyrius Petrovitch evidently guessed what the latter was thinking about. "You did not expect visitors, Rodion Romanovitch?" said Porphyrius, smiling graciously.