He persists in spite of everything, and makes a fresh start; nothing can discourage him or bring him down. In the last year of his life, however, he is still struggling, not against public opinion which he has at length won over, but against opposition papers. “For what I said in Moscow (his speech on ‘Pushkin’), just look how I’ve been treated by almost the whole of the press: it is as if I were a thief or had embezzled from some bank or other. Ukhantsev (a notorious swindler of the time) is less foully abused than I.” But it is not a reward that he is seeking, any more than it is amour-propre or an author’s vanity that inspires his conduct. Nothing could be more significant than his manner of accepting his first success: “I’ve been writing for three years already, and it dazes me; I am not living. I haven’t time to think.... A precarious reputation has been built up round me, and I don’t know how long the damnable thing will last.” He is so persuaded of the worth of his ideas that personal values are absorbed and lost. “What have I done”, he wrote to his friend, Baron Wrangel, “that you should bestow such affection upon me?” And near the close of his life, writing to an anonymous correspondent: “Do you think I am one of those who mend hearts, deliver the soul, and drive out suffering? Many people write to tell me this, but I am certain I am more capable of provoking disillusion and disgust. I have little skill in healing, although I have sometimes tried it.” Such love in this tormented soul! “I dream of you every night,” he writes from Siberia to his brother, “and I am terribly worried. I do not want you to die; I must see you and kiss you again. Calm my apprehensions for God’s sake. And for dear Christ’s sake, if you are well, forget your business and your worries, and do write to me immediately, else I shall go mad.”[20] Is there any help for him, this time, at least? “Write to me at once and in detail how you found my brother,” he writes from Semipalatinsk, on March 23, 1856, to Baron Wrangel: “What does he think about me? He used to love me passionately. He wept when he bade me good-bye. Has his feeling towards me grown cold? Has his character changed? That would be a grief. Has he forgotten all the past? I cannot believe it, but how else am I to explain his not writing for seven or eight months? And I seem to see so little warmth in him to remind one of days gone by! I shall never forget what he said to K---- who delivered my message entreating him to exert himself on my behalf: ‘The best thing for _him_ to do is to remain in Siberia.’” He actually wrote these words, but he would give anything to forget his brother’s cruelty. The affectionate letter to Michael from which I quoted a moment ago, is subsequent to this one.