And it turned out to everyone’s amazement. They began to live from the first day in great and unfeigned harmony, carefully preserving their marriage and like one soul in two bodies. She conceived that same winter, and they started going around to the churches of God and trembling before the wrath of the Lord. They visited three monasteries and heard prophecies. He constructed the promised church and built a hospital and an almshouse for the town. He allotted capital for widows and orphans. And he remembered everyone he had injured, and wished to recompense them; he started giving money away without stint, so that his spouse and the abbot restrained his hands, for “this,” they said, “is already enough.” Maxim Ivanovich obeyed: “I cheated Foma that time.” Well, so they paid Foma back. And Foma even wept: “I,” he says, “I’m so . . . There’s so much I’m content with even without that, and I’m eternally bounden to pray to God for you.” So everyone was touched by it, and that means it’s true what they say, that man will live by a good example. And they’re good people there.

His wife began to manage the factory herself, and in such a way that people still remember it. He didn’t stop drinking, but she took care of him on those days, and then also tried to cure him. His speech became decorous, and his voice itself even changed. He became filled with boundless pity, even for animals: from his window he saw a peasant beating his horse outrageously on the head and at once sent to him and bought the horse for twice the price. And he received the gift of tears:¹⁴ someone would start talking to him, and he’d just dissolve in tears. When her time came, the Lord finally heeded their prayers and sent them a son, and Maxim Ivanovich brightened up for the first time since those events; he gave away a lot of alms, forgave many debts, invited the whole town for the baptism. He invited the town, but the next day he came out black as night. His wife saw something had happened to him, she went up to him with the newborn. “The boy,” she says, “has forgiven us, and heeded our tears and prayers for him.” And it must be said that they hadn’t said a word about the matter for that whole year, but had kept it to themselves. And Maxim Ivanovich looked at her black as night. “Wait,” he says, “just consider, for the whole year he hasn’t come, but last night I saw him in a dream again.” “Here, for the first time, terror also entered my heart, after those strange words,” she remembered later.

And it was not for nothing that he had dreamed of the boy. As soon as Maxim Ivanovich mentioned it, almost, so to speak, that very minute, something happened to the newborn: he suddenly fell ill. And the baby was sick for eight days, they prayed tirelessly and invited doctors, and they sent for the foremost doctor to come by train from Moscow. The doctor arrived and was angry. “I,” he said, “am the foremost doctor, the whole of Moscow is waiting for me.” He prescribed some drops and left hurriedly. Took eight hundred roubles with him. And the baby died towards evening.

And what then? Maxim Ivanovich wrote a will leaving all his property to his gentle wife, handed all the capital and papers over to her, completed everything properly and in lawful order, then stood before her and bowed to the ground. “Let me go, my priceless wife, to save my soul while it’s still possible. If I spend my time without progress for my soul, I won’t come back anymore. I was hard and cruel, and imposed heavy burdens, but I imagine that the Lord will not leave me unrewarded for my future sorrows and wanderings, for to leave it all is no small cross and no small sorrow.” And his wife tried to soothe him with many tears: “You’re the only one I have on earth now, who can I stay with? I,” she says, “have laid up mercy in my heart during this year.” And all the town admonished him for the whole month, and begged him, and decided to keep him by force. But he didn’t listen to them, and left secretly at night, and never came back. And we hear that he performs his deeds of wandering and patience even to this day, and sends news to his dear wife every year . . .

Chapter Four

I

NOW I’M APPROACHING the final catastrophe, which concludes my notes. But in order to continue further, I must first run ahead of myself and explain something I had no idea of at the time of the action, but that I learned of and fully explained to myself only much later, that is, when everything was over. Otherwise I won’t be able to be clear, since I would have to write in riddles. And therefore I will give a direct and simple explanation, sacrificing so-called artistic quality, and I will do so as if it were not I writing, without the participation of my heart, but as if in the form of an entrefilet⁶⁷ in the newspapers.

The thing was that my childhood friend Lambert may very well have belonged, even directly, to those vile gangs of petty crooks who communicate among themselves for the sake of what is now called blackmail, and for which they now seek legal definitions and punishments in the code of law. The gang Lambert was part of had begun in Moscow and had already done enough mischief there (afterwards it was partly uncovered). I heard later that in Moscow they had for a while an extremely experienced and clever, and no longer young, leader. They embarked on their ventures as a whole gang or in parts. Along with the most dirty and unprintable things (of which, however, information did appear in the newspapers), they also carried out rather complex and even clever ventures, under the leadership of their chief. I learned about some of them later, but I won’t go into the details. I will only mention that the main feature of their method consisted in finding out certain secrets of people, sometimes very honest and highly placed people; then they went to these persons and threatened to reveal the documents (which they sometimes didn’t have at all), and demanded a ransom to keep silent. There are things that are not sinful and not at all criminal, the revealing of which might frighten even a respectable and firm man. They mostly aimed at family secrets. To indicate how deftly their chief sometimes acted, I will tell, with no details and in only three lines, about one of their tricks. In a certain very honorable house something in fact both sinful and criminal occurred: namely, the wife of a well-known and respected man entered into a secret amorous liaison with a young and rich officer. They got wind of it, and here is what they did: they directly gave the young man to know that they were going to inform the husband. They had not the slightest proof, and the young man knew that perfectly well, and they themselves made no secret of it with him; but all the deftness of the method and the cleverness of the calculation in this case consisted merely in the consideration that the informed husband, even without any proof, would act in the same way and take the same steps as if he had received the most mathematical proof. They aimed here at a knowledge of the man’s character and a knowledge of his family circumstances. The main thing was that one member of the gang was a young man from a very decent circle, who had managed to obtain the preliminary information. They fleeced the lover for a very tidy sum, and that without any danger to themselves, because the victim himself desired secrecy.

Lambert, though he took part, did not belong entirely to that Moscow gang; having acquired a taste for it, he gradually began, by way of trial, to act on his own. I’ll say beforehand: he was not quite up to it. He was calculating and by no means stupid, but he was hot-tempered and, what’s more, simplehearted, or, better to say, naïve—that is, he had no knowledge either of people or of society. For instance, he seemed not to understand at all the significance of their Moscow chief and supposed it was very easy to direct and organize such ventures. Finally, he assumed that almost everyone was the same sort of scoundrel as himself. Or, for instance, once having imagined that so-and-so was afraid or ought to be afraid for such-and-such reason, he no longer doubted that the man was indeed afraid, as in an axiom. I don’t know how to put it; later on I’ll explain it more clearly with facts, but in my opinion he was rather crudely developed, and there were certain good, noble feelings which he not only did not believe in, but maybe even had no conception of.