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effort to remember the words, which sounded something like:
    One whole year his wife he stroked,
    Onewhole – year – hiswife – hestro-oked…
    Or, having woken up, again:
    Down the Civil Servants’ Road
    There he found his girl of old…
    But no one shared his happiness; indeed, his silent companion viewed all these sudden explosions with hostility and suspicion. There was yet another man in the den, who by his outward appearance could have been taken for a retired civil servant. He was sitting apart from the other men in front of his jug of vodka, from time to time taking a sip from his glass and looking around him. He also appeared to be in a state of some agitation.

CHAPTER II
    Raskolnikov was not accustomed to crowds and, as we have already said, had been avoiding all forms of society, particularly of late. Now, however, he had a sudden longing for company. Something new seemed to be accomplishing itself within him, and one of the things that went with it was a kind of craving for people. So tired was he after a whole month of concentrated depression and gloomy excitement that he wanted, if only for asingle moment, to get his breath back in another environment, no matter what it was, and, in spite of all the filth of his surroundings, he was now content to stay on sitting in the drinking den.
    The owner of the establishment was in another room, but he frequently entered the main one, coming down into it by way of some steps, whereupon the first thing one saw of him was his dandified blacked boots with their large, red, flapped tops. He was wearing a long-waisted poddyovka 1 and a hideously greasy black velvet waistcoat; he wore no cravat, and his entire face looked as though it had been lubricated with oil, like an iron lock. Behind the bar there was a boy of about fourteen, and there was also another, younger boy who took the drinks round when anyone ordered anything. On the bar there were sliced cucumbers, black sukhari and some cut-up pieces of fish; all of it smelt very bad. The place was suffocatingly hot, making it almost unbearable to sit there, and so saturated with the fumes of alcohol that the air on its own would have been enough to make a man drunk in five minutes.
    There are some encounters, even with people who are complete strangers to us, in which we begin to take an interest right from the very first glance, suddenly, before we have uttered a word. This was precisely the impression made on Raskolnikov by the customer who was sitting some distance away and who looked like a retired civil servant. Several times later on the young man would recall this first impression and would even ascribe it to foreknowledge. He kept glancing at the civil servant incessantly, no doubt because the official was staring persistently at him, and seemed very anxious to get into conversation with him. At the other people in the drinking den, including the owner, however, the official cast a look that seemed in some way habituated and even bored, containing a shade of haughty disdain, as though these were people of inferior social class and education, to whom he had nothing to say. He was a man already on the other side of fifty, of average height and stocky constitution, with hair that was turning grey and a large bald patch. His face had the swollen look that comes of constant drinking, yellow, almost greenish in colour, with puffy eyelidsthrough which his tiny, slitlike eyes shone, reddish and animated. But there was something very strange about him; his gaze displayed an enthusiasm that was positively luminous, and said that here there were most likely both sense and intelligence; but at the same time there was a flicker of something akin to madness. He was wearing an old and completely tattered black dress-coat which had shed all of its buttons except one. This one button was still managing to hang on somehow, and he had it fastened, evidently wishing to observe the proprieties. From under his nankeen waistcoat