way. Here, put
it here, why waste it? It would come in handy to-morrow, and I dare say
you'll be coming to me to borrow ten roubles again. Why do you keep
putting the notes in your side-pocket? Ah, you'll lose them!"

"I say, my dear fellow, let's go to Mokroe together."

"What should I go for?"

"I say, let's open a bottle at once, and drink to life! I want to drink,
and especially to drink with you. I've never drunk with you, have I?"

"Very well, we can go to the 'Metropolis.' I was just going there."

"I haven't time for that. Let's drink at the Plotnikovs', in the back
room. Shall I ask you a riddle?"

"Ask away."

Mitya took the piece of paper out of his waistcoat pocket, unfolded it and
showed it. In a large, distinct hand was written: "I punish myself for my
whole life, my whole life I punish!"

"I will certainly speak to some one, I'll go at once," said Pyotr Ilyitch,
after reading the paper.

"You won't have time, dear boy, come and have a drink. March!"

Plotnikov's shop was at the corner of the street, next door but one to
Pyotr Ilyitch's. It was the largest grocery shop in our town, and by no
means a bad one, belonging to some rich merchants. They kept everything
that could be got in a Petersburg shop, grocery of all sort, wines
"bottled by the brothers Eliseyev," fruits, cigars, tea, coffee, sugar,
and so on. There were three shop-assistants and two errand boys always
employed. Though our part of the country had grown poorer, the landowners
had gone away, and trade had got worse, yet the grocery stores flourished
as before, every year with increasing prosperity; there were plenty of
purchasers for their goods.

They were awaiting Mitya with impatience in the shop. They had vivid
recollections of how he had bought, three or four weeks ago, wine and
goods of all sorts to the value of several hundred roubles, paid for in
cash (they would never have let him have anything on credit, of course).
They remembered that then, as now, he had had a bundle of hundred-rouble
notes in his hand, and had scattered them at random, without bargaining,
without reflecting, or caring to reflect what use so much wine and
provisions would be to him. The story was told all over the town that,
driving off then with Grushenka to Mokroe, he had "spent three thousand in
one night and the following day, and had come back from the spree without
a penny." He had picked up a whole troop of gypsies (encamped in our
neighborhoo