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- 1^ CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Stopped at Cyrus of Persia. Since she has attained years of ma-
turity, she has read other books of romantic tendency and of
late she has read with great interest a book she got through Mr.
Lebeziatnikov, Lewes' Physiology — do you know it? — and even
recounted extracts from it to us: and that's the whole of her
education. And now may I venture to address you, honoured sir,
on my own account with a private question. Do you suppose
that a respectable poor girl can earn much by honest work? Not
fifteen farthings a day can she earn, if she is respectable and has
no special talent and that without putting her work down for
an instant! And what's more, Ivan Ivanitch Klopstock the civil
counsellor — have you heard of him? — has not to this day paid
her for the half-dozen linen shirts she made him and drove her
roughly away, stamping and reviling her, on the pretext that
the shirt collars were not made like the pattern and were put in
askew. And there are the little ones hungry. . . . And Katerina
Ivanovna walking up and down and wringing her hands, her
cheeks flushed red, as they always are in that disease: 'Here you
live with us,' says she, 'you eat and drink and are kept warm and
you do nothing to help.' And much she gets to eat and drink
when there is not a crust for the little ones for three days! I was
lying at the time . . . well, what of it! I was lying drunk and
I heard my Sonia speaking (she is a gentle creature with a soft
little voice . . . fair hair and such a pale, thin little face). She
said: 'Katerina Ivanovna, am I really to do a thing like that?"
And Darya Frantsovna, a woman of evil character and very
well known to the police, had two or three times tried to get
at her through the landlady. 'And why not?' said Katerina
Ivanovna with a jeer, 'you are something mighty precious to be
so careful of!' But don't blame her, don't blame her, honoured
sir, don't blame her! She was not herself when she spoke, but
driven to distraction by her illness and the crying of the hungry
children; and it was said more to wound her than anything else.
. . . For that's Katerina Ivanovna's character, and when children
cry, even from hunger, she falls to beating them at once. At six
o'clock I saw Sonia get up, put on her kerchief and her cape, and
go out of the room and about nine o'clock she came back. She
walked straight up to Katerina Ivanovna and she laid thirty
roubles on the table before her in silence. She did not utter a
word, she did not even look at her, she simply picked up our
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