I offered him a sip of water; I had never seen him like this before. All the while he was talking he kept running from one end of the room to the other, but he suddenly stood still before me in an extraordinary attitude.

“Can you suppose,” he began again with hysterical haughtiness, looking me up and down, “can you imagine that I, Stepan Verhovensky, cannot find in myself the moral strength to take my bag⁠—my beggar’s bag⁠—and laying it on my feeble shoulders to go out at the gate and vanish forever, when honour and the great principle of independence demand it! It’s not the first time that Stepan Verhovensky has had to repel despotism by moral force, even though it be the despotism of a crazy woman, that is, the most cruel and insulting despotism which can exist on earth, although you have, I fancy, forgotten yourself so much as to laugh at my phrase, my dear sir! Oh, you don’t believe that I can find the moral strength in myself to end my life as a tutor in a merchant’s family, or to die of hunger in a ditch! Answer me, answer at once; do you believe it, or don’t you believe it?”