I have a final refusal to my petition, and I have hardly a crumb of bread left—I have nothing left; my wife has had a baby lately—and I-I—‘
‘He sprang up from his chair and turned away. His wife was crying in the corner; the child had begun to moan again. I pulled out my note-book and began writing in it. When I had finished and rose from my chair he was standing before me with an expression of alarmed curiosity.
‘I have jotted down your name,’ I told him, ‘and all the rest of it—the place you served at, the district, the date, and all. I have a friend, Bachmatoff, whose uncle is a councillor of state and has to do with these matters, one Peter Mat-veyevitch Bachmatoff.’
‘Peter Matveyevitch Bachmatoff!’ he cried, trembling all over with excitement. ‘Why, nearly everything depends on that very man!’
‘It is very curious, this story of the medical man, and my visit, and the happy termination to which I contributed by accident! Everything fitted in, as in a novel. I told the poor people not to put much hope in me, because I was but a poor schoolboy myself— (I am not really, but I humiliated myself as much as possible in order to make them less hope-ful)—but that I would go at once to the Vassili Ostroff and see my friend; and that as I knew for certain that his uncle adored him, and was absolutely devoted to him as the last hope and branch of the family, perhaps the old man might do something to oblige his nephew.
‘If only they would allow me to explain all to his excel-lency! If I could but be permitted to tell my tale to him!’ he

cried, trembling with feverish agitation, and his eyes flash-ing with excitement. I repeated once more that I could not hold out much hope—that it would probably end in smoke, and if I did not turn up next morning they must make up their minds that there was no more to be done in the mat-ter.
‘They showed me out with bows and every kind of re-spect; they seemed quite beside themselves. I shall never forget the expression of their faces!
‘I took a droshky and drove over to the Vassili Ostroff at once. For some years I had been at enmity with this young Bachmatoff, at school. We considered him an aristocrat; at all events I called him one. He used to dress smartly, and always drove to school in a private trap. He was a good com-panion, and was always merry and jolly, sometimes even witty, though he was not very intellectual, in spite of the fact that he was always top of the class; I myself was never top in anything! All his companions were very fond of him, excepting myself. He had several times during those years come up to me and tried to make friends; but I had always turned sulkily away and refused to have anything to do with him. I had not seen him for a whole year now; he was at the university. When, at nine o’clock, or so, this evening, I arrived and was shown up to him with great ceremony, he first received me with astonishment, and not too affably, but he soon cheered up, and suddenly gazed intently at me and burst out laughing.
‘Why, what on earth can have possessed you to come and see ME, Terentieff?’ he cried, with his usual pleasant, some-

times audacious, but never offensive familiarity, which I liked in reality, but for which I also detested him. ‘Why what’s the matter?’ he cried in alarm. ‘Are you ill?’
‘That confounded cough of mine had come on again; I fell into a chair, and with dificulty recovered my breath. ‘It’s all right, it’s only consumption’ I said. ‘I have come to
you with a petition!’
‘He sat down in amazement, and I lost no time in telling him the medical man’s history; and explained that he, with the influence which he possessed over his uncle, might do some good to the poor fellow.
‘I’ll do it—I’ll do it, of course!’ he said. ‘I shall attack my uncle about it tomorrow morning, and I’m very glad you told me the story. But how was it that you thought of com-ing to me about it, Terentieff?’
‘So much depends upon your uncle,’ I said. ‘And besides we have always been enemies, Bachmatoff; and as you are a generous sort of fellow, I thought you would not refuse my request because I was your enemy!’ I added with irony.
‘Like Napoleon going to England, eh?’ cried he, laughing. ‘I’ll do it though—of course, and at once, if I can!’ he added,
seeing that I rose seriously from my chair at this point. ‘And sure enough the matter ended as satisfactorily as
possible. A month or so later my medical friend was ap-pointed to another post. He got his travelling expenses paid, and something to help him to start life with once more. I think Bachmatoff must have persuaded the doctor to ac-cept a loan from himself. I saw Bachmatoff two or three times, about this period, the third time being when he gave

a farewell dinner to the doctor and his wife before their de-parture, a champagne dinner.
‘Bachmatoff saw me home after the dinner and we crossed the Nicolai bridge. We were both a little drunk. He told me of his joy, the joyful feeling of having done a good action; he said that it was all thanks to myself that he could feel this satisfaction; and held forth about the foolishness of the theory that individual charity is useless
‘I, too, was burning to have my say!
‘In Moscow,’ I said, ‘there was an old state counsellor, a civil general, who, all his life, had been in the habit of vis-iting the prisons and speaking to criminals. Every party of convicts on its way to Siberia knew beforehand that on the Vorobeef Hills the ‘old general’ would pay them a visit. He did all he undertook seriously and devotedly. He would walk down the rows of the unfortunate prisoners, stop before each individual and ask after his needs—he never sermonized them; he spoke kindly to them—he gave them money; he brought them all sorts of necessaries for the jour-ney, and gave them devotional books, choosing those who could read, under the firm conviction that they would read to those who could not, as they went along.
‘He scarcely ever talked about the particular crimes of any of them, but listened if any volunteered information on that point. All the convicts were equal for him, and he made no distinction. He spoke to all as to brothers, and every one of them looked upon him as a father. When he observed among the exiles some poor woman with a child, he would always come forward and fondle the little one, and make

it laugh. He continued these acts of mercy up to his very death; and by that time all the criminals, all over Russia and Siberia, knew him!
‘A man I knew who had been to Siberia and returned, told me that he himself had been a witness of how the very most hardened criminals remembered the old general, though, in point of fact, he could never, of course, have distributed more than a few pence to each member of a party. Their rec-ollection of him was not sentimental or particularly devoted. Some wretch, for instance, who had been a murderer—cut-ting the throat of a dozen fellowcreatures, for instance; or stabbing six little children for his own amusement (there have been such men!)—would perhaps, without rhyme or reason, suddenly give a sigh and say, ‘I wonder whether that old general is alive still!’ Although perhaps he had not thought of mentioning him for a dozen years before! How can one say what seed of good may have been dropped into his soul, never to die?’
‘I continued in that strain for a long while, pointing out to Bachmatoff how impossible it is to follow up the effects of any isolated good deed one may do, in all its influences and subtle workings upon the heart and after-actions of others.
‘And to think that you are to be cut off from life!’ re-marked Bachmatoff, in a tone of reproach, as though he would like to find someone to pitch into on my account.
‘We were leaning over the balustrade of the bridge, look-ing into the Neva at this moment.
‘Do you know what has suddenly come into my head?’ said I, suddenly—leaning further and further over the rail.

‘Surely not to throw yourself into the river?’ cried Bach-matoff in alarm. Perhaps he read my thought in my face.
‘No, not yet. At present nothing but the following consid-eration. You see I have some two or three months left me to live—perhaps four; well, supposing that when I have but a month or two more, I take a fancy for some ‘good deed’ that needs both trouble and time, like this business of our doc-tor friend, for instance: why, I shall have to give up the idea of it and take to something else—some LITTLE good deed, MORE WITHIN MY MEANS, eh? Isn’t that an amusing idea!’
‘Poor Bachmatoff was much impressed—painfully so. He took me all the way home; not attempting to console me, but behaving with the greatest delicacy. On taking leave he pressed my hand warmly and asked permission to come and see me. I replied that if he came to me as a ‘comforter,’ so to speak (for he would be in that capacity whether he spoke to me in a soothing manner