and distressed; he decided to go home as soon as possible and directly the doctor allowed it--they left the capital.... But imagine! On the very day of their departure they happened suddenly to meet a stretcher being carried along the street.... On the stretcher lay a man who had just been killed, with his head cut open; and imagine! the man was that fearful apparition of the night with the evil eyes.... He had been killed over some gambling dispute! Then my friend went away into the country ... became a mother for the first time ... and lived several years with her husband. He never knew anything; indeed, what could she have told him?--she knew nothing herself. But her former happiness had vanished. A gloom had come over their lives, and never again did that gloom pass out of it.... They had no other children, either before or after ... and that son....’ My mother trembled all over and hid her face in her hands. ‘But say now,’ she went on with redoubled energy, ‘was my friend to blame in any way? What had she to reproach herself with? She was punished, but had she not the right to declare before God Himself that the punishment that overtook her was unjust? Then why is it, that like a criminal, tortured by stings of conscience, why is it she is confronted with the past in such a fearful shape after so many years? Macbeth slew Bancho--so no wonder that he could be haunted ... but I....’ But here my mother’s words became so mixed and confused, that I ceased to follow her.... I no longer doubted that she was in delirium. X The agitating effect of my mother’s recital on me--any one may easily conceive! I guessed from her first word that she was talking of herself, and not any friend of hers. Her slip of the tongue confirmed my conjecture. Then this really was my father, whom I was seeking in my dream, whom I had seen awake by daylight! He had not been killed, as my mother supposed, but only wounded. And he had come to see her, and had run away, alarmed by her alarm. I suddenly understood everything: the feeling of involuntary aversion for me, which arose at times in my mother, and her perpetual melancholy, and our secluded life.... I remember my head seemed going round, and I clutched it in both hands as though to hold it still. But one idea, as it were, nailed me down; I resolved I must, come what may, find that man again? What for? with what aim? I could not give myself a clear answer, but to find him ... find him--that had become a question of life and death for me! The next morning my mother, at last, grew calmer ... the fever left her ... she fell asleep. Confiding her to the care of the servants and people of the house, I set out on my quest. XI