THAT MORNING MANY people saw Pyotr Stepanovitch. All who saw him remembered that he was in a particularly excited state. At two o'clock he went to see Gaganov, who had arrived from the country only the day before, and whose house was full of visitors hotly discussing the events of the previous day. Pyotr Stepanovitch talked more than anyone and made them listen to him. He was always considered among us as a “chatterbox of a student with a screw loose,” but now he talked of Yulia Mihailovna, and in the general excitement the theme was an enthralling one. As one who had recently been her intimate and confidential friend, he disclosed many new and unexpected details concerning her; incidentally (and of course unguardedly) he repeated some of her own remarks about persons known to all in the town, and thereby piqued their vanity. He dropped it all in a vague and rambling way, like a man free from guile driven by his sense of honour to the painful necessity of clearing up a perfect mountain of misunderstandings, and so simple-hearted that he hardly knew where to begin and where to leave off. He let slip in a rather unguarded way, too, that Yulia Mihailovna knew the whole secret of Stavrogin and that she had been at the bottom of the whole intrigue. She had taken him in too, for he, Pyotr Stepanovitch, had also been in love with this unhappy Liza, yet he had been so hoodwinked that he had almost taken her to Stavrogin himself in the carriage. “Yes, yes, it's all very well for you to laugh, gentlemen, but if only I'd known, if I'd known how it would end!” he concluded. To various excited inquiries about Stavrogin he bluntly replied that in his opinion the catastrophe to the Lebyadkins was a pure coincidence, and that it was all Lebyadkin's own fault for displaying his money. He explained this particularly well. One of his listeners observed that it was no good his “pretending”; that he had eaten and drunk and almost slept at Yulia Mihailovna's, yet now he was the first to blacken her character, and that this was by no means such a fine thing to do as he supposed. But Pyotr Stepanovitch immediately defended himself.

“I ate and drank there not because I had no money, and it's not my fault that I was invited there. Allow me to judge for myself how far I need to be grateful for that.”

The general impression was in his favour. “He may be rather absurd, and of course he is a nonsensical fellow, yet still he is not responsible for Yulia Mihailovna's foolishness. On the contrary, it appears that he tried to stop her.”

About two o'clock the news suddenly came that Stavrogin, about whom there was so much talk, had suddenly left for Petersburg by the midday train. This interested people immensely; many of them frowned. Pyotr Stepanovitch was so much struck that I was told he turned quite pale and cried out strangely, “Why, how could they have let him go?” He hurried away from Gaganov's forthwith, yet he was seen in two or three other houses.

Towards dusk he succeeded in getting in to see Yulia Mihailovna though he had the greatest pains to do so, as she had absolutely refused to see him. I heard of this from the lady herself only three weeks afterwards, just before her departure for Petersburg. She gave me no details, but observed with a shudder that “he had on that occasion astounded her beyond all belief.” I imagine that all he did was to terrify her by threatening to charge her with being an accomplice if she “said anything.” The necessity for this intimidation arose from his plans at the moment, of which she, of course, knew nothing; and only later, five days afterwards, she guessed why he had been so doubtful of her reticence and so afraid of a new outburst of indignation on her part.

Between seven and eight o'clock, when it was dark, all the five members of the quintet met together at Ensign Erkel's lodgings in a little crooked house at the end of the town. The meeting had been fixed by Pyotr Stepanovitch himself, but he was unpardonably late, and the members waited over an hour for him. This Ensign Erkel was that young officer who had sat the whole evening at Virginsky's with a pencil in his hand and a notebook before him. He had not long been in the town; he lodged alone with two old women, sisters, in a secluded by-street and was shortly to leave the town; a meeting at his house was less likely to attract notice than anywhere. This strange boy was distinguished by extreme taciturnity: he was capable of sitting for a dozen evenings in succession in noisy company, with the most extraordinary conversation going on around him, without uttering a word, though he listened with extreme attention, watching the speakers with his childlike eyes. His face was very pretty and even had a certain look of cleverness. He did not belong to the quintet; it was supposed that he had some special job of a purely practical character. It is known now that he had nothing of the sort and probably did not understand his position himself. It was simply that he was filled with hero-worship for Pyotr Stepanovitch, whom he had only lately met. If he had met a monster of iniquity who had incited him to found a band of brigands on the pretext of some romantic and socialistic object, and as a test had bidden him rob and murder the first peasant he met, he would certainly have obeyed and done it. He had an invalid mother to whom he sent half of his scanty pay—and how she must have kissed that poor little flaxen head, how she must have trembled and prayed over it! I go into these details about him because I feel very sorry for him.

“Our fellows” were excited. The events of the previous night had made a great impression on them, and I fancy they were in a panic. The simple disorderliness in which they had so zealously and systematically taken part had ended in a way they had not expected. The fire in the night, the murder of the Lebyadkins, the savage brutality of the crowd with Liza, had been a series of surprises which they had not anticipated in their programme. They hotly accused the hand that had guided them of despotism and duplicity. In fact, while they were waiting for Pyotr Stepanovitch they worked each other up to such a point that they resolved again to ask him for a definite explanation, and if he evaded again, as he had done before, to dissolve the quintet and to found instead a new secret society “for the propaganda of ideas” and on their own initiative on the basis of democracy and equality. Liputin, Shigalov, and the authority on the peasantry supported this plan; Lyamshin said nothing, though he looked approving. Virginsky hesitated and wanted to hear Pyotr Stepanovitch first. It was decided to hear Pyotr Stepanovitch, but still he did not come; such casualness added fuel to the flames. Erkel was absolutely silent and did nothing but order the tea, which he brought from his landladies in glasses on a tray, not bringing in the samovar nor allowing the servant to enter.

Pyotr Stepanoviteh did not turn up till half-past eight. With rapid steps he went up to the circular table before the sofa round which the company were seated; he kept his cap in his hand and refused tea. He looked angry, severe, and supercilious. He must have observed at once from their faces that they were “mutinous.”

“Before I open my mouth, you've got something hidden; out with it.”

Liputin began “in the name of all,” and declared in a voice quivering with resentment “that if things were going on like that they might as well blow their brains out.” Oh, they were not at all afraid to blow their brains out, they were quite ready to, in fact, but only to serve the common cause (a general movement of approbation). So he must be more open with them so that they might always know beforehand, “or else what would things be coming to?” (Again a stir and some guttural sounds.) To behave like this was humiliating and dangerous. “We don't say so because we are afraid, but if one acts and the rest are only pawns, then one would blunder and all would be lost.” (Exclamations. “Yes, yes.” General approval.)

“Damn it all, what do you want?”

“What connection is there between the common cause and the petty intrigues of Mr. Stavrogin?” cried Liputin, boiling over. “Suppose he is in some mysterious relation to the centre, if that legendary centre really exists at all, it's no concern of ours. And meantime a murder has been committed, the police have been roused; if they follow the thread they may find what it starts from.”

“If Stavrogin and you are caught, we shall be caught too,” added the authority on the peasantry.

“And to no good purpose for the common cause,” Virginsky concluded despondently.

“What nonsense! The murder is a chance crime; it was committed by Fedka for the sake of robbery.”

“H'm! Strange coincidence, though,” said Liputin, wriggling.

“And if you will have it, it's all through you.”

“Through us?”

“In the first place, you, Liputin, had a share in the intrigue yourself; and the second chief point is, you were ordered to get Lebyadkin away and given money to do it; and what did you do? If you'd got him away nothing would have happened.”

“But wasn't it you yourself who suggested the idea that it would be a good thing to set him on to read his verses?”

“An idea is not a command. The command was to get him away.”

“Command! Rather a queer word. . . . On the contrary,

your orders were to delay sending him off.”

“You made a mistake and showed your foolishness and self-will. The murder was the work of Fedka, and he carried it out alone for the sake of robbery. You heard the gossip and believed it. You were scared. Stavrogin is not such a fool, and the proof of that is he left the town at twelve o'clock after an interview with the vice-governor; if there were anything in it they would not let him go to Petersburg in broad daylight.”

“But we are not making out that Mr. Stavrogin committed the murder himself,” Liputin rejoined spitefully and unceremoniously. “He may have known nothing about it, like me; and you know very well that I knew nothing about it, though I am mixed up in it like mutton in a hash.”

“Whom are you accusing?” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, looking at him darkly.

“Those whose interest it is to burn down towns.”

“You make matters worse by wriggling out of it. However, won't you read this and pass it to the others, simply as a fact of interest?”

He pulled out of his pocket Lebyadkin's anonymous letter to Lembke and handed it to Liputin. The latter read it, was evidently surprised, and passed it thoughtfully to his neighbour; the letter quickly went the round.

“Is that really Lebyadkin's handwriting?” observed Shigalov.

“It is,” answered Liputin and Tolkatchenko (the authority on the peasantry).

“I simply brought it as a fact of interest and because I knew you were so sentimental over Lebyadkin,” repeated Pyotr Stepanovitch, taking the letter back. “So it turns out, gentlemen, that a stray Fedka relieves us quite by chance of a dangerous man. That's what chance does sometimes! It's instructive, isn't it?”

The members exchanged rapid glances.

“And now, gentlemen, it's my turn to ask questions,” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, assuming an air of dignity. “Let me know what business you had to set fire to the town without permission.”

“What's this! We, we set fire to the town? That is laying the blame on others!” they exclaimed.

“I quite understand that you carried the game too far,” Pyotr Stepanovitch persisted stubbornly, “but it's not a matter of petty scandals with Yulia Mihailovna. I've brought you here gentlemen, to explain to you the greatness of the danger you have so stupidly incurred, which is a menace to much besides yourselves.”

“Excuse me, we, on the contrary, were intending just now to point out to you the greatness of the despotism and unfairness you have shown in taking such a serious and also strange step without consulting the members,” Virginsky, who had been hitherto silent, protested, almost with indignation.

“And so you deny it? But I maintain that you set fire to the town, you and none but you. Gentlemen, don't tell lies! I have good evidence. By your rashness you exposed the common cause to danger. You are only one knot in an endless network of knots—and your duty is blind obedience to the centre. Yet three men of you incited the Shpigulin men to set fire to the town without the least instruction to do so, and the fire has taken place.”

“What three? What three of us?”

“The day before yesterday, at three o'clock in the night, you, Tolkatchenko, were inciting Fomka Zavyalov at the 'Forget-me-not.' “

“Upon my word!” cried the latter, jumping up, “I scarcely said a word to him, and what I did say was without intention, simply because he had been flogged that morning. And I dropped it at once; I saw he was too drunk. If you had not referred to it I should not have thought of it again. A word could not set the place on fire.”

“You are like a man who should be surprised that a tiny spark could blow a whole powder magazine into the air.”

“I spoke in a whisper in his ear, in a corner; how could you have heard of it?”

Tolkatchenko reflected suddenly.

“I was sitting there under the table. Don't disturb yourselves, gentlemen; I know every step you take. You smile sarcastically, Mr. Liputin? But I know, for instance, that you pinched your wife black and blue at midnight, three days ago, in your bedroom as you were going to bed.”

Liputin's mouth fell open and he turned pale. (It was afterwards found out that he knew of this exploit of Liputin's from Agafya, Liputin's servant, whom he had paid from the beginning to spy on him; this only came out later.)

“May I state a fact?” said Shigalov, getting up.

“State it.”

Shigalov sat down and pulled himself together.

“So far as I understand—and it's impossible not to understand it—you yourself at first and a second time later, drew with great eloquence, but too theoretically, a picture of Russia covered with an endless network of knots. Each of these centres of activity, proselytising and ramifying endlessly, aims by systematic denunciation to injure the prestige of local authority, to reduce the villages to confusion, to spread cynicism and scandals, together with complete disbelief in everything and an eagerness for something better, and finally, by means of fires, as a pre-eminently national method, to reduce the country at a given moment, if need be, to desperation. Are those your words which I tried to remember accurately? Is that the programme you gave us as the authorised representative of the central committee, which is to this day utterly unknown to us and almost like a myth?”

“It's correct, only you are very tedious.”

“Every one has a right to express himself in his own way. Giving us to understand that the separate knots of the general network already covering Russia number by now several hundred, and propounding the theory that if every one does his work successfully, all Russia at a given moment, at a signal . . .”

“Ah, damn it all, I have enough to do without you!” cried Pyotr Stepanovitch, twisting in his chair.

“Very well, I'll cut it short and I'll end simply by asking if we've seen the disorderly scenes, we've seen the discontent of the people, we've seen and taken part in the downfall of local administration, and finally, we've seen with our own eyes the town on fire? What do you find amiss? Isn't that your programme? What can you blame us for?”

“Acting on your own initiative!” Pyotr Stepanovitch cried furiously. “While I am here you ought not to have dared to act without my permission. Enough. We are on the eve of betrayal, and perhaps to-morrow or to-night you'll be seized. So there. I have authentic information.”

At this all were agape with astonishment.

“You will be arrested not only as the instigators of the fire, but as a quintet. The traitor knows the whole secret of the network. So you see what a mess you've made of it!”

“Stavrogin, no doubt,” cried Liputin.

“What . . . why Stavrogin?” Pyotr Stepanovitch seemed suddenly taken aback. “Hang it all,” he cried, pulling himself together at once, “it's Shatov! I believe you all know now that Shatov in his time was one of the society. I must tell you that, watching him through persons he does not suspect, I found, out to my amazement that he knows all about the organisation of the network and . . . everything, in fact. To save himself from being charged with having formerly belonged, he will give information against all. He has been hesitating up till now and I have spared him. Your fire has decided him: he is shaken and will hesitate no longer. To-morrow we shall be arrested as incendiaries and political offenders.”

“Is it true? How does Shatov know?” The excitement was indescribable.

“It's all perfectly true. I have no right to reveal the source from which I learnt it or how I discovered it, but I tell you what I can do for you meanwhile: through one person I can act on Shatov so that without his suspecting it he will put oft giving information, but not more than for twenty-four hours.” All were silent.

“We really must send him to the devil!” Tolkatchenko was the first to exclaim.

“It ought to have- been done long ago,” Lyamshin put in malignantly, striking the table with his fist.

“But how is it to be done?” muttered Liputin. Pyotr Stepanovitch at once took up the question and unfolded his plan. The plan was the following day at nightfall to draw Shatov away to a secluded spot to hand over the secret printing press .which had been in his keeping and was buried there, and there “to settle things.” He went into various essential details which we will omit here, and explained minutely Shatov's present ambiguous attitude to the central society, of which the reader knows already.

“That's all very well,” Liputin observed irresolutely, “but since it will be another adventure ... of the same sort ... it will make too great a sensation.”

“No doubt,” assented Pyotr Stepanovitch, “but I've provided against that. We have the means of averting suspicion completely.”

And with the same minuteness he told them about Kirillov, of his intention to shoot himself, and of his promise to wait for a signal from them and to leave a letter behind him taking on himself anything they dictated to him (all of which the reader knows already).

“His determination to take his own life—a philosophic, or as I should call it, insane decision—has become known there” Pyotr Stepanovitch went on to explain. “There not a thread, not a grain of dust is overlooked; everything is turned to the service of the cause. Foreseeing how useful it might be and satisfying themselves that his intention was quite serious, they had offered him the means to come to Russia (he was set for some reason on dying in Russia), gave him a commission which he promised to carry out (and he had done so), and had, moreover, bound him by a promise, as you already know, to commit suicide only when he was told to. He promised everything. You must note that he belongs to the organisation on a particular footing and is anxious to be of service; more than that I can't tell you. To-morrow, after Shatov's affair, I'll dictate a note to him saying that he is responsible for his death. That will seem very plausible: they were friends and travelled together to America, there they quarrelled; and it will all be explained in the letter . . . and . . . and perhaps, if it seems feasible, we might dictate something more to Kirillov—something about the manifestoes, for instance, and even perhaps about the fire. But I'll think about that. You needn't worry yourselves, he has no prejudices; he'll sign anything.”

There were expressions of doubt. It sounded a fantastic story. But they had all heard more or less about Kirillov; Liputin more than all.

“He may change his mind and not want to,” said Shigalov; “he is a madman anyway, so he is not much to build upon.”

“Don't be uneasy, gentlemen, he will want to,” Pyotr Stepanovitch snapped out. “I am obliged by our agreement to give him warning the day before, so it must be to-day. I invite Liputin to go with me at once to see him and make certain, and he will tell you, gentlemen, when he comes back—to-day if need be—whether what I say is true. However,” he broke off suddenly with intense exasperation, as though he suddenly felt he was doing people like them too much honour by wasting time in persuading them, “however, do as you please. If you don't decide to do it, the union is broken up—but solely through your insubordination and treachery. In that case we are all independent from this moment. But under those circumstances, besides the unpleasantness of Shatov's betrayal and its consequences, you will have brought upon yourselves another little unpleasantness of which you were definitely warned when the union was formed. As far as I am concerned, I am not much afraid of you, gentlemen. . . . Don't imagine that I am so involved with you. . . . But that's no matter.”

“Yes, we decide to do it,” Liputin pronounced.

“There's no other way out of it,” muttered Tolkatchenko, “and if only Liputin confirms about Kirillov, then . . .

“I am against it; with all my soul and strength I protest against such a murderous decision,” said Virginsky, standing up.

“But?” asked Pyotr Stepanovitch. . . .

“But what?”

“You said but . . . and I am waiting.”

“I don't think I did say but ... I only meant to say that if you decide to do it, then . . .”

“Then?”

Virginsky did not answer.

“I think that one is at liberty to neglect danger to one's own life,” said Erkel, suddenly opening his mouth, “but if it may injure the cause, then I consider one ought not to dare to neglect danger to one's life. . . .”

He broke off in confusion, blushing. Absorbed as they all were in their own ideas, they all looked at him in amazement— it was such a surprise that he too could speak.

“I am for the cause,” Virginsky pronounced suddenly.

Every one got up. It was decided to communicate once more and make final arrangements at midday on the morrow, though without meeting. The place where the printing press was hidden was announced and each was assigned his part and his duty. Liputin and Pyotr Stepanovitch promptly set off together to Kirillov.

II

All our fellows believed that Shatov was going to betray them; but they also believed that Pyotr Stepanovitch was playing with them like pawns. And yet they knew, too, that in any case they would all meet on the spot next day and that Shatov's fate—was sealed. They suddenly felt like flies caught in a web by a huge spider; they were furious, but they were trembling with terror.

Pyotr Stepanovitch, of course, had treated them badly; it might all have gone off far more harmoniously and easily if he had taken the trouble to embellish the facts ever so little. Instead of putting the facts in a decorous light, as an exploit worthy of ancient Rome or something of the sort, he simply appealed to their animal fears and laid stress on the danger to their own skins, which was simply insulting; of course there was a struggle for existence in everything and there was no other principle in nature, they all knew that, but still . . .

But Pyotr Stepanovitch had no time to trot out the Romans; he was completely thrown out of his reckoning. Stavrogin's flight had astounded and crushed him. It was a lie when he said that Stavrogin had seen the vice-governor; what worried Pyotr Stepanovitch was that Stavrogin had gone off without seeing anyone, even his mother—and it was certainly strange that he had been allowed to leave without hindrance. (The authorities were called to account for it afterwards.) Pyotr Stepanovitch had been making inquiries all day, but so far had found out nothing, and he had never been so upset. And how could he, how could he give up Stavrogin all at once like this! That was why he could not be very tender with the quintet. Besides, they tied his hands: he had already decided to gallop after Stavrogin at once; and meanwhile he was detained by Shatov; he had to cement the quintet together once for all, in case of emergency. “Pity to waste them, they might be of use.” That, I imagine, was his way of reasoning.

As for Shatov, Pyotr Stepanovitch was firmly convinced that he would betray them. All that he had told the others about it was a lie: he had never seen the document nor heard of it, but he thought it as certain as that twice two makes four. It seemed to him that what had happened—the death of Liza, the death of Marya Timofyevna—would be too much for Shatov, and that he would make up his mind at once. Who knows? perhaps he had grounds for supposing it. It is known, too, that he hated Shatov personally; there had at some time been a quarrel between them, and Pyotr Stepanovitch never forgave an offence. I am convinced, indeed, that this was his leading motive.

We have narrow brick pavements in our town, and in some streets only raised wooden planks instead of a pavement. Pyotr Stepanovitch walked in the middle of the pavement, taking up the whole of it, utterly regardless of Liputin, who had no room to walk beside him and so had to hurry a step behind or run in the muddy road if he wanted to speak to him. Pyotr Stepanovitch suddenly remembered how he had lately splashed through the mud to keep pace with Stavrogin, who had walked, as he was doing now, taking up the whole pavement. He recalled the whole scene, and rage choked him.

But Liputin, too, was choking with resentment. Pyotr Stepanovitch might treat the others as he liked, but him! Why, he knew more than all the rest, was in closer touch with the work and taking more intimate part in it than anyone, and hitherto his services had been continual, though indirect. Oh, he knew that even now Pyotr Stepanovitch might ruin him if it came to the worst. But he had long hated Pyotr Stepanovitch, and not because he was a danger but because of his overbearing manner. Now, when he had to make up his mind to such a deed, he raged inwardly more than all the rest put together. Alas! he knew that next day “like a slave” he would be the first on the spot and would bring the others, and if he could somehow have murdered Pyotr Stepanovitch before the morrow, without ruining himself, of course, he would certainly have murdered him.

Absorbed in his sensations, he trudged dejectedly after his tormentor, who seemed to have forgotten his existence, though he gave him a rude and careless shove with his elbow now and then. Suddenly Pyotr Stepanovitch halted in one of the principal thoroughfares and went into a restaurant.

“What are you doing?” cried Liputin, boiling over. “This is a restaurant.”

“I want a beefsteak.”

“Upon my word! It is always full of people.”

“What if it is?”

“But ... we shall be late. It's ten o'clock already.”

“You can't be too late to go there.”

“But I shall be late! They are expecting me back.”

“Well, let them; but it would be stupid of you to go to them. With all your bobbery I've had no dinner. And the later you go to Kirillov's the more sure you are to find him.”

Pyotr Stepanovitch went to a room apart. Liputin sat in an easy chair on one side, angry and resentful, and watched him eating. Half an hour and more passed. Pyotr Stepanovitch did not hurry himself; he ate with relish, rang the bell, asked for a different kind of mustard, then for beer, without saying a word to Liputin. He was pondering deeply. He was capable of doing two things at once—eating with relish and pondering deeply. Liputin loathed him so intensely at last that he could not tear himself away. It was like a nervous obsession. He counted every morsel of beefsteak that Pyotr Stepanovitch put into his mouth; he loathed him for the way he opened it, for the way he chewed, for the way he smacked his lips over the fat morsels, he loathed the steak itself. At last things began to swim before his eyes; he began to feel slightly giddy; he felt hot and cold run down his spine by turns.

“You are doing nothing; read that,” said Pyotr Stepanovitch suddenly, throwing him a sheet of paper. Liputin went nearer to the candle. The paper was closely covered with bad handwriting, with corrections in every line. By the time he had mastered it Pyotr Stepanovitch had paid his bill and was ready to go. When they were on the pavement Liputin handed him back the paper.

“Keep it; I'll tell you afterwards. . . . What do you say to it, though?”

Liputin shuddered all over.

“In my opinion . . . such a manifesto ... is nothing but a ridiculous absurdity.”

His anger broke out; he felt as though he were being caught up and carried along.

“If we decide to distribute such manifestoes,” he said, quivering all over, “we'll make ourselves, contemptible by our stupidity and incompetence.”

“H'm! I think differently,” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, walking on resolutely.

“So do I; surely it isn't your work?”

“That's not your business.”

“I think too that doggerel, 'A Noble Personality,' is the most utter trash possible, and it couldn't have been written by Herzen.”

“You are talking nonsense; it's a good poem.”

“I am surprised, too, for instance,” said Liputin, still dashing along with desperate leaps, “that it is suggested that we should act so as to bring everything to the ground. It's natural in Europe to wish to destroy everything because there's a proletariat there, but we are only amateurs here and in my opinion are only showing off.”

“I thought you were a Fourierist.”

“Fourier says something quite different, quite different.”

“I know it's nonsense.”

“No, Fourier isn't nonsense. . . . Excuse me, I can't believe that there will be a rising in May.”

Liputin positively unbuttoned his coat, he was so hot.

“Well, that's enough; but now, that I mayn't forget it,” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, passing with extraordinary coolness to another subject, “you will have to print this manifesto with your own hands. We're going to dig up Shatov's printing press, and you will take it to-morrow. As quickly as possible you must print as many copies as you can, and then distribute them all the winter. The means will be provided. You must do as many copies as possible, for you'll be asked for them from other places.”

“No, excuse me; I can't undertake such a ... I decline.”

“You'll take it all the same. I am acting on the instructions of the central committee, and you are bound to obey.”

“And I consider that our centres abroad have forgotten what Russia is like and have lost all touch, and that's why they talk such nonsense. ... I even think that instead of many hundreds of quintets in Russia, we are the only one that exists, and there is no network at all,” Liputin gasped finally.

“The more contemptible of you, then, to run after the cause without believing in it ... and you are running after me now like a mean little cur.”

“No, I'm not. We have a full right to break off and found a new society.”

“Fool!” Pyotr Stepanovitch boomed at him threateningly all of a sudden, with flashing eyes.

They stood facing one another for some time. Pyotr Stepanovitch turned and pursued his way confidently.

The idea flashed through Liputin's mind, “Turn and go back; if I don't turn now I shall never go back.” He pondered this for ten steps, but at the eleventh a new and desperate idea flashed into his mind: he did not turn and did not go back.

They were approaching Filipov's house, but before reaching it they turned down a side street, or, to be more accurate, an inconspicuous path under a fence, so that for some time they had to walk along a steep slope above a ditch where they could not keep their footing without holding the fence. At a dark corner in the slanting fence Pyotr Stepanovitch took out a plank, leaving a gap, through which he promptly scrambled. Liputin was surprised, but he crawled through after him; then they replaced the plank after them. This was the secret way by which Fedka used to visit Kirillov.

“Shatov mustn't know that we are here,” Pyotr Stepanovitch whispered sternly to Liputin.

III

Kirillov was sitting on his leather sofa drinking tea, as he always was at that hour. He did not get up to meet them, but gave a sort of start and looked at the new-comers anxiously.

“You are not mistaken,” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, “it's just that I've come about.”

“To-day?”

“No, no, to-morrow ... about this time.” And he hurriedly sat down at the table, watching Kirillov's agitation with some uneasiness. But the latter had already regained his composure and looked as usual.

“These people still refuse to believe in you. You are not vexed at my bringing Liputin?”

“To-day I am not vexed; to-morrow I want to be alone.”

“But not before I come, and therefore in my presence.” .

“I should prefer not in your presence.”

“You remember you promised to write and to sign all I dictated.”

“I don't care. And now will you be here long?”

“I have to see one man and to remain half an hour, so whatever you say I shall stay that half-hour.”

Kirillov did not speak. Liputin meanwhile sat down on one side under the portrait of the bishop. That last desperate idea gained more and more possession of him. Kirillov scarcely noticed him. Liputin had heard of Kirillov's theory before and always laughed at him; but now he was silent and looked gloomily round him.

“I've no objection to some tea,” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, moving up. “I've just had some steak and was reckoning on getting tea with you.”

“Drink it. You can have some if you like.”

“You used to offer it to me,” observed Pyotr Stepanovitch sourly.

“That's no matter. Let Liputin have some too.”

“No, I ... can't.”

“Don't want to or can't?” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, turning quickly to him.

“I am not going to here,” Liputin said expressively.

Pyotr Stepanovitch frowned.

“There's a flavour of mysticism about that; goodness knows what to make of you people!”

No one answered; there was a full minute of silence.

“But I know one thing,” he added abruptly, “that no superstition will prevent any one of us from doing his duty.”

“Has Stavrogin gone?” asked Kirillov.

“Yes.”

“He's done well.”

Pyotr Stepanovitch's eyes gleamed, but he restrained himself.

“I don't care what you think as long as every one keeps his word.”

“I'll keep my word.”

“I always knew that you would do your duty like an independent and progressive man.”

“You are an absurd fellow.”

“That may be; I am very glad to amuse you. I am always glad if I can give people pleasure.”

“You are very anxious I should shoot myself and are afraid I might suddenly not?”

“Well, you see, it was your own doing—connecting your plan with our work. Reckoning on your plan we have already done something, so that you couldn't refuse now because you've let us in for it.”

“You've no claim at all.”

“I understand, I understand; you are perfectly free, and we don't come in so long as your free intention is carried out.”

“And am I to take on myself all the nasty things you've done?”

“Listen, Kirillov, are you afraid? If you want to cry off, say so at once.”

“I am not afraid.”

“I ask because you are making so many inquiries.”

“Are you going soon?”

“Asking questions again?” Kirillov scanned him contemptuously.

“You see,” Pyotr Stepanovitch went on, getting angrier and angrier, and unable to take the right tone, “you want me to go away, to be alone, to concentrate yourself, but all that's a bad sign for you—for you above all. You want to think a great deal. To my mind you'd better not think. And really you make me uneasy.”

“There's only one thing I hate, that at such a moment I should have a reptile like you beside me.”

“Oh, that doesn't matter. I'll go away at the time and stand on the steps if you like. If you are so concerned about trifles when it comes to dying, then . . . it's all a very bad sign. I'll go out on to the steps and you can imagine I know nothing about it, and that I am a man infinitely below you.”

“No, not infinitely; you've got abilities, but there's a lot you don't understand because you are a low man.”

“Delighted, delighted. I told you already I am delighted to provide entertainment ... at such a moment.”

“You don't understand anything.”

“That is, I ... well, I listen with respect, anyway.”

“You can do nothing; even now you can't hide your petty spite, though it's not to your interest to show it. You'll make me cross, and then I may want another six months.” Pyotr Stepanovitch looked at his watch. “I never understood your theory, but I know you didn't invent it for our sakes, so I suppose you would carry it out apart from us. And I know too that you haven't mastered the idea but the idea has mastered you, so you won't put it off.”

“What? The idea has mastered me?”

“Yes.”

“And not I mastered the idea? That's good. You have a little sense. Only you tease me and I am proud.”

“That's a good thing, that's a good thing. Just what you need, to be proud.”

“Enough. You've drunk your tea; go away.”

“Damn it all, I suppose I must”—Pyotr Stepanovitch got up—“ though it's early. Listen, Kirillov. Shall I find that man—you know whom I mean—at Myasnitchiha's? Or has she too been lying?”

“You won't find him, because he is here and not there.”

“Here! Damn it all, where?”

“Sitting in the kitchen, eating and drinking.”

“How dared he?” cried Pyotr Stepanovitch, flushing angrily. “It was his duty to wait . . . what nonsense! He has no passport, no money!”

“I don't know. He came to say good-bye; he is dressed and ready. He is going away and won't come back. He says you are a scoundrel and he doesn't want to wait for your money.”

“Ha ha! He is afraid that I'll . . . But even now I can . . . if ... Where is he, in the kitchen?”

Kirillov opened a side door into a tiny dark room; from this room three steps led straight to the part of the kitchen where the cook's bed was usually put, behind the partition. Here, in the corner under the ikons, Fedka was sitting now, at a bare deal table. Before him stood a pint bottle, a plate of bread, and some cold beef and potatoes on an earthenware dish. He was eating in a leisurely way and was already half drunk, but he was wearing his sheep-skin coat and was evidently ready for a journey. A samovar was boiling the other side of the screen, but it was not for Fedka, who had every night for a week or more zealously blown it up and got it ready for “Alexey Nilitch, for he's such a habit of drinking tea at nights.” I am strongly disposed to believe that, as Kirillov had not a cook, he had cooked the beef and potatoes that morning with his own hands for Fedka.

“What notion is this?” cried Pyotr Stepanovitch, whisking into the room. “Why didn't you wait where you were ordered?”

And swinging his fist, he brought it down heavily on the table.

Fedka assumed an air of dignity.

“You wait a bit, Pyotr Stepanovitch, you wait a bit,” he began, with a swaggering emphasis on each word, “it's your first duty to understand here that you are on a polite visit to Mr. Kirillov, Alexey Nilitch, whose boots you might clean any day, because beside you he is a man of culture and you are only— foo!”

And he made a jaunty show of spitting to one side. Haughtiness and determination were evident in his manner, and a certain very threatening assumption of argumentative calm that suggested an outburst to follow. But Pyotr Stepanovitch had no time to realise the danger, and it did not fit in with his preconceived ideas. The incidents and disasters of the day had quite turned his head. Liputin, at the top of the three steps, stared inquisitively down from the little dark room.

“Do you or don't you want a trustworthy passport and good money to go where you've been told? Yes or no?”

“D'you see, Pyotr Stepanovitch, you've been deceiving me from the first, and so you've been a regular scoundrel to me. For all the world like a filthy human louse—that's how I look on you. You've promised me a lot of money for shedding innocent blood and swore it was for Mr. Stavrogin, though it turns out to be nothing but your want of breeding. I didn't get a farthing out of it, let alone fifteen hundred, and Mr. Stavrogin hit you in the face, which has come to our ears. Now you axe threatening me again and promising me money—what for, you don't say. And I shouldn't wonder if you are sending me to Petersburg to plot some revenge in your spite against Mr. Stavrogin, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, reckoning on my simplicity. And that proves you are the chief murderer. And do you know what you deserve for the very fact that in the depravity of your heart you've given up believing in God Himself, the true Creator? You are no better than an idolater and are on a level with the Tatar and the Mordva. Alexey Nilitch, who is a philosopher, has expounded the true God, the Creator, many a time to you, as well as the creation of the world and the fate that's to come and the transformation of every sort of creature and every sort of beast out of the Apocalypse, but you've persisted like a senseless idol in your deafness and your dumbness and have brought Ensign Erkel to the same, like the veriest evil seducer and so-called atheist. ...”

“Ah, you drunken dog! He strips the ikons of their setting and then preaches about God!”

“D'you see, Pyotr Stepanovitch, I tell you truly that I have stripped the ikons, but I only took out the pearls; and how do you know? Perhaps my own tear was transformed into a pearl in the furnace of the Most High to make up for my sufferings, seeing I am just that very orphan, having no daily refuge. Do you know from the books that once, in ancient times, a merchant with just such tearful sighs and prayers stole a pearl from the halo of the Mother of God, and afterwards, in the face of all the people, laid the whole price of it at her feet, and the Holy Mother sheltered him with her mantle before all the people, so that it was a miracle, and the command was given through the authorities to write it all down word for word in the Imperial books. And you let a mouse in, so you insulted the very throne of God. And if you were not my natural master, whom I dandled in my arms when I was a stripling, I would have done for you now, without budging from this place!”

Pyotr Stepanovitch flew into a violent rage.

“Tell me, have you seen Stavrogin to-day?”

“Don't you dare to question me. Mr. Stavrogin is fairly amazed at you, and he had no share in it even in wish, let alone instructions or giving money. You've presumed with me.”

“You'll get the money and you'll get another two thousand in Petersburg, when you get there, in a lump sum, and you'll get more.”

“You are lying, my fine gentleman, and it makes me laugh to see how easily you are taken in. Mr. Stavrogin stands at the top of the ladder above you, and you yelp at him from below like a silly puppy dog, while he thinks it would be doing you an honour to spit at you.”

“But do you know,” cried Pyotr Stepanovitch in a rage, “that I won't let you stir a step from here, you scoundrel, and I'll hand you straight over to the police.”

Fedka leapt on to his feet and his eyes gleamed with fury. Pyotr Stepanovitch pulled out his revolver. Then followed a rapid and revolting scene: before Pyotr Stepanovitch could take aim, Fedka swung round and in a flash struck him on the cheek with all his might. Then there was the thud of a second blow, a third, then a fourth, all on the cheek. Pyotr Stepanovitch was dazed; with his eyes starting out of his head, he muttered something, and suddenly crashed full length to the ground.

“There you are; take him,” shouted Fedka with a triumphant swagger; he instantly took up his cap, his bag from under the bench, and was gone. Pyotr Stepanovitch lay gasping and . unconscious. Liputin even imagined that he had been murdered. Kirillov ran headlong into the kitchen.

“Water!” he cried, and ladling some water in an iron dipper from a bucket, he poured it over the injured man's head. Pyotr Stepanovitch stirred, raised his head, sat up, and looked blankly about him.

“Well, how are you?” asked Kirillov. Pyotr Stepanovitch looked at him intently, still not recognising him; but seeing Liputin peeping in from the kitchen, he smiled his hateful smile and suddenly got up, picking up his revolver from the floor.

“If you take it into your head to run away to-morrow like that scoundrel Stavrogin,” he cried, pouncing furiously on Kirillov, pale, stammering, and hardly able to articulate his words, “I'll hang you . . . like a fly ... or crush you . . . if it's at the other end of the world ... do you understand!”

And he held the revolver straight at Kirillov's head; but almost at the same minute, coming completely to himself, he drew back his hand, thrust the revolver into his pocket, and without saying another word ran out of the house. Liputin followed him. They clambered through the same gap and again walked along the slope holding to the fence. Pyotr Stepanovitch strode rapidly down the street so that Liputin could scarcely keep up with him. At the first crossing he suddenly stopped.

“Well?” He turned to Liputin with a challenge.

Liputin remembered the revolver and was still trembling all over after the scene he had witnessed; but the answer seemed to come of itself irresistibly from his tongue:

“I think ... I think that . . .”

“Did you see what Fedka was drinking in the kitchen?”

“What he was drinking? He was drinking vodka.”

“Well then, let me tell you it's the last time in his life he will drink vodka. I recommend you to remember that and reflect on it. And now go to hell; you are not wanted till to-morrow. But mind now, don't be a fool!”

Liputin rushed home full speed.

IV

He had long had a passport in readiness made out in a false name. It seems a wild idea that this prudent little man, the petty despot of his family, who was, above all things, a sharp man of business and a capitalist, and who was an official too (though he was a Fourierist), should long before have conceived the fantastic project of procuring this passport in case of emergency, that he might escape abroad by means of it if . . . he did admit the possibility of this if, though no doubt he was never able himself to formulate what this if might mean.

But now it suddenly formulated itself, and in a most unexpected way. That desperate idea with which he had gone to Kirillov's after that “fool” he had heard from Pyotr Stepanovitch on the pavement, had been to abandon everything at dawn next day and to emigrate abroad. If anyone doubts that such fantastic incidents occur in everyday Russian life, even now, let him look into the biographies of all the Russian exiles abroad. Not one of them escaped with more wisdom or real justification. It has always been the unrestrained domination of phantoms and nothing more.

Running home, he began by locking himself in, getting out his travelling bag, and feverishly beginning to pack. His chief anxiety was the question of money, and how much he could rescue from the impending ruin—and by what means. He thought of it as “rescuing,” for it seemed to him that he could not linger an hour, and that by daylight he must be on the high road. He did not know where to take the train either; he vaguely determined to take it at the second or third big station from the town, and to make his way there on foot, if necessary. In that way, instinctively and mechanically he busied himself in his packing with a perfect whirl of ideas in his head—and suddenly stopped short, gave it all up, and with a deep groan stretched himself on the sofa.

He felt clearly, and suddenly realised that he might escape, but that he was by now utterly incapable of deciding whether he ought to make off before or after Shatov's death; that he was simply a lifeless body, a crude inert mass; that he was being moved by an awful outside power; and that, though he had a passport to go abroad, that though he could run away from Shatov (otherwise what need was there of such haste?), yet he would run away, not from Shatov, not before his murder, but after it, and that that was determined, signed, and sealed.

In insufferable distress, trembling every instant and wondering at himself, alternately groaning aloud and numb with terror, he managed to exist till eleven o'clock next morning locked in and lying on the sofa; then came the shock he was awaiting, and it at once determined him. When he unlocked his door and went out to his household at eleven o'clock they told him that the runaway convict and brigand, Fedka, who was a terror to every one, who had pillaged churches and only lately been guilty of murder and arson, who was being pursued and could not be captured by our police, had been found at daybreak murdered, five miles from the town, at a turning off the high road, and that the whole town was talking of it already. He rushed headlong out of the house at once to find out further details, and learned, to begin with, that Fedka, who had been found with his skull broken, had apparently been robbed and, secondly, that the police already had strong suspicion and even good grounds for believing that the murderer was one of the Shpigulin men called Tomka, the very one who had been his accomplice in murdering the Lebyadkins and setting fire to their house, and that there had been a quarrel between them on the road about a large sum of money stolen from Lebyadkin, which Fedka was supposed to have hidden. Liputin ran to Pyotr Stepanovitch's lodgings and succeeded in learning at the back door, on the sly, that though Pyotr Stepanovitch had not returned home till about one o'clock at night, he had slept there quietly all night till eight o'clock next morning. Of course, there could be no doubt that there was nothing extraordinary about Fedka's death, and that such careers usually have such an ending; but the coincidence of the fatal words that “it was the last time Fedka would drink vodka,” with the prompt fulfilment of the prediction, was so remarkable that Liputin no longer hesitated. The shock had been given; it was as though a stone had fallen upon him and crushed him for ever. Returning home, he thrust his travelling-bag under the bed without a word, and in the evening at the hour fixed he was the first to appear at the appointed spot to meet Shatov, though it's true he still had his passport in his pocket.

THE CATASTROPHE WITH Liza and the death of Marya Timofyevna made an overwhelming impression on Shatov. I have already mentioned that that morning I met him in passing; he seemed to me not himself. He told me among other things that on the evening before at nine o'clock (that is, three hours before the fire had broken out) he had been at Marya Timofyevna's. He went in the morning to look at the corpses, but as far as I know gave no evidence of any sort that morning. Meanwhile, towards the end of the day there was a perfect tempest in his soul, and . . . I think I can say with certainty that there was a moment at dusk when he wanted to get up, go out and tell everything. What that everything was, no one but he could say. Of course he would have achieved nothing, and would have simply betrayed himself. He had no proofs whatever with which to convict the perpetrators of the crime, and, indeed, he had nothing but vague conjectures to go upon, though to him they amounted to complete certainty. But he was ready to ruin himself if he could only “crush the scoundrels”—his own words. Pyotr Stepanovitch had guessed fairly correctly at this impulse in him, and he knew himself that he was risking a great deal in putting off the execution of his new awful project till next day. On his side there was, as usual, great self-confidence and contempt for all these “wretched creatures” and for Shatov in particular. He had for years despised Shatov for his “whining idiocy,” as he had expressed it in former days abroad, and he was absolutely confident that he could deal with such a guileless creature, that is, keep an eye on him all that day, and put a check on him at the first sign of danger. Yet what saved “the scoundrels” for a short time was something quite unexpected which they had not foreseen. . . .

Towards eight o'clock in the evening (at the very time when the quintet was meeting at Erkel's, and waiting in indignation and excitement for Pyotr Stepanovitch) Shatov was lying in the dark on his bed with a headache and a slight chill; he was tortured by uncertainty, he was angry, he kept making up his mind, and could not make it up finally, and felt, with a curse, that it would all lead to nothing. Gradually he sank into a brief doze and had something like a nightmare. He dreamt that he was lying on his bed, tied up with cords and unable to stir, and meantime he heard a terrible banging that echoed all over the house, a banging on the fence, at the gate, at his door, in Kirillov's lodge, so that the whole house was shaking, and a far-away familiar voice that wrung his heart was calling to him piteously. He suddenly woke and sat up in bed. To his surprise the banging at the gate went on, though not nearly so violent as it had seemed in his dream. The knocks were repeated and persistent, and the strange voice “that wrung his heart” could still be heard below at the gate, though not piteously but angrily and impatiently, alternating with another voice, more restrained and ordinary. He jumped up, opened the casement pane and put his head out.

“Who's there?” he called, literally numb with terror.

“If you are Shatov,” the answer came harshly and resolutely from below, “be so good as to tell me straight out and honestly whether you agree to let me in or not?”

It was true: he recognised the voice!

“Marie! . . . Is it you?”

“Yes, yes, Marya Shatov, and I assure you I can't keep the driver a minute longer.”

“This minute . . . I'll get a candle,” Shatov cried faintly. Then he rushed to look for the matches. The matches, as always happens at such moments, could not be found. He dropped the candlestick and the candle on the floor and as soon as he heard the impatient voice from below again, he abandoned the search and dashed down the steep stairs to open the gate.

“Be so good as to hold the bag while I settle with this blockhead,” was how Madame Marya Shatov greeted him below, and she thrust into his hands a rather light cheap canvas handbag studded with brass nails, of Dresden manufacture. She attacked the driver with exasperation.

“Allow me to tell you, you are asking too much. If you've been driving me for an extra hour through these filthy streets, that's your fault, because it seems you didn't know where to find this stupid street and imbecile house. Take your thirty kopecks and make up your mind that you'll get nothing more.”

“Ech, lady, you told me yourself Voznesensky Street and this is Bogoyavlensky; Voznesensky is ever so far away. You've simply put the horse into a steam.”

“Voznesensky, Bogoyavlensky—you ought to know all those stupid names better than I do, as you are an inhabitant; besides, you are unfair, I told you first of all Filipov's house and you declared you knew it. In any case you can have me up to-morrow in the local court, but now I beg you to let me alone.”

“Here, here's another five kopecks.” With eager haste Shatov pulled a five-kopeck piece out of his pocket and gave it to the driver.

“Do me a favour, I beg you, don't dare to do that!” Madame Shatov flared up, but the driver drove off and Shatov, taking her hand, drew her through the gate.

“Make haste, Marie, make haste . . . that's no matter, and . . . you are wet through. Take care, we go up here— how sorry I am there's no light—the stairs are steep, hold tight, hold tight! Well, this is my room. Excuse my having no light.

. . One minute!”

He picked up the candlestick but it was a long time before the matches were found. Madame Shatov stood waiting in the middle of the room, silent and motionless.

“Thank God, here they are at last!” he cried joyfully, lighting up the room. Marya Shatov took a cursory survey of his abode.

“They told me you lived in a poor way, but I didn't expect it to be as bad as this,” she pronounced with an air of disgust, and she moved towards the bed.

“Oh, I am tired!” she sat down on the hard bed, with an exhausted air. “Please put down the bag and sit down on the chair yourself. Just as you like though; you are in the way standing there. I have come to you for a time, till I can get work, because I know nothing of this place and I have no money. But if I shall be in your way I beg you again, be so good as to tell me so at once, as you are bound to do if you are an honest man. I could sell something to-morrow and pay for a room at an hotel, but you must take me to the hotel yourself. . . . Oh, but I am tired!”

Shatov was all of a tremor.

“You mustn't, Marie, you mustn't go to an hotel? An hotel! What for? What for?”

He clasped his hands imploringly.. . .

“Well, if I can get on without the hotel ... I must, any way, explain the position. Remember, Shatov, that we lived in Geneva as man and wife for a fortnight and a few days; it's three years since we parted, without any particular quarrel though. But don't imagine that I've come back to renew any of the foolishness of the past. I've come back to look for work, and that I've come straight to this town is just because it's all the same to me. I've not come to say I am sorry for anything; please don't imagine anything so stupid as that.”

“Oh, Marie! This is unnecessary, quite unnecessary,” Shatov muttered vaguely.

“If so, if you are so far developed as to be able to understand that, I may allow myself to add, that if I've come straight to you now and am in your lodging, it's partly because I always thought you were far from being a scoundrel and were perhaps much better than other . . . blackguards!”

Her eyes flashed. She must have had to bear a great deal at the hands of some “blackguards.”

“And please believe me, I wasn't laughing at you just now when I told you you were good. I spoke plainly, without fine phrases and I can't endure them. But that's all nonsense. I always hoped you would have sense enough not to pester me. . . . Enough, I am tired.”

And she bent on him a long, harassed and weary gaze. Shatov stood facing her at the other end of the room, which was five paces away, and listened to her timidly with a look of new life and unwonted radiance on his face. This strong, rugged man, all bristles on the surface, was suddenly all softness and shining gladness. There was a thrill of extraordinary and unexpected feeling in his soul. Three years of separation, three years of the broken marriage had effaced nothing from his heart. And perhaps every day during those three years he had dreamed of her, of that beloved being who had once said to him, “I love you.” Knowing Shatov I can say with certainty that he could never have allowed himself even to dream that a woman might say to him, “I love you.” He was savagely modest and chaste, he looked on himself as a perfect monster, detested his own face as well as his character, compared himself to some freak only fit to be exhibited at fairs. Consequently he valued honesty above everything and was fanatically devoted to his convictions; he was gloomy, proud, easily moved to wrath, and sparing of words. But here was the one being who had loved him for a fortnight (that he had never doubted, never!), a being he had always considered immeasurably above him in spite of his perfectly sober understanding of her errors; ,a being to whom he could forgive everything, everything (of that there could be no question; indeed it was quite the other way, his idea was that he was entirely to blame); this woman, this Marya Shatov, was in his house, in his presence again ... it was almost inconceivable! He was so overcome, there was so much that was terrible and at the same time so much happiness in this event that he could not, perhaps would not—perhaps was afraid to—realise the position. It was a dream. But when she looked at him with that harassed gaze he suddenly understood that this woman he loved so dearly was suffering, perhaps had been wronged. His heart went cold. He looked at her features with anguish: the first bloom of youth had long faded from this exhausted face. It's true that she was still good-looking— in his eyes a beauty, as she had always been. In reality she was a woman of twenty-five, rather strongly built, above the medium height (taller than Shatov), with abundant dark brown hair, a pale oval face, and large dark eyes now glittering with feverish brilliance. But the light-hearted, naive and good-natured energy he had known so well in the past was replaced now by a sullen irritability and disillusionment, a sort of cynicism which was not yet habitual to her herself, and which weighed upon her. But the chief thing was that she was ill, that he could see clearly. In spite of the awe in which he stood of her he suddenly went up to her and took her by both hands.

“Marie . . . you know . . . you are very tired, perhaps, for God's sake, don't be angry. ... If you'd consent to have some tea, for instance, eh? Tea picks one up so, doesn't it? If you'd consent!”

“Why talk about consenting! Of course I consent, what a baby you are still. Get me some if you can. How cramped you are here. How cold it is!”

“Oh, I'll get some logs for the fire directly, some logs . . . I've got logs.” Shatov was all astir. “Logs . . . that is . . . but I'll get tea directly,” he waved his hand as though with desperate determination and snatched up his cap.

“Where are you going? So you've no tea in the house?”

“There shall be, there shall be, there shall be, there shall be everything directly. ... I ...” he took his revolver from the shelf, “I'll sell this revolver directly . . . or pawn it. . . .”

' 'What foolishness and what a time that will take! Take my money if you've nothing, there's eighty kopecks here, I think; that's all I have. This is like a madhouse.”

“I don't want your money, I don't want it I'll be here directly, in one instant. I can manage without the revolver. . . .”

And he rushed straight to Kirillov's. This was probably two hours before the visit of Pyotr Stepanovitch and Liputin to Kirillov. Though Shatov and Kirillov lived in the same yard they hardly ever saw each other, and when they met they did not nod or speak: they had been too long “lying side by side” in America....

“Kirillov, you always have tea; have you got tea and a

samovar?”

Kirillov, who was walking up and down the room, as he was in the habit of doing all night, stopped and looked intently at his hurried visitor, though without much surprise.

“I've got tea and sugar and a samovar. But there's no need of the samovar, the tea is hot. Sit down and simply drink it.”

“Kirillov, we lay side by side in America. . . . My wife has come to me ... I ... give me the tea. ... I shall want the samovar.”

“If your wife is here you want the samovar. But take it later. I've two. And now take the teapot from the table. It's hot, boiling hot. Take everything, take the sugar, all of it. Bread . . . there's plenty of bread; all of it. There's some veal. I've a rouble.”

“Give it me, friend, I'll pay it back to-morrow! Ach, Kirillov!”

“Is it the same wife who was in Switzerland? That's a good thing. And your running in like this, that's a good thing too.”

“Kirillov!” cried Shatov, taking the teapot under his arm and carrying the bread and sugar in both hands. “Kirillov, if ... if you could get rid of your dreadful fancies and give up your atheistic ravings ... oh, what a man you'd be, Kirillov!”

“One can see you love your wife after Switzerland. It's a good thing you do—after Switzerland. When you want tea, come again. You can come all night, I don't sleep at all. There'll be a samovar. Take the rouble, here it is. Go to your wife, I'll stay here and think about you and your wife.”

Marya Shatov was unmistakably pleased at her husband's haste and fell upon the tea almost greedily, but there was no need to run for the samovar; she drank only half a cup and swallowed a tiny piece of bread. The veal she refused with disgust and irritation.

“You are ill, Marie, all this is a sign of illness,” Shatov remarked timidly as he waited upon her.

“Of course I'm ill, please sit down. Where did you get the tea if you haven't any?”

Shatov told her about Kirillov briefly. She had heard something of him.

“I know he is mad; say no more, please; 'there are plenty of fools. So you've been in America? I heard, you wrote.”

“Yes, I ... I wrote to you in Paris.”

“Enough, please talk of something else. Are you a Slavophil in your convictions?”

“I . . .1 am not exactly. . . . Since I cannot be a Russian, I became a Slavophil.” He smiled a wry smile with the effort of one who feels he has made a strained and inappropriate jest.

“Why, aren't you a Russian?”

“No, I'm not.”

“Well, that's all foolishness. Do sit down, I entreat you. Why are you all over the place? Do you think I am lightheaded? Perhaps I shall be. You say there are only you two in the house.”

“Yes. . . . Downstairs . . .”

“And both such clever people. What is there downstairs? You said downstairs?”

“No, nothing.”

“Why nothing? I want to know.”

“I only meant to say that now we are only two in the yard, but that the Lebyadkins used to live downstairs. ...”

“That woman who was murdered last night?” she started suddenly. “I heard of it. I heard of it as soon as I arrived. There was a fire here, wasn't there?”

“Yes, Marie, yes, and perhaps I am doing a scoundrelly thing this moment in forgiving the scoundrels. ...” He stood up suddenly and paced about the room, raising his arms as though in a frenzy.

But Marie had not quite understood him. She heard his answers inattentively; she asked questions but did not listen.

“Fine things are being done among you! Oh, how contemptible it all is! What scoundrels men all are! But do sit down, I beg you, oh, how you exasperate me!” and she let her head sink on the pillow, exhausted.

“Marie, I won't. . . . Perhaps you'll lie down, Marie?” She made no answer and closed her eyes helplessly. Her pale face looked death-like. She fell asleep almost instantly. Shatov looked round, snuffed the candle, looked uneasily at her face once , more, pressed his hands tight in front of him and walked on tiptoe out of the room into the passage. At the top of the stairs he stood in the corner with his face to the wall and remained so for ten minutes without sound or movement. He would have stood there longer, but he suddenly caught the sound of soft cautious steps below. Some one was coming up the stairs. Shatov remembered he had forgotten to fasten the gate.

“Who's there?” he asked in a whisper. The unknown visitor went on slowly mounting the stairs without answering. When he reached the top he stood still; it was impossible to see his face in the dark; suddenly Shatov heard the cautious question:

“Ivan Shatov?”

Shatov said who he was, but at once held out his hand to check his advance. The latter took his hand, and Shatov shuddered as though he had touched some terrible reptile.

“Stand here,” he whispered quickly. “Don't go in, I can't receive you just now. My wife has come back. I'll fetch the candle.”

When he returned with the candle he found a young officer standing there; he did not know his name but he had seen him before.

“Erkel,” said the lad, introducing himself. “You've seen me at Virginsky's.”

“I remember; you sat writing. Listen,” said Shatov in sudden excitement, going up to him frantically, but still talking in a whisper. “You gave me a sign just now when you took my hand. But you know I can treat all these signals with contempt! I don't acknowledge them. . . . I don't want them. .. . I can throw you downstairs this minute, do you know that?”

“No, I know nothing about that and I don't know what you are in such a rage about,” the visitor answered without malice and almost ingenuously. “I have only to give you a message, and that's what I've come for, being particularly anxious not to lose time. You have a printing press which does not belong to you, and of which you are bound to give an account, as you know yourself. I have received instructions to request you to give it up to-morrow at seven o'clock in the evening to Liputin. I have been instructed to tell you also that nothing more will be asked of you.”

“Nothing?”

“Absolutely nothing. Your request is granted, and you are struck off our list. I was instructed to tell you that positively.”

“Who instructed you to tell me?”

“Those who told me the sign.”

“Have you come from abroad?”

“I ... I think that's no matter to you.”

“Oh, hang it! Why didn't you come before if you were told to?”

“I followed certain instructions and was not alone.”

“I understand, I understand that you were not alone. Eh . . . hang it! But why didn't Liputin come himself?”

“So I shall come for you to-morrow at exactly six o'clock in the evening, and we'll go there on foot. There will be no one there but us three.”

“Will Verhovensky be there?”

“No, he won't. Verhovensky is leaving the town at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning.”

“Just what I thought!” Shatov whispered furiously, and he struck his fist on his hip. “He's run off, the sneak!”

He sank into agitated reflection. Erkel looked intently at him and waited in silence.

“But how will you take it? You can't simply pick it up in your hands and carry it.”

“There will be no need to. You'll simply point out the place and we'll just make sure that it really is buried there. We only know whereabouts the place is, we don't know the place itself. And have you pointed the place out to anyone else yet?” Shatov looked at him.

“You, you, a chit of a boy like you, a silly boy like you, you too have got caught in that net like a sheep? Yes, that's just the young blood they want! Well, go along. E-ech! that scoundrel's taken you all in and run away.”

Erkel looked at him serenely and calmly but did not seem to understand.

“Verhovensky, Verhovensky has run away!” Shatov growled fiercely.

“But he is still here, he is not gone away. He is not going till to-morrow,” Erkel observed softly and persuasively. “I particularly begged him to be present as a witness; my instructions all referred to him (he explained frankly like a young and inexperienced boy). But I regret to say he did not agree on the ground of his departure, and he really is in a hurry.”

Shatov glanced compassionately at the simple youth again, but suddenly gave a gesture of despair as though he thought “they are not worth pitying.”

“All right, I'll come,” he cut him short. “And now get away, be off.”

“So I'll come for you at six o'clock punctually.” Erkel made a courteous bow and walked deliberately downstairs.

“Little fool!” Shatov could not help shouting after him from the top.

“What is it?” responded the lad from the bottom.

“Nothing, you can go.”

“I thought you said something.”

II

Erkel was a “little fool” who was only lacking in the higher form of reason, the ruling power of the intellect; but of the lesser, the subordinate reasoning faculties, he had plenty—even to the point of cunning. Fanatically, childishly devoted to “the cause” or rather in reality to Pyotr Verhovensky, he acted on the instructions given to him when at the meeting of the quintet they had agreed and had distributed the various duties for the next day. When Pyotr Stepanovitch gave him the job of messenger, he succeeded in talking to him aside for ten minutes.

A craving for active service was characteristic of this shallow, unreflecting nature, which was for ever yearning to follow the lead of another man's will, of course for the good of “the common” or “the great” cause. Not that that made any difference, for little fanatics like Erkel can never imagine serving a cause except by identifying it with the person who, to their minds, is the expression of it. The sensitive, affectionate and kind-hearted Erkel was perhaps the most callous of Shatov's would-be murderers, and, though he had no personal spite against him, he would have been present at his murder without-the quiver of an eyelid. He had been instructed; for instance, to have a good look at Shatov's surroundings while carrying out his commission, and when Shatov, receiving him at the top of the stairs, blurted out to him, probably unaware in the heat of the moment, that his wife had come back to him—Erkel had the instinctive cunning to avoid displaying the slightest curiosity, though the idea flashed through his mind that the fact of his wife's return was of great importance for the success of their undertaking.

And so it was in reality; it was only that fact that saved the “scoundrels” from Shatov's carrying out his intention, and at the same time helped them “to get rid of him.” To begin with, it agitated Shatov, threw him out of his regular routine, and deprived him of his usual clear-sightedness and caution. Any idea of his own danger would be the last thing to enter his head at this moment when he was absorbed with such different considerations. On the contrary, he eagerly believed that Pyotr Verhovensky was running away the next day: it fell in exactly with his suspicions! Returning to the room he sat down again in a corner, leaned his elbows on his knees and hid his face in his hands. Bitter thoughts tormented him. . . .

Then he would raise his head again and go on tiptoe to look at her. “Good God! she will be in a fever by to-morrow morning; perhaps it's begun already! She must have caught cold. She is not accustomed to this awful climate, and then a third-class carriage, the storm, the rain, and she has such a thin little pelisse, no wrap at all. . . . And to leave her like this, to abandon her in her helplessness! Her bag, too, her bag—what a tiny, light thing, all crumpled up, scarcely weighs ten pounds! Poor thing, how worn out she is, how much she's been through! She is proud, that's why she won't complain. But she is irritable, very irritable. It's illness; an angel will grow irritable in illness. What a dry forehead, it must be hot—how dark she is under the eyes, and . . . and yet how beautiful the oval of her face is and her rich hair, how ...”

And he made haste to turn away his eyes, to walk away as though he were frightened at the very idea of seeing in her anything but an unhappy, exhausted fellow-creature who needed help—“ how could he think of hopes, oh, how mean, how base is man!” And he would go back to his corner, sit down, hide his face in his hands and again sink into dreams and reminiscences . . . and again he was haunted by hopes.

“Oh, I am tired, I am tired,” he remembered her exclamations, her weak broken voice. “Good God! Abandon her now, and she has only eighty kopecks; she held out her purse, a tiny old thing! She's come to look for a job. What does she know about jobs? What do they know about Russia? Why, they are like naughty children, they've nothing but their own fancies made up by themselves, and she is angry, poor thing, that Russia is not like their foreign dreams! The luckless, innocent creatures! . . . It's really cold here, though.”

He remembered that she had complained, that he had promised to heat the stove. “There are logs here, I can fetch them if only I don't wake her. But I can do it without waking her. But what shall I do about the veal? When she gets up perhaps she will be hungry. . . . Well, that will do later: Kirillov doesn't go to bed all night. What could I cover her with, she is sleeping so soundly, but she must be cold, ah, she must be cold!” And once more he went to look at her; her dress had worked up a little and her right leg was half uncovered to the knee. He suddenly turned away almost in dismay, took off his warm overcoat, and, remaining in his wretched old jacket, covered it up, trying not to look at it.

A great deal of time was spent in righting the fire, stepping about on tiptoe, looking at the sleeping woman, dreaming in the corner, then looking at her again. Two or three hours had passed. During that time Verhovensky and Liputin had been at Kirillov's. At last he, too, began to doze in the corner. He heard her groan; she waked up and called him; he jumped up like a criminal.

“Marie, I was dropping asleep.' . . . Ah, what a wretch I am, Marie!”

She sat up, looking about her with wonder, seeming not to recognise where she was, and suddenly leapt up in indignation and anger.

“I've taken your bed, I fell asleep so tired I didn't know what I was doing; how dared you not wake me? How could you dare imagine I meant to be a burden to you?”

“How could I wake you, Marie?”

“You could, you ought to have! You've no other bed here, and I've taken yours. You had no business to put me into a false position. Or do you suppose that I've come to take advantage of your charity? Kindly get into your bed at once and I'll lie down in the corner on some chairs.”

“Marie, there aren't chairs enough, and there's nothing to put on them.”

“Then simply oil the floor. Or you'll have to lie on the floor yourself. I want to lie on the floor at once, at once!”

She stood up, tried to take a step, but suddenly a violent spasm of pain deprived her of all power and all determination, and with a loud groan she fell back on the bed. Shatov ran up, but Marie, hiding her face in the pillow, seized his hand and gripped and squeezed it with all her might. This lasted a minute.

“Marie darling, there's a doctor Frenzel living here, a friend of mine. ... I could run for him.”

“Nonsense!”

“What do you mean by nonsense? Tell me, Marie, what is it hurting you? For we might try fomentations ... on the stomach for instance. ... I can do that without a doctor. . . . Or else mustard poultices.”

“What's this,” she asked strangely, raising her head and looking at him in dismay.

“What's what, Marie?” said Shatov, not understanding. “What are you asking about? Good heavens! I am quite bewildered, excuse my not understanding.”

“Ach, let me alone; it's not your business to understand. And it would be too absurd . . .” she said with a bitter smile. “Talk to me about something. Walk about the room and talk. Don't stand over me and don't look at me, I particularly ask you that for the five-hundredth time!”

Shatov began walking up and down the room, looking at the floor, and doing his utmost not to glance at her.

“There's—don't be angry, Marie, I entreat you—there's some veal here, and there's tea not far off. . . . You had so little before.”

She made an angry gesture of disgust. Shatov bit his tongue in despair.

“Listen, I intend to open a bookbinding business here, on rational co-operative principles. Since you live here what do you think of it, would it be successful?”

“Ech, Marie, people don't read books here, and there are none here at all. And are they likely to begin binding them!”

“Who are they?”

“The local readers and inhabitants generally, Marie.”

“Well, then, speak more clearly. They indeed, and one doesn't know who they are. You don't know grammar!”

“It's in the spirit of the language,” Shatov muttered.

“Oh, get along with your spirit, you bore me. Why shouldn't the local inhabitant or reader have his books bound?”

“Because reading books and having them bound are two different stages of development, and there's a vast gulf between them. To begin with, a man gradually gets used to reading, in the course of ages of course, but takes no care of his books and throws them about, not thinking them worth attention. But binding implies respect for books, and implies that not only he has grown fond of reading, but that he looks upon it as something of value. That period has not been reached anywhere in Russia yet. In Europe books have been bound for a long while.”

“Though that's pedantic, anyway, it's not stupid, and reminds me of the time three years ago; you used to be rather clever sometimes three years ago.”

She said this as disdainfully as her other capricious remarks.

“Marie, Marie,” said Shatov, turning to her, much moved, “oh, Marie! If you only knew how much has happened in those three years! I heard afterwards that you despised me for changing my convictions. But what are the men I've broken with? The enemies of all true life, out-of-date Liberals who are afraid of their own independence, the flunkeys of thought, the enemies of individuality and freedom, the decrepit advocates of deadness and rottenness! All they have to offer is senility, a glorious mediocrity of the most bourgeois kind, contemptible shallowness, a jealous equality, equality without individual dignity, equality as it's understood by flunkeys or by the French in '93. And the worst of it is there are swarms of scoundrels among them, swarms of scoundrels!”

“Yes, there are a lot of scoundrels,” she brought out abruptly with painful effort. She lay stretched out, motionless, as though afraid to move, with her head thrown back on the pillow, rather on one side, staring at the ceiling with exhausted but glowing eyes. Her face was pale, her lips were dry and hot.

“You recognise it, Marie, you recognise it,” cried Shatov. She tried to shake her head, and suddenly the same spasm came over her again. Again she hid her face in the pillow, and again for a full minute she squeezed .Shatov's hand till it hurt. He had run up, beside himself with alarm.

“Marie, Marie! But it may be very serious, Marie!”

“Be quiet ... I won't have it, I won't have it,” she screamed almost furiously, turning her face upwards again. “Don't dare to look at me with your sympathy! Walk about the room, say something, talk. ...”

Shatov began muttering something again, like one distraught.

“What do you do here?” she asked, interrupting him with contemptuous impatience.

“I work in a merchant's office. I could get a fair amount of money even here if I cared to, Marie.”

“So much the better for you. ...”

“Oh, don't suppose I meant anything, Marie. I said it without thinking.”

“And what do you do besides? What are you preaching? You can't exist without preaching, that's your character!”

“I am preaching God, Marie.”

“In whom you don't believe yourself. I never could see the

idea of that.”

“Let's leave that, Marie; we'll talk of that later.”

“What sort of person was this Mary a Timofyevna here?”

“We'll talk of that later too, Marie.”

“Don't dare to say such things to me! Is it true that her death may have been caused by ... the wickedness ... of these people?”

“Not a doubt of it,” growled Shatov.

Marie suddenly raised her head and cried out painfully:

“Don't dare speak of that to me again, don't dare to, never,

never!”

And she fell back in bed again, overcome by the same convulsive agony; it was the third time, but this time her groans were louder, in fact she screamed.

“Oh, you insufferable man! Oh, you unbearable man,” she cried, tossing about recklessly, and pushing away Shatov as he bent over her.

“Marie, I'll do anything you like .... I'll walk about and talk. . . .”

“Surely you must see that it has begun!”

“What's begun, Marie?”

“How can I tell! Do I know anything about it? . . . I curse myself! Oh, curse it all from the beginning!”

“Marie, if you'd tell me what's beginning ... or else I ... if you don't, what am I to make of it?”

“You are a useless, theoretical babbler. Oh, curse everything on earth!”

“Marie, Marie!” He seriously thought that she was beginning to go mad.

“Surely you must see that I am in the agonies of childbirth,” she said, sitting up and gazing at him with a terrible, hysterical vindictiveness that distorted her whole face. “I curse him before he is born, this child!”

“Marie,” cried Shatov, realising at last what it meant. “Marie . . . but why didn't you tell me before.” He pulled himself together at once and seized his cap with an air of vigorous determination.

“How could I tell when I came in here? Should I have come to you if I'd known? I was told it would be another ten days! Where are you going? . . . Where are you going? You mustn't dare!”

“To fetch a midwife! I'll sell the revolver. We must get money before anything else now.”

“Don't dare to do anything, don't dare to fetch a midwife! Bring a peasant woman, any old woman, I've eighty kopecks in my purse. . . . Peasant women have babies without midwives. . . . And if I die, so much the better. ...”

“You shall have a midwife and an old woman too. But how am I to leave you alone, Marie!”

But reflecting that it was better to leave her alone now in spite of her desperate state than to leave her without help later, he paid no attention to her groans, nor her angry exclamations, but rushed downstairs, hurrying all he could.

III

First of all he went to Kirillov. It was by now about one o'clock in the night. Kirillov was standing in the middle of the room.

“Kirillov, my wife is in childbirth.”

“How do you mean?”

“Childbirth, bearing a child!”

“You . . . are not mistaken?”

“Oh, no, no, she is in agonies! I want a woman, any old woman, I must have one at once. . . . Can you get one now? You used to have a lot of old women. . . .”

“Very sorry that I am no good at childbearing,” Kirillov answered thoughtfully; “that is, not at childbearing, but at doing anything for childbearing ... or ... no, I don't know how to say it.”

“You mean you can't assist at a confinement yourself? But that's not what I've come for. An old woman, I want a woman, a nurse, a servant!”

“You shall have an old woman, but not directly, perhaps ... If you like I'll come instead. ...”

“Oh, impossible; I am running to Madame Virginsky, the midwife, now.”

“A horrid woman!”

“Oh, yes, Kirillov, yes, but she is the best of them all. Yes, it'll all be without reverence, without gladness, with contempt, with abuse, with blasphemy in the presence of so great a mystery, the coming of a new creature! Oh, she is cursing it already!”

“If you like I'll . . .”

“No, no, but while I'm running (oh, I'll make Madame Virginsky come), will you go to the foot of my staircase and quietly listen? But don't venture to go in, you'll frighten her; don't go in on any account, you must only listen ... in case anything dreadful happens. If anything very bad happens, then run in.”

“I understand. I've another rouble. Here it is. I meant to have a fowl to-morrow, but now I don't want to, make haste, run with all your might. There's a samovar all the night.”

Kirillov knew nothing of 'the present design against Shatov, nor had he had any idea in the past of the degree of danger that threatened him. He only knew that Shatov had some old soores with “those people,” and although he was to some extent involved with them himself through instructions he had received from abroad (not that these were of much consequence, however, for he had never taken any direct share in anything), yet of late he had given it all up, having left off doing anything especially for the “cause,” and devoted himself entirely to a life of contemplation. Although Pyotr Stepanovitch had at the meeting invited Liputin to go with him to Kirillov's to make sure that the latter would take upon himself, at a given moment, the responsibility for the “Shatov business,” yet in his interview with Kirillov he had said no word about Shatov nor alluded to him in any way—probably considering it impolitic to do so, and thinking that Kirillov could not be relied upon. He put off speaking about it till next day, when it would be all over and would therefore not matter to Kirillov; such at least was Pyotr Stepanovitch's judgment of him. Liputin, too, was struck by the fact that Shatov was not mentioned in spite of what Pyotr Stepanovitch had promised, but he was too much agitated to protest.

Shatov ran like a hurricane to Virginsky's house, cursing the distance and feeling it endless.

He had to knock a long time at Virginsky's; every one had been asleep a long while. But Shatov did not scruple to bang at the shutters with all his might. The dog chained up in the yard dashed about barking furiously. The dogs caught it up all along the street, and there was a regular babel of barking.

“Why are you knocking and what do you want?” Shatov heard at the window at last Virginsky's gentle voice, betraying none of the resentment appropriate to the “outrage.” The shutter was pushed back a little and the casement was opened.

“Who's there, what scoundrel is it?” shrilled a female voice which betrayed all the resentment appropriate to the “outrage.” It was the old maid, Virginsky's relation.

“I am Shatov, my wife has come back to me and she is just confined. ...”

“Well, let her be, get along.”

“I've come for Arina Prohorovna; I won't go without Arina Prohorovna!”

“She can't attend to every one. Practice at night is a special line. Take yourself off to Maksheyev's and don't dare to make that din,” rattled the exasperated female voice. He could hear Virginsky checking her; but the old maid pushed him away and would not desist.

“I am not going away!” Shatov cried again.

“Wait a little, wait a little,” Virginsky cried at last, overpowering the lady. “I beg you to wait five minutes, Shatov. I'll wake Arina Prohorovna. Please don't knock and don't shout. . . . Oh, how awful it all is!”

After five endless minutes, Arina Prohorovna made her appearance.

“Has your wife come?” Shatov heard her voice at the window, . and to his surprise it was not at all ill-tempered, only as usual peremptory, but Arina Prohorovna could not speak except in a peremptory tone.

“Yes, my wife, and she is in labour.”

“Marya Ignatyevna?”

“Yes, Marya Ignatyevna. Of course it's Marya Ignatyevna.”

A silence followed. Shatov waited. He heard a whispering in the house.

“Has she been here long?” Madame Virginsky asked again.

“She came this evening at eight o'clock. Please make haste.”

Again he heard whispering, as though they were consulting. “Listen, you are not making a mistake? Did she send you for me herself?”

“No, she didn't send for you, she wants a peasant woman, so as not to burden me with expense, but don't be afraid, I'll pay you.”

“Very good, I'll come, whether you pay or not. I always thought highly of Marya Ignatyevna for the independence of her sentiments, though perhaps she won't remember me. Have you got the most necessary things?”

“I've nothing, but I'll get everything, everything.”

“There is something generous even in these people,” Shatov reflected, as he set off to Lyamshin's. “The convictions and the man are two very different things, very likely I've been very unfair to them! . . . We are all to blame, we are all to blame . . . and if only all were convinced of it!”

He had not to knock long at Lyamshin's; the latter, to Shatov's surprise, opened his casement at once, jumping out of bed, barefoot and in his night-clothes at the risk of catching cold; and he was hypochondriacal and always anxious about his health. But there was a special cause for such alertness and haste: Lyamshin had been in a tremor all the evening, and had not been able to sleep for excitement after the meeting of the quintet; he was haunted by the dread of uninvited and undesired visitors. The news of Shatov's giving information tormented him more than anything. . . . And suddenly there was this terrible loud knocking at the window as though to justify his fears.

He was so frightened at seeing Shatov that he at once slammed the casement and jumped back into bed. Shatov began furiously knocking and shouting.

“How dare you knock like that in the middle of the night?” shouted Lyamshin, in a threatening voice, though he was numb with fear, when at least two minutes later he ventured to open the casement again, and was at last convinced that Shatov had come alone.

“Here's your revolver for you; take it back, give me fifteen roubles.”

“What's the matter, are you drunk? This is outrageous, I shall simply catch cold. Wait a minute, I'll just throw my rug over me.”

“Give me fifteen roubles at once. If you don't give it me, I'll knock and shout till daybreak; I'll break your window-frame.”

“And I'll shout police and you'll be taken to the lock-up.”

“And am I dumb? Can't I shout 'police' too? Which of us has most reason to be afraid of the police, you or I?”

“And you can hold such contemptible opinions! I know what you are hinting at. ... Stop, stop, for God's sake don't go on knocking! Upon my word, who has money at night? What do you want money for, unless you are drunk?”

“My wife has come back. I've taken ten roubles off the price, I haven't fired it once; take the revolver, take it this minute!”

Lyamshin mechanically put his hand out of the casement and took the revolver; he waited a little, and suddenly thrusting his head out of the casement, and with a shiver running down his spine, faltered as though he were beside himself.

“You are lying, your wife hasn't come back to you. . . . It's . . . it's simply that you want to run away.”

“You are a fool. Where should I run to? It's for your Pyotr Verhovensky to run away, not for me. I've just been to the midwife, Madame Virginsky, and she consented at once to come to me. You can ask them. My wife is in agony; I need the money; give it me!”

A swarm of ideas flared up in Lyamshin's crafty mind like a shower of fireworks. It all suddenly took a different colour, though still panic prevented him from reflecting.

“But how . . . you are not living with your wife?”

“I'll break your skull for questions like that.”

“Oh dear, I understand, forgive me, I was struck all of a heap. . . . But I understand, I understand ... is Arina Prohorovna really coming? You said just now that she had gone? You know, that's not true. You see, you see, you see what lies you tell at every step.”

“By now, she must be with my wife . . . don't keep me . . . it's not my fault you are a fool.”

“That's a lie, I am not a fool. Excuse me, I really can't ...”

And utterly distraught he began shutting the casement again for the third time, but Shatov gave such a yell that he put his head out again.

“But this is simply an unprovoked assault! What do you want of me, what is it, what is it, formulate it? And think, only think, it's the middle of the night!”

“I want fifteen roubles, you sheep's-head!”

“But perhaps I don't care to take back the revolver. You have no right to force me. You bought the thing and the matter is settled, and you've no right. ... I can't give you a sum like that in the night, anyhow. Where am I to get a sum like that?”

“You always have money. I've taken ten roubles off the price, but every one knows you are a skinflint.”

“Come the day after to-morrow, do you hear, the day after to-morrow at twelve o'clock, and I'll give you the whole of it, that will do, won't it?”

Shatov knocked furiously at the window-frame for the third time.

“Give me ten roubles, and to-morrow early the other five.”

“No, the day after to-morrow the other five, to-morrow I swear I shan't have it. You'd better not come, you'd better not come.”

“Give me ten, you scoundrel!”

“Why are you so abusive. Wait a minute, I must light a candle; you've broken the window. . . . Nobody swears like that at night. Here you are!” He held a note to him out of the window.

Shatov seized it—it was a note for five roubles.

“On my honour I can't do more, if you were to murder me, I couldn't; the day after to-morrow I can give you it all, but now I can do nothing.”

“I am not going away!” roared Shatov.

“Very well, take it, here's some more, see, here's some more, and I won't give more. You can shout at the top of your voice, but I won't give more, I won't, whatever happens, I won't, I won't.”

He was in a perfect frenzy, desperate and perspiring. The two notes he had just given him were each for a rouble. Shatov had seven roubles altogether now.

“Well, damn you, then, I'll come to-morrow. I'll thrash you, Lyamshin, if you don't give me the other eight.”

“You won't find me at home, you fool!” Lyamshin reflected quickly.

“Stay, stay!” he shouted frantically after Shatov, who was already running off. “Stay, come back. Tell me please, is it true what you said that your wife has come back?”

“Fool!” cried Shatov, with a gesture of disgust, and ran home as hard as he could.

IV

I may mention that Anna Prohorovna knew nothing of the resolutions that had been taken at the meeting the day before. On returning home overwhelmed and exhausted, Virginsky had not ventured to tell her of the decision that had been taken, yet he could not refrain from telling her half—that is, all that Verhovensky had told them of the certainty of Shatov's intention to betray them; but he added at the same time that he did not quite believe it. Arina Prohorovna was terribly alarmed. This was why she decided at once to go when Shatov came to fetch her, though she was tired out, as she had been hard at work at a confinement ah! the night before. She had always been convinced that “a wretched creature like Shatov was capable of any political baseness,” but the arrival of Marya Ignatyevna put things in a different light. Shatov's alarm, the despairing tone of his entreaties, the way he begged for help, clearly showed a complete change of feeling in the traitor: a man who was ready to betray himself merely for the sake of ruining others would, she thought, have had a different air and tone. In short, Arina Prohorovna resolved to look into the matter for herself, with her own eyes.* Virginsky was very glad of her decision, he felt as though a hundredweight had been lifted off him! He even began to feel hopeful: Shatov's appearance seemed to him utterly incompatible with Verhovensky's supposition.

Shatov was not mistaken: on getting home he found Arina Prohorovna already with Marie. She had just arrived, had contemptuously dismissed Kirillov, whom she found hanging about the foot of the stairs, had hastily introduced herself to Marie, who had not recognised her as her former acquaintance, found her in “a very bad way,” that is ill-tempered, irritable and in “a state of cowardly despair,” and within five minutes had completely silenced all her protests.

“Why do you keep on that you don't want an expensive midwife?” she was saying at the moment when Shatov came in. “That's perfect nonsense, it's a false idea arising from the abnormality of your condition. In the hands of some ordinary old woman, some peasant midwife, you'd have fifty chances of going wrong and then you'd have more bother and expense than with a regular midwife. How do you know I am an expensive midwife? You can pay afterwards; I won't charge you much and I answer for my success; you won't die in my hands, I've seen worse cases than yours. And I can send the baby to a foundling asylum to-morrow, if you like, and then to be brought up in the country, and that's all it will mean. And meantime you'll grow strong again, take up some rational work, and in a very short time you'll repay Shatov for sheltering you and for the expense, which will not be so great.”

“It's not that . . . I've no right to be a burden. . . .”

“Rational feelings and worthy of a citizen, but you can take my word for it, Shatov will spend scarcely anything, if he is willing to become ever so little a man of sound ideas instead of the fantastic person he is. He has only not to do anything stupid, not to raise an alarm, not to run about the town with his tongue out. If we don't restrain him he will be knocking up all the doctors of the town before the morning; he waked all the dogs in my street. There's no need of doctors I've said already. I'll answer for everything. You can hire an old woman if you like to wait on you, that won't cost much. Though he too can do something besides the silly things he's been doing. He's got hands and feet, he can run to the chemist's without offending your feelings by being too benevolent. As though it were a case of benevolence! Hasn't he brought you into this position? Didn't he make you break with the family in which you were a governess, with the egoistic object of marrying you? We heard of it, you know . . . though he did run for me like one possessed and yell so all the street could hear. I won't force myself upon anyone and have come only for your sake, on the principle that all of us are bound to hold together! And I told him so before I left the house. If you think I am in the way, good-bye, I only hope you won't have trouble which might so easily be averted.”

And she positively got up from the chair. Marie was so helpless, in such pain, and—the truth must be confessed—so frightened of what was before her that she dared not let her go. But this woman was suddenly hateful to her, what she said was not what she wanted, there was something quite different in Marie's soul. Yet the prediction that she might possibly die in the hands of an inexperienced peasant woman overcame her aversion. But she made up for it by being more exacting and more ruthless than ever with Shatov. She ended by forbidding him not only to look at her but even to stand facing her. Her pains became more violent. Her curses, her abuse became more and more frantic.

“Ech, we'll send him away,” Arina Prohorovna rapped out. “I don't know what he looks like, he is simply frightening you; he is as white as a corpse! What is it to you, tell me please, you absurd fellow? What a farce!”

Shatov made no reply, he made up his mind to say nothing. “I've seen many a foolish father, half crazy in such cases. But they, at any rate ...”

“Be quiet or leave me to die! Don't say another word! I won't have it, I won't have it!” screamed Marie.

“It's impossible not to say another word, if you are not out of your mind, as I think you are in your condition. We must talk of what we want, anyway: tell me, have you anything ready? You answer, Shatov, she is incapable.”

“Tell me what's needed?”

“That means you've nothing ready.” She reckoned up all that was quite necessary, and one must do her the justice to say she only asked for what was absolutely indispensable, the barest necessaries. Some things Shatov had. Marie took out her key and held it out to him, for him to look in her bag. As his hands shook he was longer than he should have been opening the unfamiliar lock. Marie flew into a rage, but when Arina Prohorovna rushed up to take the key from him, she would not allow her on any account to look into her bag and with peevish cries and tears insisted that no one should open the bag but Shatov.

Some things he had to fetch from Kirillov's. No sooner had Shatov turned to go for them than she began frantically calling him back and was only quieted when Shatov had rushed impetuously back from the stairs, and explained that he should only be gone a minute to fetch something indispensable and would be back at once.

“Well, my lady, it's hard to please you,” laughed Arina Prohorovna, “one minute he must stand with his face to the wall and not dare to look at you, and the next he mustn't be gone for a minute, or you begin crying. He may begin to imagine something. Come, come, don't be silly, don't blubber, I was laughing, you know.”

“He won't dare to imagine anything.”

“Tut, tut, tut, if he didn't love you like a sheep he wouldn't run about the streets with his tongue out and wouldn't have roused all the dogs in the town. He broke my window-frame.”

He found Kirillov still pacing up and down his room so preoccupied that he had forgotten the arrival of Shatov's wife, and heard what he said without understanding him.

“Oh, yes!” he recollected suddenly, as though tearing himself with an effort and only for an instant from some absorbing idea, “yes ... an old woman. ... A wife or an old woman? Stay a minute: a wife and an old woman, is that it? I remember. I've been, the old woman will come, only not just now. Take the pillow. Is there anything else? Yes. . . . Stay, do you have moments of the eternal harmony, Shatov?”

“You know, Kirillov, you mustn't go on staying up every night.”

Kirillov came out of his reverie and, strange to say, spoke far more coherently than he usually did; it was clear that he had formulated it long ago and perhaps written it down.

“There are seconds—they come five or six at a time—when you suddenly feel the presence of the eternal harmony perfectly attained. It's something not earthly—I don't mean in the sense that it's heavenly—but in that sense that man cannot endure it in his earthly aspect. He must be physically changed or die. This feeling is clear and unmistakable; it's as though you apprehend all nature and suddenly say, 'Yes, that's right.' God, when He created the world, said at the end of each day of creation, 'Yes, it's right, it's good.' It ... it's not being deeply moved, but simply joy. You don't forgive anything because there is no more need of forgiveness. It's not that you love—oh, there's something in it higher than love—what's most awful is that it's terribly clear and such joy. If it lasted more than five seconds, the soul could not endure it and must perish. In those five seconds I live through a lifetime, and I'd give my whole life for them, because they are worth it. To endure ten seconds one must be physically changed. I think man ought to give up having children—what's the use of children, what's the use of evolution when the goal has been attained? In the gospel it is written that there will be no child-bearing in the resurrection, but that men will be like the angels of the Lord. That's a hint. Is your wife bearing a child?”

“Kirillov, does this often happen?”

“Once in three days, or once a week.”

“Don't you have fits, perhaps?”

“No.”

“Well, you will. Be careful, Kirillov. I've heard that's just how fits begin. An epileptic described exactly that sensation before a fit, word for word as you've done. He mentioned five seconds, too, and said that more could not be endured. Remember Mahomet's pitcher from which no drop of water was spilt while he circled Paradise on his horse. That was a case of five seconds too; that's too much like your eternal harmony, and Mahomet was an epileptic. Be careful, Kirillov, it's. epilepsy!”

“It won't have time,” Kirillov smiled gently.

VI

The night was passing. Shatov was sent hither and thither, abused, called back. Marie was reduced to the most abject terror for life. She screamed that she wanted to live, that “she must, she must,” and was afraid to die. “I don't want to, I don't want to!” she repeated. If Arina Prohorovna had not been there, things would have gone very badly. By degrees she gained complete control of the patient—who began to obey every word, every order from her like a child. Arina Prohorovna ruled by sternness not by kindness, but she was first-rate at her work. It began to get light . . . Arina Prohorovna suddenly imagined that Shatov had just run out on to the stairs to say his prayers and began laughing. Marie laughed too, spitefully, malignantly, as though such laughter relieved her. At last they drove Shatov away altogether. A damp, cold morning dawned. He pressed his face to the wall in the corner just as he had done the evening before when Erkel came. He was trembling like a leaf, afraid to think, but his mind caught at every thought as it does in dreams.

He was continually being carried away by day-dreams, which snapped off short like a rotten thread. From the room came no longer groans but awful animal cries, unendurable, incredible. He tried to stop up his ears, but could not, and he fell on his knees, repeating unconsciously, “Marie, Marie!” Then suddenly he heard a cry, a new cry, which made Shatov start and jump up from his knees, the cry of a baby, a weak discordant cry. He crossed himself and rushed into the room. Arina Prohorovna held in her hands a little red wrinkled creature, screaming, and moving its little arms and legs, fearfully helpless, and looking as though it could be blown away by a puff of wind, but screaming and seeming to assert its full right to live. Marie was lying as though insensible, but a minute later she opened her eyes, and bent a strange, strange look on Shatov: it was something quite new, that look. What it meant exactly he was not able to understand yet, but he had never known such a look on her face before.

“Is it a boy? Is it a boy?” she asked Arina Prohorovna in an exhausted voice.

“It is a boy,” the latter shouted in reply, as she bound up the child.

When she had bound him up and was about to lay him across the bed between the two pillows, she gave him to Shatov for a minute to hold. Marie signed to him on the sly as though afraid of Arina Prohorovna. He understood at once and brought the baby to show her.

“How . . . pretty he is,” she whispered weakly with a smile.

“Poo, what does he look like,” Arina Prohorovna laughed gaily in triumph, glancing at Shatov's face. “What a funny face!”

“You may be merry, Arina Prohorovna. . . . It's a great joy,” Shatov faltered with an expression of idiotic bliss, radiant at the phrase Marie had uttered about the child.

“Where does the great joy come in?” said Arina Prohorovna good-humouredly, bustling about, clearing up, and working like a convict.

“The mysterious coming of a new creature, a great and inexplicable mystery; and what a pity it is, Arina Prohorovna, that you don't understand it.”

Shatov spoke in an incoherent, stupefied and ecstatic way. Something seemed to be tottering in his head and welling up from his soul apart from his own will.

“There were two and now there's a third human being, a new spirit, finished and complete, unlike the handiwork of man; a new thought and a new love . . . it's positively frightening. . . . And there's nothing grander in the world.”

“Ech, what nonsense he talks! It's simply a further development of the organism, and there's nothing else in it, no mystery,” said Arina Prohorovna with genuine and good-humoured laughter. “If you talk like that, every fly is a mystery. But I tell you what: superfluous people ought not to be born. We must first remould everything so that they won't be superfluous and then bring them into the world. As it is, we shall have to take him to the Foundling, the day after to-morrow. . . . Though that's as it should be.”

“I will never let him go to the Foundling,” Shatov pronounced resolutely, staring at the floor.

“You adopt him as your son?”

“He is my son.”

“Of course he is a Shatov, legally he is a Shatov, and there's no need for you to pose as a humanitarian. Men can't get on without fine words. There, there, it's all right, but look here, my friends,” she added, having finished clearing up at last, “it's time for me to go. I'll come again this morning, and again in the evening if necessary, but now, since everything has gone off so well, I must run off to my other patients, they've been expecting me long ago. I believe you got an old woman somewhere, Shatov; an old woman is all very well, but don't you, her tender husband, desert her; sit beside her, you may be of use; Marya Ignatyevna won't drive you away, I fancy. . . . There, there, I was only laughing.”

At the gate, to which Shatov accompanied her, she added to him alone.

“You've given me something to laugh at for the rest of my life; I shan't charge you anything; I shall laugh at you in my sleep! I have never seen anything funnier than you last night.”

She went off very well satisfied. Shatov's appearance and conversation made it as clear as daylight that this man “was going in for being a father and was a ninny.” She ran home on purpose to tell Virginsky about it, though it was shorter and more direct to go to another patient.

“Marie, she told you not to go to sleep for a little time, though, I see, it's very hard for you,” Shatov began timidly. “I'll sit here by the window and take care of you, shall I?”

And he sat down, by the window behind the sofa so that she could not see him. But before a minute had passed she called him and fretfully asked him to arrange the pillow. He began arranging it. She looked angrily at the wall.

“That's not right, that's not right. . . . What hands!”

Shatov did it again.

“Stoop down to me,” she said wildly, trying hard not to look at him.

He started but stooped down.

“More . . . not so ... nearer,” and suddenly her left arm was impulsively thrown round his neck and he felt her warm moist kiss on his forehead.

“Marie!”

Her lips were quivering, she was struggling with herself, but suddenly she raised herself and said with flashing eyes:

“Nikolay Stavrogin is a scoundrel!” And she fell back helplessly with her face in the pillow, sobbing hysterically, and tightly squeezing Shatov's hand in hers.

From that moment she would not let him leave her; she insisted on his sitting by her pillow. She could not talk much but she kept gazing at him and smiling blissfully. She seemed suddenly to have become a silly girl. Everything seemed transformed. Shatov cried like a boy, then talked of God knows what, wildly, crazily, with inspiration, kissed her hands; she listened entranced, perhaps not understanding him, but caressingly ruffling his hair with her weak hand, smoothing it and admiring it. He talked about Kirillov, of how they would now begin “a new life” for good, of the existence of God, of the goodness of all men. . . . She took out the child again to gaze at it rapturously.

“Marie,” he cried, as he held the child in his arms, “all the old madness, shame, and deadness is over, isn't it? Let us work hard and begin a new life, the three of us, yes, yes! . . . Oh, by the way, what shall we call him, Marie?”

“What shall we call him?” she repeated with surprise, and there was a sudden look of terrible grief in her face.

She clasped her hands, looked reproachfully at Shatov and hid her face in the pillow.

“Marie, what is it?” he cried with painful alarm.

“How could you, how could you . . . Oh, you ungrateful man!”

“Marie, forgive me, Marie ... I only asked you what his name should be. I don't know. . . .”

“Ivan, Ivan.” She raised her flushed and tear-stained face. How could you suppose we should call him by another horrible name?”

“Marie, calm yourself; oh, what a nervous state you are in!”

“That's rude again, putting it down to my nerves. I bet that if I'd said his name was to be that other . . . horrible name, you'd have agreed at once and not have noticed it even! Oh, men, the mean ungrateful creatures, they are all alike!”

A minute later, of course, they were reconciled. Shatov persuaded her to have a nap. She fell asleep but still kept his hand in hers; she waked up frequently, looked at him, as though afraid he would go away, and dropped asleep again.

Kirillov sent an old woman “to congratulate them,” as well as some hot tea, some freshly cooked cutlets, and some broth and white bread for Marya Ignatyevna. The patient sipped the broth greedily, the old woman undid the baby's wrappings and swaddled it afresh, Marie made Shatov have a cutlet too.

Time was passing. Shatov, exhausted, fell asleep himself in his chair, with his head on Marie's pillow. So they were found by Arina Prohorovna, who kept her word. She waked them up gaily, asked Marie some necessary questions, examined the baby, and again forbade Shatov to leave her. Then, jesting at the “happy couple,” with a shade of contempt and superciliousness she went away as well satisfied as before.

It was quite dark when Shatov waked up. He made haste to light the candle and ran for the old woman; but he had hardly begun to go down the stairs when he was struck by the sound of the soft, deliberate steps of some one coming up towards him. Erkel came in.

“Don't come in,” whispered Shatov, and impulsively seizing him by the hand he drew him back towards the gate. “Wait here, I'll come directly, I'd completely forgotten you, completely! Oh, how you brought it back!”

He was in such haste that he did not even run in to Kirillov's, but only called the old woman. Marie was in despair and indignation that “he could dream of leaving her alone.”

“But,” he cried ecstatically, “this is the very last step! And then for a new life and we'll never, never think of the old horrors again!”

He somehow appeased her and promised to be back at nine o'clock; he kissed her warmly, kissed the baby and ran down quickly to Erkel.

They set off together to Stavrogin's park at Skvoreshniki, where, in a secluded place at the very edge of the park where it adjoined the pine wood, he had, eighteen months before, buried the printing press which had been entrusted to him. It was a wild and deserted place, quite hidden and at some distance from the Stavrogins' house. It was two or perhaps three miles from Filipov's house.

“Are we going to walk all the way? I'll take a cab.”

“I particularly beg you not to,” replied Erkel. '' They insisted on that. A cabman would be a witness.”

“Well . . . bother! I don't care, only to make an end of

it.”

They walked very fast.

“Erkel, you little boy,” cried Shatov, “have you ever been happy?”

“You seem to be very happy just now,” observed Erkel with curiosity.

Chapter 6: A BUSY NIGHT

During that day Virginsky had spent two hours in running round to see the members of the quintet and to inform them that Shatov would certainly not give information, because his wife had come back and given birth to a child, and no one “who knew anything of human nature “could suppose that Shatov could be a danger at this moment. But to his discomfiture he found none of them at home except Erkel and Lyamshin. Erkel listened in silence, looking candidly into his eyes, and in answer to the direct question “Would he go at six o'clock or not?” he replied with the brightest of smiles that “of course he would go.”

Lyamshin was in bed, seriously ill, as it seemed, with his head covered with a quilt. He was alarmed at Virginsky's coming in, and as soon as the latter began speaking he waved him off from under the bedclothes, entreating him to let him alone. He listened to all he said about Shatov, however, and seemed for some reason extremely struck by the news that Virginsky had found no one at home. It seemed that Lyamshin knew already (through Liputin) of Fedka's death, and hurriedly and incoherently told Virginsky about it, at which the latter seemed struck in his turn. To Virginsky's direct question, “Should they go or not?” he began suddenly waving his hands again, entreating him to let him alone, and saying that it was not his business, and that he knew nothing about it.

Virginsky returned home dejected and greatly alarmed. It weighed upon him that he had to hide it from his family; he was accustomed to tell his wife everything; and if his feverish brain had not hatched a new idea at that moment, a new plan of conciliation for further action, he might have taken to his bed like Lyamshin. But this new idea sustained him; what's more, he began impatiently awaiting the hour fixed, and set off for the appointed spot earlier than was necessary. It was a very gloomy place at the end of the huge park. I went there afterwards on purpose to look at it. How sinister it must have looked on that chill autumn evening! It was at the edge of an old wood belonging to the Crown. Huge ancient pines stood out as vague sombre blurs in the darkness. It was so dark that they could hardly see each other two paces off, but Pyotr Stepanovitch, Liputin, and afterwards Erkel, brought lanterns with them. At some unrecorded date in the past a rather absurd-looking grotto had for some reason been built here of rough unhewn stones. The table and benches in the grotto had long ago decayed and fallen. Two hundred paces to the right was the bank of the third pond of the park. These three ponds stretched one after another for a mile from the house to the very end of the park. One could scarcely imagine that any noise, a scream, or even a shot, could reach the inhabitants of the Stavrogins' deserted house. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch's departure the previous day and Alexey Yegorytch's absence left only five or six people in the house, all more or less invalided, so to speak. In any case it might be assumed with perfect confidence that if cries or shouts for help were heard by any of the inhabitants of the isolated house they would only have excited terror; no one would have moved from his warm stove or snug shelf to give assistance.

By twenty past six almost all of them except Erkel, who had been told off to fetch Shatov, had turned up at the trysting-place. This time Pyotr Stepanovitch was not late; he came with Tolkatchenko. Tolkatchenko looked frowning and anxious; all his assumed determination and insolent bravado had vanished. He scarcely left Pyotr Stepanovitch's side, and seemed to have become all at once immensely devoted to him. He was continually thrusting himself forward to whisper fussily to him, but the latter scarcely answered him, or muttered something irritably to get rid of him.

Shigalov and Virginsky had arrived rather before Pyotr Stepanovitch, and as soon as he came they drew a little apart in profound and obviously intentional silence. Pyotr Stepanovitch raised his lantern and examined them with unceremonious and insulting minuteness. “They mean to speak,” flashed through his mind.

“Isn't Lyamshin here?” he asked Virginsky. “Who said he was ill?”

“I am here,” responded Lyamshin, suddenly coming from behind a tree. He was in a warm greatcoat and thickly muffled in a rug, so that it was difficult to make out his face even with a lantern.

“So Liputin is the only one not here?”

Liputin too came out of the grotto without speaking. Pyotr Stepanovitch raised the lantern again.

“Why were you hiding in there? Why didn't you come out?”

“I imagine we still keep the right of freedom ... of our actions,” Liputin muttered, though probably he hardly knew what he wanted to express.

“Gentlemen,” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, raising his voice for the first time above a whisper, which produced an effect, “I think you fully understand that it's useless to go over things again. Everything was said and fully thrashed out yesterday, openly and directly. But perhaps—as I see from your faces— some one wants to make some statement; in that case I beg you to make haste. Damn it all! there's not much time, and Erkel may bring him in a minute. ...”

“He is sure to bring him,” Tolkatchenko put in for some reason.

“If I am not mistaken, the printing press will be handed over, to begin with?” inquired Liputin, though again he seemed hardly to understand why he asked the question.

“Of course. Why should we lose it?” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, lifting the lantern to his face. “But, you see, we all agreed yesterday that it was not really necessary to take it. He need only show you the exact spot where it's buried; we can dig it up afterwards for ourselves. I know that it's somewhere ten paces from a corner of this grotto. But, damn it all! how could you have forgotten, Liputin? It was agreed that you should meet him alone and that we should come out afterwards. . . . It's strange that you should ask—or didn't you mean what you said?”

Liputin kept gloomily silent. All were silent. The wind shook the tops of the pine-trees.

“I trust, however, gentlemen, that every one will do his duty,” Pyotr Stepanovitch rapped out impatiently.

“I know that Shatov's wife has come back and has given birth to a child,” Virginsky said suddenly, excited and gesticulating and scarcely able to speak distinctly. “Knowing what human nature is, we can be sure that now he won't give information . . . because he is happy. ... So I went to every one this morning and found no one at home, so perhaps now nothing need be done. . . .”

He stopped short with a catch in his breath.

“If you suddenly became happy, Mr. Virginsky,” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, stepping up to him, “would you abandon—not giving information; there's no question of that—but any perilous public action which you had planned before you were happy and which you regarded as a duty and obligation in spite of the risk and loss of happiness?”

“No, I wouldn't abandon it! I wouldn't on any account!” said Virginsky with absurd warmth, twitching all over.

“You would rather be unhappy again than be a scoundrel?”

“Yes, yes. . . . Quite the contrary. . . . I'd rather be a complete scoundrel . . . that is no ... not a scoundrel at all, but on the contrary completely unhappy rather than a scoundrel.”

“Well then, let me tell you that Shatov looks on this betrayal as a public duty. It's his most cherished conviction, and the proof of it is that he runs some risk himself; though, of course, they will pardon him a great deal for giving information. A man like that will never give up the idea. No sort of happiness would overcome him. In another day he'll go back on it, reproach himself, and will go straight to the police. What's more, I don't see any happiness in the fact that his wife has come back after three years' absence to bear him a child of Stavrogin's.”

“But no one has seen Shatov's letter,” Shigalov brought out all at once, emphatically.

“I've seen it,” cried Pyotr Stepanovitch. “It exists, and all this is awfully stupid, gentlemen.”

“And I protest . . .” Virginsky cried, boiling over suddenly: “I protest with all my might. ... I want . . . this is what I want. I suggest that when he arrives we all come out and question him, and if it's true, we induce him to repent of it; and if he gives us his word of honour, let him go. In any case we must have a trial; it must be done after trial. We mustn't lie in wait for him and then fall upon him.”

“Risk the cause on his word of honour—that's the acme of stupidity! Damnation, how stupid it all is now, gentlemen! And a pretty part you are choosing to play at the moment of danger!”

“I protest, I protest!” Virginsky persisted.

“Don't bawl, anyway; we shan't hear the signal. Shatov, gentlemen. . . . (Damnation, how stupid this is now!) I've told you already that Shatov is a Slavophil, that is, one of the stupidest set of people. . . . But, damn it all, never mind, that's no matter! You put me out! . . . Shatov is an embittered man, gentlemen, and since he has belonged to the party, anyway, whether he wanted to or no, I had hoped till the last minute that he might have been of service to the cause and might have been made use of as an embittered man. I spared him and was keeping him in reserve, in spite of most exact instructions. . . . I've spared him a hundred times more than he deserved! But he's ended by betraying us. . . . But, hang it all, I don't care! You'd better try running away now, any of you! No one of you has the right to give up the job! You can kiss him if you like, but you haven't the right to stake the cause on his word of honour! That's acting like swine and spies in government pay!”

“Who's a spy in government pay here?” Liputin filtered out.

“You, perhaps. You'd better hold your tongue, Liputin; you talk for the sake of talking, as you always do. All men are spies, gentlemen, who funk their duty at the moment of danger. There will always be some fools who'll run in a panic at the last moment and cry out, 'Aie, forgive me, and I'll give them all away!' But let me tell you, gentlemen, no betrayal would win you a pardon now. Even if your sentence were mitigated it would mean Siberia; and, what's more, there's no escaping the weapons of the other side—and their weapons are sharper than the government's.”

Pyotr Stepanovitch was furious and said more than he meant to. With a resolute air Shigalov took three steps towards him. “Since yesterday evening I've thought over the question,” he began, speaking with his usual pedantry and assurance. (I believe that if the earth had given way under his feet he would not have raised his voice nor have varied one tone in his methodical exposition.) “Thinking the matter over, I've come to the conclusion that the projected murder is not merely a waste of precious time which might be employed in a more suitable and befitting manner, but presents, moreover, that deplorable deviation from the normal method which has always been' most prejudicial to the cause and has delayed its triumph for scores of years, under the guidance of shallow thinkers and pre-eminently of men of political instead of purely socialistic leanings. I have come here solely to protest against the projected enterprise, for the general edification, intending then to withdraw at the actual moment, which you, for some reason I don't understand, speak of as a moment of danger to you. I am going—not from fear of that danger nor from a sentimental feeling for Shatov, whom I have no inclination to kiss, but solely because all this business from beginning to end is in direct contradiction to my programme. As for my betraying you and my being in the pay of the government, you can set your mind completely at rest. I shall not betray you.”

He turned and walked away.

“Damn it all, he'll meet them and warn Shatov!” cried Pyotr Stepanovitch, pulling out his revolver. They heard the click of the trigger.

“You may be confident,” said Shigalov, turning once more, “that if I meet Shatov on the way I may bow to him, but I shall not warn him.”

“But do you know, you may have to pay for this, Mr. Fourier?”

“I beg you to observe that I am not Fourier. If you mix me up with that mawkish theoretical twaddler you simply prove that you know nothing of my manuscript, though it has been in your hands. As for your vengeance, let me tell you that it's a mistake to cock your pistol: that's absolutely against your interests at the present moment. But if you threaten to shoot me to-morrow, or the day after, you'll gain nothing by it but unnecessary trouble. You may kill me, but sooner or later you'll come to my system all the same. Good-bye.”

At that instant a whistle was heard in the park, two hundred paces away from the direction of the pond. Liputin at once answered, whistling also as had been agreed the evening before. (As he had lost several teeth and distrusted his own powers, he had this morning bought for a farthing in the market a child's clay whistle for the purpose.) Erkel had warned Shatov on the way that they would whistle as a signal, so that the latter felt-no uneasiness.

“Don't be uneasy, I'll avoid them and they won't notice me at all,” Shigalov declared in an impressive whisper; and thereupon deliberately and without haste he walked home through the dark park.

Everything, to the smallest detail of this terrible affair, is now fully known. To begin with, Liputin met Erkel and Shatov at the entrance to the grotto. Shatov did not bow or offer him his hand, but at once pronounced hurriedly in a loud voice:

“Well, where have you put the spade, and haven't you another lantern? You needn't be afraid, there's absolutely no one here, and they wouldn't hear at Skvoreshniki now if we fired a cannon here. This is the place, here this very spot.”

And he stamped with his foot ten paces from the end of the grotto towards the wood. At that moment Tolkatchenko rushed out from behind a tree and sprang at him from behind, while Erkel seized him by the elbows. Liputin attacked him from the front. The three of them at once knocked him down and pinned him to the ground. At this point Pyotr Stepanovitch darted up with his revolver. It is said that Shatov had time to turn his head and was able to see and recognise him. Three lanterns lighted up the scene. Shatov suddenly uttered a short and desperate scream. But they did not let him go on screaming. Pyotr Stepanovitch firmly and accurately put his revolver to Shatov's forehead, pressed it to it, and pulled the trigger. The shot seems not to have been loud; nothing was heard at Skvoreshniki, anyway. Shigalov, who was scarcely three paces away, of course heard it—he heard the shout and the shot, but, as he testified afterwards, he did not turn nor even stop. Death was almost instantaneous. Pyotr Stepanovitch was the only one who preserved all his faculties, but I don't think he was quite cool. Squatting on his heels, he searched the murdered man's pockets hastily, though with steady hand. No money was found (his purse had been left under Marya Ignatyevna's pillow). Two or three scraps of paper of no importance were found: a note from his office, the title of some book, and an old bill from a restaurant abroad which had been preserved, goodness knows why, for two years in his pocket. Pyotr Stepanovitch transferred these scraps of paper to his own pocket, and suddenly noticing that they had all gathered round, were gazing at the corpse and doing nothing, he began rudely and angrily abusing them and urging them on. Tolkatchenko and Erkel recovered themselves, and running to the grotto brought instantly from it two stones which they had got ready there that morning. These stones, which weighed about twenty pounds each, were securely tied with cord. As they intended to throw the body in the nearest of the three ponds, they proceeded to tie the stones to the head and feet respectively. Pyotr Stepanovitch fastened the stones while Tolkatchenko and Erkel only held and passed them. Erkel was foremost, and while Pyotr Stepanovitch, grumbling and swearing, tied the dead man's feet together with the cord and fastened the stone to them—a rather lengthy operation—Tolkatchenko stood holding the other stone at arm's-length, his whole person bending forward, as it were, deferentially, to be in readiness to hand it without delay. It never once occurred to him to lay his burden on the ground in the interval. When at last both stones were tied on and Pyotr Stepanovitch got up from the ground to scrutinise the faces of his companions, something strange happened, utterly unexpected and surprising to almost every one.

As I have said already, all except perhaps Tolkatchenko and Erkel were standing still doing nothing. Though Virginsky had rushed up to Shatov with the others he had not seized him or helped to hold him. Lyamshin had joined the group after the shot had been fired. Afterwards, while Pyotr Stepanovitch was busy with the corpse—for perhaps ten minutes—none of them seemed to have been fully conscious. They grouped themselves around and seemed to have felt amazement rather than anxiety or alarm. Liputin stood foremost, close to the corpse. Virginsky stood behind him, peeping over his shoulder with a peculiar, as it were unconcerned, curiosity; he even stood on tiptoe to get a better view. Lyamshin hid behind Virginsky. He took an apprehensive peep from time to time and slipped behind him again at once. When the stones had been tied on and Pyotr Stepanovitch had risen to his feet, Virginsky began faintly shuddering all over, clasped his hands, and cried out bitterly at the top of his voice:

“It's not the right thing, it's not, it's not at all!” He would perhaps have added something more to his belated exclamation, but Lyamshin did not let him finish: he suddenly seized him from behind and squeezed him with all his might, uttering an unnatural shriek. There are moments of violent emotion, of terror, for instance, when a man will cry out in a voice not his own, unlike anything one could have anticipated from him, and this has sometimes a very terrible effect. Lyamshin gave vent to a scream more animal than human. Squeezing Virginsky from behind more and more tightly and convulsively, he went on shrieking without a pause, his mouth wide open and his eyes starting out of his head, keeping up a continual patter with his feet, as though he were beating a drum. Virginsky was so scared that he too screamed out like a madman, and with a ferocity, a vindictiveness that one could never have expected of Virginsky. He tried to pull himself away from Lyamshin, scratching and punching him as far as he could with his arms behind him. Erkel at last helped to pull Lyamshin away. But when, in his terror, Virginsky had skipped ten paces away from him, Lyamshin, catching sight of Pyotr Stepanovitch, began yelling again and flew at him. Stumbling over the corpse, he fell upon Pyotr Stepanovitch, pressing his head to the latter's chest and gripping him so tightly in his arms that Pyotr Stepanovitch, Tolkatchenko, and Liputin could all of them do nothing at the first moment. Pyotr Stepanovitch shouted, swore, beat him on the head with his fists. At last, wrenching himself away, he drew his revolver and put it in the open mouth of Lyamshin, who was still yelling and was by now tightly held by Tolkatchenko, Erkel, and Liputin. But Lyamshin went on shrieking in spite of the revolver. At last Erkel, crushing his silk handkerchief into a ball, deftly thrust it into his mouth and the shriek ceased. Meantime Tolkatchenko tied his hands with what was left of the rope.

“It's very strange,” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, scrutinising the madman with uneasy wonder. He was evidently struck. “I expected something very different from him,” he added thoughtfully.

They left Erkel in charge of him for a time. They had to make haste to get rid of the corpse: there had been so much noise that some one might have heard. Tolkatchenko and Pyotr Stepanovitch took up the lanterns and lifted the corpse by the head, while Liputin and Virginsky took the feet, and so they carried it away. With the two stones it was a heavy burden, and the distance was more than two hundred paces. Tolkatchenko was the strongest of them. He advised them to keep in step, but no one answered him and they all walked anyhow. Pyotr Stepanovitch walked on the right and, bending forward, carried the dead man's head on his shoulder while with the left hand he supported the stone. As Tolkatchenko walked more than half the way without thinking of helping him with the stone, Pyotr Stepanovitch at last shouted at him with an oath. It was a single, sudden shout. They all went on carrying the body in silence, and it was only when they reached the pond that Virginsky, stooping under his burden and seeming to be exhausted by the weight of it, cried out again in the same loud and wailing voice:

“It's not the right thing, no, no, it's not the right thing!”

The place to which they carried the dead man at the extreme end of the rather large pond, which was the farthest of the three from the house, was one of the most solitary and unfrequented spots in the park, especially at this late season of the year. At that end the pond was overgrown with weeds by the banks. They put down the lantern, swung the corpse and threw it into the pond. They heard a muffled and prolonged splash. Pyotr Stepanovitch raised the lantern and every one followed his example, peering curiously to see the body sink, but nothing could be seen: weighted with the two stones, the body sank at once. The big ripples spread over the surface of the water and quickly passed away. It was over.

Virginsky went off with Erkel, who before giving up Lyamshin to Tolkatchenko brought him to Pyotr Stepanovitch, reporting to the latter that Lyamshin had come to his senses, was penitent and begged forgiveness, and indeed had no recollection of what had happened to him. Pyotr Stepanovitch walked off alone, going round by the farther side of the pond, skirting the park. This was the longest way. To his surprise Liputin overtook him before he got half-way home.

“Pyotr Stepanovitch! Pyotr Stepanovitch! Lyamshin will give information!”

“No, he will come to his senses and realise that he will be the first to go to Siberia if he did. No one will betray us now. Even you won't.”

“What about you?”

“No fear! I'll get you all out of the way the minute you attempt to turn traitors, and you know that. But you won't turn traitors. Have you run a mile and a half to tell me that?”

“Pyotr Stepanovitch, Pyotr Stepanovitch, perhaps we shall never meet again!”

“What's put that into your head?”

“Only tell me one thing.”

“Well, what? Though I want you to take yourself off.”

“One question, but answer it truly: are we the only quintet in the world, or is it true that there are hundreds of others? It's a question of the utmost importance to me, Pyotr Stepanovitch.”

“I see that from the frantic state you are in. But do you know, Liputin, you are more dangerous than Lyamshin?”

“I know, I know; but the answer, your answer!”

“You are a stupid fellow! I should have thought it could make no difference to you now whether it's the only quintet or one of a thousand.”

“That means it's the only one! I was sure of it . . .” cried Liputin. “I always knew it was the only one, I knew it all along.” And without waiting for any reply he turned and quickly vanished into the darkness.

Pyotr Stepanovitch pondered a little.

“No, no one will turn traitor,” he concluded with decision, “but the group must remain a group and obey, or I'U ... What a wretched set they are though!”

II

He first went home, and carefully, without haste, packed his trunk. At six o'clock in the morning there was a special train from the town. This early morning express only ran once a week, and was only a recent experiment. Though Pyotr Stepanovitch had told the members of the quintet that he was only going to be away for a short time in the neighbourhood, his intentions, as appeared later, were in reality very different. Having finished packing, he settled accounts with his landlady to whom he had previously given notice of his departure, and drove in a cab to Erkel's lodgings, near the station. And then just upon one o'clock at night he walked to Kirillov's, approaching as before by Fedka's secret way.

Pyotr Stepanovitch was in a painful state of mind. Apart from other extremely grave reasons for dissatisfaction (he was still unable to learn anything of Stavrogin), he had, it seems— for I cannot assert it for a fact—received in the course of that day, probably from Petersburg, secret information of a danger awaiting him in the immediate future. There are, of course, many legends in the town relating to this period; but if any facts were known, it was only to those immediately concerned. I can only surmise as my own conjecture that Pyotr Stepanovitch may well have had affairs going on in other neighbourhoods as well as in our town, so that he really may have received such a warning. I am convinced, indeed, in spite of Liputin's cynical and despairing doubts, that he really had two or three other quintets; for instance, in Petersburg and Moscow, and if not quintets at least colleagues and correspondents, and possibly was in very curious relations with them. Not more than three days after his departure an order for his immediate arrest arrived from Petersburg—whether in connection with what had happened among us, or elsewhere, I don't know. This order only served to increase the overwhelming, almost panic terror which suddenly came upon our local authorities and the society of the town, till then so persistently frivolous in its attitude, on the discovery of the mysterious and portentous murder of the student Shatov—the climax of the long series of senseless actions in our midst—as well as the extremely mysterious circumstances that accompanied that murder. But the order came too late: Pyotr Stepanovitch was already in Petersburg, living under another name, and, learning what was going on, he made haste to make his escape abroad. . . . But I am anticipating in a shocking way.

He went in to Kirillov, looking ill-humoured and quarrelsome. Apart from the real task before him, he felt, as it were, tempted to satisfy some personal grudge, to avenge himself on Kirillov for something. Kirillov seemed pleased to see him; he had evidently been expecting him a long time with painful impatience. His face was paler than usual; there was a fixed and heavy look in his black eyes.

“I thought you weren't coming,” he brought out drearily from his corner of the sofa, from which he had not, however, moved to greet him.

Pyotr Stepanovitch stood before him and, before uttering a word, looked intently at his face.

“Everything is in order, then, and we are not drawing back from our resolution. Bravo!” He smiled an offensively patronising smile. “But, after all,” he added with unpleasant jocosity, “if I am behind my time, it's not for you to complain: I made you a present of three hours.”

“I don't want extra hours as a present from you, and you can't make me a present . . . you fool!”

“What?” Pyotr Stepanovitch was startled, but instantly controlled himself. “What huffiness! So we are in a savage temper?” he rapped out, still with the same offensive superciliousness. “At such a moment composure is what you need. The best thing you can do is to consider yourself a Columbus and me a mouse, and not to take offence at anything I say. I gave you that advice yesterday.”

“I don't want to look upon you as a mouse.”

“What's that, a compliment? But the tea is cold—and that shows that everything is topsy-turvy. Bah! But I see something in the window, on a plate.” He went to the window. “Oh oh, boiled chicken and rice! . . . But why haven't you begun upon it yet? So we are in such a state of mind that even chicken ...”

“I've dined, and it's not your business. Hold your tongue!”

“Oh, of course; besides, it's no consequence—though for me at the moment it is of consequence. Only fancy, I scarcely had any dinner, and so if, as I suppose, that chicken is not wanted now . . . eh?”

“Eat it if you can.”

“Thank you, and then I'll have tea.”

He instantly settled himself at the other end of the sofa and fell upon the chicken with extraordinary greediness; at the same time he kept a constant watch on his victim. Kirillov looked at him fixedly with angry aversion, as though unable to tear himself away.

“I say, though,” Pyotr Stepanovitch fired off suddenly, while he still went on eating, “what about our business? We are not crying off, are we? How about that document?”

“I've decided in the night that it's nothing to me. I'll write it. About the manifestoes?”

“Yes, about the manifestoes too. But I'll dictate it. Of course, that's nothing to you. Can you possibly mind what's in the letter at such a moment?”

“That's not your business.”

“It's not mine, of course. It need only be a few lines, though: that you and Shatov distributed the manifestoes and with the help of Fedka, who hid in your lodgings. This last point about Fedka and your lodgings is very important—the most important of all, indeed. You see, I am talking to you quite openly.”

“Shatov? Why Shatov? I won't mention Shatov for anything.”

“What next! What is it to you? You can't hurt him now.”

“His wife has come back to him. She has waked up and has sent to ask me where he is.”

“She has sent to ask you where he is? H'm . . . that's unfortunate. She may send again; no one ought to know I am here.”

Pyotr Stepanovitch was uneasy.

“She won't know, she's gone to sleep again. There's a midwife with her, Arina Virginsky.”

“So that's how it was. . . . She won't overhear, I suppose? I say, you'd better shut the front door.”

“She won't overhear anything. And if Shatov comes I'll hide you in another room.”

“Shatov won't come; and you must write that you quarrelled with him because he turned traitor and informed the police . . . this evening . . . and caused his death.”

“He is dead!” cried Kirillov, jumping up from the sofa.

“He died at seven o'clock this evening, or rather, at seven o'clock yesterday evening, and now it's one o'clock.”

“You have killed him! . . . And I foresaw it yesterday!”

“No doubt you did! With this revolver here.” (He drew out his revolver as though to show it, but did not put it back again and still held it in his right hand as though in readiness.) “You are a strange man, though, Kirillov; you knew yourself that the stupid fellow was bound to end like this. What was there to foresee in that? I made that as plain as possible over and over again. Shatov was meaning to betray us; I was watching him, and it could not be left like that. And you too had instructions to watch him; you told me so yourself three weeks ago. ...”

“Hold your tongue! You've done this because he spat in your face in Geneva!”

“For that and for other things too—for many other things; not from spite, however. Why do you jump up? Why look like that? Oh oh, so that's it, is it?”

He jumped up and held out his revolver before him. Kirillov had suddenly snatched up from the window his revolver, which had been loaded and put ready since the morning. Pyotr Stepanovitch took ,up his position and aimed his weapon at Kirillov. The latter laughed angrily.

“Confess, you scoundrel, that you brought your revolver because I might shoot you. . . . But I shan't shoot you . . . though . . . though ...”

And again he turned his revolver upon Pyotr Stepanovitch, as it were rehearsing, as though unable to deny himself the pleasure of imagining how he would shoot him. Pyotr Stepanovitch, holding his ground, waited for him, waited for him till the last minute without pulling the trigger, at the risk of being the first to get a bullet in his head: it might well be expected of “the maniac.” But at last “the maniac” dropped his hand, gasping and trembling and unable to speak.

“You've played your little game and that's enough.” Pyotr Stepanovitch, too, dropped his weapon. “I knew it was only a game; only you ran a risk, let me tell you: I might have fired.”

And he sat down on the sofa with a fair show of composure and poured himself out some tea, though his hand trembled a little. Kirillov laid his revolver on the table and began walking up and down.

“I won't write that I killed Shatov . . . and I won't write anything now. You won't have a document!”

“I shan't?”

“No, you won't.”

“What meanness and what stupidity!” Pyotr Stepanovitch turned green with resentment. “I foresaw it, though. You've not taken me by surprise, let me tell you. As you please, however. If I could make you do it by force, I would. You are a scoundrel, though.” Pyotr Stepanovitch was more and more carried away and unable to restrain himself. “You asked us for money out there and promised us no end of things. . . . I won't go away with nothing, however: I'll see you put the bullet through your brains first, anyway.”

“I want you to go away at once.” Kirillov stood firmly before him.

“No, that's impossible.” Pyotr Stepanovitch took up his revolver again. “Now in your spite and cowardice you may think fit to put it off and to turn traitor to-morrow, so as to get money again; they'll pay you for that, of course. Damn it all, fellows like you are capable of anything! Only don't trouble yourself; I've provided for all contingencies: I am not going till I've dashed your brains out with this revolver, as I did to that scoundrel Shatov, if you are afraid to do it yourself and put off your intention, damn you!”

“You are set on seeing my blood, too?”

“I am not acting from spite; let me tell you, it's nothing to me. I am doing it to be at ease about the cause. One can't rely on men; you see that for yourself. I don't understand what fancy possesses you to put yourself to death. It wasn't my idea; you thought of it yourself before I appeared, and talked of your intention to the committee abroad before you said anything to me. And you know, no one has forced it out of you; no one of them knew you, but you came to confide in them yourself, from sentimentalism. And what's to be done if a plan of action here, which can't be altered now, was founded upon that with your consent and upon your suggestion? . . . your suggestion, mind that! You have put yourself in a position in which you know too much. If you are an ass and go off to-morrow to inform the police, that would be rather a disadvantage to us; what do you think about it? Yes, you've bound yourself; you've given your word, you've taken money. That you can't deny. . . .”

Pyotr Stepanovitch was much excited, but for some time past Kirillov had not been listening. He paced up and down the room, lost in thought again.

“I am sorry for Shatov,” he said, stopping before Pyotr Stepanovitch again.

“Why so? I am sorry, if that's all, and do you suppose . . .”

“Hold your tongue, you scoundrel,” roared Kirillov, making an alarming and unmistakable movement; “I'll kill you.”

“There, there, there! I told a lie, I admit it; I am not sorry at all. Come, that's enough, that's enough.” Pyotr Stepanovitch started up apprehensively, putting out his hand.

Kirillov subsided and began walking up and down again.

“I won't put it off; I want to kill myself now: all are scoundrels.”

“Well, that's an idea; of course all are scoundrels; and since life is a beastly thing for a decent man ...”

“Fool, I am just such a scoundrel as you, as all, not a decent man. There's never been a decent man anywhere.”

“He's guessed the truth at last! Can you, Kirillov, with your sense, have failed to see till now that all men are alike, that there are none better or worse, only some are stupider, than others, and that if all are scoundrels (which is nonsense, though) there oughtn't to be any people that are not?”

“Ah! Why, you are. really in earnest?” Kirillov looked at him with some wonder. “You speak with heat and simply. . . . Can it be that even fellows like you have convictions?”

“Kirillov, I've never been able to understand why you mean to kill yourself. I only know it's from conviction . . . strong conviction. But if you feel a yearning to express yourself, so to say, I am at your service. . . . Only you must think of the time.”

“What time is it?”

“Oh oh, just two.” Pyotr Stepanovitch looked at his watch and lighted a cigarette.

“It seems we can come to terms after all,” he reflected.

“I've nothing to say to you,” muttered Kirillov.

“I remember that something about God comes into it ... you explained it to me once—twice, in fact. If you stopped yourself, you become God; that's it, isn't it?”

“Yes, I become God.”

Pyotr Stepanovitch did not even smile; he waited. Kirillov looked at him subtly.

“You are a political impostor and intriguer. You want to lead me on into philosophy and enthusiasm and to bring about a reconciliation so as to disperse my anger, and then, when I am reconciled with you, beg from me a note to say I killed Shatov.” ''

Pyotr Stepanovitch answered with almost natural frankness.

“Well, supposing I am such a scoundrel. But at the last moments does that matter to you, Kirillov? What are we quarrelling about? Tell me, please. You are one sort of man and I am another—what of it? And what's more, we are both of us . . .”

“Scoundrels.”

“Yes, scoundrels if you like. But you know that that's only words.”

“All my life I wanted it not to be only words. I lived because I did not want it to be. Even now every day I want it to be not words.”

“Well, every one seeks to be where he is best off. The fish . . . that is, every one seeks his own comfort, that's all. That's been a commonplace for ages and ages.”

“Comfort, do you say?”

“Oh, it's not worth while quarrelling over words.”

“No, you were right in what you said; let it be comfort. God is necessary and so must exist.”

“Well, that's all right, then.”

“But I know He doesn't and can't.”

“That's more likely.”

“Surely you must understand that a man with two such ideas can't go on living?”

“Must shoot himself, you mean?”

“Surely you must understand that one might shoot oneself for that alone? You don't understand that there may be a man, one man out of your thousands of millions, one man who won't bear it and does not want to.”

“All I understand is that you seem to be hesitating. . . . That's very bad.”

“Stavrogin, too, is consumed by an idea,” Kirillov said gloomily, pacing up and down the room. He had not noticed the previous remark.

“What?” Pyotr Stepanovitch pricked up his ears. “What idea? Did he tell you something himself?”

“No, I guessed it myself: if Stavrogin has faith, he does not believe that he has faith. If he hasn't faith, he does not believe that he hasn't.”

“Well, Stavrogin has got something else worse than that in his head,” Pyotr Stepanovitch muttered peevishly, uneasily watching the turn the conversation had taken and the pallor of Kirillov.

“Damn it all, he won't shoot himself!” he was thinking. “I always suspected it; it's a maggot in the brain and nothing more; what a rotten lot of people!”

“You are the last to be with me; I shouldn't like to part on bad terms with you,” Kirillov vouchsafed suddenly.

Pyotr Stepanovitch did not answer at once. “Damn it all, what is it now?” he thought again.

“I assure you, Kirillov, I have nothing against you personally as a man, and always ...”

“You are a scoundrel and a false intellect. But I am just the same as you are, and I will shoot myself while you will remain living.”

“You mean to say, I am so abject that I want to go on living.”

He could not make up his mind whether it was judicious to keep up such a conversation at such a moment or not, and resolved “to be guided by circumstances.” But the tone of superiority and of contempt for him, which Kirillov had never disguised, had always irritated him, and now for some reason it irritated him more than ever—possibly because Kirillov, who was to die within an hour or so (Pyotr Stepanovitch still reckoned upon this), seemed to him, as it were, already only half a man, some creature whom he could not allow to be haughty.

“You seem to be boasting to me of your shooting yourself.”

“I've always been surprised at every one's going on living,” said Kirillov, not hearing his remark.

“H'm! Admitting that's an idea, but . . .”

“You ape, you assent to get the better of me. Hold your tongue; you won't understand anything. If there is no God, then I am God.”

“There, I could never understand that point of yours: why are you God?”

“If God exists, all is His will and from His will I cannot escape. If not, it's all my will and I am bound to show self-will.”

“Self-will? But why are you bound?”

“Because all will has become mine. Can it be that no one in the whole planet, after making an end of God and believing in his own will, will dare to express his self-will on the most vital point? It's like a beggar inheriting a fortune and being afraid of it and not daring to approach the bag of gold, thinking himself too weak to own it. I want to manifest my self-will. I may be the only one, but I'll do it.”

“Do it by all means.”

“I am bound to shoot myself because the highest point of my self-will is to kill myself with my own hands.”

“But you won't be the only one to kill yourself; there are lots of suicides.”

“With good cause. But to do it without any cause at all, simply for self-will, I am the only one.”

“He won't shoot himself,” flashed across Pyotr Stepanovitch's ruined again.

“Do you know,” he observed irritably, “if I were in your place I should kill some one else to show my self-will, not myself. You might be of use. I'll tell you whom, if you are not afraid. Then you needn't shoot yourself to-day, perhaps. We may come to terms.”

“To kill some one would be the lowest point of self-will, and you show your whole soul in that. I am not you: I want the highest point and I'll kill myself.”

“He's come to it of himself,” Pyotr Stepanovitch muttered malignantly.

“I am bound to show my unbelief,” said Kirillov, walking about the room. “I have no higher idea than disbelief in God. I have all the history of mankind on my side. Man has done nothing but invent God so as to go on living, and not kill himself; that's the whole of universal history up till now. I am the first one in the whole history of mankind who would not invent God. Let them know it once for all.”

“He won't shoot himself,” Pyotr Stepanovitch thought anxiously.

“Let whom know it?” he said, egging him on. “It's only you and me here; you mean Liputin?”

“Let every one know; all will know. There is nothing secret that will not be made known. He said so.”

And he pointed with feverish enthusiasm to the image of the Saviour, before which a lamp was burning. Pyotr Stepanovitch lost his temper completely.

“So you still believe in Him, and you've lighted the lamp; 'to be on the safe side,' I suppose?”

The other did not speak.

“Do you know, to my thinking, you believe perhaps more thoroughly than any priest.”

“Believe in whom? In Him? Listen.” Kirillov stood still, gazing before him with fixed and ecstatic look. “Listen to a great idea: there was a day on earth, and in the midst of the earth there stood three crosses. One on the Cross had such faith that he said to another, 'To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.' The day ended; both died and passed away and found neither Paradise nor resurrection. His words did not come true. Listen: that Man was the loftiest of all on earth, He was that which gave meaning to life. The whole planet, with everything on it, is mere madness without that Man. There has never been any like Him before or since, never, up to a miracle. For that is the miracle, that there never was or never will be another like Him. And if that is so, if the laws of nature did not spare even Him, have not spared even their miracle and made even Him live in a lie and die for a lie, then all the planet is a lie and rests on a lie and on mockery. So then, the very laws of the planet are a lie and the vaudeville of devils. What is there to live for? Answer, if you are a man.”

“That's a different matter. It seems to me you've mixed up two different causes, and that's a very unsafe thing to do. But excuse me, if you are God I If the lie were ended and if you realised that all the falsity comes from the belief in that former God?”

“So at last you understand!” cried Kirillov rapturously. “So it can be understood if even a fellow like you understands. Do you understand now that the salvation for all consists in proving this idea to every one I Who will prove it? I! I can't understand how an atheist could know that there is no God and not kill himself on the spot. To recognise that there is no God and not to recognise at the same instant that one is God oneself is an absurdity, else one would certainly kill oneself. If you recognise it you are sovereign, and then you won't kill yourself but will live in the greatest glory. But one, the first, must kill himself, for else who will begin and prove it? So I must certainly kill myself, to begin and prove it. Now I am only a god against my will and I am unhappy, because I am bound to assert my will. All are unhappy because all are afraid to express their will. Man has hitherto been so unhappy and so poor because he has been afraid to assert his will in the highest point and has shown his self-will only in little things, like a schoolboy. I am awfully unhappy, for I'm awfully afraid. Terror is the curse of man. . . . But I will assert my will, I am bound to believe that I don't believe. I will begin and will make an end of it and open the door, and will save. That's the only thing that will save mankind and will re-create the next generation physically; for with his present physical nature man can't get on without his former God, I believe. For three years I've been seeking for the attribute of my godhead and I've found it; the attribute of my godhead is self-will! That's all I can do to prove in the highest point my independence and my new terrible freedom. For it is very terrible. I am killing myself to prove my independence and my new terrible freedom.”

His face was unnaturally pale, and there was a terribly heavy look in his eyes. He was like a man in delirium. Pyotr Stepanoviteh thought he would drop on to the floor.

“Give me the pen!” Kirillov cried suddenly, quite unexpectedly, in a positive frenzy. “Dictate; I'll sign anything. I'll sign that I killed Shatov even. Dictate while it amuses me. I am not afraid of what the haughty slaves will think! You will see for yourself that all that is secret shall be made manifest! And you will be crushed. ... I believe, I believe!”

Pyotr Stepanoviteh jumped up from his seat and instantly handed him an inkstand and paper, and began dictating, seizing the moment, quivering with anxiety.

“I, Alexey Kirillov, declare ...”

“Stay; I won't! To whom am I declaring it?”

Kirillov was shaking as though he were in a fever. This declaration and the sudden strange idea of it seemed to absorb him entirely, as though it were a means of escape by which his tortured spirit strove for a moment's relief.

“To whom am I declaring it? I want to know to whom?”

“To no one, every one, the first person who reads it. Why define it? The whole world!”

“The whole world! Bravo! And I won't have any repentance. I don't want penitence and I don't want it for the police!”

“No, of course, there's rid need of it, damn the police! Write, if you are in earnest!” Pyotr Stepanoviteh cried hysterically.

“Stay! I want to put at the top a face with the tongue out.”

“Ech, what nonsense,” cried Pyotr Stepanoviteh crossly, “you can express all that without the drawing, by—the tone.”

“By the tone? That's true. Yes, by the tone, by the tone of it. Dictate, the tone.”

“I, Alexey Kirillov,” Pyotr Stepanoviteh dictated firmly and peremptorily, bending over Kirillov's shoulder and following every letter which the latter formed with a hand trembling with excitement, “I, Kirillov, declare that to-day, the —th October, at about eight o'clock in the evening, I killed the student Shatov in the park for turning traitor and giving information of the manifestoes and of Fedka, who has been lodging with us for ten days in Filipov's house. I am shooting myself to-day with my revolver, not because I repent and am afraid of you, but because when I was abroad I made up my mind to put an end to my life.”

“Is that all?” cried Kirillov with surprise and indignation. “Not another word,” cried Pyotr Stepanovitch, waving his hand, attempting to snatch the document from him.

“Stay.” Kirillov put his hand firmly on the paper. “Stay, it's nonsense! I want to say with whom I killed him. Why Fedka? And what about the fire? I want it all and I want to be abusive in tone, too, in tone!”

“Enough, Kirillov, I assure you it's enough,” cried Pyotr Stepanovitch almost imploringly, trembling lest he should tear up the paper; “that they may believe you, you must say it as obscurely as possible, just like that, simply in hints. You must only give them a peep of the truth, just enough to tantalise them. They'll tell a story better than ours, and of course they'll believe themselves more than they would us; and you know, it's better than anything—better than anything! Let me have it, it's splendid as it is; give it to me, give it to me!”

And he kept trying to snatch the paper. Kirillov listened open-eyed and appeared to be trying to reflect, but he seemed beyond understanding now.

“Damn it all,” Pyotr Stepanovitch cried all at once, ill-humouredly, “he hasn't signed it! Why are you staring like that? Sign!”

“I want to abuse them,” muttered Kirillov. He took the pen, however, and signed. “I want to abuse them.”

“Write 'Vive la republique,' and that will be enough.”

“Bravo!” Kirillov almost bellowed with delight. 'Vive la republique democratique sociale et universelle ou la mart!' No, no, that's not it. 'Liberte, egalite, fraternite ou la mort.' There, that's better, that's better.” He wrote it gleefully under his signature.

“Enough, enough,” repeated Pyotr Stepanovitch.

“Stay, a little more. I'll sign it again in French, you know. 'De Kirilloff, gentilhomme russe et citoyen du monde.' Ha ha!” He went off in a peal of laughter. “No, no, no; stay. I've found something better than all. Eureka! 'Gentilhomme, seminariste russe et citoyen du monde civilise!' That's better than any. . . .” He jumped up from the sofa and suddenly, with a rapid gesture, snatched up the revolver from the window, ran with it into the next room, and closed the door behind him.

Pyotr Stepanovitch stood for a moment, pondering and gazing at the door.

“If he does it at once, perhaps he'll do it, but if he begins thinking, nothing will come of it.”

Meanwhile he took up the paper, sat down, and looked at it again. The wording of the document pleased him again.

“What's needed for the moment? What's wanted is to throw them all off the scent and keep them busy for a time. The park? There's no park in the town and they'll guess its Skvoreshniki of themselves. But while they are arriving at that, time will be passing; then the search will take time too; then when they find the body it will prove that the story is true, and it will follow that's it all true, that it's true about Fedka too. And Fedka explains the fire, the Lebyadkins; so that it was all being hatched here, at Filipov's, while they overlooked it and saw nothing—that will quite turn their heads! They will never think of the quintet; Shatov and Kirillov and Fedka and Lebyadkin, and why they killed each other—that will be another question for them. Oh, damn it all, I don't hear the shot!”

Though he had been reading and admiring the wording of it, he had been listening anxiously all the time, and he suddenly flew into a rage. He looked anxiously at his watch; it was getting late and it was fully ten minutes since Kirillov had gone out. . . . Snatching up the candle, he went to the door of the room where Kirillov had shut himself up. He was just at the door when the thought struck him that the candle had burnt out, that it would not last another twenty minutes, and that there was no other in the room. He took hold of the handle and listened warily; he did not hear the slightest sound. He suddenly opened the door and lifted up the candle: something uttered a roar and rushed at him. He slammed the door with all his might and pressed his weight against it; but all sounds died away and again there was deathlike stillness.

He stood for a long while irresolute, with the candle in his hand. He had been able to see very little in the second he held the door open, but he had caught a glimpse of the face of Kirillov standing at the other end of the room by the window, and the savage fury with which the latter had rushed upon him. Pyotr Stepanovitch started, rapidly set the candle on the table, made ready his revolver, and retreated on tiptoe to the farthest corner of the room, so that if Kirillov opened the door and rushed up to the table with the revolver he would still have time to be the first to aim and fire.

Pyotr Stepanovitch had by now lost all faith in the suicide. “He was standing in the middle of the room, thinking,” flashed like a whirlwind through Pyotr Stepanovitch's mind, “and the room was dark and horrible too. . . . He roared and rushed at me. There are two possibilities: either I interrupted him at the very second when he was pulling the trigger or ... or he was standing planning how to kill me. Yes, that's it, he was planning it. ... He knows I won't go away without killing him if he funks it himself—so that he would have to kill me first to prevent my killing him. . . . And again, again there is silence. I am really frightened: he may open the door all of a sudden. . . . The nuisance of it is that he believes in God like any priest. . . . He won't shoot himself for anything! There are lots of these people nowadays 'who've come to it of themselves.' A rotten lot! Oh, damn it, the candle, the candle! It'll go out within a quarter of an hour for certain. ... I must put a stop to it; come what may, I must put a stop to it. ... Now I can kill him. . . . With that document here no one would think of my killing him. I can put him in such an attitude oh the floor with an unloaded revolver in his hand that they'd be certain he'd done it himself. . . . Ach, damn it! how is one to kill him? If I open the door he'll rush out again and shoot me first. Damn it all, he'll be sure to miss!”

He was in agonies, trembling at the necessity of action and his own indecision. At last he took up the candle and again approached the door with the revolver held up in readiness; he put his left hand, in which he held the candle, on the doorhandle. But he managed awkwardly: the handle clanked, there was a rattle and a creak. “He will fire straightway,” flashed through Pyotr Stepanovitch's mind. With his foot he flung the door open violently, raised the candle, and held out the revolver; but no shot nor cry came from within. . . . There was no one in the room.

He started. The room led nowhere. There was no exit, no means of escape from it. He lifted the candle higher and looked about him more attentively: there was certainly no one. He called Kirillov's name in a low voice, then again louder; no one answered.

“Can he have got out by the window?” The casement in one window was, in fact, open. “Absurd! He couldn't have got away through, the casement.” Pyotr Stepanovitch crossed the room and went up to the window. “He couldn't possibly.” All at once he turned round quickly and was aghast at something extraordinary.

Against the wall facing the windows on the right of the door stood a cupboard. On the right side of this cupboard, in the corner formed by the cupboard and the wall, stood Kirillov, and he was standing in a very strange way; motionless, perfectly erect, with his arms held stiffly at his sides, his head raised and pressed tightly back against the wall in the very corner, he seemed to be trying to conceal and efface himself. Everything seemed to show that he was hiding, yet somehow it was not easy to believe it. Pyotr Stepanovitch was standing a little sideways to the corner, and could only see the projecting parts of the figure. He could not bring himself to move to the left to get a full view of Kirillov and solve the mystery. His heart began beating violently, and he felt a sudden rush of blind fury: he started from where he stood, and, shouting and stamping with his feet, he rushed to the horrible place.

But when he reached Kirillov he stopped short again, still more overcome, horror-stricken. What struck him most was that, in spite of his shout and his furious rush, the figure did riot stir, did not move in a single limb—as though it were of stone or of wax. The pallor of the face was unnatural, the black eyes were quite unmoving and were staring away at a point in the distance. Pyotr Stepanovitch lowered the candle and raised it again, lighting up the figure from all points of view and scrutinising it. He suddenly noticed that, although Kirillov was looking straight before him, he could see him and was perhaps watching him out of the corner of his eye. Then the idea occurred to him to hold the candle right up to the wretch's face, to scorch him and see what he would do. He suddenly fancied that Kirillov's chin twitched and that something like a mocking smile passed over his lips—as though he had guessed Pyotr Stepanovitch's thought. He shuddered arid, beside himself, clutched violently at Kirillov's shoulder.

Then something happened so hideous and so soon over that Pyotr Stepanovitch could never afterwards recover a coherent impression of it. He had hardly touched Kirillov when the latter bent down quickly and with his head knocked the candle out of Pyotr Stepanovitch's hand; the candlestick fell with a clang on the ground and the candle went out. At the same moment he was conscious of a fearful pain in the little finger of his left hand. He cried out, and all that he could remember was that, beside himself, he hit out with all his might and struck three blows with the revolver on the head of Kirillov, who had bent down to him and had bitten his finger. At last he tore away his finger and rushed headlong to get out of the house, feeling his way in the dark. He was pursued by terrible shouts from the room.

“Directly, directly, directly, directly.” Ten times. But he still ran on, and was running into the porch when he suddenly heard a loud shot. Then he stopped short in the dark porch and stood deliberating for five minutes; at last he made his way back into the house. But he had to get the candle. He had only to feel on the floor on the right of the cupboard for the candlestick; but how was he to light the candle? There suddenly came into his mind a vague recollection: he recalled that when he had run into the kitchen the day before to attack Fedka he had noticed in passing a large red box of matches in a corner on a shelf. Feeling with his hands, he made his way to the door on the left leading to the kitchen, found it, crossed the passage, and went down the steps. On the shelf, on the very spot where he had just recalled seeing it, he felt in the dark a full unopened box of matches. He hurriedly went up the steps again without striking a light, and it was only when he was near the cupboard, at the spot where he had struck Kirillov with the revolver and been bitten by him, that he remembered his bitten finger, and at the same instant was conscious that it was unbearably painful. Clenching his teeth, he managed somehow to light the candle-end, set it in the candlestick again, and looked about him: near the open casement, with his feet towards the right-hand corner, lay the dead body of Kirillov. The shot had been fired at the right temple and the bullet had come out at the top on the left, shattering the skull. There were splashes of blood and brains. The revolver was still in the suicide's hand on the floor. Death must have been instantaneous. After a careful look round, Pyotr Stepanovitch got up and went out on tiptoe, closed the door, left the candle on the table in the outer room, thought a moment, and resolved not to put it out, reflecting that it could not possibly set fire to anything. Looking once more at the document left on the table, he smiled mechanically and then went out of the house, still for some reason walking on tiptoe. He crept through Fedka's hole again and carefully replaced the posts after him.

III

Precisely at ten minutes to six Pyotr Stepanovitch and Erkel were walking up and down the platform at the railway-station beside a rather long train. Pyotr Stepanovitch was setting oft and Erkel was saying good-bye to him. The luggage was in, and his bag was in the seat he had taken in a second-class carriage. The first bell had rung already; they were waiting for the second. Pyotr Stepanovitch looked about him, openly watching the passengers as they got into the train. But he did not meet anyone he knew well; only twice he nodded to acquaintances— a merchant whom he knew slightly, and then a young village priest who was going to his parish two stations away. Erkel evidently wanted to speak of something of importance in the last moments, though possibly he did not himself know exactly of what, but he could not bring himself to begin! He kept fancying that Pyotr Stepanovitch seemed anxious to get rid of him and was impatient for the last bell.

“You look at every one so openly,” he observed with some timidity, as though he would have warned him.

“Why not? It would not do for me to conceal myself at present. It's too soon. Don't be uneasy. All I am afraid of is that the devil might send Liputin this way; he might scent me out and race off here.”

“Pyotr Stepanovitch, they are not to be trusted,” Erkel brought out resolutely. “Liputin?”

“None of them, Pyotr Stepanovitch.”

“Nonsense! they are all bound by what happened yesterday. There isn't one who would turn traitor. People won't go to certain destruction unless they've lost their reason.”

“Pyotr Stepanovitch, but they will lose their reason.” Evidently that idea had already occurred to Pyotr Stepanovitch too, and so Erkel's observation irritated him the more.

“You are not in a funk too, are you, Erkel? I rely on you more than on any of them. I've seen now what each of them is worth. Tell them to-day all I've told you. I leave them in your charge. Go round to each of them this morning. Read them my written instructions to-morrow, or the day after, when you are all together and they are capable of listening again . . . and believe me, they will be by to-morrow, for they'll be in an awful funk, and that will make them as soft as wax. . . . The great thing is that you shouldn't be downhearted.”

“Ach, Pyotr Stepanovitch, it would be better if you weren't going away.”

“But I am only going for a few days; I shall be back in no time.”

“Pyotr Stepanovitch,” Erkel brought out warily but resolutely, “what if you were going to Petersburg? Of course, I understand that you are only doing what's necessary for the cause.”

“I expected as much from you, Erkel. If you have guessed that I am going to Petersburg you can realise that I couldn't tell them yesterday, at that moment, that I was going so far for fear of frightening them. You saw for yourself what a state they were in. But you understand that I am going for the cause, for work of the first importance, for the common cause, and not to save my skin, as Liputin imagines.”

“Pyotr Stepanovitch, what if you were going abroad? I should understand ... I should understand that you must be careful of yourself because you are everything and we are nothing. I shall understand, Pyotr Stepanovitch.” The poor boy's voice actually quivered.

“Thank you, Erkel. . . . Aie, you've touched my bad finger.” (Erkel had pressed his hand awkwardly; the bad finger was discreetly bound up in black silk.) “But I tell you positively again that I am going to Petersburg only to sniff round, and perhaps shall only be there for twenty-four hours and then back here again at once. When I come back I shall stay at Gaganov's country place for the sake of appearances. If there is any notion of danger, I should be the first to take the lead and share it. If I stay longer, in Petersburg I'll let you know at once ... in the way we've arranged, and you'll tell them.” The second bell rang.

“Ah, then there's only five, minutes before the train starts. I don't want the group here to break up, you know. I am not afraid; don't be anxious about me. I have plenty of such centres, and it's not much consequence; but there's no harm in haying as many centres as possible. But I am quite at ease about you, though I am leaving you almost alone with those idiots. Don't be uneasy; they won't turn traitor, they won't have the pluck. . . . Ha ha, you going to-day too?” he cried suddenly in a quite different, cheerful voice to a very young man, who came up gaily to greet him. “I didn't know you were going by the express too. Where are you off to ... your mother's?”

The mother of the young man was a very wealthy landowner in a neighbouring province, and the young man was a distant relation of Yulia Mihailovna's and had been staying about a fortnight in our town.

“No, I am going farther, to R——. I've eight hours to live through in the train. Off to Petersburg?” laughed the young man.

“What makes you suppose I must be going to Petersburg?” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, laughing even more openly.

The young man shook his gloved finger at him.

“Well, you've guessed right,” Pyotr Stepanovitch whispered to him mysteriously. “I am going with letters from Yulia Mihailovna and have to call on three or four personages, as you can imagine—bother them all, to speak candidly. It's a beastly job!”

“But why is she in such a panic? Tell me,” the young man whispered too. “She wouldn't see even me yesterday. I don't think she has anything to fear for her husband, quite the contrary; he fell down so creditably at the fire—ready to sacrifice his life, so to speak.”

“Well, there it is,” laughed Pyotr Stepanovitch. “You see, she is afraid that people may have written from here already . . . that is, some gentlemen. . . . The fact is, Stavrogin is at the bottom of it, or rather Prince K. . . . Ech, it's a long story; I'll tell you something about it on the journey if you like—as far as my chivalrous feelings will allow me, at least. . . . This is my relation, Lieutenant Erkel, who lives down here.”

The young man, who had been stealthily glancing at Erkel, touched his hat; Erkel made a bow.

“But I say, Verhovensky, eight hours in the train is an awful ordeal. Berestov, the colonel, an awfully funny fellow, is travelling with me in the first class. He is a neighbour of ours in the country, and his wife is a Garin (nee de Garine), and you know he is a very decent fellow. He's got ideas too. He's only been here a couple of days. He's passionately fond of whist; couldn't we get up a game, eh? I've already fixed on a fourth—

Pripuhlov, our merchant from T——with a beard, a millionaire—.I mean it, a real millionaire; you can take my word for it. ... I'll introduce you; he is a very interesting money-bag. We shall have a laugh.”

“I shall be delighted, and I am awfully fond of cards in the train, but I am going second class.”

“Nonsense, that's no matter. Get in with us. I'll tell them directly to move you to the first class. The chief guard would do anything I tell him. What have you got? . . . a bag? a rug?”

“First-rate. Come along!”

Pyotr Stepanovitch took his bag, his rug, and his book, and at once and with alacrity transferred himself to the first class. Erkel helped him. The third bell rang.

“Well, Erkel.” Hurriedly, and with a preoccupied air, Pyotr Stepanovitch held out his hand from the window for the last time. “You see, I am sitting down to cards with them.”

“Why explain, Pyotr Stepanovitch? I understand, I understand it all!”

“Well, au revoir,” Pyotr Stepanovitch turned away suddenly on his name being called by the young man, who wanted to introduce him to his partners. And Erkel saw nothing more of Pyotr Stepanovitch.

He returned home very sad. Not that he was alarmed at Pyotr Stepanovitch's leaving them so suddenly, but ... he had turned away from him so quickly when that young swell had called to him and ... he might have said something different to him, not “Au revoir,” or ... or at least have pressed his hand more warmly. That last was bitterest of all. Something else was beginning to gnaw in his poor little heart, something which he could not understand himself yet, something connected with the evening before.