his best to address Ilya Petrovitch also, though the latter persistently appeared to be rummaging among his papers and to be contemptuously oblivious of him. “Allow me to explain that I have been living with her for nearly three years and at first … at first … for why should I not confess it, at the very beginning I promised to marry her daughter, it was a verbal promise, freely given … she was a girl … indeed, I liked her, though I was not in love with her … a youthful affair in fact … that is, I mean to say, that my landlady gave me credit freely in those days, and I led a life of … I was very heedless …”
“Nobody asks you for these personal details, sir, we’ve no time to waste,” Ilya Petrovitch interposed roughly and with a note of triumph; but Raskolnikov stopped him hotly, though he suddenly found it exceedingly difficult to speak.
“But excuse me, excuse me. It is for me to explain … how it all happened … In my turn … though I agree with you … it is unnecessary. But a year ago, the girl died of typhus. I remained lodging there as before, and when my landlady moved into her present quarters, she said to me … and in a friendly way … that she had complete trust in me, but still, would I not give her an I.O.U. for one hundred and fifteen roubles, all the debt I owed her. She said if only I gave her that, she would trust me again, as much as I liked, and that she would never, never—those were her own words—make use of that I.O.U. till I could pay of myself … and now, when I have lost my lessons and have nothing to eat, she takes action against me. What am I to say to that?”
“All these affecting details are no business of ours.” Ilya Petrovitch interrupted rudely. “You must give a written undertaking but as for your love affairs and all these tragic events, we have nothing to do with that.”
“Come now … you are harsh,” muttered Nikodim Fomitch, sitting down at the table and also beginning to write. He looked a little ashamed.
“Write!” said the head clerk to Raskolnikov.