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Under Western Eyes

Joseph Conrad

January, 2001  [Etext #2480]


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Under Western Eyes

by Joseph Conrad




"I would take liberty from any hand
as a hungry man would snatch a piece of bread."

Miss HALDIN




PART FIRST

To begin with I wish to disclaim the possession of those high
gifts of imagination and expression which would have enabled my
pen to create for the reader the personality of the man who
called himself, after the Russian custom, Cyril son of
Isidor--Kirylo Sidorovitch-Razumov,

If I have ever had these gifts in any sort of living form they
have been smothered out of existence a long time ago under a
wilderness of words.  Words, as is well known, are the great foes
of reality.  I have been for many years a teacher of languages.
It is an occupation which at length becomes fatal to whatever
share of imagination, observation, and insight an ordinary person
may be heir to.  To a teacher of languages there comes a time
when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a
mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.

This being so, I could not have observed Mr. Razumov or guessed
at his reality by the force of insight, much less have imagined
him as he was.  Even to invent the mere bald facts of his life
would have been utterly beyond my powers.  But I think that
without this declaration the readers of these pages will be able
to detect in the story the marks of documentary evidence.  And
that is perfectly correct.  It is based on a document; all I have
brought to it is my knowledge of the Russian language, which is
sufficient for what is attempted here.  The document, of course,
is something in the nature of a journal, a diary, yet not exactly
that in its actual form. For instance, most of it was not written
up from day to day, though all the entries are dated.  Some of
these entries cover months of time and extend over dozens of
pages.  All the earlier part is a retrospect, in a narrative
form, relating to an event which took place about a year before.

I must mention that I have lived for a long time in Geneva.  A
whole quarter of that town, on account of many Russians residing
there, is called La Petite Russie --Little Russia.  I had a
rather extensive connexion in Little Russia at that time.  Yet I
confess that I have no comprehension of the Russian character.
The illogicality of their attitude, the arbitrariness of their
conclusions, the frequency of the exceptional, should present no
difficulty to a student of many grammars; but there must be
something else in the way, some special human trait--one of those
subtle differences that are beyond the ken of mere professors.
What must remain striking to a teacher of languages is the
Russians' extraordinary love of words.  They gather them up; they
cherish them, but they don't hoard them in their breasts; on the
contrary, they are always ready to pour them out by the hour or
by the night with an enthusiasm, a sweeping abundance, with such
an aptness of application sometimes that, as in the case of very
accomplished parrots, one can't defend oneself from the suspicion
that they really understand what they say.  There is a generosity
in their ardour of speech which removes it as far as possible from
common loquacity; and it is ever too disconnected to be classed
as eloquence. . . .But I must apologize for this digression.

It would be idle to inquire why Mr. Razumov has left this
record behind him.  It is inconceivable that he should have
wished any human eye to see it.  A mysterious impulse of human
nature comes into play here.  Putting aside Samuel Pepys, who has
forced in this way the door of immortality, innumerable people,
criminals, saints, philosophers, young girls, statesmen, and
simple imbeciles, have kept self-revealing records from vanity no
doubt, but also from other more inscrutable motives.  There must
be a wonderful soothing power in mere words since so many men
have used them for self-communion.  Being myself a quiet
individual I take it that what all men are really after is some
form or perhaps only some formula of peace.  Certainly they are
crying loud enough for it at the present day.  What sort of peace
Kirylo Sidorovitch Razumov expected to find in the writing up of
his record it passeth my understanding to guess.

The fact remains that he has written it.

Mr. Razumov was a tall, well-proportioned young man, quite
unusually dark for a Russian from the Central Provinces.  His
good looks would have been unquestionable if it had not been for
a peculiar lack of fineness in the features.  It was as if a face
modelled vigorously in wax (with some approach  even to a
classical correctness of type) had been held close to a fire till
all sharpness of line had been lost in the softening of the
material.  But even thus he was sufficiently good-looking.  His
manner, too, was good. In discussion he was easily swayed by
argument and authority.  With his younger compatriots he took the
attitude of an inscrutable listener, a listener of the kind that
hears you out intelligently and then--just changes the subject.

This sort of trick, which may arise either from intellectual
insufficiency or from an imperfect trust in one's own
convictions, procured for Mr. Razumov a reputation of profundity.
Amongst a lot of exuberant talkers, in the habit of exhausting
themselves daily by ardent discussion, a comparatively taciturn
personality is naturally credited with reserve power.  By his
comrades at the St. Petersburg University, Kirylo Sidorovitch
Razumov, third year's student in philosophy, was looked upon as a
strong nature--an altogether trustworthy man.  This, in a country
where an opinion may be a legal crime visited by death or
sometimes by a fate worse than mere death, meant that he was
worthy of being trusted with forbidden opinions.  He was liked
also for his amiability and for his quiet readiness to oblige his
comrades even at the  cost  of personal inconvenience.

Mr. Razumov was supposed to be the son of an Archpriest and to be
protected by a distinguished nobleman--perhaps of his own distant
province.  But his outward  appearance accorded  badly with such
humble origin.  Such a descent was not credible.  It was, indeed,
suggested that Mr. Razumov was the son of an Archpriest's pretty
daughter--which, of course, would put a different complexion on
the matter.  This theory also rendered intelligible the
protection of the distinguished nobleman.  All this, however, had
never been investigated maliciously or otherwise.  No one knew or
cared who the nobleman in question was. Razumov received a modest
but very sufficient allowance from the hands of an obscure
attorney, who seemed to act as his guardian in some measure.
Now and then he appeared at some professor's  informal  reception.
Apart from that Razumov was not known to have any social relations
in the town.  He attended the obligatory lectures regularly and was
considered by the authorities as a very promising student.  He worked
at home in the manner of a man who means to get on, but did not shut
himself up severely for that purpose.  He was always accessible,
and there was nothing secret or reserved in his life.


I

THE origin of Mr. Razumov's record is connected with an event
characteristic of modern Russia in the actual fact: the
assassination of a prominent statesman --and still more
characteristic of the moral corruption of an oppressed society
where the noblest aspirations of humanity, the desire of freedom,
an ardent patriotism, the love of justice, the sense of pity, and
even the fidelity of simple minds are prostituted to the lusts of
hate and fear, the inseparable companions of an uneasy despotism.

The fact alluded to above is the successful attempt on the life
of Mr. de P---, the President of the notorious Repressive
Commission of some years ago, the Minister of State invested with
extraordinary powers. The newspapers made noise enough about that
fanatical, narrow-chested figure in gold-laced uniform, with a
face of crumpled parchment, insipid, bespectacled eyes, and the
cross of the Order of St. Procopius hung under the skinny throat.
For a time, it may be remembered, not a month passed without his
portrait appearing in some one of the illustrated papers of
Europe.  He served the monarchy by imprisoning, exiling, or
sending to the gallows men and women, young and old, with an
equable, unwearied industry.  In his mystic acceptance of the
principle of autocracy he was bent on extirpating from the land
every vestige of anything that resembled freedom in public
institutions; and in his ruthless persecution of the rising
generation he seemed to aim at the destruction of the very
hope of liberty itself.

It is said that this execrated personality had not
enough imagination to be aware of the hate he inspired. It is
hardly credible; but it is a fact that he took very few
precautions for his safety.  In the preamble of a certain famous
State paper he had declared once that "the thought of liberty has
never existed in the Act of the Creator.  From the multitude of
men's counsel nothing could come but revolt and disorder; and
revolt and disorder in a world created for obedience and
stability is sin.  It was not Reason but Authority which
expressed the Divine Intention.  God was the Autocrat of the
Universe. . . ."  It may be that the man who made this
declaration believed that heaven itself was bound to protect him
in his remorseless defence of Autocracy on this earth.

No doubt the vigilance of the police saved him many times; but,
as a matter of fact, when his appointed fate overtook him, the
competent authorities could not have given him any warning.  They
had no knowledge of any conspiracy against the Minister's life,
had no hint of any plot through their usual channels of
information, had seen no signs, were aware of no suspicious
movements or dangerous persons.

Mr. de P--- was being driven towards the railway station in a
two-horse uncovered sleigh with footman and coachman on the box.
Snow had been falling all night, making the roadway, uncleared as
yet at this early hour, very heavy for the horses.  It was still
falling thickly. But the sleigh must have been observed and
marked down.  As it drew over to the left before taking a turn,
the footman noticed a peasant walking slowly on the edge of the
pavement with his hands in the pockets of his sheepskin coat and
his shoulders hunched up to his ears under the falling snow.  On
being overtaken this peasant suddenly faced about and swung his
arm.  In an instant there was a terrible shock, a detonation
mufffled in the multitude of snowflakes; both horses lay dead and
mangled on the ground and the coachman, with a shrill cry, had
fallen off the box mortally wounded.  The footman (who survived)
had no time to see the face of the man in the sheepskin coat.
After throwing the bomb this last got away, but it is supposed that,
seeing a lot of people surging up on all sides of him in the falling snow,
and all running towards the scene of the explosion, he thought it safer
to turn back with them.

In an incredibly short time an excited crowd assembled round the
sledge.  The Minister-President, getting out unhurt into the deep
snow, stood near the groaning coachman and addressed the people
repeatedly in his weak, colourless voice: "I beg of you to keep
off:  For the love of God, I beg of you good people to keep off."

It was then that a tall young man who had remained standing
perfectly still within a carriage gateway, two houses lower down,
stepped out into the street and walking up rapidly flung another
bomb over the heads of the crowd.  It actually struck the
Minister-President on the shoulder as he stooped over his dying
servant, then falling between his feet exploded with a terrific
concentrated violence, striking him dead to the ground, finishing
the wounded man and practically annihilating the empty sledge in
the twinkling of an eye.  With a yell of horror the crowd broke
up and fled in all directions, except for those who fell dead or
dying where they stood nearest to the Minister-President, and one
or two others who did not fall till they had run a little way.

The first explosion had brought together a crowd as if by
enchantment, the second made as swiftly a solitude in the street
for hundreds of yards in each direction.  Through the falling
snow people looked from afar at the small heap of dead bodies
lying upon each other near the carcases of the two horses.
Nobody dared to approach till some Cossacks of a street-patrol
galloped up and, dismounting, began to turn over the dead.
Amongst the innocent victims of the second explosion laid out on
the pavement there was a body dressed in a peasant's sheepskin
coat; but the face was unrecognisable, there was absolutely
nothing found in the pockets of its poor clothing, and it was the
only one whose identity was never established.

That day Mr. Razumov got up at his usual hour and spent the
morning  within  the  University buildings listening to the
lectures and working for some time,in the library.  He heard the
first vague rumour of something in the way of bomb-throwing at
the table of the students' ordinary, where he was accustomed to
eat his two o'clock dinner.  But this rumour was made up of mere
whispers, and this was Russia, where it was not always safe, for
a student especially, to appear too much interested in certain
kinds of whispers.  Razumov was one of those men who, living in a
period of mental and political unrest, keep an instinctive hold
on normal, practical, everyday life.  He was aware of the
emotional tension of his time; he even responded to it in an
indefinite way.  But his main concern was with his work, his
studies, and with his own future.

Officially and in fact without a family (for the daughter of the
Archpriest had long been dead), no home influences had shaped his
opinions or his feelings.  He was as lonely in the world as a man
swimming in the deep sea.  The word Razumov was the mere label of
a solitary individuality.  There were no Razumovs belonging to
him anywhere.  His closest parentage was defined in the statement
that he was a Russian.  Whatever good he expected from life
would be given to or withheld from his hopes by that connexion
alone. This immense parentage suffered from the throes of
internal dissensions, and he shrank mentally from the fray as a
good-natured man may shrink from taking definite sides in a
violent family quarrel.

Razumov, going home, reflected that having prepared all the
matters of the forthcoming examination, he could now devote his
time to the subject of the prize essay.  He hankered after the
silver medal.  The prize was offered by the Ministry of
Education; the names of the competitors would be submitted to the
Minister himself. The mere fact of trying would be considered
meritorious in the higher quarters; and the possessor of the
prize would have a claim to an administrative appointment of the
better sort after he had taken his degree.  The student Razumov
in an access of elation forgot the dangers menacing the stability
of the institutions which give rewards and appointments.  But
remembering the medallist of the year before, Razumov, the young
man of no parentage, was sobered.  He and some others happened to
be assembled in their comrade's rooms at the very time when that
last received the official advice of his success.  He was a quiet,
unassuming young man: "Forgive me," he had said with a faint
apologetic smile and taking up his cap, "I am going out to order
up some wine.  But I must first send a telegram to my folk at home.
I say!  Won't the old people make it a festive time for the neighbours
for twenty miles around our place."

Razumov thought there was nothing of that sort for him in the
world.  His success would matter to no one. But he felt no
bitterness against the nobleman his protector, who was not a
provincial magnate as was generally supposed.  He was in fact
nobody less than Prince K---, once a great and splendid figure in
the world and now, his day being over, a Senator and a gouty
invalid, living in a still splendid but more domestic manner.  He
had some young children and a wife as aristocratic and proud as
himself.

In all his life Razumov was allowed only once to come into
personal contact with the Prince.

It had the air of a chance meeting in the little attorney's
office.  One day Razumov, coming in by appointment, found a
stranger standing there--a tall, aristocratic-looking Personage
with silky, grey sidewhiskers.  The bald-headed,  sly little
lawyer-fellow called out, "Come in--come in, Mr. Razumov," with a
sort of ironic heartiness.  Then turning deferentially to the
stranger with the grand air, "A ward of mine, your, Excellency.
One of the most promising students of his faculty in the St.
Petersburg University."

To his intense surprise Razumov saw a white shapely hand extended
to him.  He took it in great confusion (it was soft and passive)
and heard at the same time a condescending murmur in which he
caught only the words "Satisfactory" and "Persevere."  But the
most amazing thing of all was to feel suddenly a distinct
pressure of the white shapely hand just before it was withdrawn:
a light pressure like a secret sign.  The emotion of it was
terrible.  Razumov's heart seemed to leap into his throat.  When
he raised his eyes the aristocratic personage, motioning the
little lawyer aside, had opened the door and was going out.

The attorney rummaged amongst the papers on his desk for a time.
"Do you know who that was?" he asked suddenly.

Razumov, whose heart was thumping hard yet, shook his head in silence.

"That was Prince K ---.  You wonder what he could be doing in the
hole of a poor legal rat like myself-- eh?  These awfully
great people have their sentimental curiosities like common
sinners.  But if I were you, Kirylo Sidorovitch," he continued,
leering and laying a peculiar emphasis on the patronymic,"
I wouldn't boast at large of the introduction.  It would not be
prudent, Kirylo Sidorovitch.  Oh dear no! It would be in fact
dangerous for your future."

The young man's ears burned like fire; his sight was dim.
"That man!" Razumov was saying to himself.  "He!"

Henceforth it was by this monosyllable that Mr. Razumov got into
the habit of referring mentally to the stranger with grey silky
side-whiskers.  From that time too, when walking in the more
fashionable quarters, he noted with interest the magnificent
horses and carriages with Prince K --- 's liveries on the box.
Once he saw the Princess get out--she was shopping--followed by
two girls, of which one was nearly a head taller than the other.
Their fair hair hung loose down their backs in the English style;
they had merry eyes, their coats, muffs, and little fur caps were
exactly alike, and their cheeks and noses were tinged a cheerful
pink by the frost.  They crossed the pavement in front of him,
and Razumov went on his way smiling shyly to himself. "His"
daughters.  They resembled "Him."  The young man felt a glow of
warm friendliness towards these girls who would never know of his
existence.  Presently they would marry Generals or Kammerherrs
and have girls and boys of their own, w
ho perhaps would be aware of him as a celebrated old professor,
decorated, possibly a Privy Councillor, one of the glories of
Russia--nothing more!

But a celebrated professor was a somebody.  Distinction would
convert the label Razumov into an honoured name.  There was
nothing strange in the student Razumov's wish for
distinction.  A man's real life is that accorded to him in the
thoughts of other men by reason of respect or natural love.
Returning home on the day of the attempt on Mr. de P---'s life
Razumov resolved to have a good try for the silver medal.

Climbing slowly the four flights of the dark, dirty staircase in
the house where he had his lodgings, he felt confident of
success.  The winner's name would be published in the papers on
New Year's Day.  And at the thought that "He" would most probably
read it there, Razumov stopped short on the stairs for an instant,
then went on smiling faintly at his own emotion.  "This is but
a shadow," he said to himself," but the medal is a solid beginning."

With those ideas of industry in his head the warmth of his room
was agreeable and encouraging.  "I shall put in four hours of
good work," he thought.  But no sooner had he closed the door
than he was horribly startled.  All black against the usual tall
stove of white tiles gleaming in the dusk, stood a strange
figure, wearing a skirted, close-fitting, brown cloth coat
strapped round the waist, in long boots, and with a little
Astrakhan cap on its head.  It loomed lithe and martial. Razumov
was utterly confounded.  It was only when the figure advancing
two paces asked in an untroubled, grave voice if the outer door
was closed that he regained his power of speech.

"Haldin!. . .Victor Victorovitch!. . .Is that you? . . .Yes.  The
outer door is shut all right.  But this is indeed unexpected."

Victor Haldin, a student older than most of his contemporaries at
the University, was not one of the industrious set.  He was
hardly ever seen at lectures; the authorities had marked him as
"restless" and "unsound "--very bad notes.  But he had a
great personal prestige with his comrades and influenced their
thoughts.  Razumov had never been intimate with him.  They had
met from time to time at gatherings in other students' houses.
They had even had a discussion together--one of those discussions
on first principles dear to the sanguine minds of youth.

Razumov wished the man had chosen some other time to come for a
chat.  He felt in good trim to tackle the prize essay.  But as
Haldin could not be slightingly dismissed Razumov adopted the
tone of hospitality, asking him to sit down and smoke.

"Kirylo Sidorovitch," said the other, flinging off his cap, "we
are not perhaps in exactly the same camp.  Your judgment is more
philosophical.  You are a man of few words, but I haven't met
anybody who dared to doubt the generosity of your sentiments.
There is a solidity about your character which cannot exist
without courage.

Razumov felt flattered and began to murmur shyly something about
being very glad of his good opinion, when Haldin raised his hand.

"That is what I was saying to myself," he continued, "as I dodged
in the woodyard down by the river-side.  'He has a strong
character this young man,' I said to myself.  'He does not throw
his soul to the winds.'  Your reserve has always fascinated me,
Kirylo Siderovitch.  So I tried to remember your address.  But
look here--it was a piece of luck.  Your dvornik was away from
the gate talking to a sleigh-driver on the other side of the
street.  I met no one on the stairs, not a soul.  As I came up
to your floor I caught sight of your landlady coming out of your
rooms.  But she did not see me.  She crossed the landing to her
own side, and then I slipped in.  I have been here two hours
expecting you to come in every moment.

Razumov had listened in astonishment; but before he could
open his mouth Haldin added, speaking deliberately,"  It was I
who removed de P--- this morning." Razumov kept down a cry of
dismay.  The sentiment of his life being utterly ruined by this
contact with such a crime expressed itself quaintly by a sort of
half-derisive mental exclamation,  "There goes my silver medal!"

Haldin continued after waiting a while--

"You say nothing, Kirylo Sidorovitch!  I understand your silence.
To be sure, I cannot expect you with your frigid English manner
to embrace me.  But never mind your manners.  You have enough
heart to have heard the sound of weeping and gnashing of teeth
this man raised in the land.  That would be enough to get over
any philosophical hopes.  He was uprooting the tender plant.  He
had to be stopped.  He was a dangerous man--a convinced man.
Three more years of his work would have put us back fifty years
into bondage--and look at all the lives wasted, at all the souls
lost in that time."

His curt, self-confident voice suddenly lost its ring and it was
in a dull tone that he added, "Yes, brother, I have killed him.
It's weary work."

Razumov had sunk into a chair.  Every moment he expected a crowd
of policemen to rush in.  There must have been thousands of them
out looking for that man walking up and down in his room.  Haldin
was talking again in a restrained, steady voice.  Now and then he
flourished an arm, slowly, without excitement.

He told Razumov how he had brooded for a year; how he had not
slept properly for weeks. He and "Another" had a warning of the
Minister's movements from "a certain person" late the evening
before.  He and  that Another" prepared their "engines" and
"resolved to have no sleep till "the deed" was done. They
walked the streets under the falling snow with the "engines"
on them, exchanging not a word the livelong night.  When they
happened to meet a police patrol they took each other by the
arm and pretended to be a couple of peasants on the spree.
They reeled and talked in drunken hoarse voices.  Except for
these strange outbreaks they kept silence, moving on ceaselessly.
Their plans had been previously arranged.  At daybreak they made
their way to the spot which they knew the sledge must pass.
When it appeared in sight they exchanged a muttered good-bye
and separated.  The "other" remained at the corner, Haldin
took up a position a little farther up the street. . . .

After throwing his "engine" he ran off and in a moment was
overtaken by the panic-struck people flying away from the spot
after the second explosion.  They were wild with terror.  He was
jostled once or twice. He slowed down for the rush to pass him and
then turned to the left into a narrow street.  There he was alone.

He marvelled at this immediate escape.  The work was done.  He
could hardly believe it.  He fought with an almost irresistible
longing to lie down on the pavement and sleep.  But this sort of
faintness--a drowsy faintness--passed off quickly.  He walked
faster, making his way to one of the poorer parts of the town in
order to look up Ziemianitch.

This Ziemianitch, Razumov understood, was a sort of town-peasant
who had got on; owner of a small number of sledges and horses for
hire.  Haldin paused in his narrative to exclaim--

"A bright spirit ! A hardy soul! The best driver in St. Petersburg.
He has a team of three horses there. . . .  Ah!  He's a fellow!"

This man had declared himself willing to take out safely, at
any time, one or two persons to the second or third railway
station on one of the southern lines.  But there had been no time
to warn him the night before. His usual haunt seemed to be a
low-class eating-house on the outskirts of the town.  When Haldin
got there the man was not to be found.  He was not expected to
turn up again till the evening.  Haldin wandered away restlessly.

He saw the gate of a woodyard open and went in to get out of the
wind which swept the bleak broad thoroughfare.  The great
rectangular piles of cut wood loaded with snow resembled the huts
of a village.  At first the watchman who discovered him crouching
amongst them talked in a friendly manner.  He was a dried-up old
man wearing two ragged army coats one over the other; his wizened
little face, tied up under the jaw and over the ears in a dirty
red handkerchief, looked comical. Presently he grew sulky, and
then all at once without rhyme or reason began to shout furiously.

"Aren't you ever going to clear out of this, you loafer?  We know
all about factory hands of your sort.  A big, strong, young chap!
You aren't even drunk.  What do you want here?  You don't frighten us.
Take yourself and your ugly eyes away."

Haldin stopped before the sitting Razumov.  His supple figure,
with the white forehead above which the fair hair stood straight
up, had an aspect of lofty daring.

"He did not like my eyes," he said. "And so. . .here I am."

Razumov made an effort to speak calmly.

"But pardon me, Victor Victorovitch.  We know each other so
little. . . .  I don't see why you . . ."

"Confidence," said Haldin.

This word sealed Razumov's lips as if a hand had been clapped
on his mouth.  His brain seethed with arguments

"And so--here you are," he muttered through his teeth.

The other did not detect the tone of anger.  Never suspected it.

"Yes.  And nobody knows I am here.  You are the last person that
could be suspected--should I get caught.  That's an advantage,
you see.  And then--speaking to a superior mind like yours I can
well say all the truth.  It occurred to me that you--you have no
one belonging to you--no ties, no one to suffer for it if this
came out by some means.  There have been enough ruined Russian
homes as it is.  But I don't see how my passage through your
rooms can be ever known.  If I should be got hold of, I'll know
how to keep silent--no matter what they may be pleased to do to me,"
he added grimly.

He began to walk again while Razumov sat still appalled.

"You thought that----" he faltered out almost sick with indignation.

"Yes, Razumov.  Yes, brother.  Some day you shall help to build.
You suppose that I am a terrorist, now --a destructor of what is,
But consider that the true destroyers are they who destroy the
spirit of progress and truth, not the avengers who merely kill
the bodies of the persecutors of human dignity.  Men like me are
necessary to make room for self-contained, thinking men like you.
Well, we have made the sacrifice of our lives, but all the same I
want to escape if it can be done.  It is not my life I want to
save, but my power to do.  I won't live idle.  Oh no!  Don't make
any mistake, Razumov.  Men like me are rare.  And, besides, an
example like this is more awful to oppressors when the
perpetrator vanishes without a trace.  They sit in their offices
and palaces and quake.  All I want you to do is to help me to
vanish. No great matter that.  Only to go by and by and see
Ziemianitch for me at that place where I went this morning.
Just tell him, 'He whom you know wants a well-horsed sledge
to pull up half an hour after midnight at the seventh
lamp-post on the left counting from the upper end of
Karabelnaya.  If nobody gets in, the sledge is to run
round a block or two, so as to come back past the
same spot in ten minutes' time.'"

Razumov wondered why he had not cut short that talk and told this
man to go away long before.  Was it weakness or what?

He concluded that it was a sound instinct.  Haldin must have been
seen.  It was impossible that some people should not have noticed
the face and appearance of the man who threw the second bomb.
Haldin was a noticeable person.  The police in their thousands
must have had his description within the hour.  With every moment
the danger grew.  Sent out to wander in the streets he could not
escape being caught in the end.

The police would very soon find out all about him. They would set
about discovering a conspiracy.  Everybody Haldin had ever known
would be in the greatest danger.  Unguarded expressions, little
facts in themselves innocent would be counted for crimes.
Razumov remembered certain words he said, the speeches he had
listened to, the harmless gatherings he had attended--it was
almost impossible for a student to keep out of that sort of
thing, without becoming suspect to his comrades.

Razumov saw himself shut up in a fortress, worried, badgered,
perhaps ill-used.  He saw himself deported by an administrative
order, his life broken, ruined, and robbed of all hope.  He saw
himself--at best--leading a miserable existence under police
supervision, in some small, faraway provincial town, without
friends to assist his necessities or even take any steps to
alleviate his lot--as others had.  Others had fathers, mothers,
brothers, relations, connexions, to move heaven and earth on
their behalf --he had no one. The very officials that sentenced
him some morning would forget his existence before sunset.

He saw his youth pass away from him in misery and half
starvation--his strength give way, his mind become an abject
thing.  He saw himself creeping, broken down and shabby, about
the streets--dying unattended in some filthy hole of a room, or
on the sordid bed of a Government hospital.

He shuddered. Then the peace of bitter calmness came over him.
It was best to keep this man out of the streets till he could be
got rid of with some chance of escaping.  That was the best that
could be done. Razumov, of course, felt the safety of his lonely
existence to be permanently endangered.  This evening's doings
could turn up against him at any time as long as this man lived
and the present institutions endured.  They appeared to him
rational and indestructible at that moment.  They had a force of
harmony--in contrast with the horrible discord of this man's
presence.  He hated the man.  He said quietly--

"Yes, of course, I will go.  'You must give me precise
directions, and for the rest--depend on me."

"Ah! You are a fellow!  Collected--cool as a cucumber.  A regular
Englishman.  Where did you get your soul from?  There aren't
many like you.  Look here, brother!  Men like me leave no
posterity, but their souls are not lost.  No man's soul is ever
lost.  It works for itself--or else where would be the sense of
self-sacrifice, of martyrdom, of conviction, of faith--the
labours of the soul?  What will become of my soul when I die in
the way I must die--soon--very soon perhaps? It shall not perish.
Don't make a mistake, Razumov.  This is not murder--it is
war, war.  My spirit shall go on warring in some Russian body
till all falsehood is swept out of the world.  The modern
civilization is false, but a new revelation shall come out of
Russia.  Ha! you say nothing. You are a sceptic.  I respect your
philosophical scepticism, Razumov, but don't touch the soul.  The
Russian soul that lives in all of us.  It has a future.  It has a
mission, I tell you, or else why should I have been moved to
do this--reckless---like a butcher --in the middle of all these
innocent people--scattering death--I!  I!. . .I wouldn't hurt a fly!"

"Not so loud," warned Razumov harshly.

Haldin sat down abruptly, and leaning his head on his folded arms
burst into tears.  He wept for a long time.  The dusk had
deepened in the room.  Razumov, motionless in sombre wonder,
listened to the sobs.

The other raised his head, got up and with an effort mastered his voice.

"Yes.  Men like me leave no posterity,"  he repeated in a
subdued tone."  I have a sister though.  She's with my old
mother--I persuaded them to go abroad this year--thank God.
Not a bad little girl my sister.  She has the most trustful eyes of
any human being that ever walked this earth.  She will marry
well, I hope.  She may have children--sons perhaps.  Look at me.
My father was a Government official in the provinces,  He had a
little land too.  A simple servant of God--a true Russian in his
way.  His was the soul of obedience. But I am not like him.  They
say I resemble my mother's eldest brother, an officer.  They shot
him in '28.  Under Nicholas, you know.  Haven't I told you that
this is war, war. . . .  But God of Justice!  This is weary work."

Razumov, in his chair, leaning his head on his hand, spoke as if
from the bottom of an abyss.

"You believe in God, Haldin?"

"There you go catching at words that are wrung from one.  What
does it matter?  What was it the Englishman said : 'There is a
divine soul in things . . .' Devil take him--I don't remember
now.  But he spoke the truth.  When the day of you thinkers comes
don't you forget what's divine in the Russian soul--and that's
resignation.  Respect that in your intellectual restlessness and
don't let your arrogant wisdom spoil its message to the world.  I
am speaking to you now like a man with a rope round his neck.
What do you imagine I am? A being in revolt?  No.  It's you
thinkers who are in everlasting revolt.  I am one of the
resigned. When the necessity of this heavy work came to me and I
understood that it had to be done--what did I do? Did I exult?
Did I take pride in my purpose?  Did I try to weigh its worth and
consequences?  No!  I was resigned.  I thought 'God's will be
done.'"

He threw himself full length on Razumov's bed and putting the
backs of his hands over his eyes remained perfectly motionless
and silent.  Not even the sound of his breathing could be heard.
The dead stillness or the room remained undisturbed till in the
darkness Razumov said gloomily--

"Haldin."

"Yes," answered the other readily, quite invisible now on the bed
and without the slightest stir.

"Isn't it time for me to start?"

"Yes, brother."  The other was heard, lying still in the darkness
as though he were talking in his sleep.  "The time has come to
put fate to the test."

He paused, then gave a few lucid directions in the quiet
impersonal voice of a man in a trance.  Razumov made ready
without a word of answer.  As he was leaving the room the voice
on the bed said after him--

"Go with God, thou silent soul."

On the landing, moving softly, Razumov locked the door and put
the key in his pocket.


II

The words and events of that evening must have been graven as if
with a steel tool on Mr. Razumov's brain since he was able to
write his relation with such fullness and precision a good many
months afterwards.

The record of the thoughts which assailed him in the street is
even more minute and abundant.  They seem to have rushed upon him
with the greater freedom because his thinking powers were no
longer crushed by Haldin's presence--the appalling presence of a
great crime and the stunning force of a great fanaticism.  On
looking through the pages of Mr. Razumov's diary I own that a
"rush of thoughts" is not an adequate image.

The more adequate description would be a tumult of thoughts--the
faithful reflection of the state of his feelings.  The thoughts
in themselves were not numerous--they were like the thoughts of
most human beings, few and simple--but they cannot be reproduced
here in all their exclamatory repetitions which went on in an
endless and weary turmoil--for the walk was long.

If to the Western reader they appear shocking, inappropriate, or
even improper, it must be remembered that as to the first this
may be the effect of my crude statement.  For the rest I will
only remark here that this is not a story of the West of Europe.

Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the
Governments have paid them back in the same coin.  It is
unthinkable that any young Englishman should find himself in
Razumov's situation.  This being so it would be a vain enterprise
to imagine what he would think.  The only safe surmise to make is
that he would not think as Mr. Razumov thought at this crisis of
his fate.  He would not have an hereditary and personal knowledge
or the means by which historical autocracy represses ideas,
guards its power, and defends its existence.  By an act of mental
extravagance he might imagine himself arbitrarily thrown into
prison, but it would never occur to him unless he were delirious
(and perhaps not even then) that he could be beaten with whips as
a practical measure either of investigation or of punishment.

This is but a crude and obvious example of the different
conditions of Western thought.  I don't know that this danger
occurred, specially to Mr. Razumov.  No doubt it entered
unconsciously into the general dread and the general
appallingness  of this crisis.  Razumov, as has been seen, was
aware of more subtle ways in which an individual may be undone by
the proceedings of a despotic Government.  A simple expulsion
from the University (the very least that could happen to him),
with an impossibility to continue his studies anywhere, was
enough to ruin utterly a young man depending entirely upon the
development of his natural abilities for his place in the world.
He was a Russian: and for him to be implicated meant simply
sinking into the lowest social depths amongst the hopeless and
the destitute--the night birds of the city.

The peculiar circumstances of Razumov's parentage, or rather of
his lack of parentage, should be taken into the account of his
thoughts.  And he remembered them too.  He had been lately
reminded  of them in a peculiarly atrocious way by this fatal
Haldin.  "Because I haven't that, must everything else be
taken away from me?" he thought.

He nerved himself for another effort to go on. Along the roadway
sledges glided phantom-like and jingling through a fluttering
whiteness on the black face of the night.  "For it is a crime,"
he was saying to himself.  "A murder is a murder.  Though, of
course, some sort of liberal institutions. . . ."

A feeling of horrible sickness came over him.  "I must be
courageous," he exhorted himself mentally.  All his strength was
suddenly gone as if taken out by a hand.  Then by a mighty effort
of will it came back because he was afraid of fainting in the
street and being picked up by the police with the key of his
lodgings in his pocket.  They would find Haldin there, and then,
indeed, he would be undone.

Strangely enough it was this fear which seems to have kept him up
to the end.  The passers-by were rare.  They came upon him
suddenly, looming up black in the snowflakes close by, then
vanishing all at once-without footfalls.

It was the quarter of the very poor.  Razumov noticed an elderly
woman tied up in ragged shawls.  Under the street lamp she seemed
a beggar off duty. She walked leisurely in the blizzard as though
she had no home to hurry to, she hugged under one arm a round
loaf of black bread with an air of guarding a priceless booty:
and Razumov averting his glance envied her the peace of her mind
and the serenity of her fate.

To one reading Mr. Razumov's narrative it is really a wonder how
he managed to keep going as he did along one interminable street
after another on pavements that were gradually becoming blocked
with snow.  It was the thought of Haldin locked up in his rooms
and the desperate desire to get rid of his presence which
drove him forward.  No rational determination had any part in
his exertions.  Thus, when on arriving at the low eating-house he
heard that the man of horses, Ziemianitch, was not there, he
could only stare stupidly.

The waiter, a wild-haired youth in tarred boots and a pink shirt,
exclaimed, uncovering his pale gums in a silly grin, that
Ziemianitch had got his skinful early in the afternoon and had
gone away with a bottle under each arm to keep it up amongst the
horses--he supposed.

The owner of the vile den, a bony short man in a dirty cloth
caftan coming down to his heels, stood by, his hands tucked into
his belt, and nodded confirmation.

The reek of spirits, the greasy rancid steam of food got Razumov
by the throat.  He struck a table with his clenched hand and
shouted violently--

"You lie."

Bleary unwashed faces were turned to his direction. A mild-eyed
ragged tramp drinking tea at the next table moved farther away.
A murmur of wonder arose with an undertone of uneasiness.  A
laugh was heard too, and an exclamation, "There! there!"
jeeringly soothing.  The waiter looked all round and announced to
the room--

"The gentleman won't believe that Ziemianitch is drunk."

>From a distant corner a hoarse voice belonging to a horrible,
nondescript, shaggy being with a black face like the muzzle of a
bear grunted angrily--

"The cursed driver of thieves.  What do we want with his
gentlemen here?  We are all honest folk in this place."

Razumov, biting his lip till blood came to keep himself from
bursting into imprecations, followed the owner of the den, who,
whispering "Come along, little father," led him into a tiny hole
of a place behind the wooden counter, whence proceeded a sound of
splashing.  A wet and bedraggled creature, a sort of sexless
and shivering scarecrow, washed glasses in there, bending over a
wooden tub by the light of a tallow dip.

"Yes, little father," the man in the long caftan said
plaintively.  He had a brown, cunning little face, a thin greyish
beard.  Trying to light a tin lantern he hugged it to his breast
and talked garrulously the while.

He would show Ziemianitch to the gentleman to prove there were no
lies told.  And he would show him drunk.  His woman, it seems,
ran away from him last night.  "Such a hag she was!  Thin!
Pfui!"  He spat.  They were always running away from that driver
of the devil--and he sixty years old too; could never get used to
it.  But each heart knows sorrow after its own kind and
Ziemianitch was a born fool all his days. And then he would fly
to the bottle. "'Who could bear life in our land without the
bottle?' he says.  A proper Russian man--the little pig. . . .
Be pleased to follow me."

Razumov crossed a quadrangle of deep snow enclosed between high
walls with innumerable windows.  Here and there a dim yellow
light hung within the four-square mass of darkness.  The house
was an enormous slum, a hive of human vermin, a monumental abode
of misery towering on the verge of starvation and despair.

In a corner the ground sloped sharply down, and Razumov followed
the light of the lantern through a small doorway into a long
cavernous place like a neglected subterranean byre.  Deep within,
three shaggy little horses tied up to rings hung their heads
together, motionless and shadowy in the dim light of the lantern.
It must have been the famous team of Haldin's escape.  Razumov
peered fearfully into the gloom.  His guide pawed in the straw
with his foot.

"Here he is.  Ah!  the little pigeon.  A true Russian man.
'No heavy hearts for me,' he says.  'Bring out the bottle and
take your ugly mug out of my sight.' Ha! ha! ha!  That's the
fellow he is."

He held the lantern over a prone form of a man, apparently fully
dressed for outdoors.  His head was lost in a pointed cloth hood.
On the other side of a heap of straw protruded a pair of feet in
monstrous thick boots.

"Always ready to drive," commented the keeper of the
eating-house.  "A proper Russian driver that.  Saint or devil,
night or day is all one to Ziemianitch when his heart is free
from sorrow.  'I don't ask who you are, but where you want to
go,' he says.  He would drive Satan himself to his own abode and
come back chirruping to his horses.  Many a one he has driven who
is clanking his chains in the Nertchinsk mines by this time."

Razumov shuddered.

"Call him, wake him up," he faltered out.

The other set down his light, stepped back and launched a kick at
the prostrate sleeper.  The man shook at the impact but did not
move.  At the third kick he grunted but remained inert as before.

The eating-house keeper desisted and fetched a deep sigh.

"You see for yourself how it is.  We have done what we can for
you."

He picked up the lantern. The intense black spokes of shadow
swung about in the circle of light.  A terrible fury--the blind
rage of self-preservation--possessed Razumov.

"Ah! The vile beast," he bellowed out in an unearthly tone
which made the lantern jump and tremble!  "I shall wake you!
Give me . . .  Give me . . ."

He looked round wildly, seized the handle of a stablefork and
rushing forward struck at the prostrate body with
inarticulate cries.  After a time his cries ceased, and the rain
of blows fell in the stillness and shadows of the cellar-like
stable.  Razumov belaboured Ziemianitch with an insatiable fury,
in great volleys of sounding thwacks.  Except for the violent
movements of Razumov nothing stirred, neither the beaten man nor
the spoke-like shadows on the walls.  And only the sound of blows
was heard.  It was a weird scene.

Suddenly there was a sharp crack.  The stick broke and half of it
flew far away into the gloom beyond the light.  At the same time
Ziemianitch sat up.  At this Razumov became as motionless as the
man with the lantern--only his breast heaved for air as if ready
to burst.

Some dull sensation of pain must have penetrated at last the
consoling night of drunkenness enwrapping the "bright Russian
soul" of Haldin's enthusiastic praise.  But Ziemianitch evidently
saw nothing.  His eyeballs blinked all white in the light once,
twice--then the gleam went out.  For a moment he sat in the straw
with closed eyes with a strange air of weary meditation, then
fell over slowly on his  side without making the slightest sound.
Only the straw rustled a little.  Razumov stared wildly, fighting
for his breath.  After a second or two he heard a light snore.

He flung from him the piece of stick remaining in his grasp, and
went off with great hasty strides without looking back once.

After going heedlessly for some fifty yards along the street he
walked into a snowdrift and was up to his knees before he stopped.

This recalled him to himself; and glancing about he discovered he
had been going in the wrong direction. He retraced his steps, but
now at a more moderate pace. When passing before the house he had
just left he flourished his fist at the sombre refuge of
misery and crime rearing its sinister bulk on the white ground.
It had an air of brooding.  He let his arm fall by his
side--discouraged.

Ziemianitch's passionate surrender to sorrow and consolation had
baffled him.  That was the people.  A true Russian man!  Razumov
was glad he had beaten that brute--the "bright soul" of the
other.  Here they were: the people and the enthusiast.

Between the two he was done for.  Between the drunkenness of the
peasant incapable of action and the dream-intoxication of the
idealist incapable of perceiving the reason of things, and the
true character of men.  It was a sort of terrible childishness.
But children had their masters.  "Ah! the stick, the stick, the
stern hand," thought Razumov, longing for power to hurt and
destroy.

He was glad he had thrashed that brute.  The physical exertion
had left his body in a comfortable glow.  His mental agitation
too was clarified as if all the feverishness had gone out of him
in a fit of outward violence. Together with the persisting sense
of terrible danger he was conscious now of a tranquil,
unquenchable hate.

He walked slower and slower.  And indeed, considering the guest
he had in his rooms, it was no wonder he lingered on the way.  It
was like harbouring a pestilential disease that would not perhaps
take your life, but would take from you all that made life worth
living --a subtle pest that would convert earth into a hell.

What was he doing now?  Lying on the bed as if dead, with the
back of his hands over his eyes?  Razumov had a morbidly vivid
vision of Haldin on his bed--the white pillow hollowed by the
head, the legs in long boots, the upturned feet.  And in his
abhorrence he said to himself, "I'll kill him when I get home."
But he knew very well that that was of no use.  The corpse
hanging round his neck would be nearly as fatal as the living
man.  Nothing short of complete annihilation would do.  And that
was impossible.  What then?  Must one kill oneself to escape this
visitation?

Razumov's despair was too profoundly tinged with hate to accept
that issue.

And yet it was despair--nothing less--at the thought of having to
live with Haldin for an indefinite number of days in mortal alarm
at every sound.  But perhaps when he heard that this "bright
soul" of Ziemianitch suffered from a drunken eclipse the fellow
would take his infernal resignation somewhere else.  And that was
not likely on the face of it.

Razumov thought:"I am being crushed--and I can't even run away."
Other  men had somewhere a corner of the earth--some little house
in the provinces where they had a right to take their troubles.
A material refuge.  He had nothing.  He had not even a moral
refuge--the refuge of confidence.  To whom could he go with this
tale--in all this great, great land?

Razumov stamped his foot--and under the soft carpet of snow felt
the hard ground of Russia, inanimate, cold, inert, like a sullen
and tragic mother hiding her face under a winding-sheet--his
native soil!--his very own--without a fireside, without a heart!

He cast his eyes upwards and stood amazed. The snow had ceased to
fall, and now, as if by a miracle, he saw above his head the
clear black sky of the northern winter, decorated with the
sumptuous fires of the stars.  It was a canopy fit for the
resplendent purity of the snows.

Razumov received an almost physical impression of endless space
and of countless millions.

He responded to it with the readiness of a Russian who is born to
an inheritance of space and numbers. Under the sumptuous
immensity of the sky, the snow covered the endless forests,
the frozen rivers, the plains of an immense country, obliterating
the landmarks, the accidents of the ground, levelling everything
under its uniform whiteness, like a monstrous blank page awaiting
the record of an inconceivable history.  It covered the passive
land with its lives of  countless people like Ziemianitch and its
handful of agitators like this Haldin --murdering foolishly.

It was a sort of sacred inertia.  Razumov felt a respect for it.
A voice seemed   to cry within him, "Don't touch it."  It was a
guarantee of duration,  of safety, while the travail of maturing
destiny went on--a work not of revolutions with their passionate
levity of action and their shifting impulses--but of peace.  What
it needed was not the conflicting aspirations of a people, but a
will strong and one: it wanted not the babble of many voices, but
a man--strong and one!

Razumov stood on the point of conversion.  He was fascinated by
its approach, by its overpowering logic.  For a train of thought
is never false.  The falsehood lies deep in the necessities of
existence, in secret fears and half-formed ambitions, in the
secret confidence combined with a secret mistrust of ourselves,
in the love of hope and the dread of uncertain days.

In Russia, the land of spectral ideas and disembodied
aspirations, many brave minds have turned away at last from the
vain and endless conflict to the one great historical fact of the
land.  They turned to autocracy for the peace of their patriotic
conscience as a weary unbeliever, touched by grace, turns to the
faith of his fathers for the blessing of spiritual rest.  Like
other Russians before him, Razumov, in conflict with himself,
felt the touch of grace upon his forehead.

"Haldin means disruption," he thought to himself, beginning to
walk again.  "What is he with his indignation, with his talk
of bondage--with his talk of God's justice?  All that means
disruption.  Better that thousands should suffer than that a
people should become a disintegrated mass, helpless like dust in
the wind.  Obscurantism is better than the light of incendiary
torches.  The seed germinates in the night.  Out of the dark soil
springs the perfect plant.  But a volcanic eruption is sterile,
the ruin of the fertile ground.  And am I, who love my
country--who have nothing but that to love and put my faith
in--am I to have my future, perhaps my usefulness, ruined by this
sanguinary fanatic?"

The grace entered into Razumov.  He believed now in the man who
would come at the appointed time.

What is a throne?  A few pieces of wood upholstered in velvet.
But a throne is a seat of power too.  The form of government is
the shape of a tool--an instrument.  But twenty thousand bladders
inflated by the noblest sentiments and jostling against each
other in the air are a miserable incumbrance of space, holding no
power, possessing no will, having nothing to give.

He went on thus, heedless of the way, holding a discourse with
himself with extraordinary abundance and facility.  Generally his
phrases came to him slowly, after a conscious and painstaking
wooing.  Some superior power had inspired him with a flow of
masterly argument as certain converted sinners become
overwhelmingly loquacious.

He felt an austere exultation.

"What are the luridly smoky lucubrations of that fellow to the
clear grasp of my intellect?" he thought.  "Is not this my
country?  Have I not got forty million brothers?" he asked
himself, unanswerably victorious in the silence of his breast.
And the fearful thrashing he had given the inanimate Ziemianitch
seemed to him a sign of intimate union, a pathetically severe
necessity of brotherly love.  "No!  If I must suffer let me at
least suffer for my convictions, not for a crime my reason --my
cool superior reason--rejects."

He ceased to think for a moment.  The silence in his breast was
complete.  But he felt a suspicious uneasiness, such as we may
experience when we enter an unlighted strange place--the
irrational feeling that something may jump upon us in the
dark--the absurd dread of the unseen.

Of course he was far from being a moss-grown reactionary.
Everything was not for the best.  Despotic bureaucracy. . .
abuses. . .corruption. . .and so on.  Capable men were wanted.
Enlightened intelligences.  Devoted hearts.  But absolute power
should be preserved --the tool ready for the man--for the great
autocrat of the future.  Razumov believed in him.  The logic of
history made him unavoidable.  The state of the people demanded
him,  "What else?" he asked himself ardently, "could move all that
mass in one direction?  Nothing could.  Nothing but a single will."

He was persuaded that he was sacrificing his personal longings of
liberalism--rejecting the attractive error for the stern Russian
truth.  "That's patriotism," he observed mentally, and added,
"There's no stopping midway on that road," and then remarked to
himself, "I am not a coward."

And again there was a dead silence in Razumov's breast.  He
walked with lowered head, making room for no one.  He walked
slowly and his thoughts returning spoke within him with solemn
slowness.

"What is this Haldin?  And what am I? Only two grains of sand.
But a great mountain is made up of just such insignificant
grains.  And the death of a man or of many men is an
insignificant thing. Yet we combat a contagious pestilence.
Do I want his death?  No!  I would save him if I could--but no
one can do that--he is the withered member which must be cut off.
If I must perish through him, let me at least not perish with
him, and associated against my will with his sombre folly that
understands nothing either of men or things.  Why should I leave
a false memory?"

It passed through his mind that there was no one in the world who
cared what sort of memory he left behind him.  He exclaimed to
himself instantly, "Perish vainly for a falsehood! . . . What a
miserable fate!"

He was now in a more animated part of the town.  He did not
remark the crash of two colliding sledges close to the curb.
The driver of one bellowed tearfully at his fellow--
"Oh, thou vile wretch!"

This hoarse yell, let out nearly in his ear, disturbed Razumov.
He shook his head impatiently and went on looking straight before
him.  Suddenly on the snow, stretched on his back right across
his path, he saw Haldin, solid, distinct, real, with his inverted
hands over his eyes, clad in a brown close-fitting coat and long
boots.  He was lying out of the way a little, as though he had
selected that place on purpose.  The snow round him was untrodden.

This hallucination had such a solidity of aspect that the first
movement of Razumov was to reach for his pocket to assure himself
that the key of his rooms was there.  But he checked the impulse
with a disdainful curve of his lips.  He understood.  His
thought, concentrated intensely on the figure left lying on his
bed, had culminated in this extraordinary illusion of the sight.
Razumov tackled the phenomenon calmly.  With a stern face,
without a check and gazing far beyond the vision, he walked on,
experiencing nothing but a slight tightening of the chest.
After passing he turned his head for a glance, and saw only the
unbroken track of his footsteps over the place where the breast
of the phantom had been lying.

Razumov walked on and after a little time whispered his wonder to
himself.

"Exactly as if alive!  Seemed to breathe!  And right in my way too!
I have had an extraordinary experience."

He made a few steps and muttered through his set teeth--

"I shall give him up."

Then for some twenty yards or more all was blank.  He wrapped his
cloak closer round him.  He pulled his cap well forward over his eyes.

"Betray.  A great word.  What is betrayal?  They talk of a man
betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart.  There must
be a moral bond first.  All a man can betray is his conscience.
And how is my conscience engaged here;  by what bond of common
faith, of common conviction, am I  obliged to let that fanatical
idiot drag me down with him?  On the contrary--every obligation
of true courage is the other way."

Razumov looked round from under his cap.

"What can the prejudice of the world reproach me with?  Have I
provoked his confidence?  No!  Have I by a single word, look, or
gesture given him reason to suppose that I accepted his trust in
me?  No!  It is true that I consented to go and see his
Ziemianitch.  Well, I have been to see him.  And I broke a stick
on his back too--the brute."

Something seemed to turn over  in  his  head bringing uppermost a
singularly hard, clear facet of his brain.

"It would be better, however," he reflected with a quite different
mental accent, "to keep that circumstance altogether to myself."

He had passed beyond the turn leading to his lodgings, and had
reached a wide and fashionable street.  Some shops were still
open, and all the restaurants.  Lights fell on the pavement where
men in expensive fur coats, with here and there the elegant
figure of a woman, walked with an air of leisure.  Razumov looked
at them with the contempt of an austere believer for the
frivolous crowd.  It was the world--those officers, dignitaries,
men of fashion, officials, members of the Yacht Club.  The event
of the morning affected them all.  What would they say if they
knew what this student in a cloak was going to do?

"Not one of them is capable of feeling and thinking as deeply as
I can.  How many of them could accomplish an act of conscience?"

Razumov lingered in the well-lighted street.  He was firmly
decided.  Indeed, it could hardly be called a decision.  He had
simply discovered what he had meant to do all along.  And yet he
felt the need of some other mind's sanction.

With something resembling anguish he said to himself--

"I want to be understood."  The universal aspiration with all its
profound and melancholy meaning assailed heavily Razumov, who,
amongst eighty millions of his kith and kin, had no heart to
which he could open himself.

The attorney was not to be thought of.  He despised the little
agent of chicane too much.  One could not go and lay one's
conscience before the policeman at the corner.  Neither was
Razumov anxious to go to the chief of his district's police--a
common-looking person whom he used to see sometimes in the
street in a shabby uniform and with a smouldering cigarette stuck
to his lower lip.  "He would begin by locking me up most
probably.  At any rate, he is certain to get excited and create
an awful commotion," thought Razumov practically

An act of conscience must be done with outward dignity.

Razumov longed desperately for a word of advice, for moral
support.  Who knows what true loneliness is --not the
conventional word, but the naked terror?  To the lonely
themselves it wears a mask.  The most miserable outcast hugs some
memory or some illusion.  Now and then a fatal conjunction of
events may lift the veil for an instant.  For an instant only.
No human being could bear a steady view of moral solitude without
going mad.

Razumov had reached that point of vision.  To escape from it he
embraced for a whole minute the delirious purpose of rushing to
his lodgings and flinging himself on his knees by the side of the
bed with the dark figure stretched on it; to pour out a full
confession in passionate words that would stir the whole being of
that man to its innermost depths; that would end in embraces and
tears; in an incredible fellowship of souls --such as the world
had never seen.  It was sublime!

Inwardly he wept and trembled already.  But to the casual eyes
that were cast upon him he was aware that he appeared as a
tranquil student in a cloak, out for a leisurely stroll.
He noted, too, the sidelong, brilliant glance of a pretty
woman--with a delicate head, and covered in the hairy skins
of wild beasts down to her feet, like a frail and beautiful
savage--which rested for a moment with a sort of mocking tenderness
on the deep abstraction of that good-looking young man.

Suddenly Razumov stood still.  The glimpse of a passing grey
whisker, caught and lost in the same instant, had evoked the
complete image of Prince K---, the man who once had pressed his
hand as no other man had pressed it--a faint but lingering
pressure like a secret sign, like a half-unwilling caress.

And Razumov marvelled at himself.  Why did he not think of him before!

"A senator, a dignitary, a  great personage, the very man--He!"

A strange softening emotion came over Razumov--made his knees
shake a little.  He repressed it with a new-born austerity.  All
that sentiment was pernicious nonsense.  He couldn't be quick
enough; and when he got into a sledge he shouted to the driver--

"TotheK--- Palace.  Get on--you! Fly!"  The startled moujik,
bearded up to the very whites of his eyes, answered obsequiously--

"I hear, your high Nobility."

It was lucky for Razumov that Prince K ---was not a man of timid
character.  On the day of Mr. de P---'s murder an extreme alarm
and despondency prevailed in the high official spheres.
Prince K---, sitting sadly alone in his study, was told by his
alarmed servants that a mysterious young man had forced his way
into the hall, refused to tell his name and the nature of his
business, and would not move from there till he had seen his
Excellency in private.  Instead of locking himself up and
telephoning for the police, as nine out of ten high personages
would have done that evening, the Prince gave way to curiosity
and came quietly to the door of his study.

In the hall, the front door standing wide open, he recognised at
once Razumov, pale as death, his eyes blazing, and surrounded by
perplexed lackeys.

The Prince was vexed beyond measure, and even indignant.  But
his humane instincts and a subtle sense of self-respect could not
allow him to let this young man be thrown out into the street by
base menials.  He retreated unseen into his room, and after a
little rang his bell.  Razumov heard in the hall an ominously
raised harsh voice saying somewhere far away--

"Show the gentleman in here."

Razumov walked in without a tremor.  He felt himself
invulnerable--raised far above the shallowness of common
judgment.  Though he saw the Prince looking at him with black
displeasure, the lucidity of his mind, of which he was very
conscious, gave him an extraordinary assurance.  He was not
asked to sit down.

Half an hour later they appeared in the hall together.  The lackeys
stood up, and the Prince, moving with difficulty on his
gouty feet, was helped into his furs.  The carriage had been
ordered before.  When the great double door was flung open with a
crash, Razumov, who had been standing silent with a lost gaze but
with every faculty intensely on the alert, heard the Prince's voice--

"Your arm, young man."

The mobile, superficial mind of the ex-Guards officer, man of
showy missions, experienced in nothing but the arts of gallant
intrigue and worldly success, had been equally impressed by the
more obvious difficulties of such a situation and by Razumov's
quiet dignity in stating them.

He had said, "No.  Upon the whole I can't condemn the step you
ventured to take by coming to me with your story.  It is not an
affair for police understrappers.  The greatest importance is
attached to. . .Set your mind at rest.  I shall see you through
this most extraordinary and difficult situation."

Then the Prince rose to ring the bell, and Razumov, making a
short bow, had said with deference--

"I have trusted my instinct.  A young man having no claim upon
anybody in the world has in an hour of trial involving his
deepest political convictions turned to an illustrious
Russian--that's all."

The Prince had exclaimed hastily--

"You have done well."

In the carriage--it was a small brougham on sleigh runners--
Razumov broke the silence in a voice that trembled slightly.

"My gratitude surpasses the greatness of my presumption."

He gasped, feeling unexpectedly in the dark a momentary pressure
on his arm.

"You have done well," repeated the Prince.

When the carriage stopped the Prince murmured to Razumov, who had
never ventured a single question--

"The house of General T---."

In the middle of the snow-covered roadway blazed a great bonfire.
Some Cossacks, the bridles of their horses over the arm, were
warming themselves around.  Two sentries stood at the door,
several gendarmes lounged under the great carriage gateway, and
on the first-floor landing two orderlies rose and stood at
attention.  Razumov walked at the Prince's elbow.

A surprising quantity of hot-house plants in pots cumbered the
floor of the ante-room.  Servants came forward.  A  young man in
civilian clothes arrived hurriedly, was whispered to, bowed low,
and exclaiming zealously, "Certainly--this minute," fled within
somewhere.  The Prince signed to Razumov.

They passed through a suite of reception-rooms all barely lit and
one of them prepared for dancing.  The wife of the General had
put off her party.  An atmosphere of consternation pervaded the place.
But the General's own room, with heavy sombre hangings, two massive desks,
and deep armchairs, had all the lights turned on.  The footman shut the
door behind them and they waited.

There was a coal fire in an English grate; Razumov had never
before seen such a fire; and the silence of the room was like the
silence of the grave; perfect, measureless, for even the clock on
the mantelpiece made no sound.  Filling a corner, on a black
pedestal, stood a quarter-life-size smooth-limbed bronze of an
adolescent figure, running.  The Prince observed in an undertone-

"Spontini's.  'Flight of Youth.'  Exquisite."

"Admirable," assented Razumov faintly.

They said nothing more after this, the Prince silent with his
grand air, Razumov staring at the statue.  He was worried by a
sensation resembling the gnawing of hunger.

He did not turn when he heard an inner door fly open, and a quick
footstep, muffled on the carpet.

The Prince's voice immediately exclaimed, thick with excitement--

"We have got him--_ce miserable._  A worthy young man came to me--
No!  It's incredible. . ."

Razumov held his breath before the bronze as if expecting a
crash.  Behind his back a voice he had never heard before
insisted politely--

"_Asseyez-vous donc_."

The Prince almost shrieked, "_Mais comprenez-vous, mon cher!
L'assassin!_  the murderer --we have got him. . ."

Razumov spun round.  The General's smooth big cheeks rested on
the stiff collar of his uniform.  He must have been already
looking at Razumov, because that last saw the pale blue eyes
fastened on him coldly.

The Prince from a chair waved an impressive hand.

"This is a most honourable young man whom Providence
itself. . .Mr. Razumov."

The General acknowledged the introduction by frowning at Razumov,
who did not make the slightest movement.

Sitting down before his desk the General listened with compressed lips.
It was impossible to detect any sign of emotion on his face.

Razumov watched the immobility of the fleshy profile.  But it
lasted only a moment, till the Prince had finished; and when the
General turned to the providential young man, his florid
complexion, the blue, unbelieving eyes and the bright white flash
of an automatic smile had an air of jovial, careless cruelty.  He
expressed no wonder at the extraordinary story--no pleasure or
excitement--no incredulity either.  He betrayed no sentiment
whatever.  Only with a politeness almost deferential suggested
that "the bird might have flown while Mr.--Mr. Razumov was
running about the streets."

Razumov advanced to the middle of the room and said, "The door is
locked and I have the key in my pocket."

His loathing for the man was intense.  It had come upon him so
unawares that he felt he had not kept it out of his voice.  The
General looked up at him thoughtfully, and Razumov grinned.

All this went over the head of Prince K ---seated in a deep
armchair, very tired and impatient.

"A student called Haldin," said the General thoughtfully.

Razumov ceased to grin.

"That is his name," he said unnecessarily loud.  "Victor
Victorovitch Haldin--a student."

The General shifted his position a little.

"How is he dressed?  Would you have the goodness to tell me?"

Razumov angrily described Haldin's clothing in a few jerky words.
The General stared all the time, then addressing the Prince--

"We were not without some indications," he said in French.  "A
good woman who was in the street described to us somebody wearing
a dress of the sort as the thrower of the second bomb.  We have
detained her at the Secretariat, and every one in a Tcherkess
coat we could lay our hands on has been brought to her to look
at.  She kept on crossing herself and shaking her head at them.
It was exasperating. . . ."  He turned to Razumov, and in
Russian, with friendly reproach--

"Take a chair, Mr. Razumov--do.  Why are you standing?"

Razumov sat down carelessly and looked at the General.

"This goggle-eyed imbecile understands nothing," he thought.

The Prince began to speak loftily.

"Mr. Razumov is a young man of conspicuous abilities.  I have it
at heart that his future should not. . . ."

"Certainly," interrupted the General, with a movement of the
hand.  "Has he any weapons on him, do you think, Mr. Razumov?"

The General employed a gentle musical voice.  Razumov answered
with suppressed irritation--

"No.  But my razors are lying about--you understand."

The General lowered his head approvingly.

"Precisely."

Then to the Prince, explaining courteously--

"We want that bird alive.  It will be the devil if we can't make
him sing a little before we are done with him."

The grave-like silence of the room with its mute clock fell upon
the polite modulations of this terrible phrase.  The Prince,
hidden in the chair, made no sound.

The General unexpectedly developed a thought.

"Fidelity to menaced institutions on which depend the safety of a
throne and of a people is no child's play.  We know that, _mon
Prince,_ and--_tenez_--"he went on with a sort of flattering
harshness, "Mr. Razumov here begins to understand that too."

His eyes which he turned upon Razumov seemed to be starting out
of his head.  This grotesqueness of aspect no longer shocked
Razumov.  He said with gloomy conviction--

"Haldin will never speak."

"That remains to be seen," muttered the General.

"I am  certain," insisted Razumov.  "A man like this never
speaks. . . .  Do you imagine that I am here from fear?" he added
violently.  He felt ready to stand by his opinion of Haldin to
the last extremity.

"Certainly not," protested the General, with great simplicity of
tone.  "And I don't mind telling you, Mr. Razumov, that if he had
not come with his tale to such a staunch and loyal Russian as
you, he would have disappeared like a stone in the water . . .
which would have had a detestable effect," he added, with a
bright, cruel smile under his stony stare.  "So you see, there
can be no suspicion of any fear here."

The Prince intervened, looking at Razumov round the back of the
armchair.

"Nobody doubts the moral soundness of your action.  Be at ease in
that respect, pray."

He turned to the General uneasily.

"That's why I am here.  You may be surprised why I should . . ."

The General hastened to interrupt.

"Not at all.  Extremely natural.  You saw the importance. . .

"Yes," broke in the Prince.  "And I venture to ask insistently
that mine and Mr. Razumov's intervention should not become
public.  He is a young man of promise--of remarkable aptitudes."

"I haven't a doubt of it," murmured the General.  "He inspires
confidence."

"All sorts of pernicious views are so widespread nowadays--they
taint such unexpected quarters--that, monstrous as it seems, he
might suffer. . . .  His studies. . . .  His. . ."

The General, with his elbows on the desk, took his head between
his hands.

"Yes.  Yes.  I am thinking it out. . . .  How long is it since
you left him at your rooms, Mr. Razumov?"

Razumov mentioned the hour which nearly corresponded with the
time of his distracted flight from the big slum house.  He had
made up his mind to keep Ziemianitch out of the affair
completely.  To mention him at all would mean imprisonment for
the "bright soul," perhaps cruel floggings, and in the end a
journey to  Siberia in chains.  Razumov, who had beaten
Ziemianitch, felt for him now a vague, remorseful tenderness.

The General,giving way for the first time to his secret
sentiments, exclaimed contemptuously--

"And you say he came in to make you this confidence like
this--for nothing--_a propos des bottes_."

Razumov felt danger in the air.  The merciless suspicion  of
despotism had spoken openly at last.  Sudden fear sealed
Razumov's lips.  The silence of the room resembled now the
silence of a deep dungeon, where time does not count, and a
suspect person is sometimes forgotten for ever.  But the Prince
came to the rescue.

"Providence itself has led the wretch in a moment of mental
aberration to seek Mr. Razumov on the strength of some old,
utterly misinterpreted exchange of ideas--some sort of idle
speculative conversation--months ago--I am told--and completely
forgotten till now by Mr. Razumov."

"Mr. Razumov," queried the General meditatively, after a short
silence, "do you often indulge in speculative conversation?"

"No, Excellency," answered Razumov, coolly, in a sudden access of
self-confidence.  "I am a man of deep convictions.  Crude
opinions are in the air.  They are not always worth combating.
But even the silent contempt of a serious mind may be
misinterpreted by headlong utopists."

The General stared from between his hands.  Prince K---
murmured--

"A serious young man.  _Un esprit superieur_."

"I see that, _mon cher Prince_,"  said the General. "Mr. Razumov
is quite safe with me.  I am interested in him.  He has, it
seems, the great and useful quality of inspiring confidence.
What I was wondering at is why the other should mention anything
at all--I mean even the bare fact alone--if his object was only
to obtain temporary shelter for a few hours.  For, after all,
nothing was easier than to say nothing about it unless, indeed,
he were trying, under a crazy misapprehension of your true
sentiments, to enlist your assistance--eh, Mr. Razumov?"

It seemed to Razumov that the floor was moving slightly.
This grotesque man in a tight uniform was terrible.  It was right
that he should be terrible.

"I can see what your Excellency has in your mind.  But I can only
answer that I don't know why."

"I have nothing in my mind," murmured the General, with gentle
surprise.

"I am his prey--his helpless prey," thought Razumov.  The
fatigues and the disgusts of that afternoon, the need to forget,
the fear which he could not keep off, reawakened his hate for
Haldin.

"Then I can't help your Excellency.  I don't know what he meant.
I only know there was a moment when I wished to kill him.  There
was also a moment when I wished myself dead.  I said nothing.  I
was overcome.  I provoked no confidence--I asked for no
explanations--"

Razumov seemed beside himself; but his mind was lucid.  It was
really a calculated outburst.

"It is rather a pity," the General said, "that you did not.
Don't you know at all what he means to do?" Razumov calmed down
and saw an opening there.

"He told me he was in hopes that a sledge would meet him about
half an hour after midnight at the seventh lamp-post on the left
from the upper end of Karabelnaya.  At any rate, he meant to be
there at that time.  He did not even ask me for a change of
clothes."
"_Ah voila_!" said the General, turning to Prince K with an air
of satisfaction.  "There is a way to keep your _protege_, Mr.
Razumov, quite clear of any connexion with the actual arrest.  We
shall be ready for that gentleman in Karabelnaya."

The Prince expressed his gratitude.  There was real emotion in
his voice.  Razumov, motionless, silent, sat staring at the
carpet.  The General turned to him.

"Half an hour after midnight.  Till then we have to depend on
you, Mr. Razumov.  You don't think he is likely to change his
purpose?"

"How can I tell?" said Razumov.  "Those men are not of the sort
that ever changes its purpose."

"What men do you mean?"

"Fanatical lovers of liberty in general.  Liberty with a capital
L, Excellency.  Liberty that means nothing precise.  Liberty in
whose name crimes are committed."

The General murmured--

"I detest rebels of every kind.  I can't help it.  It's my nature!"

He clenched a fist and shook it, drawing back his arm.  "They shall
be destroyed, then."

"They have made a sacrifice of their lives beforehand," said
Razumov with malicious pleasure and looking the General straight
in the face.  "If Haldin does change his purpose to-night, you
may depend on it that it will not be to save his life by flight
in some other way.  He would have thought then of something else
to attempt. But that is not likely."

The General repeated as if to himself, "They shall be destroyed."

Razumov assumed an impenetrable expression.

The Prince exclaimed--

"What a terrible necessity!"

The General's arm was lowered slowly.

"One comfort there is.  That brood leaves no posterity.  I've
always said it, one effort, pitiless, persistent, steady--and we
are done with them for ever."

Razumov thought to himself that this man entrusted with so much
arbitrary power must have believed what he said or else he could
not have gone on bearing the responsibility.

"I detest rebels.  These subversive minds!  These intellectual
_debauches_!  My existence has been built on fidelity.  It's a feeling.
To defend it I am ready to lay down my life--and even my honour--if
that were needed.  But pray tell me what honour can there be as against
rebels--against people that deny God Himself--perfect unbelievers!
Brutes.  It is horrible to think of."

During this tirade Razumov, facing the General, had nodded
slightly twice.  Prince K---, standing on one side with his grand
air, murmured, casting up his eyes--

"_Helas!_"

Then lowering his glance and with great decision declared--

"This young man, General, is perfectly fit to apprehend the
bearing of your memorable words."

The General's whole expression changed from dull resentment to
perfect urbanity.

"I would ask now, Mr. Razumov," he said, "to return to his home.
Note that I don't ask Mr. Razumov whether he has justified his
absence to his guest.  No doubt he did this sufficiently.  But I
don't ask.  Mr. Razumov inspires confidence.  It is a great gift.
I only suggest that a more prolonged absence might awaken the
criminal's suspicions and induce him perhaps to change his
plans."

He rose and with a scrupulous courtesy escorted his visitors to
the ante-room encumbered with flower-pots.

Razumov parted with the Prince at the corner of a street.  In the
carriage he had listened to speeches where natural sentiment
struggled with caution.  Evidently the Prince was afraid of
encouraging any hopes of future intercourse.  But there was a
touch of tenderness in the voice uttering in the dark the guarded
general phrases of goodwill.  And the Prince too said--

"I have perfect confidence in you, Mr. Razumov."

"They all, it seems, have confidence in me," thought Razumov
dully.  He had an indulgent contempt for the man sitting shoulder
to shoulder with him in the confined space.  Probably he was afraid
of scenes with his wife.  She was said to be proud and violent.

It seemed to him bizarre that secrecy should play such a large
part in the comfort and safety of lives.  But he wanted to put
the Prince's mind at ease; and with a proper amount of emphasis
he said that, being conscious of some small abilities and
confident in his power of work, he trusted his future to his own
exertions.  He expressed his gratitude for the helping hand.
Such dangerous situations did not occur twice in the course of
one life--he added.

"And you have met this one with a firmness of mind and
correctness of feeling which give me a high idea of your worth,"
the Prince said solemnly.  "You have now only to persevere--to
persevere."

On getting out on the pavement Razumov saw an ungloved hand
extended to him through the lowered window of the brougham.  It
detained his own in its grasp for a moment, while the light of a
street lamp fell upon the Prince's long face and old-fashioned
grey whiskers.

"I hope you are perfectly reassured now as to the consequences. . ."

"After what your Excellency has condescended to do for me,
I can only rely on my conscience."

"_Adieu_," said the whiskered head with feeling.

Razumov bowed.  The brougham glided away with a slight swish in
the snow--he was alone on the edge of the pavement.

He said to himself that there was nothing to think about, and
began walking towards his home.

He walked quietly.  It was a common experience to walk thus
home to bed after an evening spent somewhere with his fellows or
in the cheaper seats of a theatre.  After he had gone a little
way the familiarity of things got hold of him.  Nothing was
changed.  There was the familiar corner; and when he turned it he
saw the familiar dim light of the provision shop kept by a German
woman.  There were loaves of stale bread, bunches of onions and
strings of sausages behind the small window-panes.  They were
closing it.  The sickly lame fellow whom he knew so well by sight
staggered out into the snow embracing a large shutter.

Nothing would change.  There was the familiar gateway yawning
black with feeble glimmers marking the arches of the different
staircases.

The sense of life's continuity depended on trifling bodily
impressions.  The trivialities of daily existence were an armour
for the soul.  And this thought reinforced the inward quietness
of Razumov as he began to climb the stairs familiar to his feet
in the dark, with his hand on the familiar clammy banister.  The
exceptional could not prevail against the material contacts which
make one day resemble another.  To-morrow would be like yesterday.

It was only on the stage that the unusual was outwardly acknowledged.

"I suppose," thought Razumov, "that if I had made up my mind to
blow out my brains on the landing I would be going up these
stairs as quietly as I am doing it now.  What's a man to do?
What must be must be.  Extraordinary things do happen.  But when
they have happened they are done with.  Thus, too, when the mind
is made up.  That question is done with.  And the daily concerns,
the familiarities of our thought swallow it up--and the life goes
on as before with its mysterious and secret sides quite out
of sight, as they should be.  Life is a public thing."

Razumov unlocked his door and took the key out; entered very
quietly and bolted the door behind him carefully.

He thought, "He hears me," and after bolting the door he stood
still holding his breath.  There was not a sound.  He crossed the
bare outer room, stepping deliberately in the darkness.  Entering
the other, he felt all over his table for the matchbox.  The
silence, but for the groping of his hand, was profound.  Could
the fellow be sleeping so soundly?

He struck a light and looked at the bed.  Haldin was lying on
his back as before, only both his hands were under his head.
His eyes were open.  He stared at the ceiling.

Razumov held the match up.  He saw the clear-cut features, the
firm chin, the white forehead and the topknot of fair hair
against the white pillow.  There he was, lying flat on his back.
Razumov thought suddenly, "I have walked over his chest."

He continued to stare till the match burnt itself out; then
struck another and lit the lamp in silence without looking
towards the bed any more.  He had turned his back on it and was
hanging his coat on a peg when he heard Haldin sigh profoundly,
then ask in a tired voice--

"Well!  And what have you arranged?"

The emotion was so great that Razumov was glad to put his hands
against the wall.  A diabolical impulse to say, "I have given you
up to the police," frightened him exceedingly.  But he did not
say that.  He said, without turning round, in a muffled voice--

"It's done."

Again he heard Haldin sigh.  He walked to the table, sat down
with the lamp before him, and only then looked towards the bed.

In the distant corner of the large room far away from the lamp,
which was small and provided with a very thick china shade,
Haldin appeared like a dark and elongated shape--rigid with the
immobility of death.  This body seemed to have less substance
than its own phantom walked over by Razumov in the street white
with snow.  It was more alarming in its shadowy, persistent
reality than the distinct but vanishing illusion.

Haldin was heard again.

"You must have had a walk--such a walk. . ." he murmured
deprecatingly."  This weather. . ."

Razumov answered with energy--

"Horrible walk. . . .  A nightmare of a walk."

He shuddered audibly.  Haldin sighed once more, then--

"And so you have seen Ziemianitch--brother?"

"I've seen  him."

Razumov, remembering the time he had spent with the Prince,
thought it prudent to add, "I had to wait some time."

"A character--eh?  It's extraordinary what a sense of the
necessity of freedom there is in that man.  And he has sayings
too--simple, to the point, such as only the people can invent in
their rough sagacity.  A character that. . ."

"I, you understand, haven't had much opportunity. . ."  Razumov
muttered through his teeth.

Haldin continued to stare at the ceiling.

"You see, brother, I  have been a  good  deal in that house of
late.  I used to take there books--leaflets.  Not a few of the
poor people who live there can read.  And, you see, the guests
for the feast of freedom must be sought for in byways and hedges.
The truth is, I have almost lived in that house of late.  I slept
sometimes in the stable.  There is a stable. . ."

"That's where I had my interview with Ziemianitch," interrupted
Razumov gently.  A mocking spirit entered into him and he added,
"It was satisfactory in a sense.  I came away from it much relieved."

"Ah! he's a fellow," went on Haldin, talking slowly at the
ceiling.  "I came to know him in that way, you see.  For some
weeks now, ever since I resigned myself to do what had to be
done, I tried to isolate myself.  I gave up my rooms.  What was
the good of exposing a decent widow woman to the risk of being
worried out of her mind by the police?  I gave up seeing any of
our comrades. . ."

Razumov drew to himself a half-sheet of paper and began to trace
lines on it with a pencil.

"Upon my word," he thought angrily, "he seems to have thought of
everybody's safety but mine."

Haldin was talking on.

"This  morning--ah! this morning--that was different.  How can I
explain to you?  Before the deed was done I wandered at night and
lay hid in the day, thinking it out, and I felt restful.
Sleepless but restful.  What was there for me to torment myself
about?  But this morning--after!  Then it was that I became
restless.  I could not have stopped in that big house full of
misery.  The miserable of this world can't give you peace.
Then when that silly caretaker began to shout, I said to myself,
'There is a young man in this town head and shoulders above
common prejudices.'"

"Is he laughing at mei?" .Razumov asked himself, going on with
his aimless drawing of triangles and squares.  And suddenly he
thought: "My behaviour must appear to him strange.  Should he
take fright at my manner and rush off somewhere I shall be
undone completely.  That infernal General. . ."

He dropped the pencil and turned abruptly towards the bed with
the shadowy figure extended full length on it--so much more
indistinct than the one over whose breast he had walked without
faltering.  Was this, too, a phantom?

The silence had lasted a long time.  "He is no longer here," was
the thought against which Razumov struggled desperately, quite
frightened at its absurdity.  "He is already gone and this. . .
only. . ."

He could resist no longer.  He sprang to his feet, saying aloud,
"I am intolerably anxious," and in a few headlong strides stood
by the side of the bed.  His hand fell lightly on Haldin's
shoulder, and directly he felt its reality he was beset by an
insane temptation to grip that exposed throat and squeeze the
breath out of that body, lest it should escape his custody,
leaving only a phantom behind.

Haldin did not stir a limb, but his overshadowed eyes moving a
little gazed upwards at Razumov with wistful gratitude for this
manifestation of feeling.

Razumov turned away and strode up and down the room.  "It would
have been possibly a kindness," he muttered to himself, and was
appalled by the nature of that apology for a murderous intention
his mind had found somewhere within him.  And all the same he
could not give it up.  He  became lucid  about  it. "What can he
expecti?" he thought.  "The halter--in the end.  And I. . ."

This argument was interrupted by Haldin's voice.

"Why be anxious for me? They can kill my body, but they cannot
exile my soul from this world.  I tell you what--I believe in
this world so much that I cannot conceive eternity otherwise than
as a very long life.  That is perhaps the reason I am so
ready to die."

"H'm,"muttered Razumov,and biting hislower lip he continued to
walk up and down and to carry on his strange argument.

Yes, to a man in such a situation--of course it would be an act
of kindness.  The question, however, was not how to be kind, but
how to be firm.  He was a slippery customer

"I too, Victor Victorovitch, believe in this world of ours," he
said with force.  "I too, while I live. . . .  But you seem
determined to haunt it.  You can't seriously. . .mean"

The voice of the motionless Haldin began--

"Haunt it!  Truly, the oppressors of thought which quickens the
world, the destroyers of souls which aspire to perfection of
human dignity, they shall be haunted.  As to the destroyers of my
mere body, I have forgiven them beforehand."

Razumov had stopped apparently to listen, but at the same time he
was observing his own sensations.  He was vexed with himself for
attaching so much importance to what Haldin said.

"The fellow's mad," he thought firmly, but this opinion did not
mollify him towards Haldin.  It was a particularly impudent form
of lunacy--and when it got loose in the sphere of public life of
a country, it was obviously the duty of every good citizen. . .

This train of thought broke off short there and was succeeded by
a paroxysm of silent hatred towards Haldin, so intense that
Razumov hastened to speak at random.

"Yes.  Eternity,  of  course.  I, too, can't very well represent
it to myself. . . .  I imagine it, however, as something quiet and dull.
There would be nothing unexpected--don't you see?  The element of time
would be wanting."

He pulled out his watch and gazed at it.  Haldin turned over on
his side and looked on intently.

Razumov got frightened at this movement.  A slippery customer
this fellow with a phantom.  It was not midnight yet.  He
hastened on--

"And unfathomable mysteries!  Can you conceive secret places in
Eternity?  Impossible.  Whereas life is full of them.  There are
secrets of birth, for instance.  One carries them on to the
grave.  There is something comical. . .but never mind.  And there
are secret motives of conduct.  A man's most open actions have a
secret side to them.  That is interesting and so unfathomable!
For instance, a man goes out of a room for a walk.  Nothing more
trivial in appearance.  And yet it may be momentous.  He comes
back--he has seen perhaps a drunken brute, taken particular
notice of the snow on the ground--and behold he is no longer the
same man.  The most unlikely things have a secret power over
one's thoughts--the grey whiskers of a particular person--the
goggle eyes of another."

Razumov's forehead was moist.  He took a turn or two in the room,
his head low and smiling to himself viciously.

"Have you ever reflected on the power of goggle eyes and grey
whiskers?  Excuse me.  You seem to think I must be crazy to talk
in this vein at such a time.  But I am not talking lightly.  I
have seen instances.  It has happened to me once to be talking to
a man whose fate was affected by physical facts of that kind.
And the man did not know it.  Of course, it was a case of
conscience, but the material facts such as these brought about
the solution. . . .  And you tell me, Victor Victorovitch,
not to be anxious!  Why!  I am responsible for you,"
Razumov almost shrieked.

He avoided with difficulty a burst of Mephistophelian laughter.
Haldin, very pale, raised himself on his elbow.

"And the surprises of life," went on Razumov, after glancing at
the other uneasily.  "Just consider their astonishing nature.  A
mysterious impulse induces you to come here.  I don't say you
have done wrong.  Indeed, from a certain point of view you could
not have done better.  You might have gone to a man with
affections and family ties.  You have such ties yourself.  As to
me, you know I have been brought up in an educational institute
where they did not give us enough to eat.  To talk of affection
in such a connexion--you perceive yourself. . . .  As to ties,
the only ties I have in the world are social.  I must get
acknowledged in some way before I can act at all.  I sit here
working. . . .  And don't you think I am working for progress too?
I've got to find my own ideas of the true way. . . .  Pardon me,"
continued Razumov, after drawing breath and with a short, throaty
laugh, "but I haven't inherited a revolutionary inspiration
together with a resemblance from an uncle."

He looked again at his watch and noticed with sickening disgust
that there were yet a good many minutes to midnight.  He tore
watch and chain off his waistcoat and laid them on the table well
in the circle of bright lamplight.  Haldin, reclining on his
elbow, did not stir.  Razumov was made uneasy by this attitude.
"What move is he meditating over so quietly?"  he thought.  "He
must be prevented.  I must keep on talking to him."

He raised his voice.

"You are a son, a brother, a nephew, a cousin--I don't know
what--to no end of people.  I am just a man.  Here I stand before
you.  A man with a mind. Did it ever occur to you how a man who
had never heard a word of warm affection or praise in his
life would think on matters on which you would think first with
or against your class, your domestic tradition--your fireside
prejudices?. . .  Did you ever consider how a man like that would
feel?  I have no domestic tradition.  I have nothing to think
against.  My tradition is historical. What have I to look back to
but that national past from which you gentlemen want to wrench
away your future?  Am I to let my intelligence, my aspirations
towards a better lot, be robbed of the only thing it has to go
upon at the will of violent enthusiasts?  You come from your
province, but all this land is mine--or I have nothing.  No doubt
you shall be looked upon as a martyr some day --a sort of hero--a
political saint. But I beg to be excused.  I
am content in fitting myself to be a worker.  And what can you
people do by scattering a few drops of blood on the snow?  On
this Immensity.  On this unhappy Immensity!  I tell you," he
cried, in a vibrating, subdued voice, and advancing one step
nearer the bed, "that what it needs is not a lot of haunting
phantoms that I could walk through--but a man!"

Haldin threw his arms forward as if to keep him off in horror.

"I understand it all now," he exclaimed, with awestruck dismay.
"I understand--at last."

Razumov staggered back against the table.  His forehead broke out
in perspiration while a cold shudder ran down his spine.

"What have I been saying?" he asked himself. "Have I let him slip
through my fingers after all?

"He felt his lips go stiff like buckram, and instead of a
reassuring smile only achieved an uncertain grimace.

"What will you have?" he began in a conciliating voice which got
steady after the first trembling word or two.  "What will you have?
Consider--a man of studious, retired habits--and suddenly like this. . . .
I am not practised in talking delicately. But. . .

"He felt anger, a wicked anger, get hold of him again.

"What were we to do together till midnight?  Sit here opposite
each other and think of your--your-shambles?"

Haldin had a subdued, heartbroken attitude.  He bowed his head;
his hands hung between his knees. His voice was low and pained
but calm.

"I see now how it is, Razumov--brother.  You are a magnanimous
soul, but my action is abhorrent to you--alas. . ."

Razumov stared. From fright he had set his teeth so hard that his
whole face ached.  It was impossible for him to make a sound.

"And even my person, too, is loathsome to you perhaps," Haldin
added mournfully, after a short pause, looking up for a moment,
then fixing his gaze on the floor.  "For indeed, unless one. . ."

He broke off evidently waiting for a word.  Razumov remained
silent.  Haldin nodded his head dejectedly twice.

"Of course.  Of course,"he murmured. . . .  "Ah! weary work!"

He remained perfectly still for a moment, then made Razumov's
leaden heart strike a ponderous blow by springing up briskly.

"So be it," he cried sadly in a low, distinct tone.  "Farewell then."

Razumov started forward, but the sight of Haldin's raised hand
checked him before he could get away from the table.  He leaned
on it heavily, listening to the faint sounds of some town clock
tolling the hour.  Haldin, already at the door, tall and straight
as an arrow, with his pale face and a hand raised attentively,
might have posed for the statue of a daring youth listening
to an inner voice.  Razumov mechanically glanced down at his
watch.  When he looked towards the door again Haldin had
vanished.  There was a faint rustling in the outer room, the
feeble click of a bolt drawn back lightly.  He was gone--almost
as noiseless as a vision.

Razumov ran forward unsteadily, with parted, voiceless lips.  The
outer door stood open.  Staggering out on the landing, he leaned
far over the banister.  Gazing down into the deep black shaft
with a tiny glimmering flame at the bottom, he traced by ear the
rapid spiral descent of somebody running down the stairs on
tiptoe.  It was a light, swift, pattering sound, which sank away
from him into the depths: a fleeting shadow passed over the
glimmer--a wink of the tiny flame.  Then stillness.

Razumov hung over, breathing the cold raw air tainted by the evil
smells of the unclean staircase.  All quiet.

He went back into his room slowly, shutting the doors after him.
The peaceful steady light of his reading-lamp shone on the watch.
Razumov stood looking down at the little white dial.  It wanted yet
three minutes to midnight.  He took the watch into his hand fumblingly.

"Slow," he muttered, and a strange fit of nervelessness came over
him.  His knees shook, the watch and chain slipped through his
fingers in an instant and fell on the floor.  He was so startled
that he nearly fell himself.  When at last he regained enough
confidence in his limbs to stoop for it he held it to his ear at
once.  After a while he growled--

"Stopped," and paused for quite a long time before he muttered sourly--

"It's done. . . .  And now to work."

He sat down, reached haphazard for a book, opened it in middle and
began to read; but after going conscientiously over two lines he lost
his hold on the print completely and did not try to regain it.  He thought--

"There was to a certainty a police agent of some sort watching
the house across the street."

He imagined him lurking in a dark gateway, goggle-eyed, muffled
up in a cloak to the nose and with a General's plumed, cocked hat
on his head.  This absurdity made him start in the chair convulsively.
He literally had to shake his head violently to get rid of it.
The man would be disguised perhaps as a peasant . . .a beggar. . . .
Perhaps he would be just buttoned up in a dark overcoat and carrying
a loaded stick--a shifty-eyed rascal, smelling of raw onions and spirits.

This evocation brought on positive nausea.  "Why do I want to
bother about this?"  thought Razumov with disgust.  "Am I a gendarme?
Moreover, it is done."

He got up in great agitation.  It was not done.  Not yet.  Not
till half-past twelve.  And the watch had stopped.  This reduced
him to despair.  Impossible to know the time!  The andlady and
all the people across the landing were asleep.  How could he go
and. . .God knows what they would imagine, or how much they
would guess.  He dared not go into the streets to find out.
"I am a suspect now.  There's no use shirking that fact," he said
to himself bitterly.  If Haldin from some cause or another gave
them the slip and.failed to turn up in the Karabelnaya the police
would be invading his lodging.  And if he were not in he could
never clear himself.  Never.  Razumov looked wildly about as if
for some means of seizing upon time which seemed to have escaped
him altogether.  He had never, as far as he could remember, heard
the striking of that town clock in his rooms before this night.
And he was not even sure now whether he had heard it really on
this night.

He went to the window and stood there with slightly bent head
on the watch for the faint sound.  'I will stay here till I hear
something," he said to himself.  He stood still, his ear turned
to the panes.  An atrocious aching numbness with shooting pains
in his back and legs tortured him.  He did not budge.  His  mind
hovered on the borders of delirium.  He heard himself suddenly
saying, "I confess," as a person might do on the rack.  "I am on
the rack," he thought.  He felt ready to swoon.  The faint deep
boom of the distant clock seemed to explode in his head--he heard
it so clearly. . . .  One!

If Haldin had not turned up the police would have been already
here ransacking the house.  No sound reached him.  This time it
was done.

He dragged himself painfully to the table and dropped into the
chair.  He flung the book away and took a square sheet of paper.
It was like the pile of sheets covered with his neat minute
handwriting, only blank.  He took a pen brusquely and dipped it
with a vague notion of going on with the writing of his
essay--but his pen remained poised over the sheet.  It hung there
for some time before it came down and formed long scrawly
letters.

Still-faced and his lips set hard, Razumov began to write.  When
he wrote a large hand his neat writing lost its character
altogether--became unsteady, almost childish.  He wrote five
lines one under the other.
History not Theory.
Patriotism not Internationalism.
Evolution not Revolution.
Direction not Destruction.
Unity not Disruption.

He gazed at them dully.  Then his eyes strayed to the bed and
reInajned fixed there for a good many minutes, while his
right hand groped all over the table for the penknife.

He rose at last, and walking up with measured steps stabbed the
paper with the penknife to the lath and plaster wall at the head
of the bed.  This done he stepped back a pace and flourished his
hand with a glance round the room.

After that he never looked again at the bed.  He took his big
cloak down from its peg and, wrapping himself up closely, went to
lie down on the hard horse-hair sofa at the other side of his
room.  A leaden sleep closed his eyelids at once.  Several times
that night he woke up shivering from a dream of walking through
drifts of snow in a Russia where he was as completely alone as
any betrayed autocrat could be; an immense, wintry Russia which,
somehow, his view could embrace in all its enormous expanse as if
it were a map.  But after each shuddering start his heavy eyelids
fell over his glazed eyes and he slept again.


III


Approaching this part of Mr. Razumov's story, my mind, the decent
mind of an old teacher of languages, feels more and more the
difficulty of the task.

The task is not in truth the writing in the narrative form a
_precis_ of a strange human document, but the rendering--I
perceive it now clearly--of the moral conditions ruling over a
large portion of this earth's surface; conditions not easily to
be understood, much less discovered in the limits of a story,
till some key-word is found; a word that could stand at the back
of all the words covering the pages; a word which, if not truth
itself, may perchance hold truth enough to help the moral
discovery which should be the object of every tale.

I turn over for the hundredth time the leaves of Mr. Razumov's record,
I lay it aside, I take up the pen--and the pen being ready for its office
of setting down black on white I hesitate.  For the word that persists
in creeping under its point is no other word than "cynicism."

For that is the mark of Russian autocracy and of Russian revolt.
In its pride of numbers, in its strange pretensions of sanctity,
and in the secret readiness to abase itself in suffering, the
spirit of Russia is the spirit of cynicism.  It informs the
declarations of her statesmen, the theories of her
revolutionists, and the mystic vaticinations of prophets to the
point of making freedom look like a form of debauch, and the
Christian virtues themselves appear actually indecent. . . .
But I must apologize for the digression.  It proceeds from the
consideration of the course taken by the story of Mr. Razumov
after his conservative convictions, diluted in a vague liberalism
natural to the ardour of his age, had become crystallized by the
shock of his contact with Haldin.

Razumov woke up for the tenth time perhaps with a heavy shiver.
Seeing the light of day in his window, he resisted the
inclination to lay himself down again.  He did not remember
anything, but he did not think it strange to find himself on the
sofa in his cloak and chilled to the bone.  The light coming
through the window seemed strangely cheerless, containing no
promise as the light of each new day should for a young man.  It
was the awakening of a man mortally ill, or of a man ninety years
old.  He looked at the lamp which had burnt itself out.  It stood
there, the extinguished beacon of his labours, a cold object of
brass and porcelain, amongst the scattered pages of his notes and
small piles of books--a mere litter of blackened paper--dead
matter--without significance or interest.

He got on his feet, and divesting himself of his cloak hung
it on the peg, going through all the motions mechanically.  An
incredible dullness, a ditch-water stagnation was sensible to his
perceptions as though life had withdrawn itself from all things
and even from his own thoughts.  There was not a sound in the house.

Turning away from the peg, he thought in that same lifeless
manner that it must be very early yet; but when he looked at the
watch on his table he saw both hands arrested at twelve o'clock.
"Ah! yes," he mumbled to himself, and as if beginning to get
roused a little he took a survey of his room.  The paper stabbed
to the wall arrested his attention.  He eyed it from the distance
without approval or perplexity; but when he heard the
servant-girl beginning to bustle about in the outer room with the
_samovar_ for his morning tea, he walked up to it and took it
down with an air of profound indifference.

While doing this he glanced down at the bed on which he had not
slept that night.  The hollow in the pillow made by the weight of
Haldin's head was very noticeable.

Even his anger at this sign of the man's passage was dull.  He
did not try to nurse it into life.  He did nothing all that day;
he neglected even to brush his hair.  The idea of going out never
occurred to him--and if he did not start a connected train of
thought it was not because he was unable to think.  It was
because he was not interested enough.

He yawned frequently.  He drank large quantities of tea, he
walked about aimlessly, and when he sat down he did not budge for
a long time.  He spent some time drumming on the window with his
finger-tips quietly.  In his listless wanderings round about the
table he caught sight of his own face in the looking-glass and
that arrested him.  The eyes which returned his stare were
the most unhappy eyes he had ever seen.  And this was the first
thing which disturbed the mental stagnation of that day.

He was not affected personally.  He merely thought that life
without happiness is impossible.  What was happiness?  He yawned
and went on shuffling about and about between the walls of his
room.  Looking forward was happiness--that's all--nothing more.
To look forward to the gratification of some desire, to the
gratification of some passion, love, ambition, hate--hate too
indubitably.  Love and hate.  And to escape the dangers of
existence, to live without fear, was also happiness.  There was
nothing else.  Absence of fear --looking forward.  "Oh! the
miserable lot  of humanity!" he exclaimed mentally; and added at
once in his thought, "I ought to be happy enough as far as that
goes."  But he was not excited by that assurance.  On the
contrary,he yawned again as he had been yawning all day.  He was
mildly surprised to discover himself being overtaken by night.
The room grew dark swiftly though time had seemed to stand still.
How was it that he had not noticed the passing of that
day?  Of course, it was the watch being stopped. . . .

He did not light his lamp, but went over to the bed and threw
himself on it without any hesitation.  Lying on his back, he put
his hands under his head and stared upward.  After a moment he
thought, "I am lying here like that man.  I wonder if he slept
while I was struggling with the blizzard in the streets.  No, he
did not sleep.  But why should I not sleep?" and he felt the
silence of the night press upon all his limbs like a weight.

In the calm of the hard frost outside, the clear-cut strokes
of the town clock counting off midnight penetrated the quietness
of his suspended animation.

Again he began to think.  It was twenty-four hours since that man
left his room.  Razumov had  a distinct feeling that Haldin in
the fortress was sleeping that night.  It was a certitude which
made him angry because he did not want to think of Haldin, but he
justified it to himself by physiological and psychological
reasons.  The fellow had hardly slept for weeks on his own
confession, and now every incertitude was at an end for him.  No
doubt he was looking forward to the consummation of his
martyrdom.  A man who resigns himself to kill need not go very
far for resignation to die.  Haldin slept perhaps more soundly
than General T---, whose task--weary work too--was not done, and
over whose head hung the sword of revolutionary vengeance.

Razumov, remembering the thick-set man with his heavy jowl
resting on the collar of his uniform, the champion of autocracy,
who had let no sign of surprise, incredulity, or joy escape him,
but whose goggle eyes could express a mortal hatred of all
rebellion--Razumov moved uneasily on the bed.

"He suspected me," he thought. "I suppose he must suspect
everybody.  He would be capable of suspecting his own wife, if
Haldin had gone to her boudoir with his confession."

Razumov sat up in anguish.  Was he to remain a political suspect
all his days?  Was he to go through life as a man not wholly to
be trusted--with a bad secret police note tacked on to his
record?  What sort of future could he look forward to?

"I am now a suspect," he thought again; but the habit of
reflection and that desire of safety, of an ordered life, which
was so strong in him came to his assistance as the night wore
on.  His quiet, steady, and laborious existence would vouch at
length for his loyalty.  There were many permitted ways to serve
one's country.  There was an activity that made for progress
without being revolutionary.  The field of influence was great
and infinitely varied--once one had conquered a name.

His thought like a circling bird reverted after fourand-twenty
hours to the silver medal, and as it were poised itself there.

When the day broke he had not slept, not for a moment, but he got
up not very tired and quite sufficiently self-possessed for all
practical purposes.

He went out and attended three lectures in the morning.  But the
work in the library was a mere dumb show of research. He sat with
many volumes open before him trying to make notes and extracts.
His new tranquillity was like a flimsy garment, and seemed to
float at the mercy of a casual word.  Betrayal!  Why!  the fellow
had done all that was necessary to betray himself.  Precious
little had been needed to deceive him.

"I have said no word to him that was not strictly true.
Not one word," Razumov argued with himself.

Once engaged on this line of thought there could be no question
of doing useful work.  The same ideas went on passing through his
mind, and he pronounced mentally the same words over and over
again.  He shut up all the books and rammed all his papers into
his pocket with convulsive movements, raging inwardly against Haldin.

As he was leaving the library a long bony student in a threadbare
overcoat joined him, stepping moodily by his side.  Razumov
answered his mumbled greeting without looking at him at all.

"What does he want with me?  "he thought with a strange dread
of the unexpected which he tried to shake off lest it should
fasten itself upon his life for good and all.  And the other,
muttering cautiously with downcast eyes, supposed that his
comrade had seen the news of de P---'s executioner--that was
the expression he used--having been arrested the night
before last. . . .

"I've been ill--shut up in my rooms," Razumov mumbled
through his teeth.

The tall student, raising his shoulders, shoved his hands deep
into his pockets.  He had a hairless, square, tallowy chin which
trembled slightly as he spoke, and his nose nipped bright red by
the sharp air looked like a false nose of painted cardboard
between the sallow cheeks.  His whole appearance was stamped with
the mark of cold and hunger.  He stalked deliberately at
Razumov's elbow with his eyes on the ground.

"It's an official  statement," he  continued  in  the same
cautious mutter."  It may be a lie.  But there was somebody
arrested between midnight and one in the morning on Tuesday.
This is certain."

And talking rapidly under the cover of his downcast air, he told
Razumov that this was known through an inferior Government clerk
employed at the Central Secretariat.  That man belonged to one of
the revolutionary circles.  "The same, in fact, I am affiliated
to," remarked the student.

They were crossing a wide quadrangle. An infinite distress
possessed Razumov, annihilated his energy, and before his eyes
everything appeared confused and as if evanescent.  He dared not
leave the fellow there.  "He may be affiliated to the police,"
was the thought that passed through his mind.  "Who could tell?"
But eyeing the miserable frost-nipped, famine-struck figure of
his companion he perceived the absurdity of his suspicion.

"But I--you know--I don't belong to any circle.  I. . ."

He dared not say any more. Neither dared he mend his pace.  The
other, raising and setting down his lamentably shod feet with
exact deliberation, protested in a low tone that it was not
necessary for everybody to belong to an organization.  The most
valuable personalities remained outside.  Some of the best work
was done outside the organization.  Then very fast, with whispering,
feverish lips--

"The  man arrested in the street was Haldin."

And accepting Razumov's dismayed silence as natural enough, he
assured him that there was no mistake.  That Government clerk was
on night duty at the Secretariat.  Hearing a great noise of
footsteps in the hall and aware that political prisoners were
brought over sometimes at night from the fortress, he opened the
door of the room in which he was working, suddenly.  Before the
gendarme on duty could push him back and slam the door in his
face, he had seen a prisoner being partly carried, partly dragged
along the hall by a lot of policemen.  He was being used very
brutally.  And the clerk had recognized Haldin perfectly.  Less
than half an hour afterwards General T--  arrived at the
Secretariat to examine that prisoner personally.

"Aren't you astonished?"  concluded the gaunt student.

"No," said Razumov roughly--and at once regretted his answer.

"Everybody supposed Haldin was in the provinces --with his
people.  Didn't you?"

The student turned his big hollow eyes upon Razumov, who said
unguardedly--

"His people are abroad."

He could have bitten his tongue out with vexation.
The student pronounced in a tone of profound meaning--
"So!  You alone were aware. . ." and stopped.

"They have sworn my ruin," thought Razumov."  Have You spoken of
this to anyone else?" he asked with bitter curiosity.

The other shook his head.

"No, only to you.  Our circle thought that as Haldin had been
often heard expressing a warm appreciation of your character. . ."

Razumov could not restrain a gesture of angry despair which the
other must have misunderstood in some way, because he ceased
speaking and turned away his black, lack-lustre eyes.

They moved side by side in silence.  Then the gaunt student began
to whisper again, with averted gaze--

"As we have at present no one affiliated inside the fortress so
as to make it possible to furnish him with a packet of poison, we
have considered already some sort of retaliatory action--to
follow very soon. . ."

Razumov trudging on interrupted--

"Were you acquainted with Haldin?  Did he know where you live?"

"I had the happiness to hear him speak twice," his companion
answered in the feverish whisper contrasting with the gloomy
apathy of his face and bearing.  "He did not know where
I live . . . .  I am lodging poorly with an artisan family. . . .
I have just a corner in a room.  It is not very practicable to
see me there, but if you should need me for anything I am ready. . . .

Razumov trembled with rage and fear.  He was beside himself,
but kept his voice low.

"You are not to come near me.  You are not to speak to me.  Never
address a single word to me.  I forbid you."

"Very well," said the other submissively, showing no surprise
whatever at this abrupt prohibition.  "You don't wish for secret
reasons. . .perfectly. . .I understand."

He edged away at once, not looking up even; and Razumov saw his
gaunt, shabby, famine-stricken figure cross the street obliquely
with lowered head and that peculiar exact motion of the feet.

He watched him as one would watch a vision out of a nightmare,
then he continued on his way, trying not to think.  On his
landing the landlady seemed to be waiting for him.  She was a
short, thick, shapeless woman with a large yellow face wrapped up
everlastingly in a black woollen shawl.  When she saw him come up
the last flight of stairs she flung both her arms up excitedly,
then clasped her hands before her face.

"Kirylo Sidorovitch--little father--what have you been doing?
And such a quiet young man, too!  The police are just gone this
moment after searching your rooms."

Razumov gazed down at her with silent, scrutinizing attention.
Her puffy yellow countenance was working with emotion.  She
screwed up her eyes at him entreatingly.

"Such a sensible young man!  Anybody can see you are sensible.
And now--like this--all at once. . . .  What is the good of mixing
yourself up with these Nihilists?  Do give over, little father.
They are unlucky people."

Razumov moved his shoulders slightly.

"Or is it that some secret enemy has been calumniating you,
Kirylo Sidorovitch?  The world is full of black hearts and false
denunciations nowadays.  There is much fear about."

"Have you heard that I have been denounced by some one?"
asked Razumov, without taking his eyes off her quivering face.

But she had not heard anything.  She had tried to find out by
asking the police captain while his men were turning the room
upside down.  The police captain of the district had known her
for the last eleven years and was a humane person.  But he said
to her on the landing, looking very black and vexed--

"My good woman, do not ask questions.  I don't know anything
myself. The order comes from higher quarters."

And indeed there had appeared,shortly after the arrival of the
policemen of the district, a very superior gentleman in a fur
coat and a shiny hat, who sat down in the room and looked through
all the papers himself.  He came alone and went away by himself,
taking nothing with him.  She had been trying to put things
straight a little since they left.

Razumov turned away brusquely and entered his rooms.

All his books had been shaken and thrown on the floor.  His
landlady followed him, and stooping painfully began to pick them
up into her apron.  His papers and notes which were kept always
neatly sorted (they all related to his studies) had been shuffled
up and heaped together into a ragged pile in the middle of the table.

This disorder affectecI him profoundly, unreasonably.  He sat
down and stared.  He had a distinct sensation of his very
existence being undermined in some mysterious manner, of his
moral supports falling away from him one by one.  He even
experienced a slight physical giddiness and made a movement
as if to reach for something to steady himself with.

The old woman, rising to her feet with a low groan, shot all
the books she had collected in her apron on to the sofa and left
the room muttering and sighing.

It was only then that he noticed that the sheet of paper which
for one night had remained stabbed to the wall above his empty
bed was lying on top of the pile.

When he had taken it down the day before he had folded it in
four, absent-mindedly, before dropping it on the table.  And now
he saw it lying uppermost, spread out, smoothed out even and
covering all the confused pile of pages, the record of his
intellectual life for the last three years.  It had not been
flung there.   It had been placed there--smoothed out, too!  He
guessed in that an intention of profound meaning--or perhaps some
inexplicable mockery.

He sat staring at the piece of paper till his eyes began to
smart.  He did not attempt to put his papers in order, either
that evening or the next day--which he spent at home in a state
of peculiar irresolution.  This irresoIution bore upon the
question whether he should continue to live--neither more nor
less.  But its nature was very far removed from the hesitation of
a man contemplating suicide.  The idea of laying violent hands
upon his body did not occur to Razumov.  The unrelated organism
bearing that label, walking, breathing, wearing these clothes,
was of no importance to anyone, unless maybe to the landlady.
The true Razumov had his being in the willed, in the determined
future--in that future menaced by the lawlessness of
autocracy--for autocracy knows no law--and the lawlessness of
revolution.  The feeling that his moral personality was at the
mercy of these lawless forces was so strong that he asked himself
seriously if it were worth while to go on accomplishing the men
tal functions of that existence which seemed no longer his own.

"What is the good of exerting my intelligence, of pursuing the
systematic development of my faculties and all my plans of work?"
he asked himself.  "I want to guide my conduct by reasonable convictions,
but what security have I against something--some destructive horror--
walking in upon me as I sit here?. . .

Razumov looked apprehensively towards the door of the outer room
as if expecting some shape of evil to turn the handle and appear
before him silently.

"A common thief," he said to himself, "finds more guarantees in
the law he is breaking, and even a brute like Ziemianitch has his
consolation."  Razumov envied the materialism of the thief and
the passion of the incorrigible lover.  The consequences of their
actions were always clear and their lives remained their own.

But he slept as soundly that night as though he had been
consoling himself in the manner of Ziemianitch.  He dropped off
suddenly, lay like a log, remembered no dream on waking.  But it
was as if his soul had gone out in the night to gather the
flowers of wrathful wisdom.  He got up in a mood of grim
determination and as if with a new knowledge of his own nature.
He looked mockingly on the heap of papers on his table; and left
his room to attend the lectures, muttering to himself, "We shall see."

He was in no humour to talk to anybody or hear himself questioned
as to his absence from lectures the day before.  But it was
difficult to repulse rudely a very good comrade with a smooth
pink face and fair hair, bearing the nickname amongst his
fellow-students of "Madcap Kostia."  He was the idolized  only
son of a very wealthy and illiterate Government contractor, and
attended the lectures only during the periodical fits of
contrition following upon tearful paternal remonstrances.
Noisily blundering like a retriever puppy, his elated voice
and great gestures filled the bare academy corridors with the
joy of thoughtless animal life, provoking indulgent smiles at
a great distance.  His usual discourses treated of trotting horses,
wine-parties in expensive restaurants, and the merits of persons
of easy virtue, with a disarming artlessness of outlook.  He
pounced upon Razumov about midday, somewhat less uproariously
than his habit was, and led him aside.

"Just a moment, Kirylo Sidorovitch.  A few words here in this
quiet corner."

He felt Razumov's reluctance, and insinuated his hand under his
arm caressingly.

"No--pray do.  I don't want to talk to you about any of my silly
scrapes.  What are my scrapes?  Absolutely nothing.  Mere
childishness.  The other night I flung a fellow out of a certain
place where I was having a fairly good time.  A tyrannical little
beast of a quill-driver from the Treasury department.  He was
bullying the people of the house.  I rebuked him.  'You are not
behaving humanely to God's creatures that are a jolly sight more
estimable than yourself,'  I said.  I can't bear to see any
tyranny, Kirylo Sidorovitch.  Upon my word I can't.  He didn't
take it in good part at all.  'Who's that impudent puppy?'
he begins to shout.  I was in excellent form as it happened,
and he went through the closed window very suddenly.  He flew
quite a long way into the yard.  I raged like--like a--minotaur.
The women clung to me and screamed, the fiddlers got under the table.
. . .Such fun!  My dad had to put his hand pretty deep into his pocket,
I can tell you."  He chuckled.

"My dad is a very useful man.  Jolly good thing it is for me, too.
I do get into unholy scrapes."

His elation fell.  That was just it.  What was his life?
Insignificant; no good to anyone; a mere festivity.  It
would end some fine day in his getting his skull split with a
champagne bottle in a drunken brawl.  At such times, too, when
men were sacrificing themselves to ideas.  But he could never get
any ideas into his head.  His head wasn't worth anything better
than to be split by a champagne bottle.

Razumov, protesting that he had no time, made an attempt to get
away.  The other's tone changed to confidential earnestness.

"For God's sake, Kirylo, my dear soul, let me make some sort of
sacrifice.  It would not be a sacrifice really.  I have my rich
dad behind me.  There's positively no getting to the bottom of
his pocket."

And rejecting indignantly Razumov's suggestion that this was
drunken raving, he offered to lend him some money to escape
abroad with.  He could always get money from his dad.  He had
only to say that he had lost it at cards or something of that
sort, and at the same time promise solemnly not to miss a single
lecture for three months on end.  That would fetch the old man;
and he, Kostia, was quite equal to the sacrifice.  Though he
really did not see what was the good for him to attend the
lectures.  It was perfectly hopeless.

"Won't you let me be of some use?" he pleaded to the silent
Razumov, who with his eyes on the ground and utterly unable to
penetrate the real drift of the other's intention, felt a strange
reluctance to clear up the point.

"What makes you think I want to go abroad?" he asked at last
very quietly.

Kostia lowered his voice.

"You had the police in your rooms yesterday. There are three or
four of us who have heard of that. Never mind how we know.  It is
sufficient that we do.  So we have been consulting together."

"Ah!  You got to know that so soon,"  muttered Razumov negligently.

"Yes.  We did.  And it struck us that a man like you. . ."

"What sort of a man do you take me to be?" Razumov interrupted him.

"A man of ideas--and a man of action too.  But you are very deep,
Kirylo.  There's no getting to the bottom of your mind.  Not for
fellows like me.  But we all agreed that you must be preserved
for our country.  Of that we have no doubt whatever--I mean all
of us who have heard Haldin speak of you on certain occasions.
A man doesn't get the police ransacking his rooms without there
being some devilry hanging over his head. . . .  And so if you
think that it would be better for you to bolt at once. . ."

Razumov tore himself away and walked down the corridor, leaving
the other motionless with his mouth open.  But almost at once he
returned and stood before the amazed Kostia, who shut his mouth
slowly.  Razumov looked him straight in the eyes, before saying
with marked deliberation and separating his words--
"I thank--you--very--much."

He went away again rapidly. Kostia, recovering from his surprise
at these manoeuvres, ran up behind him pressingly.
"No! Wait!  Listen.  I really mean it.  It would be like giving
your compassion to a starving fellow.  Do you hear, Kirylo?  And
any disguise you may think of, that too I could procure from a
costumier, a Jew I know.  Let a fool be made serviceable
according to his folly.  Perhaps also a false beard or something
of that kind may be needed.

Razumov turned at bay.

"There are no false beards needed in this business,
Kostia--you good-hearted lunatic, you.  What do you know of
my ideas?  My ideas may be poison to you."  The other began to
shake his head in energetic protest.

"What have you got to do with ideas?  Some of them would make an
end of your dad's money-bags.  Leave off meddling with what you
don't understand.  Go back to your trotting horses and your
girls, and then you'll be sure at least of doing no harm to
anybody, and hardly any to yourself."

The enthusiastic youth was overcome by this disdain.

"You're sending me back to my pig's trough, Kirylo.  That settles
it.  I am an unlucky beast--and I shall die like a beast too.
But mind--it's your contempt that has done for me."

Razumov went off with long strides. That this simple and grossly
festive soul should have fallen too under the revolutionary curse
affected him as an ominous symptom of the time.  He reproached
himself for feeling troubled.  Personally he ought to have felt
reassured.  There was an obvious advantage in this conspiracy of
mistaken judgment taking him for what he was not.  But was it not
strange?

Again he experienced that sensation of his conduct being taken
out of his hands by Haldin's revolutionary tyranny.  His solitary
and laborious existence had been destroyed--the only thing he
could call his own on this earth.  By what right?  he asked
himself furiously.  In what name?

What infuriated him most was to feel that the "thinkers" of the
University were evidently connecting him with Haldin--as a sort
of confidant in the background apparently.  A  mysterious connexion!
Ha ha!. . .He had been made a personage without knowing anything
about it.  How that wretch Haldin must have talked about him!
Yet it was likely that Haldin had said very little.  The fellow's
casual utterances were caught up and treasured and pondered over
by all these imbeciles.  And was not all secret revolutionary action
based upon folly, self-deception, and lies?

"Impossible to think of anything else," muttered Razumov to
himself.  "I'll become an idiot if this goes on.  The scoundrels
and the fools are murdering my intelligence."

He lost all hope of saving his future, which depended on the free
use of his intelligence.

He reached the doorway of his house in a state of mental
discouragement which enabled him to receive with apparent
indifference an official-looking envelope from the dirty hand of
the dvornik.

"A gendarme brought it," said the man.  "He asked if you were
at home.  I told him  'No, he's not at home.'  So he left it.
'Give it into his own hands,' says he. Now you've got it--eh?"

He went back to his sweeping, and Razumov climbed his stairs,
envelope in hand.  Once in his room he did not hasten to open it.
Of course this official missive was from the superior direction
of the police.  A suspect!  Asuspect!

He stared in dreary astonishment at the absurdity of his
position.  He thought with a sort of dry, unemotional melancholy;
three years of good work gone, the course of forty more perhaps
jeopardized--turned from hope to terror, because events started
by human folly link themselves into a sequence which no sagacity
can foresee and no courage can break through. Fatality enters
your rooms while your landlady's back is turned; you come home
and find it in possession bearing a man's name, clothed in
flesh--wearing a brown cloth coat and long boots--lounging
against the stove.  It asks you, "Is the outer door closed?"--and
you don't know enough to take it by the throat and fling it
downstairs.  You don't know.  You welcome the crazy fate.  "Sit
down," you say.  And it is all over.  You cannot shake it off any
more.  It will cling to you for ever.  Neither halter nor bullet
can give you back the freedom of your life and the sanity of
your thought. . . .  It was enough to dash one's head
against a wall.

Razumov looked slowly all round the walls as if to select a spot
to dash his head against.  Then he opened the letter.  It
directed the student Kirylo Sidorovitch Razumov to present
himself without delay at the General Secretariat.

Razumov had a vision of General T---'s goggle eyes waiting for
him--the embodied power of autocracy, grotesque and terrible.  He
embodied the whole power of autocracy because he was its
guardian.  He was the incarnate suspicion, the incarnate anger,
the incarnate ruthlessness of a political and social regime on
its defence.  He loathed rebellion by instinct. And Razumov
reflected that the man was simply unable to understand a
reasonable adherence to the doctrine of absolutism.

"What can he want with me precisely--I wonder?" he asked himself.

As if that mental question had evoked the familiar phantom,
Haldin stood suddenly before him in the room with an
extraordinary completeness of detail.  Though the short winter
day had passed already into the sinister twilight of a land
buried in snow, Razumov saw plainly the narrow leather strap
round the Tcherkess coat.  The illusion of that hateful presence
was so perfect that he half expected it to ask, "Is the outer
door closed?" He looked at it with hatred and contempt. Souls do
not take a shape of clothing.  Moreover, Haldin could not be
dead yet. Razumov stepped forward menacingly; the vision
vanished--and turning short on his heel he walked out
of his room with infinite disdain.

But after going down the first flight of stairs it occurred to
him that perhaps the superior authorities of police meant to
confront him with Haldin in the flesh.  This thought struck him
like a bullet, and had he not clung with both hands to the
banister he would have rolled down to the next landing most
likely.  His legs were of no use for a considerable time. . . .
But why?  For what conceivable reason?  To what end?

There could be no rational answer to these questions; but Razumov
remembered the promise made by the General to Prince K---.  His
action was to remain unknown.

He got down to the bottom of the stairs, lowering himself as it
were from step to step, by the banister. Under the gate he
regained much of his firmness of thought and limb.  He went out
into the street without staggering visibly.  Every moment he felt
steadier mentally.  And yet he was saying to himself that General
T--- was perfectly capable of shutting him up in the fortress for
an indefinite time.  His temperament fitted his remorseless task,
and his omnipotence made him inaccessible to reasonable argument.

But when Razumov arrived at the Secretariat he discovered that he
would have nothing to do with General T---.  It is evident from
Mr. Razumov's diary that this dreaded personality was to remain
in the background.  A civilian of superior rank received him in a
private room after a period of waiting in outer offices where a
lot of scribbling went on at many tables in a heated and stuffy
atmosphere.

The clerk in uniform who conducted him said in the corridor--

"You are going before Gregor Matvieitch Mikulin."

There was nothing formidable about the man bearing that name.
His mild, expectant glance was turned on the door already when
Razumov entered.  At once, with the penholder he was holding in
his hand, he pointed to a deep sofa between two windows.  He
followed Razumov with his eyes while that last crossed the room
and sat down. The mild gaze rested on him, not curious, not
inquisitive--certainly not suspicious--almost without expression.
In its passionless persistence there was something resembling
sympathy.

Razumov, who had prepared his will and his intelligence to
encounter General T--- himself, was profoundly troubled.  All the
moral bracing up against the possible excesses of power and
passion went for nothing before this sallow man, who wore a full
unclipped beard.  It was fair, thin, and very fine.  The light
fell in coppery gleams on the protuberances of a high, rugged
forehead.  And the aspect of the broad, soft physiognomy was so
homely and rustic that the careful middle parting of the hair
seemed a pretentious affectation.

The diary of Mr. Razumov testifies to some irritation on his
part.  I may remark here that the diary proper consisting of the
more or less daily entries seems to have been begun on that very
evening after Mr. Razumov had returned home.

Mr. Razumov, then, was irritated.  His strung-up individuality
had  gone to pieces within him very suddenly.

"I must be very prudent with him," he warned himself in the
silence during which they sat gazing at each other.  It lasted
some little time, and was characterized (for silences have their
character) by a sort of sadness imparted to it perhaps by the
mild and thoughtful manner of the bearded official.  Razumov
learned later that he was the chief of a department in the
General Secretariat, with a rank in the civil service equivalent
to that of a colonel in the army.

Razumov's mistrust became acute.  The main point was, not to be
drawn into saying too much.  He had been called there for some
reason.  What reason?  To be given to understand that he was a
suspect--and also no doubt to be pumped.  As to what precisely?
There was nothing.  Or perhaps Haldin had been telling lies. . . .
Every alarming uncertainty beset Razumov.  He could bear the
silence no longer, and cursing himself for his weakness spoke
first, though he had promised himself not to do so on any
account.

"I haven't lost a moment's time," he began in a hoarse, provoking
tone; and then the faculty of speech seemed to leave him and
enter the body of Councillor Mikulin, who chimed in approvingly--

"Very proper.  Very proper.  Though as a matter of fact. . .

But the spell was broken, and Razumov interrupted him boldly,
under a sudden conviction that this was the safest attitude to
take.  With a great flow of words he complained of being totally
misunderstood.  Even as he talked with a perception of his own
audacity he thought that the word "misunderstood" was better than
the word "mistrusted," and he repeated it again with insistence.
Suddenly he ceased, being seized with fright before the attentive
immobility of the official.  "What am I talking about?" he
thought, eyeing him with a vague gaze.  Mistrusted--not
misunderstood--was the right symbol for these people.
Misunderstood was the other kind of curse.  Both had been brought
on his head by that fellow Haldin.  And his head ached terribly.
He passed his hand over his brow--an involuntary gesture of
suffering, which he was too careless to restrain.





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext Under Western Eyes, by Joseph Conrad

