It was just that he worshipped Pyotr Stepanovich, having met him not too long before. If he had encountered some prematurely depraved monster who, on some social and romantic pretext, put him up to forming a band of robbers and ordered him as a test to kill and rob the first muzhik he came across, he wouldn’t have hesitated to obey and would have gone and done it. He had an ailing mother somewhere, to whom he sent half of his meagre pay — and how she must have kissed this poor little blond head, worried about it, prayed for it!
Erkel </3
