Fyodor Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment

PART I 2. CHAPTER II (continued)

Marmeladov stopped short, as though his voice had failed him. Then he hurriedly filled his glass, drank, and cleared his throat.

"Since then, sir," he went on after a brief pause--"Since then, owing to an unfortunate occurrence and through information given by evil-intentioned persons--in all which Darya Frantsovna took a leading part on the pretext that she had been treated with want of respect--since then my daughter Sofya Semyonovna has been forced to take a yellow ticket, and owing to that she is unable to go on living with us. For our landlady, Amalia Fyodorovna would not hear of it (though she had backed up Darya Frantsovna before) and Mr. Lebeziatnikov too . . . hm. . . . All the trouble between him and Katerina Ivanovna was on Sonia's account. At first he was for making up to Sonia himself and then all of a sudden he stood on his dignity: 'how,' said he, 'can a highly educated man like me live in the same rooms with a girl like that?' And Katerina Ivanovna would not let it pass, she stood up for her . . . and so that's how it happened. And Sonia comes to us now, mostly after dark; she comforts Katerina Ivanovna and gives her all she can. . . . She has a room at the Kapernaumovs' the tailors, she lodges with them; Kapernaumov is a lame man with a cleft palate and all of his numerous family have cleft palates too. And his wife, too, has a cleft palate. They all live in one room, but Sonia has her own, partitioned off. . . . Hm . . . yes . . . very poor people and all with cleft palates . . . yes. Then I got up in the morning, and put on my rags, lifted up my hands to heaven and set off to his excellency Ivan Afanasyvitch. His excellency Ivan Afanasyvitch, do you know him? No? Well, then, it's a man of God you don't know. He is wax . . . wax before the face of the Lord; even as wax melteth! . . . His eyes were dim when he heard my story. 'Marmeladov, once already you have deceived my expectations . . . I'll take you once more on my own responsibility'--that's what he said, 'remember,' he said, 'and now you can go.' I kissed the dust at his feet--in thought only, for in reality he would not have allowed me to do it, being a statesman and a man of modern political and enlightened ideas. I returned home, and when I announced that I'd been taken back into the service and should receive a salary, heavens, what a to-do there was . . .!"