I

But it was not this alone, as his sister Varvára supposed, that influenced him. There was also in him something else⁠—a sincere religious feeling which Varvára did not know, which intertwined itself with the feeling of pride and the desire for preeminence, and guided him. His disillusionment with Mary, whom he had thought of angelic purity, and his sense of injury, were so strong that they brought him to despair, and the despair led him⁠—to what? To God, to his childhood’s faith which had never been destroyed in him.