LYUBIM KARPYCH.  It’s impossible to stop; I’ve got started on this track.

MITYA.  What track?

LYUBIM KARPYCH.  Ah, well, listen—­you’re a kind soul—­what this track was.  Only, you listen, take note of it.  I was left when my father died, just a kid, tall as a bean pole, a little fool of twenty.  The wind whistled through my head like an empty garret!  My brother and I divided up things:  he took the factory himself, and gave me my share in money, drafts and promissory notes.  Well, now, how he divided with me is not our business—­God be his judge!  Well, then I went to Moscow to get money on the drafts.  I had to go!  One must see people and show oneself, and learn good manners.  Then again, I was such a handsome young man, and I’d never seen the world, or spent the night in a private house.  I felt I must try everything!  First thing, I got myself dressed like a dandy.  “Know our people!” says I. That is, I played the fool to a rarity!  Of course, I started to visit all the taverns:  “Schpeelen sie polka!  Give us a bottle off the ice!” I got together enough friends to fill a pond!  I went to the theatres—­

MITYA.  Well, Lyubim Karpych, it must be very nice in the theatre.

LYUBIM KARPYCH.  I kept going to see the tragedies; I liked them very much, only I didn’t see anything decently, and I didn’t understand anything because I was nearly always drunk. [Rises] “Drink beneath the dagger of Prokop Lyapunov.” [Sits down] By this sort of life I soon squandered all my money; what was left I intrusted to my friend Afrikan Korshunov, on his oath and word of honor; with him I had drunk and gone on sprees, he was responsible for all my folly, he was the chief mixer of the mash!  He fooled me and showed me up, and I was stuck like a crab on a sand bank.  I had nothing to drink, and I was thirsty—­what was to be done?  Where could I go to drown my misery?  I sold my clothes, all my fashionable things; got pay in bank-notes, and changed them for silver, the silver for copper, and then everything went and all was over.

MITYA.  How did you live, Lyubim Karpych?

LYUBIM KARPYCH.  How did I live?  May God never give such a life to a Tatar!  I lived in roomy lodgings, between heaven and earth, with no walls and no ceiling.  I was ashamed to see people.  I hid from the world; and yet you have to go out into God’s world, for you have nothing to eat.  You go along the street, and everybody looks at you.—­Every one had seen what a life I used to lead, how I rattled through the town in a first-class cab, and now went about tattered and torn and unshaven.  They shook their heads and away they went.  Shame, shame, shame! [Sits and hangs his head] There is a good business—­a trade which pays—­to steal.  But this business didn’t suit me—­I had a conscience, and again I was afraid:  no one approves of this business.

MITYA.  That’s a last resort.