n, Paul Ivanovitch, awake to better things, for as yet there is
time."

"No, no!" groaned Chichikov in a voice which made Murazov's heart bleed.
"It is too late, too late. More and more is the conviction gaining upon
me that I am powerless, that I have strayed too far ever to be able to
do as you bid me. The fact that I have become what I am is due to my
early schooling; for, though my father taught me moral lessons, and beat
me, and set me to copy maxims into a book, he himself stole land from
his neighbours, and forced me to help him. I have even known him to
bring an unjust suit, and defraud the orphan whose guardian he was!
Consequently I know and feel that, though my life has been different
from his, I do not hate roguery as I ought to hate it, and that my
nature is coarse, and that in me there is no real love for what is good,
no real spark of that beautiful instinct for well-doing which becomes
a second nature, a settled habit. Also, never do I yearn to strive for
what is right as I yearn to acquire property. This is no more than the
truth. What else could I do but confess it?"

The old man sighed.

"Paul Ivanovitch," he said, "I know that you possess will-power, and
that you possess also perseverance. A medicine may be bitter, yet the
patient will gladly take it when assured that only by its means can he
recover. Therefore, if it really be that you have no genuine love for
doing good, do good by FORCING yourself to do so. Thus you will benefit
yourself even more than you will benefit him for whose sake the act
is performed. Only force yourself to do good just once and again, and,
behold, you will suddenly conceive the TRUE love for well-doing. That
is so, believe me. 'A kingdom is to be won only by striving,' says the
proverb. That is to say, things are to be attained only by putting forth
one's whole strength, since nothing short of one's whole strength will
bring one to the desired goal. Paul Ivanovitch, within you there is a
source of strength denied to many another man. I refer to the strength
of an iron perseverance. Cannot THAT help you to overcome? Most men are
weak and lack will-power, whereas I believe that you possess the power
to act a hero's part."

Sinking deep into Chichikov's heart, these words would seem to have
aroused in it a faint stirring of ambition, so much so that, if it was
not fortitude which shone in his eyes, at all events it was something
virile, and of much the same nature.

"A