you are smoking, so
you are wanting in politeness to the whole company." As he said this,
Raskolnikoff felt an inexpressible delight at his maliciousness. The
clerk looked up with a smile. The choleric officer was clearly
nonplused.

"That is not your business, sir," he cried at last, unnaturally loud.
"Make the necessary declaration. Show him, Alexander Gregorivitch.
Complaints have been made about you! You don't pay your debts! You
know how to fly the kite evidently!"

Raskolnikoff did not listen, but greedily seized the paper. He read it
through more than once, and could make nothing of it. "What is this?"
he asked of the clerk.

"It is a writ for recovery on a note of hand of yours. Please write,"
said the clerk.

"Write what?" asked he rudely.

"As I dictate."

The clerk stood near and dictated to him the usual form of
declaration: that he was unable to pay, that he would not quit the
capital, dispose of his goods in any way, etc., etc.

"You cannot write, your pen is falling from your fingers," said the
clerk, and he looked him in the face. "Are you ill?"

"Yes, my head swims. Go on."

"That is all. Now sign it."

Raskolnikoff let fall the pen, and seemed as if about to rise and go;
but, instead of doing so, he laid both elbows on the table and
supported his head with his hands. A new idea formed in his mind: to
rise immediately, go straight to Nicodemus Thomich the ward officer
and tell him all that had occurred; then to accompany him to his room,
and show him all the things hidden away in the wall behind the paper.
His desire to do all this was of such strength that he got up from the
table to carry his design into execution. "Reflect, reflect a moment!"
ran in his head. "No, better not think, get it off my shoulders."
Suddenly he stood still as if shot. Nicodemus Thomich was at this
moment hotly discussing something with Elia Petrovitch, the inspector
of police, and the words caught Raskolnikoff's anxious attention. He
listened.

"It cannot be, they will both be released. In the first place, all is
contradictory. Consider. Why did they call the porter if it were their
work? To denounce themselves? Or out of cunning? Not at all, that
would be too much! Besides, did not the porter see the student
Pestriakoff at the very gate just as he came in, and he stood there
some time with three friends who had accompanied him. And Koch: was he
not below in the silversmith's for half an hour before he went u