undermine whatever good is latent in him. Money, the destroyer of souls, together with the consciousness that he has been indirectly a party to Anisya's crime, turn Nikita's love for the woman into bitter hatred. He takes for his mistress Akulina, Peter's oldest daughter, a girl of sixteen, deaf and silly, and forces Anisya to serve them. She had strength to resist her old husband, but her love for Nikita has made her weak. "The moment I see him my heart softens. I have no courage against him."
Old Akim comes to ask for a little money from his newly rich son. He quickly senses the swamp of corruption and vise into which Nikita has sunk. He tries to save him, to bring him back to himself, to arouse the better side of his nature. But he fails. The ways of life are too evil for Akim. He leaves, refusing even the money he needs so badly to purchase a horse.
Akim. One sin holds on to another and pulls you along. Nikita, you are stuck in sins. You are stuck, I see, in sins. You are stuck fast, so to speak. I have heard that nowadays they pull fathers' beards, so to speak, -but this leads only to ruin, to ruin, so to speak. . . . There is your money. I will go and beg, so to speak, but I will not, so to speak, take the money. . . . Let me go! I will not stay! I would rather sleep near the fence than in your nastiness.
