tly
poring over the Gospel. His piety increases, he prays night and
day, hardly eats anything, and experiences "a singular joy at
feeling himself grow weaker through the fasting." One day he notices
that the priest of the village is less pious than he. He enters a
convent in the hopes of finding there true Christians. But even
there his disillusionment comes soon. Finally, he decides to found a
church of his own. He hires a little room which he transforms into a
chapel. He finds disciples and soon gains a reputation as a
thaumaturgical saint.

A sect, of which he is to be the head, is in process of formation,
when, one day, he finds that he is on the wrong track. He thinks he
has committed a mortal sin. Pride has taken possession of him; it is
the Devil and not God who now directs his moves. Conscious of his
error, he returns to orthodoxy, and, in the hopes of expiating his
wrong-doing, he humiliates himself everywhere and on every occasion.

But his cousin Jacob, having become infected with his earlier ideas,
practises them with the fanatic ardor of a neophyte. With his sister
and several other religious people, he locks himself into his house
to pray; he sings vespers and matins. In the meanwhile Matvey
decides that he must read Jacob a sermon.

"Be reasonable," he tells him repeatedly, "repent, cousin. You will
lose, because you are the prey of the demon. Repent."

Instead of repenting, Jacob and his sister vow an implacable hatred
against Matvey; so extreme is their feeling, that one day, at the
end of an altercation, Jacob, blinded by rage, kills his cousin.

He is judged and condemned. He is sent to the island of Sakhaline.
There, he languishes, suffers, and despairs. But, little by little,
his mind grows peaceful, and he has consoling visions. In prison he
is surrounded by pariahs and criminals, and the sight of all this
human suffering turns him again towards God, towards the religion of
Love, the religion of pity for mankind. And now he wants to return
to the country to tell of the miracle that has taken place in him,
and to save souls from ill and ignorance.

In "The Ravine" evil and injustice triumph at times with revolting
cynicism. Evil is in everything and everywhere: "in the great
manufacturers who drive along the streets of the village, crushing
men and beasts; in the bailiff and the recorder, who are such bad
characters that their very faces betray their knavery;" and finally,
in the central fig