Chapter IX

. that is anticipated by the plan of _The Life_. There is a deeper and closer connection between them.

The note, “he makes an attempt on the lame girl,” occurring in the plan, is closely connected as a particular development of the general idea with the other note, “straight into the abyss.” But this last is intimately connected with another and quite different note, brief but of great significance in the eyes of Dostoevsky, “The Monastery.” The Great Sinner, the violator of the little girl, doing penance to Tikhon in the monastery, was meant to form the second part of _The Life_, and in the plan is sketched out by independent notes.

It is at the same time the artistic skeleton of our