ometimes his very step almost threw me into
convulsions. What I loathed particularly was his lisp. His tongue
must have been a little too long or something of that sort, for he
continually lisped, and seemed to be very proud of it, imagining that
it greatly added to his dignity. He spoke in a slow, measured tone,
with his hands behind his back and his eyes fixed on the ground. He
maddened me particularly when he read aloud the psalms to himself
behind his partition. Many a battle I waged over that reading! But he
was awfully fond of reading aloud in the evenings, in a slow, even,
sing-song voice, as though over the dead. It is interesting that that
is how he has ended: he hires himself out to read the psalms over the
dead, and at the same time he kills rats and makes blacking. But at
that time I could not get rid of him, it was as though he were
chemically combined with my existence. Besides, nothing would have
induced him to consent to leave me. I could not live in furnished
lodgings: my lodging was my private solitude, my shell, my cave, in
which I concealed myself from all mankind, and Apollon seemed to me,
for some reason, an integral part of that flat, and for seven years I
could not turn him away.

To be two or three days behind with his wages, for instance, was
impossible. He would have made such a fuss, I should not have known
where to hide my head. But I was so exasperated with everyone during
those days, that I made up my mind for some reason and with some object
to PUNISH Apollon and not to pay him for a fortnight the wages that
were owing him. I had for a long time--for the last two years--been
intending to do this, simply in order to teach him not to give himself
airs with me, and to show him that if I liked I could withhold his
wages. I purposed to say nothing to him about it, and was purposely
silent indeed, in order to score off his pride and force him to be the
first to speak of his wages. Then I would take the seven roubles out
of a drawer, show him I have the money put aside on purpose, but that I
won't, I won't, I simply won't pay him his wages, I won't just because
that is "what I wish," because "I am master, and it is for me to
decide," because he has been disrespectful, because he has been rude;
but if he were to ask respectfully I might be softened and give it to
him, otherwise he might wait another fortnight, another three weeks, a
whole month....

But angry as I was, yet he got