His eyes were dim when he heard my story.

'Marmeladov, once already you have deceived my expectations...

I'll take you once more on my own responsibility'-- that's what he said, 'remember,' he said, 'and now you can go.' I kissed the dust at his feet--in thought only, for in reality he would not have allowed me to do it, being a statesman and a man of modern political and enlightened ideas.

I returned home, and when I announced that I'd been taken back into the service and should receive a salary, heavens, what a to-do there was!..." Marmeladov stopped again in violent excitement.

At that moment a whole party of revellers already drunk came in from the street, and the sounds of a hired concertina and the cracked piping voice of a child of seven singing "The Hamlet" were heard in the entry.