him more heavily.

"With this idiotic, purely physical weakness, depending on the sunset or
something, one can't help doing something stupid! You'll go to Dounia,
as well as to Sonia," he muttered bitterly.

He heard his name called. He looked round. Lebeziatnikov rushed up to
him.

"Only fancy, I've been to your room looking for you. Only fancy, she's
carried out her plan, and taken away the children. Sofya Semyonovna and
I have had a job to find them. She is rapping on a frying-pan and making
the children dance. The children are crying. They keep stopping at the
cross-roads and in front of shops; there's a crowd of fools running
after them. Come along!"

"And Sonia?" Raskolnikov asked anxiously, hurrying after Lebeziatnikov.

"Simply frantic. That is, it's not Sofya Semyonovna's frantic, but
Katerina Ivanovna, though Sofya Semyonova's frantic too. But Katerina
Ivanovna is absolutely frantic. I tell you she is quite mad. They'll be
taken to the police. You can fancy what an effect that will have....
They are on the canal bank, near the bridge now, not far from Sofya
Semyonovna's, quite close."

On the canal bank near the bridge and not two houses away from the one
where Sonia lodged, there was a crowd of people, consisting principally
of gutter children. The hoarse broken voice of Katerina Ivanovna could
be heard from the bridge, and it certainly was a strange spectacle
likely to attract a street crowd. Katerina Ivanovna in her old dress
with the green shawl, wearing a torn straw hat, crushed in a hideous way
on one side, was really frantic. She was exhausted and breathless. Her
wasted consumptive face looked more suffering than ever, and indeed out
of doors in the sunshine a consumptive always looks worse than at home.
But her excitement did not flag, and every moment her irritation grew
more intense. She rushed at the children, shouted at them, coaxed
them, told them before the crowd how to dance and what to sing, began
explaining to them why it was necessary, and driven to desperation by
their not understanding, beat them.... Then she would make a rush at the
crowd; if she noticed any decently dressed person stopping to look, she
immediately appealed to him to see what these children "from a genteel,
one may say aristocratic, house" had been brought to. If she heard
laughter or jeering in the crowd, she would rush at once at the scoffers
and begin squabbling with them. Some people laughed, others shook their