but had
forgotten where. One beggar was quarrelling with another, and a man dead
drunk was lying right across the road. Raskolnikov joined the throng of
women, who were talking in husky voices. They were bare-headed and wore
cotton dresses and goatskin shoes. There were women of forty and some
not more than seventeen; almost all had blackened eyes.

He felt strangely attracted by the singing and all the noise and
uproar in the saloon below.... someone could be heard within dancing
frantically, marking time with his heels to the sounds of the guitar
and of a thin falsetto voice singing a jaunty air. He listened intently,
gloomily and dreamily, bending down at the entrance and peeping
inquisitively in from the pavement.

"Oh, my handsome soldier Don't beat me for nothing,"

trilled the thin voice of the singer. Raskolnikov felt a great desire to
make out what he was singing, as though everything depended on that.

"Shall I go in?" he thought. "They are laughing. From drink. Shall I get
drunk?"

"Won't you come in?" one of the women asked him. Her voice was
still musical and less thick than the others, she was young and not
repulsive--the only one of the group.

"Why, she's pretty," he said, drawing himself up and looking at her.

She smiled, much pleased at the compliment.

"You're very nice looking yourself," she said.

"Isn't he thin though!" observed another woman in a deep bass. "Have you
just come out of a hospital?"

"They're all generals' daughters, it seems, but they have all snub
noses," interposed a tipsy peasant with a sly smile on his face, wearing
a loose coat. "See how jolly they are."

"Go along with you!"

"I'll go, sweetie!"

And he darted down into the saloon below. Raskolnikov moved on.

"I say, sir," the girl shouted after him.

"What is it?"

She hesitated.

"I'll always be pleased to spend an hour with you, kind gentleman, but
now I feel shy. Give me six copecks for a drink, there's a nice young
man!"

Raskolnikov gave her what came first--fifteen copecks.

"Ah, what a good-natured gentleman!"

"What's your name?"

"Ask for Duclida."

"Well, that's too much," one of the women observed, shaking her head
at Duclida. "I don't know how you can ask like that. I believe I should
drop with shame...."

Raskolnikov looked curiously at the speaker. She was a pock-marked wench
of thirty, covered with bruises, with her upper lip swollen. She made
her criticism quietly and earnestl