- cid
- bafkreibs2aacgbojnv2blebqokh7bfgwwb4lmlssxgykxgywxa32zhwxte
- content_type
- image/jpeg
- filename
- crimepunishment00dostiala_page_0010.jpg
- key
- pdf-page-1768922919366-fi68301834t
- page_number
- 10
- pdf_type
- born_digital
- size
- 228967
- text
- 2 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are
most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what
they fear most. . . . But I am talking too much. It's because I
chatter that I do nothing. Or perhaps it is that I chatter be-
cause Ido nothing. I've learned to chatter this last month,
lying for days together in my den thinking ... of Jack the
Giant-killer. Why am I going there now? Am I capable of
that? Is that serious? It is not serious at all. It's simply a fan-
tasy to amuse myself; a plaything! Yes, maybe it is a play-
thing."The heat in the street was terrible: and the airlessness, the
bustle and the plaster, scaffolding, bricks, and dust all about
him, and that special Petersburg stench, so familiar to all who
are unable to get out of town in summer — all worked painfully
upon the young man's already overwrought nerves. The insuf-
ferable stench from the pot-houses, which are particularly nu-
merous inthat part of the town, and the drunken men whom
he met continually, although it was a working day, completed
the revolting misery of the picture. An expression of the pro-
foundest disgust gleamed for a moment in the young man's
refined face. He was, by the way, exceptionally handsome,
above the average in height, slim, well-built, with beautiful
dark eyes and dark brown hair. Soon he sank into deep thought,
or more accurately speaking into a complete blankness of -^' .*;
he walked along not observing what was about him and not
caring to observe it. From time to time, he would mutter
something, from the habit of talking to himself, to which he
had just confessed. At these moments he would become con-
scious that his ideas were sometimes in a tangle and that he was
very weak; for two days he had scarcely tasted food.
He was so badly dressed that even a man accustomed to
shabbiness would have been ashamed to be seen in the street in
such rags. In that quarter of the town, however, scarcely any
short-coming in dress would have created surprise. Owing to
the proximity of the Hay Market, the number of establish-
ments ofbad character, the preponderance of the trading and
working class population crowded in these streets and alleys in
the heart of Petersburg, types so various were to be seen in the
streets that no figure, however queer, would have caused sur-
prise. But there was such accumulated bitterness and contempt
- text_extracted_at
- 2026-01-20T15:28:39.366Z
- text_extracted_by
- pdf-processor
- text_has_content
- true
- text_source
- born_digital
- uploaded
- true