“Serves him right!”
“A pickpocket I dare say.”
“Pretending to be drunk, for sure, and getting under the wheels on purpose; and you have to answer for him.”
“It’s a regular profession, that’s what it is.”
But while he stood at the railing, still looking angry and bewildered after the retreating carriage, and rubbing his back, he suddenly felt someone thrust money into his hand. He looked. It was an elderly woman in a kerchief and goatskin shoes, with a girl, probably her daughter, wearing a hat, and carrying a green parasol.
“Take it, my good man, in Christ’s name.”
He took it and they passed on. It was a piece of twenty kopecks. From his dress and appearance they might well have taken him for a beggar asking alms in the streets, and the gift of the twenty kopecks he doubtless owed to the blow, which made them feel sorry for him.
He closed his hand on the twenty kopecks, walked on for ten paces, and turned facing the Neva, looking towards the palace. The sky was without a cloud and the water was almost bright blue, which is so rare in the Neva. The cupola of the cathedral, which is seen at its best from the bridge about twenty paces from the chapel, glittered in the sunlight, and in the pure air every ornament on it could be clearly distinguished. The pain from the lash went off, and Raskolnikov forgot about it; one uneasy and not quite definite idea occupied him now completely. He stood still, and gazed long and intently into the distance; this spot was especially familiar to him. When he was attending the university, he had hundreds of times—generally on his way home—stood still on this spot, gazed at this truly magnificent spectacle and almost always marvelled at a vague