_Of these two opinions I give preference to the one most agreeable to me, namely, the second. I did not find it indispensable to create and invent out of myself; all that is episodic, realistic, and psychologic in any novel is based on very precise observation, and I found sufficient "material" for my novel around me. And if my labours on this novel have been rather prolonged, it has been in order to elevate to necessity whatever is here by chance; so that the austere Ananke should reign on the throne of Aisa, the prodigal scatterer of episodes._ _It is true that people love to be loved. They are pleased with the portrayal of the nobler, loftier aspects of the soul. Even in villains they want to see a spark of nobility, "the divine spark," as people used to say in the old days. That is why they do not want to believe the picture that confronts them when it is true, exact, gloomy, and evil. They say: "It is not about me."_ _No, my dear contemporaries, it is of you that I have written my novel, about the Little Demon and his dreadful Nedotikomka, about Ardalyon and Varvara Peredonov, Pavel Volodin, Darya, Liudmilla, and Valeria Routilov, Aleksandr Pilnikov and the others. About you._ _This novel is a mirror--very skilfully made. I have spent a long time in polishing it, I have laboured over it zealously._ _The surface of my mirror is pure. It has been remeasured again and again, and most carefully verified; it has not a single blemish._ _The monstrous and the beautiful are reflected in it with equal precision._ AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE FIFTH RUSSIAN EDITION, 1909 _I once thought that Peredonov's career was finished, and that he was not to leave the psychiatric hospital where he was placed after cutting Volodin's throat. But latterly rumours have begun to reach me to the effect that Peredonov's mental derangement has proved to be only temporary, and that after a brief confinement he was restored to freedom. These rumours sound hardly plausible. I only mention them because even in our days the unplausible happens. Indeed, I have read in a newspaper that I am preparing to write a sequel to "The Little Demon."_ _I have heard that Varvara has apparently succeeded in convincing someone that Peredonov had cause for behaving as he did--that Volodin uttered more than once objectionable words, and had betrayed objectionable intentions--and that before his death he said something amazingly insolent which led to the fatal catastrophe. I am told that Varvara has interested the Princess Volchanskaya in this story, and the Princess, who earlier had neglected to put in a word for Peredonov, is now taking a keen interest in his fate._