In so far as Stavrogin is the Great Sinner, his meeting with Tikhon and confession (_i.e._ our Chapter IX.) are a necessary part of _The Possessed_. This conclusion is justified by Dostoevsky’s direct evidence. There is no doubt that Dostoevsky had Chapter IX. (At Tikhon’s) in view when he says to Katkov, in his letter of October 8, 1870, that in _The Possessed_, which was at that time being published in the _Russkìi Vèstnik_, he “wants for the first time ... to deal with a certain group of people which has as yet been little dealt with in literature. I take Tikhon Sadonsky to be the ideal of such a character. He too is a priest living in a monastery in retirement. With him I confront the hero of my novel and bring them together for a time.”[95] That is, up to the end of writing the novel, Dostoevsky himself considered that Chapter IX. was a necessary, inseparable, and essential part of it. The relationship between _The Life of a Great Sinner_ and _The Possessed_ explains that necessity. Footnote 95: See “Dostoevsky as contributor to _Russkìi Vèstnik_” in _Builoe_, No. 14, 1919; F. M. D.’s unpublished letters from 1866 to 1873. Turning to the completed text of _The Possessed_, we find signs of the seemingly accidental disappearance of Chapter IX. Without that chapter certain details of the novel appear to be incomplete. Stavrogin, when he awoke “looking stubbornly and curiously at an object in the corner of the room which had struck him, although there was nothing new or particular there....”[96] Shatov, seeing Stavrogin out, says to him: “Listen, go and see Tikhon ... Tikhon, the late Bishop, who through ill-health lives in retirement in this city, in our Yefimev-Bogorodskii Monastery.”[97] The first two details (we could indicate others) are, without Chapter IX., superfluous and have no artistic foundation. And only Stavrogin’s confession about the devil who persecutes him, only his meeting and conversation with Tikhon, only Chapter IX., give to these details the sense of that anticipation of motive which Dostoevsky was so fond of using. Footnote 96: See _The Possessed_ (original), Edition 1888, vol. vii. pp. 212-213. Footnote 97: See _ibid._ p. 238.