This inconsistency in the principal character of the novel, which arises if Chapter IX. is included, clearly forbids any such inclusion. Besides, there are direct proofs that at the time he finished work on _The Possessed_, and also later, Dostoevsky considered that Chapter IX. was excluded from the novel. The words of the Apocalypse, “And to the Angel of the Laodicean Church,” would hardly have been repeated by Dostoevsky at the end of the novel in the last talk of Stepan Trofimovich with the “book-pedlar,” if he had not considered that Chapter IX. was finally excluded from the text. Although _The Possessed_ was published more than once after 1871, Dostoevsky, though no longer bound by Katkov’s censorship, did not include Chapter IX. And finally, the following fact gives us the clearest evidence as to how Dostoevsky regarded the fragment in relation to the text of _The Possessed_: a considerable part of Stavrogin’s Confession was inserted by Dostoevsky almost without alteration in the confession of Versilov (_The Raw Youth_), in 1874.[98] The artist might have used for the new novel the material of the rough draft of the preceding novel, but could not possibly have used a fragment of the authentic text. Footnote 98: Compare the passage in Stavrogin’s Confession from “A year ago, in the spring, going through Germany, I absentmindedly left the station behind me,” to the words “A whole shaft of bright slanting rays from the setting sun rushed out and poured their light over me,” with the corresponding passage of Chapter VII., Part III., of _The Raw Youth_, third edition, 1888, pp. 461-462. Thus, both the completeness of Stavrogin’s character and the definitely expressed wish of the author compel us to conclude that Chapter IX. was not accidentally omitted, but did not belong to the novel. It is a variant of the manuscript, but nothing more. How then are we to reconcile this conclusion with the one which tells in favour of the opposite solution? Surely Dostoevsky’s letter of October 8, 1870, to Katkov clearly refers to our fragment as a necessary part of the novel. The date, although it coincides with the beginning of the publication of the novel, does not fix the final moment of the conception of _The Possessed_. The autumn of 1870 is the time when the idea of _The Possessed_ had become closely related in Dostoevsky’s mind with the idea of _The Life of a Great Sinner_. Stavrogin is almost identified with the hero of _The Life_. And since the crisis of that Life, as it was planned, was the repentance of the sinner and his conversion to God with Tikhon’s help, Dostoevsky had then planned the same conversion for Stavrogin. At that moment (the final moment in the creation of the novel, for the first part was already being published) Dostoevsky might, indeed, have thought that Chapter IX.—the story of the meeting of the sinner with Tikhon and the beginning of his repentance—was necessary.