“A cock? Did you say a cock?” shouted the commissariat clerk.

Katerina Ivanovna did not vouchsafe a reply. She sighed, lost in thought.

“No doubt you think, like everyone, that I was too severe with him,” she went on, addressing Raskolnikov. “But that’s not so! He respected me, he respected me very much! He was a kindhearted man! And how sorry I was for him sometimes! He would sit in a corner and look at me, I used to feel so sorry for him, I used to want to be kind to him and then would think to myself: ‘Be kind to him and he will drink again,’ it was only by severity that you could keep him within bounds.”

“Yes, he used to get his hair pulled pretty often,” roared the commissariat clerk again, swallowing another glass of vodka.

“Some fools would be the better for a good drubbing, as well as having their hair pulled. I am not talking of my late husband now!” Katerina Ivanovna snapped at him.