Part 4, Chapter 1 — Svidrigailov leaves; the meeting with Luzhin set

The chapter opens immediately after the last. Svidrigailov is still in the garret. He talks, with a casual eloquence Raskolnikov finds harder and harder to listen to, about a question that interests him: what eternity might be like. We picture it as something grand, he says, but perhaps it is much smaller. Perhaps eternity is a single small smoky room, like the bathhouse of a country estate, with spiders in every corner — and that is all. He laughs at his own image. Raskolnikov stares at him.

Svidrigailov returns to his point. He wants Raskolnikov to deliver to Dunya the offer of ten thousand roubles, no strings, and to ask her to grant him a brief private interview before her marriage. He gives Raskolnikov his current address — a flat near the canal — and rises to leave. He bows almost formally in the doorway. He goes down the staircase. Raskolnikov, alone again, registers that the man has spoken to him for an hour as if to an equal, and that the equality consists of mutual recognition that they have both crossed lines no other character in the novel has crossed.

Razumikhin arrives within the half-hour. The two set out for Bakaleyev's house. The plan, agreed on the way, is to be present that evening when Luzhin makes his next formal visit to the women — the visit Luzhin has insisted on as a precondition of the engagement — and to break the engagement publicly in front of all parties. They arrive. Pulcheria Alexandrovna and Dunya are anxious. Raskolnikov tells them about Svidrigailov's visit and his offer. Dunya is appalled that her brother has been visited by Svidrigailov at all. The chapter ends with the household waiting for eight o'clock and Luzhin's arrival.