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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.