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Two friends one a fat man and the other a thin man met at the Nikolaevsky station. The fat man had just dined in the station and his greasy lips shone like ripe cherries. He smelt of sherry and fleur d'orange. The thin man had just slipped out of the train and was laden with portmanteaus, bundles, and bandboxes. He smelt of ham and coffee grounds.

My ticket, for which they asked me 12,000 rubles, was obtained through the cook's sweetheart, and I left Petrograd on the 6th for Moscow on the usual 12:30, and arrived uneventfully at the depot in Moscow next morning at about 10:30. On the stairs of the Nikolaevsky depot I stopped. Where was I going? In fact I had never thought of it. I had no place, no destination, no desires nothing.

And opportunely a little boat appeared: he lifted his foot to get into it and though through clumsiness he stumbled and hurt himself rather badly, so that for some time he did not know where anything was, yet he managed it and getting into the boat, floated on the big river, which, as the River of Time, flows to Constantinople in the map on the walls of the Nikolaevsky High School.

No answer. "Well, confound you then!" But Raskolnikov was already stepping into the street. On the Nikolaevsky Bridge he was roused to full consciousness again by an unpleasant incident. A coachman, after shouting at him two or three times, gave him a violent lash on the back with his whip, for having almost fallen under his horses' hoofs. He angrily clenched and ground his teeth.

During the space of an hour Nejdanov listened to the wise, courteous, patronising speeches of his host, received a hundred roubles, and ten days later was leaning back in the plush seat of a reserved first-class compartment, side by side with this same wise, liberal politician, being borne along to Moscow on the jolting lines of the Nikolaevsky Railway.