r six months in a prison, which was no jail to him? Was
it not her duty to execute the justice which neither the laws nor men
would practise? Had she not a perfect right to do so, since she, and
those who belonged to her, had hitherto always atoned fully and
completely, rigidly and more than rigidly, for every sin?

In her early childhood her soul had been ravaged by a terrible grief,
which had never been overcome; the law had killed her brother; in her
girlhood, she had been tortured by only too frequent repetitions of the
sight of her father, whom the law had loaded with chains and punished
with severe imprisonment; her sorely wounded heart had found
consolation only in a single thought which, amid her sufferings and
afflictions, had gradually become established as firmly as a rock
within her soul, that every sin found a harsh punishment, that this was
an immovable, inexorable law of the universe, which could not be
escaped, that it would be easier to pluck the stars from the sky than
to do wrong without atoning for it. When, by a sudden act of violence,
she injured Pista for life, it was instantly apparent to her that she
owed expiation for it, and she had not hesitated or delayed an instant
in punishing herself more severely than any judge would have done, by
voluntarily sacrificing the happiness of her whole existence. This had
cost her no self-conquest, it was a matter of course; the eternal law
of the universe of sin and atonement required it, and to this demand
there could be no resistance.

This law was her religion, she believed it and could not help
believing; if she did not, if there was no august law of the universe,
beyond all doubt, that sin exacted pitiless requital, it surely would
not have been necessary to shoot her brother, to deliver her father so
often to the hardships of prison-life, to bind her own youth to a
hideous being whom she did not love when she married him, whom only the
consciousness of duty voluntarily and proudly fulfilled afterwards
rendered dear to her. If this was not a necessity, surely God, fate,
mankind--use whatever name you choose--had basely, atrociously, robbed
her brother, her father, and herself of life and happiness, and their
destiny was enough to cause frenzy, despair, madness!

No, no, that could not be. Fate could not deal so rapaciously with a
whole group of human beings; such unprecedented, inconceivable
injustice could not have been done them. They had onl