a thief. I made him one. It was necessary. I had
to confirm myself in my contempt and hate for what I betrayed. I have
suffered from as many vipers in my heart as any social democrat of them
all--vanity, ambitions, jealousies, shameful desires, evil passions of
envy and revenge. I had my security stolen from me, years of good work,
my best hopes. Listen--now comes the true confession. The other was
nothing. To save me, your trustful eyes had to entice my thought to the
very edge of the blackest treachery. I could see them constantly looking
at me with the confidence of your pure heart which had not been touched
by evil things. Victor Haldin had stolen the truth of my life from me,
who had nothing else in the world, and he boasted of living on through
you on this earth where I had no place to lay my head on. She will marry
some day, he had said--and your eyes were trustful. And do you know what
I said to myself? I shall steal his sister's soul from her. When we met
that first morning in the gardens, and you spoke to me confidingly
in the generosity of your spirit, I was thinking, 'Yes, he himself by
talking of her trustful eyes has delivered her into my hands!' If you
could have looked then into my heart, you would have cried out aloud
with terror and disgust.

"Perhaps no one will believe the baseness of such an intention to be
possible. It's certain that, when we parted that morning, I gloated
over it. I brooded upon the best way. The old man you introduced me to
insisted on walking with me. I don't know who he is. He talked of you,
of your lonely, helpless state, and every word of that friend of yours
was egging me on to the unpardonable sin of stealing a soul. Could he
have been the devil himself in the shape of an old Englishman? Natalia
Victorovna, I was possessed! I returned to look at you every day,
and drink in your presence the poison of my infamous intention. But
I foresaw difficulties. Then Sophia Antonovna, of whom I was not
thinking--I had forgotten her existence--appears suddenly with that
tale from St. Petersburg.... The only thing needed to make me safe--a
trusted revolutionist for ever.

"It was as if Ziemianitch had hanged himself to help me on to further
crime. The strength of falsehood seemed irresistible. These people
stood doomed by the folly and the illusion that was in them--they being
themselves the slaves of lies. Natalia Victorovna, I embraced the might
of falsehood, I exulted in it--I gave