Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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page 36 of 736 (04%)
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to his sister in violent terror, almost in a fit. The eldest girl was
shaking like a leaf. "He's drunk it! he's drunk it all," the poor woman screamed in despair--"and his clothes are gone! And they are hungry, hungry!"--and wringing her hands she pointed to the children. "Oh, accursed life! And you, are you not ashamed?"--she pounced all at once upon Raskolnikov--"from the tavern! Have you been drinking with him? You have been drinking with him, too! Go away!" The young man was hastening away without uttering a word. The inner door was thrown wide open and inquisitive faces were peering in at it. Coarse laughing faces with pipes and cigarettes and heads wearing caps thrust themselves in at the doorway. Further in could be seen figures in dressing gowns flung open, in costumes of unseemly scantiness, some of them with cards in their hands. They were particularly diverted, when Marmeladov, dragged about by his hair, shouted that it was a consolation to him. They even began to come into the room; at last a sinister shrill outcry was heard: this came from Amalia Lippevechsel herself pushing her way amongst them and trying to restore order after her own fashion and for the hundredth time to frighten the poor woman by ordering her with coarse abuse to clear out of the room next day. As he went out, Raskolnikov had time to put his hand into his pocket, to snatch up the coppers he had received in exchange for his rouble in the tavern and to lay them unnoticed on the window. Afterwards on the stairs, he changed his mind and would have gone back. "What a stupid thing I've done," he thought to himself, "they have Sonia and I want it myself." But reflecting that it would be impossible to take it back now and that in any case he would not have taken it, he |
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