he greatest pains to do so, as she had absolutely refused to see
him. I heard of this from the lady herself only three weeks afterwards,
just before her departure for Petersburg. She gave me no details, but
observed with a shudder that "he had on that occasion astounded her
beyond all belief." I imagine that all he did was to terrify her
by threatening to charge her with being an accomplice if she "said
anything." The necessity for this intimidation arose from his plans at
the moment, of which she, of course, knew nothing; and only later,
five days afterwards, she guessed why he had been so doubtful of her
reticence and so afraid of a new outburst of indignation on her part.

Between seven and eight o'clock, when it was dark, all the five members
of the quintet met together at Ensign Erkel's lodgings in a little
crooked house at the end of the town. The meeting had been fixed by
Pyotr Stepanovitch himself, but he was unpardonably late, and the
members waited over an hour for him. This Ensign Erkel was that young
officer who had sat the whole evening at Virginsky's with a pencil in
his hand and a notebook before him. He had not long been in the town;
he lodged alone with two old women, sisters, in a secluded by-street and
was shortly to leave the town; a meeting at his house was less likely
to attract notice than anywhere. This strange boy was distinguished by
extreme taciturnity: he was capable of sitting for a dozen evenings in
succession in noisy company, with the most extraordinary conversation
going on around him, without uttering a word, though he listened with
extreme attention, watching the speakers with his childlike eyes. His
face was very pretty and even had a certain look of cleverness. He did
not belong to the quintet; it was supposed that he had some special job
of a purely practical character. It is known now that he had nothing of
the sort and probably did not understand his position himself. It was
simply that he was filled with hero-worship for Pyotr Stepanovitch,
whom he had only lately met. If he had met a monster of iniquity who had
incited him to found a band of brigands on the pretext of some romantic
and socialistic object, and as a test had bidden him rob and murder the
first peasant he met, he would certainly have obeyed and done it. He had
an invalid mother to whom he sent half of his scanty pay--and how
she must have kissed that poor little flaxen head, how she must have
trembled and prayed ove