Excerpt from Crime and Punishment: A Russian Realistic Novel<br><br>The heat in the streets was stifling. The crowd, the sight of lime, bricks, scaffolding, and the peculiar odour so familiar to the nostrils of the inhabitant of St. Petersburg who has no means of escaping to the country for the summer, all con tributed to irritate the young man's already excited nerves. The reeking fumes of the dram-shops, so numerous in this part of the city, and the tipsy men to be seen at every point, although it was no holiday, completed the repulsive character of the scene. Our hero's refined features betrayed, for a moment, an impression of bitter disgust. We may observe casually that he was not destitute of personal attractions; he was above middle height, with a slender and well-proportioned figure, and he had dark auburn hair and fine dark eyes. In a little while he sank into a deep reverie, or rather into a sort of mental torpor. He walked on without noticing, or trying to notice, his surroundings. Occasionally he muttered a few words to himself as if, as he himself had just perceived, thls had become his habit. At this moment it dawned upon him that his ideas were becoming confused and that he was very feeble; he had eaten nothing worth mentioning for the last two days.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.