“Ah, Pavel Ivanovitch, Pavel Ivanovitch!” said Murazoff. “What a man you might have been if you had but exerted yourself with this same force and perseverance in the proper direction, with a better aim in view! Great heavens! how much good you might have accomplished! If one of the people who love good had only expended as much power in its behalf as you have expended in acquiring copecks, and had understood how to sacrifice his own self-love and ambition for good without sparing himself, as you have not spared yourself for the sake of amassing money, my God, how this earth of ours would have blossomed out! Pavel Ivanovitch, Pavel Ivanovitch! the pity of it is not that you have been guilty towards others, but that you have been false to yourself, to the rich powers and talents with which you were endowed. You were intended to be a great man, but you have been the cause of your own loss and ruin.”

No matter how far the incorrigible criminal may have strayed from the path in his wanderings, no matter how hardened his feelings may have become, no matter how he may have persisted in and clung to his life of corruption, yet if you approach him with the very qualities which he has discredited, his soul involuntarily awakens, and quivers in every fibre.

“Afanasiy Vasilievitch,” said Tchitchikoff, and he seized Murazoff’s hand in both of his, “oh, if you could only contrive to set me free, to restore my property to me, I swear to you that I would henceforth lead a wholly different life. Save me, my benefactor, save me!”

“What can I do? I must in that case war against the laws. Suppose that I were to bring myself to that; however, the prince is a just man; he would not release you.”

“My benefactor, you can do anything! The law does not terrify me. I could find means of coping with the law: what troubles me is, that I have been cast into prison, that I shall perish here like a dog, and that my property, my papers, my dressing-case——Ah! Save me!”

He embraced the old man’s feet, and burst into tears.

“Ah, Pavel Ivanovitch, Pavel Ivanovitch!” said old Murazoff, shaking his head, “how this property has blinded you! For its sake you refuse to listen to your poor soul.”

“I will think of my soul; only save me!”

“Pavel Ivanovitch,” said old Murazoff, impressively, “it is not within my power to save you. You see that yourself. But I will exert myself so far as I can to lighten your fate and to have you set at liberty. I do not know whether I shall succeed in effecting this, but I will try. But in case I should succeed beyond my expectations, I shall claim a reward for my labour, Pavel Ivanovitch. Cast aside all these efforts to acquire wealth. I say to you in serious earnest, that if I were to lose all my money—and I have more than you—I should not weep over it. No, no; the point does not lie in the property of which others may deprive me, but in that which no one can confiscate or steal away from me. You have already lived a tolerably long time in the world. You yourself style your life a bark amid the billows. You already have enough to live upon for the remainder of your days. Settle down in some retired spot, near a church and among good simple people; or, if you are anxious to leave descendants behind you, marry some good young girl who is not rich, but who is accustomed to a modest way of living; forget this noisy world and all its seductive caprices, and let it forget you. There is no rest to be had in it. You see how it is: everyone in it is an enemy, a tempter, or a traitor.”

“Certainly, certainly. I had already formally intended to order my life in accordance with the requirements of my soul, to occupy myself with the management of my estate, to live a quiet life, in fact. The tempter Satan, yes, the Devil and his crew, turned me from the path and beguiled me.”

Some hidden and hitherto unknown feelings now revealed themselves within our hero, as though something remote, something which had been dropped into his mind long before, which had been stifled since his childhood by stern and deadly precepts, by the unpropitious conditions of his wearisome boyhood,