midday
Why were they silent ? And agonizing days and nights followed for Ivan Dmitritch . Everyone who passed by the windows or came into the yard seemed to him a spy or a detective . At midday the chief of the police usually drove down the street with a pair of horses ; he was going from his estate near the town to the police department ; but Ivan Dmitritch fancied every time that he was driving especially quickly , and that he had a peculiar expression : it was evident that he was in haste to announce that there was a very important criminal in the town . Ivan Dmitritch started at every ring at the bell and knock at the gate , and was agitated whenever he came upon anyone new at his landlady 's ; when he met police officers and gendarmes he smiled and began whistling so as to seem unconcerned . He could not sleep for whole nights in succession expecting to be arrested , but he snored loudly and sighed as though in deep sleep , that his landlady might think he was asleep ; for if he could not sleep it meant that he was tormented by the stings of conscience -- what a piece of evidence ! Facts and common sense persuaded him that all these terrors were nonsense and morbidity , that if one looked at the matter more broadly there was nothing really terrible in arrest and imprisonment -- so long as the conscience is at ease ; but the more sensibly and logically he reasoned , the more acute and agonizing his mental distress became .