sat on the bench to “catch the favorable moment,” as he expressed it. Profound dejection clung about his soul like a heavy mist. A profound, intense dejection! He sat thinking, but could reach no conclusion. The candle burnt dimly, a cricket chirped; it became insufferably close in the overheated room. He suddenly pictured the garden, the path behind the garden, the door of his father’s house mysteriously opening and Grushenka running in. He leapt up from the bench.
“It’s a tragedy!” he said, grinding his teeth.
Mechanically he went up to the sleeping man and looked in his face. He was a lean, middle-aged peasant, with a very long face, flaxen curls, and a long, thin, reddish beard, wearing a blue cotton shirt and a black waistcoat, from the pocket of which peeped the chain of a silver watch.
Mitya looked at his face with intense hatred, and for some unknown reason his curly hair particularly irritated him.
What was insufferably humiliating was, that after leaving things of such importance and making such sacrifices, he, Mitya, utterly worn out, should with business of such urgency be standing over this dolt on whom his whole fate depended, while he snored as though there were nothing the matter, as though he’d dropped from another planet.
“Oh, the irony of fate!” cried Mitya, and, quite losing his head, he fell again to rousing the tipsy peasant. He roused him with a sort of ferocity, pulled at him, pushed him, even beat him; but after five minutes of vain exertions, he returned to his bench in helpless despair, and sat down.
“Stupid! Stupid!” cried Mitya. “And how dishonorable it all is!” something made him add.