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to remove the object of his affections from being tempted
by his father, did he bring himself to touch that little bag!
Why, if only to avoid abandoning his mistress to the rival of
whom he was so jealous, he would have been certain to have
opened that bag and to have stayed at home to keep watch
over her, and to await the moment when she would say to
him at last ‘I am yours,’ and to fly with her far from their
fatal surroundings.
‘But no, he did not touch his talisman, and what is the
reason he gives for it? The chief reason, as I have just said,
was that when she would say’ I am yours, take me where
you will,’ he might have the wherewithal to take her. But
that first reason, in the prisoner’s own words, was of little
weight beside the second. While I have that money on me,
he said, I am a scoundrel, not a thief, for I can always go
to my insulted betrothed, and, laying down half the sum I
have fraudulently appropriated, I can always say to her, ‘You
see, I’ve squandered half your money, and shown I am a
weak and immoral man, and, if you like, a scoundrel’ (I use
the prisoner’s own expressions), ‘but though I am a scoun-
drel, I am not a thief, for if I had been a thief, I shouldn’t
have brought you back this half of the money, but should
have taken it as I did the other half!’ A marvellous explana-
tion! This frantic, but weak man, who could not resist the
temptation of accepting the three thousand roubles at the
price of such disgrace, this very man suddenly develops the
most stoical firmness, and carries about a thousand rou-
bles without daring to touch it. Does that fit in at all with
the character we have analysed? No, and I venture to tell

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