supports Stepan Trofimovich financially and emotionally, protects him, fusses over him, and in the process acquires for herself an idealized romantic poet, modelled somewhat on the writer Nestor Kukolnik. She promotes his reputation as the town's preeminent intellectual, a reputation he happily indulges at regular meetings, often enhanced with champagne, of the local "free-thinkers". Generous, noble-minded and strong willed, Varvara Petrovna prides herself on her patronage of artistic and charitable causes. She is "a classic kind of woman, a female Maecenas, who acted strictly out of the highest considerations". But she is also extremely demanding and unforgiving, and is almost terrifying to Stepan Trofimovich when he inadvertently fails her or humiliates her in some way. Pyotr Stepanovich, on his arrival in the town, is quick to take advantage of her resentment towards his father. Varvara Petrovna almost worships her son Nikolai Vsevolodovich, but there are indications that she is aware that there is something deeply wrong. She tries to ignore this however, and Pyotr Stepanovich is able to further ingratiate himself by subtly presenting her son's inexplicable behaviour in a favourable light. Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin is the central character of the novel. He is handsome, strong, fearless, intelligent and refined, but at the same time, according to the narrator, there is something repellent about him. Socially he is self-assured and courteous, but his general demeanour is described as "stern, pensive and apparently distracted." Other characters are fascinated by Stavrogin, especially the younger Verkhovensky, who envisions him as the figurehead of the revolution he is attempting to spark. Shatov, on the other hand, once looked up to him as a potentially great leader who could inspire Russia to a Christian regeneration. Disillusioned, he now sees him as "an idle, footloose son of a landowner", a man who has lost the distinction between good and evil. According to Shatov, Stavrogin is driven by "a passion for inflicting torment", not merely for the pleasure of harming others, but to torment his own conscience and wallow in the sensation of "moral carnality". In an originally censored chapter (included as "At Tikhon's" in modern editions), Stavrogin himself defines the rule of his life thus: "that I neither know nor feel good and evil and that I have not only lost any sense of it, but that there is neither good nor evil... and that it is just a prejudice". In a written confession given to