His dress was so miserable that anyone else might have scrupled to go out in such rags during the daytime.  This quarter of the city, indeed, was not particular as to dress.  In the neighborhood of the Cyennaza or Haymarket, in those streets in the heart of St. Petersburg, occupied by the artisan classes, no vagaries in costume call forth the least surprise.  Besides the young man’s fierce disdain had reached such a pitch, that, notwithstanding his extreme sensitiveness, he felt no shame at exhibiting his tattered garments in the street.  He would have felt differently had he come across anyone he knew, any of the old friends whom he usually avoided.  Yet he stopped short on hearing the attention of passers-by directed to him by the thick voice of a tipsy man shouting:  “Eh, look at the German hatter!” The exclamation came from an individual who, for some unknown reason, was being jolted away in a great wagon.  The young man snatched off his hat and began to examine it.  It was a high-crowned hat that had been originally bought at Zimmermann’s, but had become worn and rusty, was covered with dents and stains, slit and short of a brim, a frightful object in short.  Yet its owner, far from feeling his vanity wounded, was suffering rather from anxiety than humiliation.

“I suspected this,” muttered he, uneasily, “I foresaw it.  That’s the worst of it!  Some wretched trifle like this might spoil it all.  Yes, this hat is certainly too remarkable; it looks so ridiculous.  I must get a cap to suit my rags; any old thing would be better than this horror.  Hats like these are not worn; this one would be noticeable a verst[2] off; it would be remembered; people would think of it again some time after, and it might furnish a clew.  I must attract as little attention as possible just now.  Trifles become important, everything hinges on them.”

He had not far to go; he knew the exact distance between his lodging and present destination—­just seven hundred and thirty paces.  He had counted them when his plan only floated through his brain like a vague dream.  At that time, he himself would not have believed it capable of realization; he merely dallied in fancy with a chimera which was both terrible and seductive.  But a month had elapsed, and he had already begun to view it in a different light.  Although he reproached himself throughout his soliloquies with irresolution and a want of energy, he had accustomed himself, little by little, and, indeed, in spite of himself, to consider the realization of his dream a possibility, though he doubted his own resolution.  He was but just now rehearsing his enterprise, and his agitation was increasing at every step.