“Ach, what folly a man will descend to!” cried Pyotr Stepanovitch, actually surprised. “Well, goodbye, old fellow, I shall never come and see you again. Send me the article beforehand, don’t forget, and try and let it be free from nonsense. Facts, facts, facts. And above all, let it be short. Goodbye.”

Outside influences, too, had come into play in the matter, however. Pyotr Stepanovitch certainly had some designs on his parent. In my opinion he calculated upon reducing the old man to despair, and so to driving him to some open scandal of a certain sort. This was to serve some remote and quite other object of his own, of which I shall speak hereafter. All sorts of plans and calculations of this kind were swarming in masses in his mind at that time, and almost all, of course, of a fantastic character. He had designs on another victim besides Stepan Trofimovitch. In fact, as appeared afterwards, his victims were not few in number, but this one he reckoned upon particularly, and it was Mr. von Lembke himself.