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protruded a white dicky, all crumpled, splashed and stained. He was clean-shaven, in the manner appropriate to government officials, but it must have been a long time since his last shave, for a thick, greyish stubble had begun to appear on his features. There was in his manner, too, something that bespoke the solid, dependable air of the civil servant. He was, however, in a state of agitation; he kept ruffling his hair and from time to time would prop his head in both hands as if in despair, placing his threadbare elbows on the splashed and sticky table. At last he looked straight at Raskolnikov and said, loudly and firmly:
    ‘My dear sir, may I make so bold as to address you with some polite conversation? For although you are not in a condition of eminence, experience tells me that you are a man of education, unhabituated to the beverage. I personally have always respected education united with the feelings of the heart, and am, if I may so inform you, a titular councillor. Marmeladov – such is my name; titular councillor. Dare I inquire whether you yourself have been working in the service?’
    ‘No, I'm studying…’ the young man answered, rather surprised both at the speaker's peculiarly flowery tone and at being spoken to in such a direct, point-blank manner. In spite of his recent momentary desire for any kind of contact with people, at the first word that was actually addressed to him he suddenly felt his customary irritable and unpleasant sense of revulsion towards any stranger who touched, or merely attempted to touch, his personal individuality.
    ‘So you're a student, or an ex-student!’ the civil servant cried. ‘I knew it! Experience, dear sir, repeated experience!’ And heput a finger to his forehead as a token of bravado. ‘You've been a student or have trodden the path of learning! But if you will permit me…’ He rose to his feet, swayed slightly, picked up his jug and glass, and came over and sat down at the young man's table, slightly to one side of him. He was intoxicated, but he spoke volubly and with eloquence, only on occasion losing his thread slightly and slurring his speech. He pounced upon Raskolnikov avidly, as though he had not spoken to anyone for a whole month, either.
    ‘My dear respected sir,’ he began with almost ceremonial formality, ‘poverty is not a sin – that is a true saying. I know that drunkenness is not a virtue, either, and that's an even truer saying. But destitution, dear sir, destitution – that is a sin. When a man is poor he may still preserve the nobility of his inborn feelings, but when he's destitute he never ever can. If a man's destitute he isn't even driven out with a stick, he's swept out of human society with a broom, to make it as insulting as possible; and that is as it should be, for I will admit that when I'm destitute I'm the first to insult myself. Hence the beverage! Dear sir, a month ago Mr Lebezyatnikov gave my lady-wife a most unmerciful beating, and that's not quite the same as if he'd given it to me, now, is it? Do you take my meaning, sir? Permit me to ask you another question, sir: have you ever spent the night on the Neva, on the hay barges?’ 2
    ‘No, I haven't had occasion to,’ Raskolnikov replied. ‘What are you driving at?’
    ‘Well, sir, that's where I've just come from, this night will be the fifth I've spent there…’
    He poured himself another glass, drank it, and paused for reflection. The odd wisp of hay could indeed be seen sticking to his clothes; there were even some in his hair. It looked highly probable that for five days he had neither undressed nor washed. His hands, in particular, were filthy – red and oleaginous, with black fingernails.
    His conversation seemed to be arousing general, though indolent, attention. The boys behind the bar had begun to snigger. The owner, it appeared, had come down from his upstairs room especially in order to listen to the ‘funny man’,and had sat down some distance away,