Dmitri’s spending of the 3,000 roubles entrusted to him by Katerina Ivanovna is a decisive breach of trust that binds his pursuit of Grushenka to a concealed debt. Given the money to forward to Agafya Ivanovna in Moscow, he takes it instead to Mokroe and consumes it in a revel. His later admission makes the episode more than an account of extravagance: he acknowledges that he hid what he had done, claimed to have posted the money, and cannot supply it when the obligation comes due.

The Money’s Intended Purpose

Katerina Ivanovna had asked Dmitri to go to the provincial capital and post 3,000 roubles to Agafya Ivanovna in Moscow, with the specific intention that the transaction should remain unknown in their town. Dmitri therefore carried money entrusted for a private remittance, not funds he was free to spend. Its destination and secrecy give the sum a purpose beyond its face value: it represented a duty he had accepted and an act of confidence on which Katerina Ivanovna relied.

The episode takes its sharpest turn when Dmitri admits that the money she had given him was still in his pocket when he went to see Grushenka. He drove with her to Mokroe, twenty-five versts away, and used the intended remittance to pay for an extravagant night of drinking and entertainment. The distance from the town offered no remedy for the betrayal; it only carried the money, and the consequences of his choice, away from the setting in which the obligation had been made.

The Revel at Mokroe

At Mokroe, Dmitri hired Gypsies, bought champagne, and made the peasants, women, and girls drink. He describes the thousands as sent flying and says that within three days he was stripped bare. The spending is presented not as a measured series of purchases but as a burst of lavish dissipation: money assigned to another person’s needs vanishes into a public celebration arranged around Dmitri and Grushenka.

The revel does not achieve what Dmitri wanted from it. He recalls himself as having been a hero, yet the expenditure produces no sign that Grushenka has yielded to him. The contrast between his grand gesture and its failure makes the spending doubly consequential: he has lost the money without securing the romantic outcome for which he hoped. When he describes Grushenka as someone who could not be won by force of spending, he frames the night as a defeat as well as a waste.

Concealment and the Unpaid Obligation

After the revel, Dmitri pretended that he had gone to the provincial town. He told Grushenka that he had sent the money and would bring the postal receipt, but never produced it. The false claim converts an impulsive misuse of entrusted funds into an ongoing deception: the remittance has not been made, while Dmitri’s story temporarily suggests that it has.

The missing receipt becomes the concrete sign of the lie. Without it, Dmitri cannot substantiate his claim that Agafya Ivanovna received the money; more importantly, the money itself is gone. When he imagines Grushenka asking what happened to the sum, the question exposes how little his earlier performance can protect him. He has neither the receipt nor the 3,000 roubles he would need to make good on his promise.

Exposure and Moral Stakes

Dmitri’s confession distinguishes between his acknowledged degradation and the more serious charge of theft. He concedes that he did not send the money and wasted it, but insists that it would still be possible to return the sum and have it forwarded to Agafya Ivanovna. The proposed restitution clarifies the moral alternative: an explanation alone would not discharge the obligation; the money must be restored and sent to the person for whom it was intended.

The event joins romantic rivalry, financial wrongdoing, and public self-exposure in a single chain. Dmitri spent the money while pursuing Grushenka, concealed the expenditure with a false account of posting it, and later faced the prospect that Grushenka would ask where the money was. His extravagance may look like a gesture of conquest, but its aftermath reveals its actual cost: Katerina Ivanovna’s trust has been violated, Agafya Ivanovna has not received the remittance, and Dmitri is left with an obligation his vanished money cannot meet.