CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
413
And Bianchon concludes his argument in favor of sparing
the Chinaman by warning Rastignac against a rash solution
of the problem posed at "the entrance of life," against the at–
tempt to cut that Gordian knot with
his
sword.
"If
you mean
to act thus," he says, "you must be an Alexander or else you
will be sent to the gallows." Unlike Rastignac, however, Dos–
toevsky's hero confides in no one and sets out to cut the Gordian
knot without in the least resembling an Alexander or a Napo–
leon, though hoping that
his
crime might possibly prove him
to belong to their superior breed.
It seems to me, too, that Dostoevsky drew on
Le Pere
Goriot
for far more than the germinal anecdote of the Chinese
Mandarin. Svidrigailov's posture vis-a.-vis Raskolnikov is in
certain respects strongly reminiscent of Vautrin's relation to
Rastignac in Balzac's novel. We know that Svidrigailov is miss–
ing from the early drafts of
Crime and Punishment,
and it is
not improbable that when it came to composing the final ver–
sion Dostoevsky decided to introduce a character playing
Vautrin to his own Rastignac. Consider that both Vautrin and
Svidrigailov are older men who assume the role of mentors in
the ways of the world, that both have insinuating manners and
appear cheerful and obliging when it suits them, that both are
sexual deviants (the Frenchman is
<Ii
homosexual and the Rus–
sian has very special tastes in underage girls), and that both
are predatory types who make no secret of their immorality.
Moreover, some of the ideas that Vautrin communicates to
Rastignac turn up in Raskolnikov's thought virtually without
modification, as if he had absorbed the lesson addressed to his
French prototype. Vautrin declares, for instance, that there are
but two courses open to
<Ii
man, blind obedience or open revolt,
and that he can make his way in the world either "by the
splendor of genius or the adroitness of corruption. He must
burst like a cannon-ball into the ranks of his fellow-men, or
he must move among them like the pestilence. Honesty is of
no use. Men yield to the power of genius; they hate and calum-
