we’ll go on! I am a luckless fool, I am unworthy of you and drunk... and I am ashamed... I am not worthy to love you, but to do homage to you is the duty of every man who is not a perfect beast! And I’ve done homage... Here are your lodgings, and for that alone Rodya was right in driving your Pyotr Petrovitch away... How dare he! how dare he put you in such lodgings! It’s a scandal! Do you know the sort of people they take in here? And you his betrothed! You are his betrothed? Yes? Well, then, I’ll tell you, your fianc� is a scoundrel.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Razumihin, you are forgetting...” Pulcheria Alexandrovna was beginning.

“Yes, yes, you are right, I did forget myself, I am ashamed of it,” Razumihin made haste to apologise. “But... but you can’t