With the criminals he was not in the position of a teacher, but of a disciple; he learnt from them, and in his life with them he grew physically stronger, and found faith, certitude and peace. At the end of the four years (in 1853) he was set free and returned to ordinary life, strengthened in body and better balanced in mind. He had still three years to serve in a regiment as a private soldier, and after this period of service three years more to spend in Siberia. In 1859 he crossed the frontier and came back to Russia, and was allowed to live first at Tver and then at St. Petersburg. He brought a wife with him, the widow of one of his former colleagues in the Petrachevsky conspiracy, whom he had loved and married in Siberia. Until 1865 he worked at journalism. Dostoievsky’s nature was alien to Socialism, and he loathed the moral materialism of his Socialistic contemporaries. Petrachevsky repelled him because he was an atheist and laughed at all belief; and the attitude of Bielinsky towards religion, which was one of flippant contempt, awoke in Dostoievsky a passion of hatred which blazed up whenever he thought of the man. Dostoievsky thus became a martyr, and was within an ace of losing his life for the revolutionary cause; a movement in which he had never taken part, and in which he disbelieved all his life. Dostoievsky returned from prison just at the time of the emancipation of the serfs, and the trials which awaited him on his release were severer than those which he endured during his captivity. In January 1861 he started a newspaper called the _Vremya_. The venture was a success. But just as he thought that Fortune was smiling upon him, and that freedom from want was drawing near, the newspaper, by an extraordinary misunderstanding, was prohibited by the censorship for an article on Polish affairs. This blow, like his condemnation to death, was due to a casual blunder in the official machinery. After considerable efforts, in 1864 he started another newspaper called the _Epocha_. This newspaper incurred the wrath, not of the Government censorship, but of the Liberals; and it was now that his peculiar situation, namely, that of a man between two fires, became evident. The Liberals abused him in every kind of manner, went so far as to hint that the _Epocha_ and its staff were Government spies, and declared that Dostoievsky was a scribbler with whom the police should deal. At this same time his brother Michael, his best friend Grigoriev, who was on the staff of his newspaper, and his first wife, Marie, died one after another. Dostoievsky was now left all alone; he felt that his whole life was broken, and that he had nothing to live for. His brother’s family was left without resources of any kind. He tried to support them by carrying on the publication of the _Epocha_, and worked day and night at this, being the sole editor, reading all the proofs, dealing with the authors and the censorship, revising articles,