never rose from beneath the weight of horror and hopelessness that
hangs over offenders against the Great White Czar. Dostoyevsky,
sentenced as a criminal, herded with criminals, really BECAME a
criminal in literary imagination. Add to this a minute
observation, a marvelous memory, ardent political convictions--and
we can understand why the story here, with others of his, is taken
as a scientific text by criminologists.--EDITOR.)


One sultry evening early in July a young man emerged from the small
furnished lodging he occupied in a large five-storied house in the
Pereoulok S----, and turned slowly, with an air of indecision,
toward the K---- bridge. He was fortunate enough not to meet his
landlady on the stairs. She occupied the floor beneath him, and
her kitchen, with its usually open door, was entered from the
staircase. Thus, whenever the young man went out, he found himself
obliged to pass under the enemy's fire, which always produced a
morbid terror, humiliating him and making him knit his brows. He
owed her some money and felt afraid of encountering her.

It was not that he had been terrified or crushed by misfortune, but
that for some time past he had fallen into a state of nervous
depression akin to hypochondria. He had withdrawn from society and
shut himself up, till he was ready to shun, not merely his
landlady, but every human face. Poverty had once weighed him down,
though, of late, he had lost his sensitiveness on that score. He
had given up all his daily occupations. In his heart of hearts he
laughed scornfully at his landlady and the extremities to which she
might proceed. Still, to be waylaid on the stairs, to have to
listen to all her jargon, hear her demands, threats, and