nd in his right mind; and they were afraid.'"

"My friend," said Stepan Trofimovitch in great excitement "_savez-vous,_
that wonderful and... extraordinary passage has been a stumbling-block
to me all my life... _dans ce livre_.... so much so that I remembered
those verses from childhood. Now an idea has occurred to me; _une
comparaison._ A great number of ideas keep coming into my mind now. You
see, that's exactly like our Russia, those devils that come out of the
sick man and enter into the swine. They are all the sores, all the foul
contagions, all the impurities, all the devils great and small that have
multiplied in that great invalid, our beloved Russia, in the course of
ages and ages. _Oui, cette Russie que j'aimais toujours._ But a great
idea and a great Will will encompass it from on high, as with that
lunatic possessed of devils... and all those devils will come forth, all
the impurity, all the rottenness that was putrefying on the surface ...
and they will beg of themselves to enter into swine; and indeed maybe
they have entered into them already! They are we, we and those... and
Petrusha and _les autres avec lui..._ and I perhaps at the head of them,
and we shall cast ourselves down, possessed and raving, from the rocks
into the sea, and we shall all be drowned--and a good thing too, for
that is all we are fit for. But the sick man will be healed and
'will sit at the feet of Jesus,' and all will look upon him with
astonishment.... My dear, _vous comprendrez apres,_ but now it excites me
very much.... _Vous comprendrez apres. Nous comprendrons ensemble._"

He sank into delirium and at last lost consciousness. So it went on all
the following day. Sofya Matveyevna sat beside him, crying. She scarcely
slept at all for three nights, and avoided seeing the people of the
house, who were, she felt, beginning to take some steps. Deliverance
only came on the third day. In the morning Stepan Trofimovitch returned
to consciousness, recognised her, and held out his hand to her. She
crossed herself hopefully. He wanted to look out of the window. _"Tiens,
un lac!"_ he said. "Good heavens, I had not seen it before!..." At that
moment there was the rumble of a carriage at the cottage door and a
great hubbub in the house followed.

III

It was Varvara Petrovna herself. She had arrived, with Darya Pavlovna,
in a closed carriage drawn by four horses, with two footmen. The marvel
had happened in the simplest way: Anisim, dyin