“That’s the very advice Pyotr Stepanovitch gives me, in the very same words, for he’s uncommonly mean and hardhearted about helping a fellow-creature. And what’s more, he hasn’t a ha’p’orth of belief in the Heavenly Creator, who made us out of earthly clay; but he says it’s all the work of nature even to the last beast. He doesn’t understand either that with our way of life it’s impossible for us to get along without friendly assistance. If you begin to talk to him he looks like a sheep at the water; it makes one wonder. Would you believe, at Captain Lebyadkin’s, out yonder, whom your honour’s just been visiting, when he was living at Filipov’s, before you came, the door stood open all night long. He’d be drunk and sleeping like the dead, and his money dropping out of his pockets all over the floor. I’ve chanced to see it with my own eyes, for in our way of life it’s impossible to live without assistance.⁠ ⁠…”

“How do you mean with your own eyes? Did you go in at night then?”

“Maybe I did go in, but no one knows of it.”

“Why didn’t you kill him?”