What was the structure of Leo Tolstoy's "The Penitent Sinner"?

The structure of this excellent spiritual meditation on
grace and our sinful nature as humans is built around the attempts of the penitent
sinner of the title to gain admission into heaven, and the three knocks that he makes on
the door and the three people that come to see if he is worthy to enter. The first two
knocks bring, respectively, Peter and David to the gates to interrogate the sinner. When
they reply, after hearing the accuser denounce them, that the sinner cannot enter, the
sinner is able to challenge them on the many sins that they committed during their
lifetime. Consider what the sinner says to David as an
example:

Have
pity on me, King David! Remember man's weakness, and God's mercy. God loved thee and
exalted thee among men. Thou hadst all: a kingdom, and honour, and riches, and wives,
and children; but thou sawest from thy house-top the wife of a poor man, and sin entered
into thee, and thou tookest the wife of Uriah, and didst slay him with the sword of the
Ammonites. Thou, a rich man, didst take from the poor man his one ewe lamb, and didst
kill him. I have done likewise. Remember, then, how thou didst repent, and how thou
saidst, "I acknowledge my transgressions: my sin is ever before me?" I have done the
same. Thou canst not refuse to let me
in.

The sinner is thus able
to challenge both Peter and David about their own failings and how they, too, are
dependent upon the grace and forgiveness of God. This silences both of them until the
sinner knocks the third time and the Apostle John comes, whose doctrine of love and
grace means that the sinner knows he can finally be admitted into
heaven.

Thus the structure of this text is based around the
three separate knocks on the gates of heaven of the penitent sinner, and who responds to
those knocks.