own in his presence...."

As Miguev was walking along a narrow, deserted alley, beside a long
row of fences, in the thick black shade of the lime trees, it suddenly
struck him that he was doing something very cruel and criminal.

"How mean it is really!" he thought. "So mean that one can't imagine
anything meaner.... Why are we shifting this poor baby from door to
door? It's not its fault that it's been born. It's done us no harm. We
are scoundrels.... We take our pleasure, and the innocent babies have
to pay the penalty. Only to think of all this wretched business! I've
done wrong and the child has a cruel fate before it. If I lay it at the
Myelkins' door, they'll send it to the foundling hospital, and there it
will grow up among strangers, in mechanical routine,... no love,
no petting, no spoiling.... And then he'll be apprenticed to a
shoemaker,... he'll take to drink, will learn to use filthy language,
will go hungry. A shoemaker! and he the son of a collegiate assessor, of
good family.... He is my flesh and blood,... "

Miguev came out of the shade of the lime trees into the bright moonlight
of the open road, and opening the bundle, he looked at the baby.

"Asleep!" he murmured. "You little rascal! why, you've an aquiline nose
like your father's.... He sleeps and doesn't feel that it's his own
father looking at him!... It's a drama, my boy... Well, well, you
must forgive me. Forgive me, old boy.... It seems it's your fate...."

The collegiate assessor blinked and felt a spasm running down his
cheeks.... He wrapped up the baby, put him under his arm, and strode
on. All the way to the Myelkins' villa social questions were swarming in
his brain and conscience was gnawing in his bosom.

"If I were a decent, honest man," he thought, "I should damn everything,
go with this baby to Anna Filippovna, fall on my knees before her,
and say: 'Forgive me! I have sinned! Torture me, but we won't ruin an
innocent child. We have no children; let us adopt him!' She's a good
sort, she'd consent.... And then my child would be with me....
Ech!"

He reached the Myelkins' villa and stood still hesitating. He imagined
himself in the parlor at home, sitting reading the paper while a little
boy with an aquiline nose played with the tassels of his dressing gown.
At the same time visions forced themselves on his brain of his winking
colleagues, and of his Excellency digging him in the ribs and
guffawing.... Besides the pricking of his