“Shall we be false to civic duty,” Ivan Markovitch exclaimed passionately, “if instead of punishing an erring boy we hold out to him a helping hand?”

Ivan Markovitch talked further of family honour.  He had not the honour to belong to the Uskov family himself, but he knew their distinguished family went back to the thirteenth century; he did not forget for a minute, either, that his precious, beloved sister had been the wife of one of the representatives of that name.  In short, the family was dear to him for many reasons, and he refused to admit the idea that, for the sake of a paltry fifteen hundred roubles, a blot should be cast on the escutcheon that was beyond all price.  If all the motives he had brought forward were not sufficiently convincing, he, Ivan Markovitch, in conclusion, begged his listeners to ask themselves what was meant by crime?  Crime is an immoral act founded upon ill-will.  But is the will of man free?  Philosophy has not yet given a positive answer to that question.  Different views were held by the learned.  The latest school of Lombroso, for instance, denies the freedom of the will, and considers every crime as the product of the purely anatomical peculiarities of the individual.

“Ivan Markovitch,” said the Colonel, in a voice of entreaty, “we are talking seriously about an important matter, and you bring in Lombroso, you clever fellow.  Think a little, what are you saying all this for?  Can you imagine that all your thunderings and rhetoric will furnish an answer to the question?”

Sasha Uskov sat at the door and listened.  He felt neither terror, shame, nor depression, but only weariness and inward emptiness.  It seemed to him that it made absolutely no difference to him whether they forgave him or not; he had come here to hear his sentence and to explain himself simply because kind-hearted Ivan Markovitch had begged him to do so.  He was not afraid of the future.  It made no difference to him where he was:  here in the hall, in prison, or in Siberia.

“If Siberia, then let it be Siberia, damn it all!”

He was sick of life and found it insufferably hard.  He was inextricably involved in debt; he had not a farthing in his pocket; his family had become detestable to him; he would have to part from his friends and his women sooner or later, as they had begun to be too contemptuous of his sponging on them.  The future looked black.

Sasha was indifferent, and was only disturbed by one circumstance; the other side of the door they were calling him a scoundrel and a criminal.  Every minute he was on the point of jumping up, bursting into the study and shouting in answer to the detestable metallic voice of the Colonel: 

“You are lying!”

“Criminal” is a dreadful word—­that is what murderers, thieves, robbers are; in fact, wicked and morally hopeless people.  And Sasha was very far from being all that. . . .  It was true he owed a great deal and did not pay his debts.  But debt is not a crime, and it is unusual for a man not to be in debt.  The Colonel and Ivan Markovitch were both in debt. . . .