“At last I decided to leave.[41] I met no one on the stairs. Three hours later we were all drinking tea in our shirt-sleeves in our rooms and playing with a pack of old cards; Lebiadkin recited poetry. Many stories were told, and, as if on purpose, they were good and amusing, and not as foolish as usual. Kirillov too was there. No one drank, although there was a bottle of rum, but only Lebiadkin took a pull at it now and then. Footnote 41: Instead of “at last, etc.,” originally stood: “I finally decided that I could leave and I went downstairs.” “Prokhor Malov once said that ‘when Nikolai Vsevolodovich is pleased to be cheerful and does not sulk, the whole lot of us are happy and talk cleverly.’ I remembered this at that time; consequently I was merry, cheerful, and not sulky. This was how it looked. But I remember being conscious that I was simply a low and despicable coward for my joy at having escaped and that I should never be an honest man. “About eleven o’clock the doorkeeper’s little daughter came from the landlady at Gorokhovaya Street, with a message to me that Matryosha had hanged herself. I went with the little girl and saw that the landlady herself did not know why she had sent for me. She wailed aloud and beat her head[42]; there was a crowd and policemen. I stood about for a time[43] and went away. Footnote 42: After “beat her head” is struck out: “there was a commotion.” Footnote 43: After “stood” is struck out: “in the lobby.” “I was scarcely disturbed all that time, yet I was asked the usual questions. But all I said was that the girl had been ill and delirious, so that I had offered to call a doctor at my own expense. They also questioned me about the penknife, and I said that the landlady had thrashed her, but that there was nothing in that. Nobody knew about my having been there that evening.[44] Footnote 44: There is struck out “I heard nothing of the result of the medical evidence.” “For about a week I did not call there. I went at last[45] to give notice about the room. The landlady was still crying, although she was already messing about with her rags and sewing as usual. ‘It was for your penknife that I wronged her,’ she said to me, but without much reproach. I settled my account with her, and gave as an excuse for going that I could not remain in a house like that to receive Nina Savelevna. At parting, she again praised Nina Savelevna to me. When I left, I gave her five roubles over and above what was due for the room. Footnote 45: The words “after she had been long buried” are struck out. “In the main I was sick of life, to the verge of madness. The incident in Gorokhovaya Street, after the danger was over, I would have completely forgotten, just as I forgot all the other events of that time, had I not for a certain time remembered with anger what a coward I had been.