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a Petersburg shop, grocery of all sort, wines ‘bottled by the
brothers Eliseyev,’ fruits, cigars, tea, coffee, sugar, and so on.
There were three shop-assistants and two errand boys al-
ways employed. Though our part of the country had grown
poorer, the landowners had gone away, and trade had got
worse, yet the grocery stores flourished as before, every year
with increasing prosperity; there were plenty of purchasers
for their goods.
They were awaiting Mitya with impatience in the shop.
They had vivid recollections of how he had bought, three or
four weeks ago, wine and goods of all sorts to the value of
several hundred roubles, paid for in cash (they would nev-
er have let him have anything on credit, of course). They
remembered that then, as now, he had had a bundle of hun-
dred-rouble notes in his hand, and had scattered them at
random, without bargaining, without reflecting, or caring
to reflect what use so much wine and provisions would be
to him. The story was told all over the town that, driving
off then with Grushenka to Mokroe, he had ‘spent three
thousand in one night and the following day, and had come
back from the spree without a penny.’ He had picked up a
whole troop of gypsies (encamped in our neighbourhood at
the time), who for two days got money without stint out of
him while he was drunk, and drank expensive wine with-
out stint. People used to tell, laughing at Mitya, how he had
given champagne to grimy-handed peasants, and feasted
the village women and girls on sweets and Strasburg pies.
Though to laugh at Mitya to his face was rather a risky
proceeding, there was much laughter behind his back, es-

The Brothers Karamazov