“He’s going to Jerusalem, brothers, and saying goodbye to his children and his country. He’s bowing down to all the world and kissing the great city of St. Petersburg and its pavement,” added a workman who was a little drunk.
“Quite a young man, too!” observed a third.
“And a gentleman,” someone observed soberly.
“There’s no knowing who’s a gentleman and who isn’t nowadays.”
These exclamations and remarks checked Raskolnikov, and the words, “I am a murderer,” which were perhaps on the point of dropping from his lips, died away. He bore these remarks quietly, however, and, without looking round, he turned down a street leading to the police office. He had a glimpse of something on the way which did not surprise him; he had felt that it must be so. The second time he bowed down in the Hay Market he saw, standing fifty paces from him on the left, Sonia. She was hiding from him behind one of the wooden shanties in the marketplace. She had followed him then on his painful way! Raskolnikov at that moment felt and knew once for all that Sonia was with him forever and would follow him to the ends of the earth, wherever fate might take him. It wrung his heart … but he was just reaching the fatal place.
He went into the yard fairly resolutely. He had to mount to the third storey.
“I shall be some time going up,” he thought.
He felt as though the fateful moment was still far off, as though he had plenty of time left for consideration.
Again the same rubbish, the same eggshells lying about on the spiral stairs, again the open doors of the flats, again the same kitchens and the same fumes and stench coming from them. Raskolnikov had not been