Crime and Punishment

On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which helodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge. He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady on the staircase. His garret was under the roofof a high, five-storied house and was more like a cupboard than a room. The landlady who providedhim with garret, dinners, and attendance, lived on the floor below, and every time he went out hewas obliged to pass her kitchen, the door of which invariably stood open. And each time he passed, the young man had a sick, frightened feeling, which made him scowl and feel ashamed. He washopelessly in debt to his landlady, and was afraid of meeting her. This was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite the contrary; but for some time past hehad been in an overstrained irritable condition, verging on hypochondria. He had become socompletely absorbed in himself, and isolated from his fellows that he dreaded meeting, not only hislandlady, but anyone at all. He was crushed by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had of lateceased to weigh upon him. He had given up attending to matters of practical importance; he had lostall desire to do so. Nothing that any landlady could do had a real terror for him. But to be stoppedon the stairs, to be forced to listen to her trivial, irrelevant gossip, to pestering demands forpayment, threats and complaints, and to rack his brains for excuses, to prevaricate, to lie-no, ratherthan that, he would creep down the stairs like a cat and slip out unseen