do his duty," Pyotr
Stepanovitch rapped out impatiently.

"I know that Shatov's wife has come back and has given birth to a
child," Virginsky said suddenly, excited and gesticulating and scarcely
able to speak distinctly. "Knowing what human nature is, we can be sure
that now he won't give information... because he is happy.... So I
went to every one this morning and found no one at home, so perhaps now
nothing need be done...."

He stopped short with a catch in his breath.

"If you suddenly became happy, Mr. Virginsky," said Pyotr Stepanovitch,
stepping up to him, "would you abandon--not giving information; there's
no question of that--but any perilous public action which you had
planned before you were happy and which you regarded as a duty and
obligation in spite of the risk and loss of happiness?"

"No, I wouldn't abandon it! I wouldn't on any account!" said Virginsky
with absurd warmth, twitching all over.

"You would rather be unhappy again than be a scoundrel?"

"Yes, yes.... Quite the contrary.... I'd rather be a complete
scoundrel... that is no... not a scoundrel at all, but on the contrary
completely unhappy rather than a scoundrel."

"Well then, let me tell you that Shatov looks on this betrayal as a
public duty. It's his most cherished conviction, and the proof of it is
that he runs some risk himself; though, of course, they will pardon him
a great deal for giving information. A man like that will never give up
the idea. No sort of happiness would overcome him. In another day he'll
go back on it, reproach himself, and will go straight to the police.
What's more, I don't see any happiness in the fact that his wife
has come back after three years' absence to bear him a child of
Stavrogin's."

"But no one has seen Shatov's letter," Shigalov brought out all at once,
emphatically.

"I've seen it," cried Pyotr Stepanovitch. "It exists, and all this is
awfully stupid, gentlemen."

"And I protest..." Virginsky cried, boiling over suddenly: "I protest
with all my might.... I want... this is what I want. I suggest that when
he arrives we all come out and question him, and if it's true, we induce
him to repent of it; and if he gives us his word of honour, let him
go. In any case we must have a trial; it must be done after trial. We
mustn't lie in wait for him and then fall upon him."

"Risk the cause on his word of honour--that's the acme of stupidity!
Damnation, how stupid it all is now, gentlemen! And