It seemed that all the Golovliovo victims were now creeping from out of the nooks and crannies of the deserted house. Gray apparitions stirred everywhere. Here was old Vladimir Mikhailovich, in his white nightcap, making wry faces and citing Barkov; here was Simple Simon and Pavel the Sneak; here were Lubinka and the last offshoots of the Golovliovo stock, Volodya and Petka. All were drunk, lustful, weary and bleeding. And over all these ghosts there brooded a living phantom, Porfiry Vladimirych Golovliov, the last representative of the decadent family. CHAPTER V The continual reverting to the past and its victims was bound to have its effect on Yudushka. The natural outcome--was it fear?--No, rather the awakening of conscience. He discovered he had a conscience, and oblivion and contempt, although blunting its sensitiveness, could not destroy it. The awakening of a torpid conscience is usually fraught with pain. It brings no peace, holds no promise of a new life, but merely tortures, endlessly and fruitlessly. Man sees himself immured in a narrow prison, a helpless victim of the agonies of repentance, with no hope of ever returning to life. And he perceives no other way of allaying his gnawing pain than to break his head against the stony walls of the prison cell. Never in the course of his long, useless life had it occurred to Yudushka that dire tragedies were interwoven with his existence. He had lived peacefully and calmly, with a constant prayer on his lips, and the thought had been far from him that this manner of life had caused so much sorrow. Least of all could he imagine that he himself had been the source of these tragedies. Suddenly the terrible truth was revealed to his conscience, but all too late--too late for him to make amends for the crimes of his life. He was unsociable, old, with one foot in the grave, and there was not a single human being who approached him with loving pity. Why was he alone? Why did he see nothing but indifference and hatred around him? Why was it that everything he touched had perished? This estate of Golovliovo was once so full, a human nest. How had it happened that now there was not a trace, not a feather left? Of the fledgelings nursed there his niece was the only one that remained alive, and she had come back only to sneer at him and deal him his deathblow. Even Yevpraksia, simple as she was, hated him. She lived at Golovliovo because Porfiry sent her father, the sacristan, provisions every month, but undoubtedly she hated him. He had made her unhappy, too, by robbing her of her child. What was the outcome of his existence? Wherefore had he lied, babbled, persecuted, hoarded? Who would inherit his wealth? Who was to enjoy the fruits of his life? Who?