He moved away at last, not remembering where he was; but when he got into the middle of the square an emotion suddenly came over him, overwhelming him body and mind.
He suddenly recalled Sonia's words,
"Go to the cross-roads, bow down to the people, kiss the earth, for you have sinned against it too, and say aloud to the whole world,
'I am a murderer.'" He trembled, remembering that.
And the hopeless misery and anxiety of all that time, especially of the last hours, had weighed so heavily upon him that he positively clutched at the chance of this new unmixed, complete sensation.
It came over him like a fit; it was like a single spark kindled in his soul and spreading fire through him.
Everything in him softened at once and the tears started into his eyes.
He fell to the earth on the spot....
He knelt down in the middle of the square, bowed down to the earth, and kissed that filthy earth with bliss and rapture.
He got up and bowed down a second time.
"He's boozed," a youth near him observed.
There was a roar of laughter.
"He's going to Jerusalem, brothers, and saying good-bye to his children and his country. He's bowing down to all the world and kissing the great city of St. Petersburg and its pavement," added a workman who was a little drunk.
"Quite a young man, too!" observed a third.
"And a gentleman," someone observed soberly.
"There's no knowing who's a gentleman and who isn't nowadays."
These exclamations and remarks checked Raskolnikov, and the words, "I am a murderer," which were perhaps on the point of dropping from his lips, died away.
He bore these remarks quietly, however, and, without looking round, he turned down a street leading to the police office.
He had a glimpse of something on the way which did not surprise him; he had felt that it must be so.
The second time he bowed down in the Hay Market he saw, standing fifty paces from him on the left, Sonia.
She was hiding from him behind one of the wooden shanties in the market-place. She had followed him then on his painful way!
Raskolnikov at that moment felt and knew once for all that Sonia was with him for ever and would follow him to the ends of the earth, wherever fate might take him.
It wrung his heart... but he was just reaching the fatal place.
He went into the yard fairly resolutely.
He had to mount to the third storey.
"I shall be some time going up," he thought.
He felt as though the fateful moment was still far off, as though he had plenty of time left for consideration.
Again the same rubbish, the same eggshells lying about on the spiral stairs, again the open doors of the flats, again the same kitchens and the same fumes and stench coming from them.
Raskolnikov had not been here since that day.
His legs were numb and gave way under him, but still they moved forward.
He stopped for a moment to take breath, to collect himself, so as to enter _like a man_.
"But why? what for?" he wondered, reflecting.
"If I must drink the cup what difference does it make?
The more revolting the better."
He imagined for an instant the figure of the "explosive lieutenant," Ilya Petrovitch.
Was he actually going to him?
Couldn't he go to someone else?
To Nikodim Fomitch?
Couldn't he turn back and go straight to Nikodim Fomitch's lodgings?
At least then it would be done privately....
No, no!
To the "explosive lieutenant"!
If he must drink it, drink it off at once.
Turning cold and hardly conscious, he opened the door of the office.
There were very few people in it this time--only a house porter and a peasant.
The doorkeeper did not even peep out from behind his screen.
Raskolnikov walked into the next room.
"Perhaps I still need not speak," passed through his mind.
Some sort of clerk not wearing a uniform was settling himself at a bureau to write.
In a corner another clerk was seating himself.