“And what a regiment it was, too,” cried Ilya Petrovitch, much gratified at this agreeable banter, though still sulky.
Raskolnikov had a sudden desire to say something exceptionally pleasant to them all. “Excuse me, Captain,” he began easily, suddenly addressing Nikodim Fomitch, “will you enter into my position?... I am ready to ask pardon, if I have been ill-mannered. I am a poor student, sick and shattered (shattered was the word he used) by poverty. I am not studying, because I cannot keep myself now, but I shall get money.... I have a mother and sister in the province of X. They will send it to me, and I will pay. My landlady is a good-hearted woman, but she is so exasperated at my having lost my lessons, and not paying her for the last four months, that she does not even send up my dinner... and I don’t understand this I O U at all. She is asking me to pay her on this I O U. How am I to pay her? Judge for yourselves!...”
“But that is not our business, you know,” the head clerk was observing.
“Yes, yes. I perfectly agree with you. But allow me to explain...” Raskolnikov put in again, still addressing Nikodim Fomitch, but trying his best to address Ilya Petrovitch also, though the latter persistently appeared to be rummaging among his papers and to be contemptuously oblivious of him. “Allow me to explain that I have been living with her for nearly three years and at first... at first... for why should I not confess it, at the very beginning I promised to marry her daughter, it was a verbal promise, freely given... she was a girl... indeed, I liked her, though I was not in love with her... a youthful affair in fact... that is, I mean to say, that my landlady gave me credit freely in those days, and I led a life of... I was very heedless...”
“Nobody asks you for these personal details, sir, we’ve no time to waste,” Ilya Petrovitch interposed roughly and with a note of triumph; but Raskolnikov stopped him hotly, though he suddenly found it exceedingly difficult to speak.
“But excuse me, excuse me. It is for me to explain... how it all happened... In my turn... though I agree with you... it is unnecessary. But a year ago, the girl died of typhus. I remained lodging there as before, and when my landlady moved into her present quarters, she said to me... and in a friendly way... that she had complete trust in me, but still, would I not give her an I O U for one hundred and fifteen roubles, all the debt I owed her. She said if only I gave her that, she would trust me again, as much as I liked, and that she would never, never—those were her own words—make use of that I O U till I could pay of myself... and now, when I have lost my lessons and have nothing to eat, she takes action against me. What am I to say to that?”
“All these affecting details are no business of ours.” Ilya Petrovitch interrupted rudely. “You must give a written undertaking but as for your love affairs and all these tragic events, we have nothing to do with that.”
“Come now... you are harsh,” muttered Nikodim Fomitch, sitting down at the table and also beginning to write. He looked a little ashamed.
“Write!” said the head clerk to Raskolnikov.
“Write what?” the latter asked, gruffly.