“Believe me, you can speak openly to me as you would to yourself! Official duty is one thing but⁠ ⁠… you are thinking I meant to say friendship is quite another? No, you’re wrong! It’s not friendship, but the feeling of a man and a citizen, the feeling of humanity and of love for the Almighty. I may be an official, but I am always bound to feel myself a man and a citizen.⁠ ⁠… You were asking about Zametov. Zametov will make a scandal in the French style in a house of bad reputation, over a glass of champagne⁠ ⁠… that’s all your Zametov is good for! While I’m perhaps, so to speak, burning with devotion and lofty feelings, and besides I have rank, consequence, a post! I am married and have children, I fulfil the duties of a man and a citizen, but who is he, may I ask? I appeal to you as a man ennobled by education⁠ ⁠… Then these midwives, too, have become extraordinarily numerous.”

Raskolnikov raised his eyebrows inquiringly. The words of Ilya Petrovitch, who had obviously been dining, were for the most part a stream of empty sounds for him. But some of them he understood. He looked at him inquiringly, not knowing how it would end.