"You wish to know why I tell you this? Because I look upon it as a sacred duty to explain my line of action. Because I subjected you, as I now fully acknowledge, to cruel torture. I do not wish, my dear Rodion, that you should take me for an ogre. Hence, by way of justification, I purpose explaining to you what led up to it. I think it needless to account for the nature and origin of the reports which circulated originally, as also why you were connected with them. There was, however, one circumstance, a purely fortuitous one, and which need not now be mentioned, which aroused my suspicions. From these reports and accidental circumstances, the same conclusion became evolved for me. I make this statement in all sincerity, for it was I who first implicated you with the matter. I do not in any way notice the particulars notified on the articles found at the old woman's. That, and several others of a similar nature, are of no kind of importance. At the same time, I was aware of the incident which had happened at the police office. What occurred there has been told me with the utmost accuracy by some one who had been closely connected with it, and who, most unwittingly, had brought things to a head. Very well, then, how, under such circumstances, could a man help becoming biased? 'One swallow does not make a summer,' as the English proverb says: a hundred suppositions do not constitute one single proof. Reason speaks in that way, I admit, but let a man try to subject prejudice to reason. An examining magistrate, after all, is only a man--hence given to prejudice.