the staircase, but the door on to the stairs was not closed. From the inner rooms clouds of tobacco smoke floated in, she kept coughing, but did not close the door. The youngest child, a girl of six, was asleep, sitting curled up on the floor with her head on the sofa. A boy a year older stood crying and shaking in the corner, probably he had just had a beating. Beside him stood a girl of nine years old, tall and thin, wearing a thin and ragged chemise with an ancient cashmere pelisse flung over her bare shoulders, long outgrown and barely reaching her knees. Her arm, as thin as a stick, was round her brother’s neck. She was trying to comfort him, whispering something to him, and doing all she could to keep him from whimpering again. At the same time her large dark eyes, which looked larger still from the thinness of her frightened face, were watching her mother with alarm. Marmeladov did not enter the door, but dropped on his knees in the very doorway, pushing Raskolnikov in front of him. The woman seeing a stranger stopped indifferently facing him, coming to herself for a moment and apparently wondering what he had come for. But evidently she decided that he was going into the next room, as he had to pass through hers to get there. Taking no further notice of him, she walked towards the outer door to close it and uttered a sudden scream on seeing her husband on his knees in the doorway.
—¡Ah! —exclamó con frenesí—, ¡ha vuelto! ¡El criminal! ¡el monstruo! … ¿Y dónde está el dinero? ¿Qué tienes en el bolsillo, enséñamelo! ¡Y toda tu ropa es distinta! ¿Dónde está tu ropa? ¿Dónde está el dinero? ¡Habla!
Y ella se puso a registrarlo. Marmeladov, sumisa y obedientemente, levantó ambos brazos para facilitarle el registro. No había ni un céntimo.
—¿Dónde está el dinero? —gritó ella—: ¡Dios nos ampare, se lo habrá bebido todo! ¡Quedaban doce rublos de plata en el cofre!, y, mont cólera, lo agarró de los cabellos y lo arrastró hasta la habitación. Marmeladov secundó sus esfuerzos arrastrándose dócilmente sobre las rodillas.