my brow, by my blood, by years of toil, by privation. My dressing-case, Afanasiy Vasilievitch! Everything will be stolen—carried off! O God!”

And, powerless to control the anguish which attacked his very heart, he sobbed aloud in a voice which pierced the thick walls of his prison, and resounded dully in the distance: he snatched off his satin neckcloth, and, seizing his coat of Navarino flame and ‘smoke by the collar, he tore it off.

“Ah, Pavel Ivanovitch, how these riches have blinded you! They prevent your realising your terrible situation.”

“My benefactor, my saviour, save me!” cried poor Pavel Ivanovitch, throwing himself at Murazoff’s feet. “The prince loves you: he will do anything for you.”

“No, Pavel Ivanovitch, I cannot, much as I should wish and like to do it. You have fallen under an inexorable law, and not under the power of any man.”

“That rascal of a Satan, that outcast of the human race, has ruined me!” So saying, Tchitchikoff dashed his head against the wall, and struck the table with his fist, so that he wounded it till it bled; but he felt neither the pain in his head nor the violence of the blow.

“Calm yourself, Pavel Ivanovitch; reflect how you may make your peace with God, and not with men; think of your miserable soul.”

“But what a fate, Afanasiy Vasilievitch! Did such a fate ever overtake any other man? I amassed my copecks patiently—with bloody patience, I may say, with toil, with toil; and I have never cheated men, nor robbed the treasury, as many do. Why did I amass copecks? In order to be able to pass the remnant of my days in comfort, to leave them to the wife and children whom I intended to acquire for my salvation, for the service of my country. That is why I wanted to amass money. I have gone astray; I do not deny it, I have gone astray; but what could I do? I only went astray when I saw that nothing was to be won by following the straight road, and that the crooked ways were more profitable. But I have ever toiled and stinted myself. If I have taken anything it has been from the wealthy. But see those scoundrels in the departments of justice who steal thousands from the treasury, who rob the poor, who squeeze the last copeck from those who have nothing. What a misfortune this is! Tell me why it is, that every time that you begin to reap the fruits of your labour, and to touch them with your hand, so to speak, there suddenly arises a tempest, or you run aground on a reef beneath the water, and the whole ship is dashed into splinters? Here I had a capital of thirty thousand roubles; I also had a three-storey house; on two occasions I purchased a village. Ah, Afanasiy Vasilievitch, why are these blows dealt to me? Was not my life already like a bark among the billows? Where is the justice of Heaven? Where is the reward for patience, for unexampled perseverance? Three times have I begun afresh, after having lost everything. I began again with a copeck, when any other man would long before have taken to drink in despair, and have ruined himself in the dram-shop. Consider how much I have had to content with, how much to endure! Why, every copeck has been wrung out of me, so to speak, with all the powers of my soul. Some other man might have acquired a fortune with ease, but with me it has only been by dint of great exertion.”

He sobbed loudly with insufferable torture of heart, fell upon a chair, completely tore off the skirt of his coat, which was hanging in shreds, flung it away from him, and thrusting both hands into his hair, over the improvement of which he had formerly taken so much pains, he tore it our remorselessly, enjoying the pain by which he strove to deaden the unquenchable torture of his heart.

For a long time Murazoff sat silent before him, gazing at this remarkable exhibition of madness, which was something that he had never hitherto witnessed. This fellow, who had not long ago been fluttering about with the easy agility of a man of the world or an officer, was now flinging himself wildly about in a soiled, torn, and rumpled waistcoat and unbuttoned trousers, with a hand bleeding from the blow which he had dealt it, and pouring out invectives on the hostile powers which attend upon mankind.