10 files changed, 44544 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/39166-8.txt b/39166-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da735b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/39166-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,13830 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The white terror and the red, by Abraham Cahan
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: The White Terror and The Red
+       A novel of revolutionary Russia
+
+Author: Abraham Cahan
+
+Release Date: March 16, 2012 [EBook #39166]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE TERROR AND THE RED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Rosanna Murphy, Suzanne Shell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE TERROR AND THE RED
+
+
+
+
+    THE WHITE TERROR
+    AND
+    THE RED
+
+    A Novel of Revolutionary Russia
+
+    BY
+    A. CAHAN
+    Author of "Yekl" and "The Imported Bridegroom."
+
+    [Illustration]
+
+    NEW YORK
+    A. S. BARNES & COMPANY
+    1905
+
+
+
+
+    Copyright, 1905
+    BY A. S. BARNES & COMPANY
+
+    _All rights reserved_
+
+    _Published February, 1905_
+    _Second Printing, February, 1905_
+    _Third Printing, March, 1905_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+    CHAPTER                                    PAGE
+
+          I. An Affront to His Czar               1
+
+         II. The White Terror                    14
+
+        III. Pievakin Pleads Guilty              20
+
+         IV. The "Demonstration"                 28
+
+          V. Pavel's First Step                  40
+
+         VI. A Meeting on New Terms              57
+
+        VII. "Terrorism Without Violence"        62
+
+       VIII. Makar's Canvass                     76
+
+         IX. A Day Underground                   81
+
+          X. The Czar's Escape                   93
+
+         XI. A Mysterious Arrest                 97
+
+        XII. A Bewildering Encounter            103
+
+       XIII. A Gendarme's Sister                112
+
+        XIV. Underground Miroslav               121
+
+         XV. A Warning                          135
+
+        XVI. Clara at Home                      147
+
+       XVII. The Countess' Discovery            151
+
+      XVIII. Pavel at Boyko's Court             160
+
+        XIX. Strawberries                       169
+
+         XX. A "Conspiracy Trip"                178
+
+        XXI. Makar's Father                     187
+
+       XXII. From Cellar to Palace              196
+
+      XXIII. An Unforeseen Suggestion           205
+
+       XXIV. Vladimir Finds His Cause           211
+
+        XXV. Clara Becomes "Illegal"            227
+
+       XXVI. On Sacred Ground                   235
+
+      XXVII. A Postponed Wedding                244
+
+     XXVIII. A Second Courtship                 252
+
+       XXIX. A Hunted Monarch                   260
+
+        XXX. The Mystery of a Shop              267
+
+       XXXI. A Reassuring Search                277
+
+      XXXII. The Red Terror                     287
+
+     XXXIII. The Revelation                     299
+
+      XXXIV. The Czar Takes Courage             310
+
+       XXXV. A Hunted People                    319
+
+      XXXVI. A "Paper from the Czar"            331
+
+     XXXVII. The Defence Committee              339
+
+    XXXVIII. The Nihilist's Guard               357
+
+      XXXIX. The Riot                           371
+
+         XL. Light out of Darkness              389
+
+        XLI. Pavel Becomes "Illegal"            401
+
+       XLII. Ominous Footsteps                  408
+
+      XLIII. A Message Through the Wall         423
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE TERROR AND THE RED
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE TERROR AND THE RED.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+AN AFFRONT TO HIS CZAR.
+
+
+Alexander II. passed part of the summer of 1874 in a German
+health-resort taking the mineral waters. When not in the castle in which
+he was staying with his train he affected the life of an ordinary
+citizen. He did so as much from necessity as from choice. Czar or
+subject, the same water must be drunk at the same spot and hour by all
+who seek its cure. Nor can any distinction be made in the matter of the
+walk which the patient is to take after draining his two or three
+gobletsful.
+
+The promenade at a watering place is a great parade-ground for the
+display of plumage, the gayest and costliest gowns being reserved for
+the procession that follows the taking of the remedy; but while the race
+is under way and everybody is striving to throw everybody else into the
+shade, the fact of their being there pierces each dress as with "X"
+rays, showing their flesh to be of the same fragile clay.
+
+So the Czar accepted the levelling effect of the place good-naturedly
+and sought diversion in the unsustained r�le of a common mortal.
+Unsustained, because he carried his gigantic, beautiful form with a
+graceful self-importance and a martial erectness that betrayed his
+incognito even in the open country stretches to which he would stroll
+off in search of mild adventure and flirtation.
+
+It was a late afternoon in the valley. The river glittered crimson. The
+hills on the other side of the summer town were capped by a sultry haze.
+Donkeys used in ascending these hills were trotting about impishly or
+standing in stupid row awaiting custom. The sun blazed down upon a
+parade of a hundred countries, including a jet black prince from Africa,
+a rajah, a Chinaman in dazzling silks, a wealthy Galician Jew in atlas,
+and a pasha with German features.
+
+The Czar, his immense figure encased in a light frock coat of excellent
+fit, was sauntering along apparently unaccompanied except by his terrier
+and cane. When saluted he would raise his straw hat and nod his enormous
+well-shaped head with a cordiality that bordered on good-fellowship. He
+seemed to relish this exchange of courtesies with people who were not
+his subjects in this little republic of physical malady. It was as
+though he felt apart from his autocratic self without feeling out of
+that pampering atmosphere of deference and attention which was his
+second nature; and he gave an effect of inhaling his freedom as one does
+the first whiffs of spring air.
+
+As to his fellow patients, they either discovered something majestic in
+the very dog that followed him, or were struck by the knuckles of his
+ungloved hands, for example, as if it were remarkable that they should
+be the same sort of knuckles as their own. He was strikingly well-built
+and strikingly handsome. He wore thick close-cropped side whiskers of
+the kind that is rarely becoming, but his face they became very well
+indeed, adding majesty to a cast of large, clear-cut features. It was
+the most monarchical face of its time, and yet it was anything but a
+strong face. His imposing side whiskers and moustache left bare a full
+sensuous mouth and a plump weak chin; his blueish eyes gave forth
+suggestions of melancholy and anguish. Interest in him was whetted by
+stories of his passion for Princess Dolgoruki, lady in waiting to the
+Czarina; so the women at the watering place tried to decipher the tale
+of his liaison in those sad amative eyes of his.
+
+Two refined looking, middle-aged women attracted attention by the
+bizarre simplicity with which one of them was attired and coiffured. She
+was extremely pale and made one think of an insane asylum or a convent.
+She was grey, while her companion had auburn hair and was shorter and
+flabbier of figure. They were conversing in French, but it was not their
+native tongue. The one with the grey hair was Pani Oginska, a Polish
+woman; the other a Russian countess named Anna Nicolayevna Varova
+(Varoff). They had first met, in this watering place, less than a
+fortnight ago, when a chat, in the course of which they warmed to each
+other, led to the discovery that their estates lay in neighbouring
+provinces in Little Russia. They were preceded by a slender youth of
+eighteen in a broad-brimmed straw hat and a clean-shaven elderly little
+man in one of soft grey felt. These were Prince Pavel Alexeyevich
+Boulatoff, a son of the countess by a former marriage, and Alexandre
+Alexandrovich Pievakin, his private tutor, as well as one of his
+instructors at the gymnasium[A] of his native town. Pavel's straw hat
+was too sedate for his childish face and was pushed down so low that a
+delicately sculptured chin and mouth and the turned up tip of a rudely
+hewn Russian nose was all one could see under its vast expanse of yellow
+brim. The old man knew no German and this was his first trip abroad, so
+his high-born pupil, who had an advantage over him in both these
+respects, was explaining things to him, with an air at once patronising
+and respectful. Presently Pavel interrupted himself.
+
+  [A] A classical Russian high school modelled after its German
+  namesake.
+
+"The Czar!" he whispered, in a flutter. "The Czar!" he repeated over his
+shoulder, addressing himself to his mother.
+
+Pievakin raised his glance, paling as he did so, but was so overawed by
+the sight that he forthwith dropped his eyes, a sickly expression on his
+lips.
+
+When the men came face to face with their monarch they made way and
+snatched off their hats as if they were on fire. Countess Varoff,
+Pavel's mother, curtseyed deeply, her flaccid insignificant little body
+retreating toward the side of the promenade and then sinking to the
+ground; while the Polish woman proceeded on her way stiffly without so
+much as a nod of her head. The Czar returned the greeting of the Russian
+woman gallantly and disappeared in the rear of them.
+
+The group walked on in nervous silence, the two women now in the lead.
+When they reached a deserted spot the youth suddenly flushed a violent
+red, and, thrusting out his finely chiselled chin at his mother, he
+said, in quick pugnacious full-toned accents as out of keeping with his
+boyish figure as his hat:
+
+"Mother, you are not going to keep up acquaintance with a person who has
+offered an insult to our Czar."
+
+"Paul! What has come over you?" the countess stammered out, colouring
+abjectly as she paused.
+
+"I mean just what I say, mother."
+
+The elderly little man by his side looked on sheepishly, the cold sweat
+standing in beads on his forehead.
+
+"Don't mind this wild boy, I beg of you," Anna Nicolayevna said to the
+Polish woman. "Don't pay the least attention to him. He imagines himself
+a full grown man, but he is merely a silly boy and he gives me no end of
+trouble. Don't take it ill, _ma ch�re_." She rattled it off in a great
+flurry of embarrassment, straining the boy back tenderly, while she was
+condemning him.
+
+"I don't take it ill at all," Pani Oginska answered tremulously. "He's
+perfectly right. Your acquaintance has been a great pleasure to me,
+countess, but I can see that my company at this place would be very
+inconvenient to you. Adieu!"
+
+She walked off toward a row of new cottages, and Anna Nicolayevna, the
+countess, stood gazing after her like one petrified.
+
+"You are a savage, Pasha," she whispered, in Russian.
+
+"Why am I? I have done what is right, and you feel it as well as I do,"
+he returned hotly, in his sedate, compact, combative voice, looking from
+her to his teacher. When he was excited he sputtered out his sentences
+in volleys, growling at his listener and seemingly about to flounce off.
+This was the way he spoke now. "Why am I a savage? Can you afford to
+associate with a woman who will behave in this impudent, in this
+rebellious manner toward the Czar? Can you, now?"
+
+"That's neither here nor there," she said, with irritation, as they
+resumed their walk. "She is a very unhappy creature. All that she holds
+dear has been taken from her. Her husband was hanged during the Polish
+rebellion and now her son, a college student, has been torn from her and
+is dying in prison of consumption. If you were not so heartless you
+would have some pity on her."
+
+"Her husband was hanged and her son is in prison and you wish to
+associate with her! Do you really? What do you think of it, Alexandre
+Alexandrovich?"
+
+"A very painful incident," Pievakin murmured, wretchedly.
+
+"As if I were eager for her company," she returned, timidly. "As if one
+could help the chance acquaintances that fall into one's way while
+travelling. Besides, _she_ is no rebel. Indeed, she is one of the most
+charming women I ever met, and to hear her story is enough to break a
+heart of stone. You have no sympathy, Pasha."
+
+"She is no rebel! Why, if she did in Russia what she did here a minute
+ago she would be hustled off to Siberia in short order, and it would
+serve her right, too. And because I don't want my mother to go with such
+a person I have no sympathy."
+
+"Pardon me, Anna Nicolayevna," Pievakin interposed, with embarrassed
+ardour, "but if I were you I should keep out of her way. She is an
+unfortunate woman, but, God bless her,--Pasha is right, I think."
+
+"I should say I was," the boy said, triumphantly. "She wouldn't dare do
+such a thing in Russia, would she? But then in Russia a woman of that
+sort would have no chance to do anything of the kind. Oh, I do hate the
+Germans for exposing the Czar to these insults. It is simply terrible,
+terrible. Couldn't they arrange it so that he should not have to rub
+shoulders with every Tom, Dick and Harry and be exposed to every sort of
+affront? And yet when I say so I am a savage and have no heart." He
+gnashed his teeth and burst into tears.
+
+"Hush, dear, I didn't mean it. Don't be excited, now."
+
+"But you did mean it; you know you did."
+
+"Sh, calm down, Pasha," the old man besought him, and Pavel's features
+softened.
+
+Alexandre Alexandrovich was the only teacher at the high school of whom
+Pavel was fond. He was an old-fashioned little man, with cravats of a
+former generation and with features and movements which conveyed the
+impression that he was forever making ready to bow. His cackling good
+humour when the recitations were correct and fluent, his distressed air
+when they were not; his mixed timidity and quick temper--these things
+are recalled with fond smiles in Miroslav. He was attached to both his
+subjects and when put on his mettle by the attention of his class he
+really knew how to put life into the dullest lesson. On such occasions
+his timid manner would disappear, and he would draw himself up, and go
+strutting back and forth with long, defiant steps and hurling out his
+sentences like a domineering rooster. It was only when a lesson of this
+sort was suddenly disturbed by some sally from a scapegrace of a pupil
+that Pievakin would fly into a passion and then he would take to jumping
+about, tearing at his own hair, and groaning as though with physical
+pain.
+
+Pavel was perhaps the most ardent friend Alexandre Alexandrovich had in
+all Miroslav. The young prince was in a singular position at the
+gymnasium. Somehow things were always done in a way to make one remember
+that he was Prince Boulatoff and a nephew of the governor of the
+province of which Miroslav was the capital. He was the only boy who
+usually came to school in a carriage and it seemed as though the
+imposing vehicle had the effect of isolating him from the other boys. As
+to his teachers, they took a peculiar tone with him--one of
+ill-concealed reverence which would betray itself with all the more
+emphasis when they tried to take him to task. The upshot was that most
+of the other pupils, including the only other prince in the class (who
+was also the wildest boy in it) kept out of Pavel's way, while those
+who did not treated him with a servility that was even more offensive to
+him than the aloofness of the rest. He had made several attempts to get
+on terms of good fellowship with two or three of the boys he liked, but
+his own effort to laugh and frolic with them had jarred on him like a
+false note. He had finally settled down to a manner of haughty
+reticence, keeping an observant eye on his classmates and finding a
+peculiar pleasure in these silent observations.
+
+The only two teachers who did not indulge him were Pievakin and the
+teacher of mathematics, a cheerful hunchback with a pale distended face
+lit by a pair of comical blue eyes, whom the boys had dubbed "truncated
+cone." The teacher of mathematics made Pavel feel his exceptional
+position by treating him with special harshness. As to Pievakin, who had
+begun by addressing the aristocratic youth with an embarrassed air, he
+had gradually adopted toward him a manner of fatherly superiority that
+developed in the boy's heart a filial attachment for the old pedagogue.
+In order to increase his income Pavel had made him his private tutor,
+although he stood high in his class and needed no such assistance, and
+this summer, when the old man complained of rheumatism, he had caused
+his mother to invite him to the German resort.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they reached their hotel the countess unburdened herself to her
+son's tutor of certain memories which interested her now far more than
+did her unexpected rupture with the Polish woman. She described a court
+ball at St. Petersburg at which the present Czar, then still Czarowitz,
+conversed for five minutes with her. She treated the gymnasium teacher
+partly as she would her priest, partly as if he were her butler, and
+now, in her burst of reminiscence, she overhauled her past to him with
+the whole-hearted, childlike abandon which is characteristic of her race
+and which put the humble old teacher ill at ease. "He told me to take
+good care of my 'pretty eyes and golden eyebrows,'" she said. "And yet
+it was for these very eyebrows that Pavel's father disliked me."
+
+She had been the pet daughter of a wealthy nobleman, high in the service
+of the ministry for foreign affairs, but Pavel's father, and her living
+husband, from whom she was now practically separated, had almost
+convinced her that to be disliked was her just share in life. Her
+parents and sisters were dead. She had a little boy by her second
+marriage, but she was still in love with the shadow of her first
+husband, and the son he had left her was the one passion of her life.
+Having spent her youth in the two foreign countries to which her
+father's diplomatic career took the family, she deprecated, in a dim
+unformulated way, many of the things that surrounded her in her native
+land. She was unable to reconcile her luminous image of the Emperor with
+the medi�val cruelties that were being perpetrated by his order. She was
+at a loss to understand how such a gentle-hearted man could send to the
+gallows or to the living graves of Siberia people like the Polish
+patriots. The compulsory religion of the Orthodox Russian Church, too,
+with its iron-clad organisation and grotesque uniforms, impressed her as
+a kind of spiritual gendarmerie. Yet she accepted it all as part of that
+panorama of things which whispered the magic word, "Russia." And now the
+sight of the Czar had rekindled memories of her better days and stirred
+in her a submissive sense of her cheerless fate.
+
+Pavel was meanwhile putting the case of the Polish woman to Onufri, one
+of the two servants who accompanied them in their present travels--a
+retired hussar with a formidable moustache in front of a pinched
+hollow-cheeked face.
+
+"Her highness, your mother, is good as an angel, sir," was Onufri's
+verdict.
+
+"And you are stupid as a cork," Pavel snarled. His sense of the
+desecration to which the person of his Czar was being subjected by
+mingling with people like the widow of a hanged rebel rankled in his
+heart. He worked himself up to a state of mind in which the very
+similarity in physical appearance between the untitled people with whom
+the Czar and born aristocrats like himself and his mother were compelled
+to mingle at a place like this resort struck him as an impertinence on
+the part of the untitled people.
+
+Later when he lay between two German featherbeds and Onufri brought him
+his book and a candle he asked him to take a seat by his bedside.
+
+"Why are you such a deuced fool, Onufri?"
+
+"If I am it is God's business, not mine, nor your highness'."
+
+"Look here, Onufri. How would you like to have all common people black
+like those darkies?"
+
+The servant spat out in horror and made the sign of the cross.
+
+"For shame, sir. What harm have the common people done you that you
+should wish them a horrid thing like that? And where does your highness
+get these cruel thoughts? Surely not from your mother. For shame, sir."
+
+"Idiot that you are, it's mere fancy, just for fun. There ought to be
+some difference between noble people and common. There is in some
+countries, you know." He told him about castes, the slave trade in
+America and passed to the days of chivalry, his favourite topic, until
+the retired hussar's head sank and a mighty snore rang out of his bushy
+moustache. Pavel flew into a passion.
+
+"Ass!" he shouted, getting half out of bed and shaking him fiercely.
+"Why don't I fall asleep when you tell me stories?"
+
+Onufri started and fell to rubbing one eye, while with his other eye he
+looked about him, as though he had slept a week. The stories he often
+told young Boulatoff mostly related to the days of serfdom, which had
+been abolished when Pavel was a boy of five. Onufri's mother had been
+flogged to death in the presence of her master, Pavel's grandfather, and
+the former hussar would tell the story with a solemnity that reflected
+his veneration for the "good old times" rather than grief over the fate
+of his mother.
+
+That night Pavel dreamed of a pond full of calves that were splashing
+about and laughing in the water. He carried them all home and on his way
+there they were transformed into one pair, and the two calves walked
+about and talked just like Onufri and the transformation was no
+transformation at all, the calves being real calves and negroes at the
+same time. When he awoke, in the morning, and it came over him that the
+dream had had something to do with Onufri, he was seized with a feeling
+of self-disgust. He thought of the Polish woman and his treatment of
+her, and this, too, appeared in a new light to him.
+
+Two or three hours later, when the countess returned from her morning
+walk Pavel, dressed to go out, grave and mysterious, solemnly handed her
+a sealed note from himself.
+
+"Don't open it until I have left," he said. "I am going out for a
+stroll."
+
+"What you said yesterday about my being hard-hearted and incapable of
+sympathy," the letter read, "left a deep impression on me. I thought of
+it almost the first thing this morning as I opened my eyes, and it kept
+me thinking all the morning. I looked deep into my soul, I overhauled my
+whole ego. I turned it inside out, and--well, I must say I have come to
+the conclusion that what you said was not devoid of foundation. Not that
+I am prepared to imagine ourselves as having anything to do with a woman
+whose family is a family of rebels and who has the audacity to pass our
+emperor without bowing; but she is a human being, too, and her
+sufferings should have aroused some commiseration in me. I envy you,
+mother. Compared to you I really am a hard-hearted, unfeeling brute, and
+it makes me very, very unhappy to think of it. My heart is so full at
+this moment that I am at a loss to give expression to what I feel, but
+you will understand me, darling little mother mine. I do _not_ want to
+be hard and cruel, and I want you to help me.
+
+                               "Your struggling son,
+                                                         "PAVEL."
+
+When Anna Nicolayevna laid down the letter her large meek grey eyes
+first grew red and then filled with tears. She sat with her long slim
+arms loosely folded on a davenport, weeping and smiling at once. There
+was much charm in her smile, but, barring it and her mass of fine auburn
+hair, she was certainly not good looking. She was small, ungainly,
+flat-chested, with a large thin-lipped mouth and, in spite of her
+beautiful gowns, with a general effect of rustiness.
+
+When Pavel and his mother met at dinner he felt so embarrassed he could
+not bring himself to look her in the face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE WHITE TERROR.
+
+
+Miroslav was trisected longitudinally by a clear, cheerful river and by
+Kasimir Street, its principal thoroughfare, which contained most of its
+public buildings and best shops. The middle one of the three sections
+thus formed was the home of the higher nobility and the official class;
+the district across the bridge from here was inhabited by Christian
+burghers and workmen, with here and there a clay hovel, the home of a
+peasant family, gleaming white in the distant outskirts; while the hilly
+quarter beyond Kasimir Street was the seat of Jewish industry and Jewish
+poverty, part of this neighbourhood being occupied by the market places
+and "the Paradise," as the slums of the town were called ironically. The
+governor's house, which faced Governor's Prospect--a small square with a
+fountain in the centre--and Anna Nicolayevna's were the two most
+imposing buildings in Miroslav.
+
+The countess' residence was the only structure in town that had a
+colonnaded front. The common people called it the Palace and the section
+of Kasimir Street it faced the Pillars. The sidewalk opposite was the
+favourite promenade of the younger generation, and every afternoon, in
+auspicious weather, it glittered with the uniforms of army officers and
+gymnasium boys. The Palace was built by her grandfather in the closing
+days of the previous century. It abutted on a long narrow lane formed
+on one side by Anna Nicolayevna's garden and leading to Theatre Square,
+where stood the playhouse and the Nobles' Club. When the white rigidity
+of these buildings was relieved by the grass of its lawns and the
+foliage of its trees the spot was the joy of the town.
+
+During the winter of the year following the countess' sojourn at the
+German watering place, Miroslav was stirred by a sensation, the central
+figure of which was Pavel's tutor, the instructor of geography and
+history in the local gymnasium, Alexandre Alexandrovich Pievakin. Pavel
+was then in the graduating class.
+
+Besides being connected with the male gymnasium Pievakin taught at the
+female high school of Miroslav. The town was fond of him and he was fond
+of the town and upon the whole he was contented. One of the things that
+galled him was the fact that his superior, the newly appointed director
+of the school, was his inferior both in years and in civil rank.
+Pievakin was a "councillor of state," while Novikoff, the head of the
+male gymnasium, was only a "collegiate assessor." Novikoff was a
+painstaking, narrow-minded functionary, superciliously proud of his
+office and slavishly loyal to the letter of the law. He was a slender,
+dark-complexioned man of forty, but he tried to look much older and
+heavier. He copied the Czar's side-whiskers, walked like a corpulent
+grandee, perpetually pulling at his waistcoat as though he were burdened
+by a voluminous paunch, and interlarded his speech with aphorisms from
+the Latin Grammar.
+
+One day as the director strutted ponderously along one of the two
+corridors, the word "parliament" fell on his ear. It was Pievakin's
+voice. The old man was explaining something to his class with great
+ardour. Novikoff paused, his lordly walk congealing into the picture of
+dignified attention. The next minute, however, his grandeur melted away.
+His face expressed unfeigned horror. Pievakin was drawing an effusive
+parallel between absolute monarchies and limited. This was distinctly in
+violation of the Circular of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment
+enjoining teachers of geography, in cases of this kind, to adhere
+strictly to the bare terminology of the approved text-book without
+venturing into anything like an elucidation. Not that Pievakin was
+betraying any partiality for limited monarchies. Indeed, to him the
+distinction between the two forms of government was neither of more nor
+of less interest than the difference between a steppe and a prairie or a
+simoon and a hurricane. It appealed to him because it was geography, and
+in his ecstasy over the lesson all thought of the Ministry and its
+Circulars had escaped his mind.
+
+That afternoon he was summoned to the director's office on the floor
+below.
+
+Novikoff was at his large, flat-topped desk, studiously absorbed in some
+papers. He silently motioned the teacher of geography to a seat, and
+went on with his feigned work. After a lapse of some minutes he
+straightened up, played a few scales upon the brass buttons of his
+uniform, and said:
+
+"It pains me to have to say it, Alexandre Alexandrovich, but these are
+queer times and the passions of youth should be moderated, held in
+check, suppressed, not aroused. The imagination of one's pupils is not
+to be trifled with, Alexandre Alexandrovich."
+
+He paused mournfully. The little old man, who had not the least idea
+what he was driving at, waited in consternation. The room was
+overheated, and the pause had an overpowering effect on him. He felt on
+the verge of fainting.
+
+"The point is," Novikoff resumed, with a sudden spurt in his voice,
+"that in your class work you sometimes suffer yourself to say things
+that cannot but be regarded as dangerous. Dangerous particularly in view
+of the evil influences at work among the young of our generation; in
+view of the very sad fact that college students will disguise themselves
+as peasants----"
+
+"What do you mean, sir?" Pievakin burst out, reddening violently. "How
+dare you liken me to those fellows? I was serving the Czar while you
+were still a whippersnapper. I'm a councillor of state, sir. How dare
+you make these insinuations?"
+
+"I expected as much," Novikoff answered, nervously polishing his
+buttons. "Defying one's superior is of a piece with the views you're
+trying to instill into the minds of your scholars."
+
+"What is of a piece with what? Speak out, sir," Pievakin shrieked.
+
+"Bridle your temper, sir. I can't allow that."
+
+"Then tell me what it's all about," the teacher of history and geography
+said in a queer, half-beseeching, half-threatening voice.
+
+"Well, this morning you were expatiating upon the blessings of a
+constitutional government. Yes, sir. There are no spies to eavesdrop on
+one in this building, but it seems you never speak so loud nor with so
+much gusto as when you get to the subject of constitutions and
+parliaments and things of that kind."
+
+"It isn't true. I merely said a word or two on the various forms of
+government. It's practically all in Smirnoff's Geography."
+
+"'Practically'! It's against the law. I am very sorry, but it becomes my
+duty to report it to the curator."
+
+Here Pievakin, losing control of himself, shouted "Spy!" and
+"Scoundrel!" and darted out of the room.
+
+This happened at a time when the "peasantist" movement, the peaceful,
+unresisting stage in the history of what is commonly known as Nihilism,
+was at its height. The educated young generation was in an ecstasy of
+altruism. It was the period of "going to the people," when hundreds of
+well-bred men and women, children of the nobility, would don peasant
+garb and go to share the life of the tillers of the soil, teaching them
+to read, talking to them of universal love, liberty and equality. The
+government punished this "going to the people" with Asiatic severity.
+Russia has no capital punishment for the slaying of common mortals, the
+average penalty for murder being about ten years of penal servitude in
+Siberia; and this penalty the courts were often ordered to impose on
+absolutely peaceable missionaries, on university students who
+practically did the same kind of work as that pursued by the "university
+settlements" in English-speaking countries. There were about one
+thousand of these propagandists in the political prisons of the empire,
+and their number was growing. They were kept in solitary confinement in
+cold, damp cells. Scores of them went insane or died of consumption,
+scurvy or suicide before their cases came up for trial.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pievakin's house was searched by gendarmes, but no "underground"
+literature was discovered there. He was not arrested, but spies shadowed
+his movements and about a month after the domiciliary visit he was
+officially notified by the curator's office that he was to be
+transferred to the four-year "progymnasium" of a small town a
+considerable distance off. This implied that his work was to be
+restricted to boys of fourteen and less in a town out of the way of
+"dangerous tendencies." He grew thin and haggard and a certain look of
+fright never left his eye. The other instructors at the gymnasium, all
+except one, and many of his private acquaintance plainly shunned him. He
+had become one of those people with whom one could not come in contact
+without attracting the undesirable attention of the police. One of those
+who were not afraid to be seen in his company was the "truncated cone."
+"My crooked back is the only one that does not bend," the deformed man
+would joke. The tacit philosophy of his attitude toward the world seemed
+to be something like this: "You people won't consider me one of you. I
+am only a hunchback, something like an elf, and you will take many an
+unwelcome truth from me which you would resent in one like yourselves.
+So let us proceed on this understanding."
+
+When Boulatoff heard that his favourite teacher was to be exiled to a
+small town "to render him harmless," he was shocked. Alexandre
+Alexandrovich Pievakin was the last man in the world he would have
+suspected to be guilty of seditious agitation. His only idol at school
+was thus shattered. Pievakin had not the courage to visit the countess'
+house now, and Pavel, on his part, held aloof from him. The old man was
+hateful to him, not only as a rebel, but also as an impostor and a
+hypocrite. He felt duped. His blood rankled with disgust and resentment.
+At the same time the situation did not seem quite clear to him.
+Something puzzled him, although he could not have put his finger on it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+PIEVAKIN PLEADS GUILTY.
+
+
+A lesson in Latin was in progress. The teacher was a blond Czech. Pavel
+looked at him intently, trying to follow the exercises, but he only
+became the more aware of the foreigner's struggles with Russian and made
+the discovery that his clumsy carriage, as he walked up and down the
+room, was suggestive of a peasant woman trying to catch a chicken. His
+thoughts passed to Pievakin and almost at the same instant a question
+flashed into his brain: If Pievakin was unreliable politically, why,
+then, was he getting off so easily? How was it that instead of being cut
+off from the living world, instead of being thrown into a dungeon to
+waste and perish, as was done with all fellows of that sort, he was
+merely transferred to another school?
+
+The bell sounded. The Czech put his big flat record-book under his arm
+and left the room. Most of the pupils went out soon after. The two long
+corridors were bubbling with boys in blue, a-glitter with nickel-plated
+buttons and silver galloon, some laughing over their experience with the
+lesson just disposed of, others eagerly reviewing the one soon to be
+recited. Pievakin passed along. The pupils bowed to him with curious
+sympathetic looks, and he returned their salutes with an air of mixed
+timidity and gratitude. Presently the teacher of mathematics emerged
+from one of the glass doors, his deformity bulging through the blue
+broadcloth of his uniform.
+
+"Alexandre Alexandrovich!" he shouted demonstratively, and catching up
+with him he threw his arm around his waist.
+
+Pavel, who had been watching the scene, was about to return to his
+class-room so as to avoid bowing to Pievakin, when, by a sudden impulse,
+he saluted the two teachers, and advancing to meet them, with that
+peculiar air of politeness which reminded his classmates of his equipage
+and the colonnade in front of his mother's mansion, he accosted the
+instructor of history and geography, turning pale as he did so:
+
+"May I speak to you, Alexandre Alexandrovich?" When the mathematician
+had withdrawn, he inquired in a tone of pain and concern: "What has
+happened, Alexandre Alexandrovich?"
+
+"Oh, I'm in trouble, prince," the old man faltered. He had never
+addressed the youth by his title before, and there was a note of abject
+supplication in his voice, as if the boy could help him. His face had a
+pinched, cowed look.
+
+"But, Alexandre Alexandrovich, it's a terrible thing they are accusing
+you of. You've been so dear to me, Alexandre Alexandrovich. I want to
+know all. I cannot rest, Alexandre Alexandrovich."
+
+"The story is easily told. A misfortune has befallen me. While touching
+upon the constitutional form of government, I was somewhat carried away.
+That I don't deny. I know it was wrong of me, but I assure you, prince,
+I meant no harm."
+
+It sounded as though he were a pleading pupil and the boy before him his
+teacher.
+
+Pavel was touched and perplexed.
+
+"But that's in the text-book, Alexandre Alexandrovich."
+
+"To be sure it is. Only the text-book merely uses the term without
+explaining it, while I, absent-mindedly, proceeded to do so, which is
+against the rules, and, as ill luck would have it, I warmed up a bit.
+When I was first asked about it I was not aware of having done any
+wrong. I was so shocked, in fact, I lost my temper. That was the worst
+of it. I am a ruined man, prince. Thirty-six years have I served the
+Czar and there is not a blemish on my record."
+
+"But why should you call yourself a ruined man, Alexandre
+Alexandrovich," Pavel said impetuously. "I don't see why it should be
+too late to straighten it all out. I'm going to see my uncle. Or, better
+still, my mother will see him. We can't let it go that way. We should
+all be a lot of scoundrels if we did. I'm going to tell him so."
+
+"Do it, prince, if you can," the old man said with shamefaced eagerness.
+"I shall never forget it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Pavel came home he found his mother's sleigh in front of the main
+entrance, her coachman in dazzling attire, waiting with pompous
+stolidity. When the liveried porter threw the door open to him and he
+entered the vestibule he saw coming down the immense staircase his
+mother and his five-year-old half-brother, Kostia, dressed for their
+afternoon drive, Anna Nicolayevna in her furs and the little fellow in
+the costume of a Caucasian horseman, which became his grave little face
+charmingly. Following at some distance, with a smile of admiration, half
+servile, half sincere, on her fresh German face, was Kostia's governess.
+She was not dressed for a drive. She was merely going to see her charge
+off.
+
+"Mother, I am afraid I shall have to detain you," Pavel said, solemnly.
+"I wish to speak to you about Alexandre Alexandrovich."
+
+"Won't it keep?" she asked, with a facetious gesture.
+
+"Don't make fun of it, mother," he reproached her. "It's a serious
+matter. My head is in a whirl."
+
+Kostia was burning to show himself in public in his new Circassian cap
+and when he saw his mother yield he screwed up his face for a cry, but
+he forthwith straightened it out again. He scarcely ever cried in
+Pavel's presence for fear of being called "damsel" by him--an
+appellation he dreaded more than being locked up alone in the
+schoolroom.
+
+They went into Anna Nicolayevna's favorite sitting-room, a square
+chamber furnished and decorated in tan, in no particular style, but with
+an eye to the combined suggestions of old-time solidity and latter-day
+elegance. It was the embodiment of rest and silence, an effect to which
+two life-sized bronze statues--a Diana and a Venus de Medici--and the
+drowsy ticking of an ancient clock contributed not a little. It was
+known as the English room because its former furnishings had been
+modelled after London standards.
+
+Pavel painted Pievakin as a penitent, broken spirit till Anna
+Nicolayevna's eyes grew red.
+
+"Still, maybe he does hold dangerous views?" she asked.
+
+"Dangerous nothing! It's all nonsense. He's more loyal than Novikoff
+anyhow, for Novikoff is a soulless, attitudinising nincompoop, while he
+is the kindliest, most conscientious, most soulful man in the world."
+
+"Unfortunately all this has nothing to do with loyalty," she said,
+sadly. "This is a very queer world, Pasha. It's just like those
+wretches who would do away with czars to be warm-hearted and good to
+everybody. They don't believe there ought to be rich and poor, either.
+When you come across a man of this sort keep away from him, Pasha."
+
+"But what has that got to do with Pievakin?" he shouted. "The very sight
+of a Nihilist would be enough to frighten him out of his wits. I want
+you to tell it all to uncle, _mamman_. Give him no peace until he
+promises you to write to the curator about the poor old man."
+
+The governor of Miroslav was a Boulatoff, being a cousin of Pavel's
+deceased father; but he was also related to the young man by marriage to
+his mother's sister, who had died less than a year ago. Anna Nicolayevna
+promised to see her brother-in-law the next morning, but Pavel would not
+wait. He pleaded, he charged her with heartlessness, tapping the thick
+rug with his foot and shaking all over as he spoke, until she agreed to
+go at once.
+
+While she was gone Pavel and Kostia went into the ball room and played
+"hunter and partridge," a game of the gymnasium boys' inventing. They
+had not been many minutes at it before Pavel had forgotten all about the
+errand on which he had despatched his mother and the vast ball room
+echoed with his voluminous laughter. His great pleasure was to tease
+Kostia until the little boy's mouth would begin to twitch, and then to
+shake his finger at him and say: "Better not cry, Kostia, or you know
+what I am going to call you." Whereupon Kostia would make a desperate
+effort to look nonchalantly grave and Pavel would burst into a new roar
+of merriment.
+
+Anna Nicolayevna came back converted to a rigorous point of view, and
+although her son had no difficulty in convincing her once again that
+Pievakin deserved mercy, he made up his mind to see his uncle himself,
+and he did so the very next morning.
+
+Governor Boulatoff was a massive, worn, blinking old satrap, shrewd,
+tight-fisted, and, what was quite unusual for a man of his class, with
+an eye to business. His nose was extremely broad and fleshy, his hair
+was elaborately dressed, and altogether he looked like a successful old
+comedian. Bribe-giving was as universal in Miroslav as tipping was in
+its leading caf�. One could not turn round without showing "gratitude."
+The wheels of government would not move in the desired direction unless
+they were greased, the price of this "grease" or "gratitude" varying all
+the way from a ten-copeck piece to ten or fifteen thousand rubles.
+Governor Boulatoff, who had come to Miroslav a ruined man, was now the
+largest land-owner in the province. Whenever he was in need of ready
+cash he would galvanize into a new lease of life some defunct piece of
+anti-Jewish legislation. This was known among the other officials as
+"pressing the spring"--the spring of the Jewish pocketbook, that is, the
+invariable effect of the proceeding being the appearance of a delegation
+with a snug piece of Jewish "gratitude." He was continually sneering at
+the powers behind the throne, and mildly striving for recognition; yet
+so comfortable did he feel in this city of gardens, card-playing and
+"gratitude," from which "the Czar was too far off and God too high up,"
+that he was in mortal fear lest the promotion which he coveted should
+come in the form of a transfer to a more important province.
+
+Pavel found him in his imposing "den." The old potentate was in his
+morning gown, freshly bathed, shaved and coiffured and smelling of
+pomade and cigarette smoke.
+
+"Well, my little statesman," he greeted him in French. "What brings you
+so early this morning? Aren't you going to school at all?" He called him
+statesman because of his ambition to follow in the footsteps of his
+diplomatic grandfather.
+
+"I shall stay away from the first three lessons," Pavel answered. "I
+cannot rest, uncle. I want to speak to you about that unfortunate man."
+
+The governor was very fond of Pavel, but he persisted in treating him as
+a boy, and the only serious talk young Boulatoff got out of him
+regarding Pievakin was an exhortation to give "men of that sort a wide
+berth."
+
+"But, uncle----"
+
+"Don't argue," the governor interrupted him, blinking as he spoke. "This
+is not the kind of thing for a boy of your station to get mixed up in."
+
+"Oh, it's enough to drive one crazy. The poor man is sincerely
+repentant, uncle. He'll never do it again, uncle."
+
+"I see you're quite excited over it. Just the kind of effect fellows of
+that stamp will have on the mind of a boy. This is just where the danger
+comes in. Don't forget your name, Pasha. Come, throw it all out of your
+clever little head. There's a good boy."
+
+"Uncle darling, he'll never do it again. Let him stay where he is."
+
+"You're a foolish boy. Whether he'll do it again or no, his very
+presence in this town would be a source of danger. Whoever sets his eyes
+on him will say to himself: 'Here is the man who once talked of the way
+people live under a constitution.' So you see he'll be a reminder of
+unlawful ideas. We have no use for fellows of this sort. They are like
+living poison. Do you see the point? Let your teacher thank his stars
+the case was not put in the hands of the gendarmes entirely, or he
+would be sent to a colder place."
+
+All this the governor said in the playful manner of one conversing with
+a child and, by way of clinching the matter, he explained that he had
+nothing to do with the case and that it was under the jurisdiction of
+the "curator of educational district."
+
+Pavel was in despair and his being treated as a boy threw him into a
+rage, but he held himself in check for Pievakin's sake.
+
+"Oh, the curator will do anything you ask of him, uncle," he said in a
+tone of entreaty and resentment at once.
+
+"You don't want your uncle to write letters begging for a fellow who was
+foolish enough to get mixed up in such an affair as that, do you? I used
+to think you really cared for your uncle."
+
+Pavel contracted his forehead and put out his chin sullenly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE "DEMONSTRATION."
+
+
+At the hour of Pievakin's departure the Miroslav railway station was
+crowded with gymnasium pupils of both sexes, but Pavel was not among
+them. He had not been informed that such a gathering was in
+contemplation at all.
+
+Alexandre Alexandrovich, a satchel slung across his breast, wan and
+haggard, but flushed with excitement, was bustling about in a listless,
+mechanical way. He was accompanied by his large family and the teacher
+of mathematics. A number of gendarmes, stalwart, bewhiskered,
+elaborately formidable, were pacing up and down the large waiting room.
+The gendarmerie is the political police of the Czar. It forms a special
+military organisation quite distinct from the police proper. A detail of
+such gendarmes, proportionate to the importance of the place, is to be
+found in every railroad station of the country. On this occasion,
+however, the presence of the gendarmes seemed to have some special
+bearing upon the nature of the scene. They were all big strapping
+fellows. Their jingling spurs, red epaulets and icy silence belonged to
+the same category of things as the terrible political prisons of
+Kharkoff and St. Petersburg; as the clinking of convict-chains, as the
+frozen wastes of Siberia.
+
+All at once most of the bespurred men disappeared. After an absence of
+two or three minutes they came back, considerably re-enforced.
+
+"All gymnasium pupils, ladies and gentlemen, will please leave the
+station," they called out.
+
+About one-half of the throng struck out for the doors as if the place
+were on fire. Some fifteen or twenty pupils stood still, frowning upon
+the guardians of the Czar's safety, in timid defiance. The rest, a crowd
+of about two hundred, made a lunge in the direction of the corner where
+Alexandre Alexandrovich and his family were pottering about some light
+baggage, when three lusty gendarmes planted themselves in front of the
+little old man.
+
+"Go home, ladies and gentlemen, go home!" Pievakin besought his friends,
+waving his hands and stamping his feet desperately.
+
+"Have we no right to say good-bye to our own teacher?" one boy ventured.
+
+"Not allowed!" a gendarme answered, sternly. "Get out, get out!"
+
+The crowd surged back; but at this point a young feminine voice,
+sonorous with indignation and distress, rose above the din of the
+scramble:
+
+"Good heavens! Can it be that we shall leave without saying good-bye to
+our dear teacher? All they say of him is a lie, a malicious lie. They're
+a lot of knaves, and he is the best man in the world. Let them arrest us
+if they will, let them kill us. It would be a shame if we went away like
+traitors to our dear teacher."
+
+The rest was lost in a hubbub of shouts and shrieks. In their effort to
+get at the speaker, who was shielded by the other pupils, the gendarmes
+were beating young women with their sheathed swords or pulling them by
+the hair. With the exception of a few who had skulked out through back
+doors, the young people now all stood their ground, ready to fight.
+
+"Arrest us all!" they yelled. "We all say the same thing."
+
+"Yes, Alexandre Alexandrovich is the best man in the world. There!"
+
+"A better man than Novikoff!"
+
+"Novikoff is a hypocrite and a rogue!"
+
+In the commotion the gendarmes lost sight of the girl they were about to
+arrest. She could not have left the room, but then it was not easy to
+tell her from any of the other girls. The gendarmes had seen her at a
+distance, and all they could say was that she was blonde. In their
+eagerness to pick her out, they were rudely scanning every young woman
+in the waiting-room. Had she been arrested it would have gone hard with
+her. As good luck would have it, however, Major Safonoff, the officer in
+command of the railroad gendarmes, was the brother of one of the girls
+present. He was a plump, good-natured bachelor, and his devotion to his
+sister, who had been under his care since she was a year old, was a
+source of jests and anecdotes. When it occurred to him that the
+conflict, which was beginning to look like a serious affair, was likely
+to cause trouble to his sister, he hastened to make light of it.
+
+"Go home, ladies and gentlemen," he said, in a remonstrative amicable
+voice, taking the matter in his own hands.
+
+His friendly tone and his smiling fat face, added to the tacit
+understanding that the girl who had made the speech was not to be
+persecuted, acted as a balm; but the flattering notion that the
+gendarmes had surrendered kindled new fighting blood.
+
+"Your men have hit ladies. They've no right to hit anybody. They're a
+lot of brutes. All we wanted was to say good-bye to Alexandre
+Alexandrovich."
+
+"But that's impossible, so what's the use getting excited, gentlemen?
+Better go home."
+
+The pupils obeyed, in a leisurely way, as though leaving of their own
+accord.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the following few weeks this "victory" over the gendarmes was the
+great topic of discussion. The personality of the girl who "started the
+demonstration" was emblazoned with the halo of heroism. The curious part
+of it was that only a minority of those who had participated in the
+scene had any idea who she was. When the crowd at the railroad station
+had dispersed, the handful that knew her whispered her name to some of
+those who did not, so that the number of pupils in the secret was by now
+comparatively large, but it was a "revolutionary" secret, so it was
+guarded most zealously against unreliable pupils as well as against the
+authorities.
+
+One of the page-proofs of the _Miroslav Messenger_ that were sent to the
+censor at midnight contained the following paragraph:
+
+"Alexandre Alexandrovich Pievakin, for many years instructor of History
+and Geography at our male gymnasium, left for his new place of service
+yesterday afternoon. A large number of gymnasium pupils were at the
+railway station."
+
+The entire paragraph was stricken out, so that the _Messenger_ next
+morning contained not the remotest reference to the departure of the old
+teacher.
+
+When Pasha heard what had happened at the railway station his heart
+sank.
+
+"I must speak to you, mother," he gasped out, bursting into her room,
+after school time. When her companion, a dried-up little Frenchwoman
+with a thriving streak of black moustache, had withdrawn, he said:
+"Mother, I am a miserable egoist and a scoundrel." He told her the story
+of Pievakin's departure. His dear old teacher was in trouble, the victim
+of a cruel injustice, yet he, Pasha, had not even thought of going to
+see him off. Everybody had been there except him. But what tantalised
+him more than anything else was the fact that a girl was the only person
+who had taken a brave noble stand in the old man's behalf. This hurt his
+knightly sense of honour cruelly. He should have been on the scene and
+done exactly what that girl had done.
+
+"I'm an egoist and a coward, _mamman_. I hate myself. Oh, I do hate
+myself!"
+
+Anna Nicolayevna's eyes grew red. She had an impulse to fold him in her
+arms and to offer to take him to Pievakin's new place so that he might
+protest his sympathy and affection for the old man, but her instinct
+told her that this would be improper. Oh, there were so many things that
+made a strong appeal to one's better feelings which were considered
+improper. So she emitted a sigh of resignation and said nothing.
+
+Pavel was pacing the floor so vehemently that he came near running into
+and knocking down the life-sized Diana. He walked with rapid heavy steps
+until his brain grew dizzy and his despair was dulled as from the effect
+of drink. Suddenly the situation rushed back upon him.
+
+"I tell you what, mother, he's too good for them," he said, stopping in
+front of her. "He is better than uncle, anyhow."
+
+"Hush, you mustn't say that."
+
+"The devil I mustn't. It's true."
+
+"You are impossible, Pasha. Can't you calm down?"
+
+"I'll tell you calmly, then: uncle is a bribe-taker and a heartless
+egoist. There."
+
+"Dear me," she said, in consternation.
+
+"But you know he is, mother. And do you call that loyalty to the Czar?
+Pievakin is pure as an infant. If the Czar knew the real character of
+both, he would know that the poor man could give uncle points in
+loyalty."
+
+A few days after this conversation the governor dined at "The Palace,"
+as Countess Varoff's residence was known among the common people of
+Miroslav. Pavel refused to leave his room. When Anna Nicolayevna pleaded
+his uncle's affection for him, he said:
+
+"His affection be hanged. Who wants the affection of a bribe-taker who
+will let an honest man perish? Look here, mother, you have no business
+to tell him I have a headache. I want him to know the truth. Tell him
+it's men like himself, bribe-takers, cowards, who spread sedition, not
+men like Pievakin. 'Living poison,' indeed! Tell him he is a lump of
+living poison himself. Oh, I hate him, I do hate him."
+
+His brain was working feverishly. The image of Pievakin with three
+gendarmes between him and a crowd of pupils haunted him. Why could he
+not be pardoned? Was there no mercy in this world? His sense of the
+cruelty of the thing and of his own helplessness seized him as with a
+violent clutch again and again.
+
+Once, as he was reviewing the situation for the thousandth time, a voice
+in him exclaimed: "Pardoned? What was Pievakin to be pardoned for? What
+had he done? Why should it be wrong to dwell on the vital features of
+parliamentary government? Such governments existed, didn't they? And if
+they did, then why should one be forbidden to explain their essence?"
+For the first time did his attention fix itself on this point, and
+questions came crowding upon him. Where was the sense of having such
+terms as "limited monarchy" in the text-book at all, if the pupils were
+not to be told what this meant? Above all, why should the government be
+afraid of such explanations? There seemed to be something cowardly,
+sneaking, about all this which jarred on Pavel's sense of the knightly
+magnificence of the Czar and left him with a bad taste in the mouth, as
+the phrase is.
+
+Alexandre Alexandrovich, then, had done no wrong, and yet he had been
+banished as "living poison," treated by everybody as a criminal, until
+he came to believe himself one. Why, of course he was better than
+Novikoff. Novikoff was a self-seeking, posing wretch, and all the other
+teachers were cringing and crouching before him; and these insects
+turned their backs upon Alexandre Alexandrovich! Corruption passed for
+loyalty, and a really good man was persecuted, hunted down like a wild
+beast, trampled upon. "Trampled upon, trampled upon, trampled upon!"
+Pavel whispered audibly, stamping his foot and gnashing his teeth as he
+did so.
+
+The only gleam of light was the veiled figure of that gymnasium girl.
+She alone had had sympathy and courage enough to raise her voice for the
+poor man. "Why, she is a perfect heroine," he said in his aching heart.
+
+At the gymnasium he felt his loneliness more keenly than ever. Wherever
+he saw a cluster of boys, he felt sure they were whispering about the
+gendarmes and the girl who had made the "speech" at the railroad
+station. His pride was gone. He now saw himself an outcast, shut out of
+the most important things life contained.
+
+The leader of the "serious-minded" boys in Pavel's class was an underfed
+Jewish youth, with an an�mic chalky face and a cold intelligent look,
+named Elkin. To Pavel he had always been repugnant. Since Pievakin's
+departure, however, the aristocratic boy had looked at his classmates in
+a new light, and Elkin now even inspired him with respect.
+
+"Who is the girl that made that speech at the station?" he asked simply.
+The two had scarcely ever spoken before.
+
+Elkin gave Boulatoff a stare of freezing irony, as who should say: "What
+do you think of the assurance of this man?" and then, dropping his eyes,
+he asked:
+
+"What girl?" When he spoke his lips assumed the form of two obtuse
+angles, exposing to view a glistening lozenge of white teeth.
+
+"Look here, Elkin, I want to know who that girl is and all about the
+whole affair, and if you think I ought not to know it because--well,
+because I am a Boulatoff and my uncle is the governor, I can assure you
+that if I had been there I should have acted as she did. What's more, I
+hate myself for not having been there."
+
+"I don't know what you're talking about," replied Elkin. "As to your
+hating yourself, that's your own affair."
+
+"Well, however I may feel toward myself, I certainly have nothing but
+contempt for a man like you," Pasha snapped back, paling. "But if you
+think you can keep it from me, you're mistaken."
+
+Elkin sized him up with a look full of venom, as he said:
+
+"Pitiful wretch! How are you going to find it out? Through the political
+spies?"
+
+Pavel turned red. It was with a great effort that he kept himself from
+striking Elkin. After a pause he said:
+
+"Now, I can tell you from the bottom of my heart that you are a knave."
+
+"Besides," said Elkin, as though finishing an interrupted remark, "most
+of the gymnasium girls who saw Alexandre Alexandrovich off are daughters
+of poor, humble people, so of what interest would it have been to a man
+in your position?"
+
+Boulatoff stood still for a few moments, and then said under his breath:
+
+"Well, you're a fool as well as a knave," and turned away.
+
+The heroine of the demonstration was hateful to him now. She and Elkin
+seemed to stand at the head of the untitled classes all arrayed against
+him. He retired into himself deeper than ever. He abhorred her because
+she had done the right thing, and each time his sympathy for Pievakin
+welled up he hated himself for not having been at the station, and her
+for having been there. He sought relief in charging Elkin with
+cowardice. "What did he do there?" he would say to himself. "To think of
+a lot of fellows running away when they are told they can't say good-bye
+to their martyred teacher, and a girl being the only one who has courage
+enough to act properly. And now that she has done it this coward has the
+face to give himself airs, as if he were entitled to credit for her
+courage. If I had been there I should not have run away as Elkin and his
+crew did."
+
+This placed Elkin and his followers on one side of the line and Pavel
+and the girl on the other. So what right had that coward of a Jew to
+place himself between her and him?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Toward spring, some two months after the old teacher's departure, and
+when the incident was beginning to grow dim in the public mind, the
+sensation was suddenly revived and greatly intensified by an
+extraordinary piece of news that came from the town to which Pievakin
+had been transferred: The Third Section of His Majesty's Own Office--the
+central political detective bureau of the empire--had taken up the case,
+with the result that the action of the Department of Public Instruction
+had been repudiated as dangerously inadequate. The idea of a man like
+Pievakin participating in the education of children! Accordingly, the
+poor old man was now under arrest, condemned to be transported to
+Viatka, a thinly populated province in the remote north, where he was to
+live under police surveillance, as a political exile strictly debarred
+from teaching, even in private families.
+
+Pavel was stunned. He received the news as something elemental. He could
+find fault with his uncle, but the government at St. Petersburg was a
+sublime abstract force, bathed in the effulgence of the Czar's
+personality. It was no more open to condemnation than a thunderstorm or
+a turbulent sea. But the incident made an ineffaceable impression upon
+him. It left him with the general feeling that there was something
+inherently cruel in the world. And the picture of a pretty girl boldly
+raising her voice for poor Pievakin in the teeth of formidable-looking
+gendarmes and in the midst of a crowd of panic-stricken men remained
+imbedded in his fancy as the emblem of brave pity. An importunate sense
+of jealousy nagged him. He often caught himself dreaming of situations
+in which he appeared in a r�le similar to the one she had played at the
+railroad station.
+
+His perceptions and sensibilities took a novel trend.
+
+One day, for example, as he walked through Theatre Square, he paused to
+watch an apple-faced ensign, evidently fresh from the military school,
+lecture a middle-aged sergeant. The youthful officer sat on a bench,
+swaggeringly leaning back, his new sword gleaming by his side, as he
+questioned the soldier who stood at attention, the picture of
+embarrassment and impotent rage. A young woman, probably the sergeant's
+wife, sweetheart, or daughter, stood aside, looking on wretchedly.
+Seated on a bench directly across the walk were two pretty gymnasium
+girls. It was clear that the whole scene had been gotten up for their
+sake, that the ensign had stopped the poor fellow, who was old enough to
+be his father, and was now putting him through this ordeal for the sole
+purpose of flaunting his authority before them. When the sergeant had
+been allowed to go his way, but before he was out of hearing, Pavel
+walked up to the ensign and said aloud:
+
+"I wish to tell you, sir, that you tormented that poor man merely to
+show off."
+
+"Bravo!" said the two gymnasium girls, clapping their hands with all
+their might; "bravo!"
+
+The ensign sprang to his feet, his apple-cheeks red as fire. "What do
+you mean by interfering with an officer--in the performance of his
+duty?" he faltered. He apparently knew that the young man before him was
+a nephew of the governor.
+
+"Nonsense! You were not performing any duties. You were parading. That's
+what you were doing."
+
+The two girls burst into a ringing laugh, whereupon the ensign stalked
+off, mumbling something about having the gymnasium boy arrested.
+
+"Mother," he said, when he came home. "The world is divided into
+tormentors and victims."
+
+Anna Nicolayevna gave a laugh that made her rusty face interesting. "And
+what are you--a tormentor or a victim?" she asked. "At any rate you had
+better throw these thoughts out of your mind. They lead to no good,
+Pasha."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+PAVEL'S FIRST STEP.
+
+
+When Pavel arrived in St. Petersburg, in the last days of July, his
+recent tribulations seemed a thing of the faded past. The capital was a
+fascinating setting for the great university which he was soon to enter
+and in which he was bent upon drinking deep of the deepest mysteries of
+wisdom. His "certificate of maturity"--his gymnasium diploma--was a
+solemn proclamation of his passage from boyhood to manhood--a change
+which seemed to assert itself in everything he did. He ate maturely,
+talked maturely, walked maturely. He felt like a girl on the eve of her
+wedding day.
+
+He had not been in the big city for six years, and so marked was the
+distinction between it and the southern town from which he hailed, that
+to his "mature" eyes it seemed as if they were seeing it for the first
+time. The multitude of large lusty men, heavily bearded and wearing
+blouses of flaming red; the pink buildings; the melodious hucksters; the
+cherry-peddlars, with their boards piled with the succulent fruit on
+their shoulders; the pitchy odor of the overheated streets; the soft,
+sibilant affectations in the speech of the lower classes; the bustling
+little ferry-boats on the Neva--all this, sanctified by the presence of
+the university buildings across the gay river, made his heart throb with
+a feeling as though Miroslav were a foreign town and he were treading
+the soil of real Russia at last.
+
+He matriculated at the Section of Philology and History, St. Petersburg.
+Before starting on his studies, however, he went off on a savage debauch
+with some aristocratic young relatives. The debauch lasted a fortnight,
+and cost his mother a small fortune. When he came to the university at
+last, weary of himself and his relatives, he settled down to a winter of
+hard work. But the life at the university disturbed his peace of mind.
+He found the students divided into "crammers," "parquette-scrapers" and
+"radicals." The last named seemed to be in the majority--a bustling,
+whispering, preoccupied crowd with an effect of being the masters of the
+situation. There was a vast difference between Elkin and his followers
+and these people. Pavel knew that the university was the hotbed of the
+secret movement, of which he was now tempted to know something. There
+was no telling who of his present classmates might prove a candidate for
+the gallows. The wide-awake, whispering, mysterious world about him
+reminded him of the Miroslav girl and of his rebuff upon trying to
+discover who she was. When he made an attempt to break through the magic
+circle in which that world was enclosed his well-cared-for appearance
+and high-born manner went against him. A feeling of isolation weighed on
+his soul that was much harder to bear than his ostracism at the
+gymnasium had been. Harder to bear, because the students who kept away
+from him here struck him as his superiors, and because he had a humble
+feeling as though it were natural that they should hold aloof from him.
+And the image of that Miroslav girl seemed to float over these
+whispering young men, at once luring and repulsing him. He often went
+about with a lump in his throat.
+
+One day he met a girl named Sophia Perovskaya, the daughter of a former
+governor of the Province of St. Petersburg and the granddaughter of a
+celebrated cabinet minister. She was a strong-featured, boyish-looking
+little creature, with grave blue eyes beneath a very high forehead. He
+had known her when he was a child. There was something in her general
+appearance now and in the few words she said to him which left a
+peculiar impression on Pavel. As he thought of her later it dawned upon
+him that she might belong to the same world as those preoccupied,
+whispering fellow-students of his. He looked her up the same day.
+
+"I should like to get something to read, Sophia Lvovna," he said,
+colouring. "Some of the proscribed things, I mean." Then he added, with
+an embarrassed frown, "Something tells me you could get it for me. If I
+am mistaken, you will have to excuse me."
+
+The governor's daughter fixed her blue eyes on him as she said, simply:
+
+"All right. I'll get you something."
+
+She lent him a volume of the "underground" magazine _Forward!_ and some
+other prints. The tales of valour and martyrdom which he found in these
+publications, added to the editorials they contained calling upon the
+nobility to pay the debt they owed to the peasantry by sacrificing
+themselves for their welfare, literally intoxicated him.
+
+"Dear Mother and Comrade," he wrote in a letter home, "I have come to
+the conclusion that the so-called nobility to which I belong has never
+done anything useful. For centuries and centuries and centuries we have
+been living at the expense of those good, honest, overworked people, the
+peasantry. It is enough to drive one to suicide. Yes, mamma darling, we
+are a race of drones and robbers. The ignorant, unkempt moujiks that we
+treat like beasts are in reality angels compared to us. There is
+something in them--in their traditions and in the inherent purity of
+their souls--which should inspire us with reverence. Yet they are
+literally starved and three-fourths of their toil goes to maintain the
+army and the titled classes."
+
+Further down in the same letter he said: "Every great writer in the
+history of our literature has been in prison or exiled. Our noblest
+thinker and critic, Chernyshevsky, is languishing in Siberia. Why? Why?
+My hair stands erect when I think of these things."
+
+When it came to posting the letter, it dawned upon him that such
+sentiments were not to be trusted to the mails, and, feeling himself a
+conspirator, he committed the epistle to the flames.
+
+He was touched by the spirit of that peasant worship--the religion of
+the "penitent nobility"--which was the spirit of the best unproscribed
+literature of the day as well as of the "underground" movement.
+Turgeneff owed the origin of his fame to the peasant portraits of his
+_Notes of a Huntsman_. Nekrasoff, the leading poet of the period, and a
+score of other writers were perpetually glorifying the peasant, going
+into ecstasies over him, bewailing him. The peasant they drew was a
+creature of flesh-and-blood reality, but shed over him was the golden
+halo of idealism. The central doctrine of the movement was a theory that
+the survival of the communistic element in the Russian village, was
+destined to become the basis of the country's economic and political
+salvation; that Russia would leap into an ideal social arrangement
+without having to pass through capitalism; that her semi-barbaric
+peasant, kindly and innocent as a dove and the martyr of centuries,
+carried in his person the future glory, moral as well as material, of
+his unhappy country. As to the living peasant, he had no more knowledge
+of this adoration of himself (nor capacity to grasp the meaning of the
+movement, if an attempt had been made to explain it to him) than a
+squirrel has of the presence of a "q" in the spelling of its name.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sophia disappeared from St. Petersburg, and Pavel found himself cut off
+from the "underground" world once more. The prints she had left him only
+served to excite his craving for others of the same character. The
+preoccupied, mysterious air of the "radicals" at the university
+tantalised him. He was in a veritable fever of envy, resentment,
+intellectual and spiritual thirst. He subscribed liberally to the
+various revolutionary funds that were continually being raised under the
+guise of charity, and otherwise tried to manifest his sympathy with the
+movement, all to no purpose. His contributions were accepted, but his
+advances were repulsed. One day he approached a student whom he had once
+given ten rubles "for a needy family"--a thin fellow with a very long
+neck and the face of a chicken.
+
+"I should like to get something to read," he said, trying to copy the
+tone of familiar simplicity which he had used with Sophia. "I have read
+one number of _Forward!_ and another thing or two, but that's all I have
+been able to get."
+
+"Pardon me," the chicken-face answered, colouring, "I really don't know
+what you mean. Can't you get those books in the book-stores or in the
+public library?"
+
+Pavel was left with an acute pang of self-pity. He felt like a pampered
+child undergoing ill-treatment at the hands of strangers. His mother and
+all his relatives thought so much of him, while these fellows, who
+would deem it a privilege to talk to any of them, were treating him as
+a nobody and a spy. The tears came to his eyes. But presently he
+clenched his fists and said to himself, "I _will_ be admitted to their
+set."
+
+In his fidget he happened to think of Pani Oginska. As the scene at the
+German watering-place came back to him, he was seized with a desire to
+efface the affront he had offered her. "How can I rest until I have seen
+her and asked her pardon?" he said to himself. "If I were a real man and
+not a mere phrase-monger I should start out on the journey at once. But,
+of course, I won't do anything of the kind, and writing of such things
+is impossible. I _am_ a phrase-maker. That's all I am."
+
+But he soliloquized himself into the reflection that Pani Oginska was
+likely to know some of her imprisoned son's friends, if, indeed, she was
+not in the "underground" world herself, and the very next morning found
+him in a railway car, bound for the south.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pani Oginska's estate was near the boundary line between the province to
+which it belonged and the one whose capital was Miroslav, a considerable
+distance from a railway station. Pavel covered that distance in a
+post-sleigh drawn by a troika. His way lay in the steppe region. It was
+a very cold forenoon in mid-winter. The horses' manes were covered with
+frost; the postilion was bundled up so heavily that he looked like an
+old woman. The sun shone out of a blue, unconcerned sky upon a waste of
+eery whiteness. There were ridges of drifts and there were black patches
+of bare ground, but the general perspective unfolded an unbroken plane
+of snow, a level expanse stretching on either side of the smooth road,
+seemingly endless and bottomless, destitute of any trace of life save
+for an occasional inn by the roadside or the snow-bound hovel and
+outhouses of a shepherd in the distance--a domain of silence and numb
+monotony. That this desert of frozen sterility would four or five months
+later, be transformed into a world of grass and birds seemed as
+inconceivable as the sudden disappearance of the ocean.
+
+The last few versts were an eternity. Pavel's heart leaped with a
+foretaste of the exciting interview.
+
+"Lively, my man," he pressed the postilion. "Can't your horses get a
+move on them?"
+
+The postilion nodded his muffled head and set up a fierce yelp, for all
+the world like a wolf giving chase; whereupon the animals, apparently
+scared to death, broke into a desperate gallop, the scud flying, the
+sleigh dashing along like an electric car in open country, its bell
+ringing frostily.
+
+"That's better," Pavel shouted with a thrill of physical pleasure and
+speaking with difficulty for the breakneck speed that seemed to fling
+the breath out of his lungs. "That's better, my man. You shall get a
+good tip. But where have you learned the trick?"
+
+The postilion gave a muffled grunt of appreciation and went on howling
+with all his might.
+
+They passed through a small village. The chimneys of some of the white
+clay hovels on either side of the road poured out clouds of sweetish,
+nauseating smoke. Wood being scarce in these parts, the peasantry made
+fuel of manure.
+
+At last the sleigh swung into the great front yard of Pani Oginska's
+manor house. It was greeted by the curious eyes of half a dozen
+servants. Pavel entered a warm vestibule with a painted floor, where he
+found waiting to meet him Pani Oginska and an aged man with hair as
+white as the snow without. He bowed politely and asked, in French, with
+nervous timidity:
+
+"Do you remember me, Madame Oginska?"
+
+She screwed up her eyes as she scanned his flushed, frozen face.
+
+"Prince Boulatoff!" she said in a perplexed whisper.
+
+"I have come all the way from St. Petersburg to beg your pardon, Madame
+Oginska," he fired out. "I acted like a brute on that occasion. I was an
+idiotic boy. Forgive me."
+
+"Have you actually come all the way from St. Petersburg, to tell me
+that?" she asked with a hearty peal of laughter. She introduced him to
+the white-haired man, her father, who first made a bow full of
+old-fashioned dignity and then gave Pavel's cold hand a doddering grasp.
+
+"So you have really come for that express purpose?" Pani Oginska
+resumed, while a servant was relieving the newcomer of his fur-lined
+coat, fur cap, heavy gloves, muffler and storm shoes. "A case of
+compunction, I suppose?"
+
+Her father followed them as far as the open door of a vast, plainly
+furnished parlour, and after looming on the threshold for a minute or
+two, in an attitude of pained dignity, he bowed himself away. Pani
+Oginska gently pressed the young man into a huge, rusty easy-chair, she
+herself remaining in a standing posture, her mind apparently divided
+between hospitality and an important errand upon which she seemed to
+have been bent when he arrived. She wore a furred jacket, her head in a
+grey shawl and her feet in heavy top-boots--a costume jarringly out of
+accord with her pale, delicate, nunnish face. She made quite a new
+impression on the young prince.
+
+"I was blind then," he began, when they were left alone. "My eyes were
+closed."
+
+"Oh, you needn't go into detail," she rejoined with an amused look. "I
+think I can guess how it has come about. You have caught the contagion,
+haven't you?"
+
+"Why call it 'contagion?' It's the truth; it's justice. If I hadn't been
+such a silly boy when I first had the pleasure of meeting you, I should
+certainly not have acted the way I did."
+
+"A boy? And what are you now, pray? An old man with the weight of
+experience on your shoulders?" she asked with motherly gaiety. "Well,
+we'll talk it over later on, or, indeed, we'll find better things to
+talk about; and meanwhile I want you to excuse me, prince, and make
+yourself comfortable without me. You are hungry, of course?"
+
+"Not at all. I had luncheon at the station."
+
+"Well, you shall have some refreshments at any rate, and by and by I
+shall be back. I am a rather busy woman, you see. I have to be my own
+manager, and there are a thousand and one things to look after, and the
+snow is rather deep"--pointing at her heavy boots. "Well, here are some
+books and magazines. _Au revoir._" She made for the door, but faced
+about again. "By the way, prince, does your mother know of this crazy
+trip of yours?"
+
+"I confess she does not," he answered, feeling helplessly like a boy.
+"Why?"
+
+"Why! Because she is the best woman in the world, and because it's too
+bad you did anything so foolish without letting her know at least. By
+the way, this is anything but a desirable place for a young man to
+visit. Since my son got into trouble the police have tried to keep an
+eye on us; but then the police are so stupid. Still, I am sorry you
+didn't first consult your mother. If you boys would only let yourselves
+be guided by your mothers you would be spared many a trouble."
+
+"Is that the prime object of life--to guard against harm to oneself?"
+Pavel protested.
+
+She fixed him with a look of amusement, and then remarked sadly: "You
+_have_ caught the contagion, poor thing. I'll write your mother about
+it. Let her put a stop to it if it isn't too late."
+
+He took fire. "I don't know what you are hinting at, Madame Oginska," he
+said. Asking her to introduce him to Nihilists seemed out of the
+question.
+
+"I am hinting at those 'circles,' prince. You probably belong to one of
+them; that's what I am hinting at. Don't you, now?"
+
+"I don't belong to any circles. Nor do I know what you mean, madame."
+
+"Well, well. You have come to ask me not to be offended with you, and
+now it seems to be my turn to ask you not to be angry with me. Don't be
+uneasy, prince. I shan't write to your mother. Indeed, she couldn't
+afford to be in correspondence with me at all. However, if you really
+aren't yet mixed up in those dreadful things"--there was a dubious
+twinkle in her eye--"you had better keep out of them in the future, too.
+Think of your charming mother and take care of yourself, prince. Well, I
+have got to go. It's barbaric of me to leave you, but I'll soon be back.
+Here are some books and magazines. Or wait, I have another occupation
+for you. I want you to meet the best Jew in the world. I want you to
+examine him in 'Gentile lore,' as his people would put it. They would
+kill me, his people, if they knew he came to read my 'Gentile books.'"
+
+"He is a brainy fellow," she went on, leading the way through a
+labyrinth of rooms and corridors, "chockful of that Talmud of theirs,
+don't you know. Now that he is married they are trying to make a
+business man of him, but he prefers worldly wisdom and that sort of
+thing. I let him use my library, the only place he has for his 'unholy'
+studies, in fact. He is supposed to come on business here. He lives in a
+small town a mile from here."
+
+She was speaking in Russian now, a language she had perfect command of,
+but which she spoke with a strong Polish accent, making it sound to
+Pavel as though she was declaiming poetry. Twelve years ago, before she
+inherited this estate, and when she still lived in Poland, her
+birthplace, she could scarcely speak it at all.
+
+She took him into a room whose walls were lined with books, mostly old
+and worn, and whose two windows looked out upon a frozen pond in front
+of a snow-covered clump of trees.
+
+"Monsieur Parmet, Prince Boulatoff," she said, as a man sprang to his
+feet with the air of one startled from mental absorption. He was of
+strong, ungainly build, with the peculiar stamp of rabbinical
+scholarship on a plump, dark-bearded face. "See how much he knows,
+prince. He thinks he can take the examination for a certificate of
+maturity and enter the university. But then he thinks he knows
+everything." With this she left them to themselves.
+
+Pavel was in a whirl of embarrassment and annoyance, but the abashed
+smile of the other mollified him. "What I need more than anything else
+is to be examined in Latin and Greek," Parmet said. "I haven't had my
+exercises looked over for a long time, and it may be all wrong for all I
+know." His Russian had a Yiddish accent. He spoke in low, purring tones
+that seemed to soften the heavy outline of his figure. He was a
+lumbering mass of physical strength, one of those bearlike giants whom
+village people will describe as bending horseshoes like so many blades
+of grass or driving nails into a wall with their bare knuckles for a
+hammer. His dark-brown eyes shone meekly.
+
+"Have you learned it all by yourself?" Pavel asked.
+
+"Not altogether."
+
+Pavel began with an air of lofty reluctance, but he was soon carried
+away by the niceties of the ancient syntax, and his stiffness melted
+into didactic animation. As to Parmet, his plump, dark face was an image
+of religious ecstasy. Pavel warmed to him. His Talmudic gestures and
+intonation amused him.
+
+"There's no trouble about your Latin," he said, familiarly; "no trouble
+whatever."
+
+"Isn't there? It was Pani Oginska's son who gave me the first start,"
+the other said, blissfully, uttering the name in a lowered voice. "If it
+had not been for him I should still be immersed in the depths of
+darkness."
+
+"'Immersed in the depths of darkness!' There is a phrase for you! Why
+should you use high-flown language like that?"
+
+Parmet smiled, shrugging his shoulders bashfully. "Will you kindly try
+me on Greek now?" he said.
+
+"One second. That must have been quite a little while ago when Pani
+Oginska's son taught you, wasn't it?"
+
+Parmet tiptoed over to the open door, closed it, tiptoed back and said:
+"Not quite two years. If you knew what a man of gold he was! They are
+slowly killing him, the murderers. And why? What had he done? He could
+not harm a fly. He is all goodness, an angel like his mother. He was of
+delicate health when they took him, and now he is melting like a
+candle. Why, oh why, should men like him have to perish that way?"
+
+"Isn't it rather risky for you to be coming here?" Pavel demanded,
+looking him over curiously.
+
+Parmet smiled, a queer, outlandish smile, at once na�ve and knowing, as
+he replied:
+
+"Risky? No. What does an old-fashioned Jew like myself care about
+politics? I am supposed to come here on business. Did you know Eugene?"
+
+"Who is Eugene? Pani Oginska's son?"
+
+"Yes. I thought you knew him."
+
+"I wish I had. People like him are the only ones worth knowing. Most of
+the others are scoundrels, humbugs, cold-blooded egoists; that's what
+they are."
+
+So talking, they gradually confided to each other the story of their
+respective conversions and tribulations. Parmet followed the prince's
+tale first with a look of childlike curiosity and then with an air that
+betrayed emotion. As he listened he kept rubbing his hand nervously.
+When Pavel had concluded, the Jew took to tiptoeing up and down the
+room, stopped in front of him and said, with great ardour:
+
+"Don't grieve, my dear man. I may be able to help you. I know a friend
+of Eugene's who could put you in touch with the proper persons."
+
+"Is he in St. Petersburg?"
+
+"No, but that's no matter. He can arrange it. He knows somebody there.
+I'll see him as soon as I can, even if I have to travel many miles for
+it."
+
+Pavel grasped his hand silently.
+
+"Well," the other said. "There was a time when I thought every Christian
+hard-hearted and cruel. Now I am ashamed of myself for having harboured
+such ideas in my mind. Every Christian whose acquaintance I happen to
+make turns out to be an angel rather than a human being."
+
+"Why these compliments?" Pavel snarled. "Most of the Christians I know
+are knaves. The whole world is made up of knaves for that matter."
+
+When Pani Oginska came home and saw them together, she said:
+
+"I knew I should find you two making love to each other."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A month or two after Pavel's return to St. Petersburg a tall blond young
+man with typical Great-Russian features looked him up at the university.
+
+"I have received word from the south about you," he said, without
+introducing himself.
+
+"I am pleased to meet you," Pavel returned gruffly, "but I hope I won't
+be kept on probation and be subjected to all sorts of humiliations."
+
+"Why, why," the other said, in confusion. "I'll be glad to let you have
+any kind of literature there is and to introduce you to other comrades.
+That's why I have been looking for you. Why should you take it that
+way?"
+
+Pavel's face broke into a smile. "Dashed if I know why I should.
+Something possessed me to put on a harsh front. It was mere parading, I
+suppose. Don't mind it. What shall I call you?"
+
+"Why--er--oh, call me anything," the other answered, colouring.
+
+"Very well, then. I'll call you Peter; or no, will 'godfather' do? That
+is, provided you are really going to be one to me," Pavel said, in a
+vain struggle to suppress his exultation.
+
+"It'll be all right," his new acquaintance replied with bashful ardour.
+
+"Godfather, then?"
+
+Godfather introduced him to several other "radicals," who gave him
+underground prints and a list of legitimate books for a course of
+"serious" reading. He would stay at home a whole week at a time without
+dressing or going down for his meals, perusing volume after volume,
+paper after paper. When he did dress and go out it was to get more books
+or to seek answers to the questions which disturbed his peace. He was in
+a state of vernal agitation, in a fever of lofty impulses. And so much
+like a conspirator did he feel by now, that he no longer even thought of
+opening his mind to his mother. Indeed, the change that had come over
+him was so complete that she was not likely to understand him if he had.
+To drive her to despair seemed to be the only result he could expect of
+such a confession. The secret movement appealed to him as a host of
+saints. He longed to be one of them, to be martyred with them. It was
+clear to him that some day he would die for the Russian people; die a
+slow, a terrible death; and this slow, terrible death impressed him as
+the highest pinnacle of happiness.
+
+When his mother came to see him, a year later, she thought he was in
+love.
+
+He was in the thick of the movement by that time. He was learning
+shoemaking with a view to settling in a village. He would earn his
+livelihood in the sweat of his brow, and he would carry the light of his
+lofty ideas into the hovels of the suffering peasantry. But his plans in
+this direction were never realized. The period of "going to the people"
+soon came to an end.
+
+The mothlike self-immolation of university students continued, but the
+spirit of unresisting martyrdom could not last. Violence was bound to
+result from it.
+
+The next year saw the celebrated "trial of 193," mostly college men and
+college women. They were charged with political propaganda, and the bold
+stand they took thrilled the country. The actual number tried was,
+indeed, much less than 193, for of those who had been kept in prison in
+connection with that case as many as seventy had perished in their cold,
+damp cells while waiting to be arraigned. Of those who were tried many
+were acquitted, but instead of regaining their liberty a large number of
+these were transported to Siberia "by administrative order." Moreover,
+hundreds of people were slowly killed in the dungeons or exiled to
+Siberia without any process of law whatsoever. School children were
+buried in these consumption breeding cells; whole families were ruined
+because one of their members was accused of reading a socialist
+pamphlet. Student girls were subjected to indignities by dissolute
+officials--all "by administrative order."
+
+The Russian penal code imposes the same penalty for disfiguring the eyes
+of an imperial portrait as it does for blinding a live subject of the
+Czar. But political suspects were tortured without regard even to this
+code.
+
+It gradually dawned upon the propagandists that instead of being
+decimated in a fruitless attempt to get at the common people they should
+first devote themselves to an effort in the direction of free speech. By
+a series of bold attacks it was expected to extort the desired reforms
+from the government. Nothing was lawless, so it was argued, when
+directed, in self-defence, against the representatives of a system that
+was the embodiment of bloodthirsty lawlessness.
+
+Thus peaceful missionaries became Terrorists. The government inaugurated
+a system of promiscuous executions; the once unresisting propagandists
+retaliated by assassination after assassination. Socialists were hanged
+for disseminating their ideas or for resisting arrest; high officials
+were stabbed or shot down for the bloodthirsty cruelty with which they
+fought the movement; and finally a series of plots was inaugurated
+aiming at the life of the emperor himself.
+
+The White Terror of the throne was met by the Red Terror of the
+Revolution.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+A MEETING ON NEW TERMS.
+
+
+It was an evening in the spring, 1879. The parlour of a wealthy young
+engineer in Kharkoff--a slender little man with eyelids that looked
+swollen and a mouth that was usually half-open, giving him a drowsy
+appearance--was filled with Nihilists come to hear "an important man
+from St. Petersburg." The governor of the province had recently been
+killed for the maltreatment of political prisoners and students of the
+local university, while a month later a bold attempt had been made on
+the life of the Czar at the capital. The new phase of the movement was
+asserting itself with greater and greater emphasis, and the address by
+the stranger, who was no other than Pavel Boulatoff, though he was known
+here as Nikolai, was awaited with thrills of impatience.
+
+The room was fairly crowded and the speaker of the evening was on hand,
+but the managers of the gathering were waiting for several more
+listeners. When two of these arrived, one of them proved to be Elkin. He
+and Pavel had not met since their graduation from the Miroslav
+gymnasium. Both wore scant growths of beard and both looked considerably
+changed, though Pavel was still slim and boyish of figure and Elkin's
+face as an�mic and chalk-coloured as it had been four years ago. Elkin
+had been expelled from the University for signing some sort of
+petition. Since then he had nominally been engaged in revolutionary
+business. In reality he spent his nights in gossip and tea-drinking, and
+his days in sleep. Too proud to sponge on his Nihilist friends for more
+than tea and bread and an occasional cutlet, and too lazy to give
+lessons, he was growing ever thinner and lazier. He was a man of
+spotless honesty, overflowing with venom, yet endowed with a certain
+kind of magnetism.
+
+When Elkin discovered who the important revolutionist from St.
+Petersburg was the blood rushed to his face. It was a most disagreeable
+surprise. But Pavel greeted him with a cordiality so free from
+consciousness, and his roaring laughter, as he compared the
+circumstances of their last quarrel and those that surrounded their
+present meeting, was so hearty that Elkin's hostility gave way to a
+feeling of elation at being so well received by the lion of the evening.
+He was one of the rank and file of the local "Circles," and the
+prominence into which Pavel's attention brought him at this meeting, in
+the presence of several of his chums, gave him a sense of promotion and
+triumph. He wished he could whisper into the ear of everybody present
+that this important revolutionist who was known to the gathering as
+Nikolai was Prince Boulatoff.
+
+"I am still in the dark as to the identity of that girl," said Pavel.
+
+"I shouldn't keep it from you now," the other returned, exposing an
+exultant lozenge of white teeth. "Next time we meet in Miroslav I shall
+look her up and introduce you to her. I have not seen her for a long
+time. She is quite an interesting specimen."
+
+"I should like to meet her very much," Pavel said earnestly. "I have
+been wanting to know something about her all along. You see, if there
+were a circle in that blessed out-of-the-way town of ours one might be
+able to find out things, but if there is I have not seen anybody who
+knows of its existence. I myself have not been there for two years."
+
+"I was there last summer. There is a small circle there. At least there
+are several people who get things through me, but that girl I have not
+seen for a long time."
+
+"Is it possible? Can it be that you have not tried to get her in?
+Really, a Miroslav circle without her seems like Hamlet without the
+Prince of Denmark."
+
+"Yes, she is a lass with some grit to her, and with brains too."
+
+"If she is, we ought to get her in. We ought to get her in."
+
+"She was only sixteen when that affair happened."
+
+"Was she? Well, you wouldn't believe it, but my curiosity about that
+girl has been smouldering ever since. If it were not for her and for
+poor Pievakin I might not be in the movement now."
+
+"I see. It needed a little girl to make a convert of a great man like
+you. Well, well. That's interesting," Elkin remarked, with a
+lozenge-shaped sneer; but he hastened to atone for it by adding,
+ardently: "You're right. She should be in the circle. I'll make it my
+business to see her next time I am there. I'll go there on purpose, in
+fact."
+
+He was always trying to be clever, for the most part with venom in his
+attempts. Friend or foe, whatever humour was his was habitually coloured
+by an impulse to sting. "For the sake of a pretty word he would not
+spare his own father," as a Russian proverb phrases it, and his pretty
+words or puns were usually tinctured with malice.
+
+He painted the Miroslav girl in the most attractive colours. It gave
+him a peculiar satisfaction to whet Pavel's curiosity and to be able to
+say mutely: "Indeed, she is even more interesting than you suppose, yet
+while you are so crazy to know her, I, who do know her, have not even
+thought of getting her into my Circle."
+
+When Pavel was making his speech Elkin, whose natural inclination was to
+disapprove, listened with an air of patronising concurrence. Pavel's
+oratory was of the unsophisticated, "hammer-and-tongs," fiery type, yet
+its general effect, especially when he assailed existing conditions, was
+one of complaint. In spite of the full-throated buzz of his voice and
+the ferocious rush of his words, he conveyed the impression of a
+schoolboy laying his grievance before his mother.
+
+Before he took leave from his former classmate the two had another talk
+of the "heroine of the Pievakin demonstration." It was Elkin who brought
+up the subject, which took them back to the time when, from a Nihilist
+point of view, he was Pavel's superior. He found him a ready listener.
+The student girls of the secret movement, their devotion to the cause,
+their pluck, the inhuman sufferings which the government inflicted on
+those of them who fell into its hands,--all this was the aureole of
+Pavel's ecstasy. His heart had remained spotless, the wild oats he had
+sown during the first weeks of his stay in the capital notwithstanding.
+The word Woman would fill him with tender whisperings of a felicity
+hallowed by joint sacrifices, of love crowned with martyrdom, and it was
+part of the soliloquies which the sex would breathe into his soul to
+tell himself that he owned his conversion to a girl. But these were
+sentimentalities of which the Spartan traditions of the underground
+movement had taught him to be ashamed. Moreover, there was really no
+time for such things.
+
+During the following summer and fall mines were laid in several places
+under railway tracks over which the Emperor was expected to pass. The
+revolutionists missed their aim, but the Czar's narrow escape, coupled
+with the gigantic scope of the manifold plot, with the skill and the
+boldness it implied, and with the fact that the digging of these
+subterranean passages had gone on for months without attracting notice,
+made a profound impression. Such a display of energy and dexterity on
+the part of natives in a country where one was accustomed to trace every
+bit of enterprise to some foreign agency, could not but produce a
+fascinating effect. The gendarmes were apparently no match for the
+Nihilists.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+"TERRORISM WITHOUT VIOLENCE."
+
+
+One afternoon, in December of the same year, Pavel sat in a student
+restaurant, in the capital, eating fried steak and watching the door for
+a man with whom he had an appointment. He ate without appetite and
+looked fatigued and overworked. He had been out from an early hour,
+bustling about on perilous business and dodging spies. It was extremely
+exhausting and enervating, this prowling about under the perpetual
+strain of danger. He was liable to be arrested at any moment. It was
+like living continually under fire.
+
+The restaurant was full of cigarette smoke and noise. Somebody in the
+rear of Pavel, who evidently had nothing to say, was addressing somebody
+else in high-flown Russian and with great gusto. His fine resonant
+voice, of which he was apparently conscious, jarred on Pavel's nerves,
+interfering with what little relish he had for his meal. He was eyeing
+the design on the frost-covered door-glass and lashing himself into a
+fury over the invisible man's phrase-mongery, when he was accosted by a
+fair-complexioned young woman:
+
+"Pardon me, but if I am not mistaken you are Prince Boulatoff?"
+
+"That's my name. And with whom have I the pleasure----?"
+
+"Oh, that would really be uninteresting to know. I'll tell you, though,
+that I belong to Miroslav."
+
+He reluctantly invited her to a glass of tea, which she accepted,
+saying: "It may look as if I were forcing myself upon your acquaintance,
+prince, but I really could not help it. Whatever comes from Miroslav is
+irresistible to me." And talking rapidly in effervescent, choking
+sentences, she told him that her name was Maria Andreevna Safonova
+(Safonoff), that she was a student at the Bestusheff Women's College and
+that her brother was a major of gendarmes.
+
+Pavel had heard of there being a daughter or a sister of a Miroslav
+gendarme officer at the Bestusheff College; also that she made a
+favourable impression on her classmates; but he had been too busy to
+give the information more than passing notice.
+
+"Is your brother in Miroslav?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, and I can assure you he is a gentleman, even if he is in the
+gendarme service. Some day, I hope, he'll give it up. He is really too
+good to be in the business."
+
+Pavel ascribed her ebullition to the nature of the subject, but he soon
+found that she was in the same state of excitement when a railroad
+ticket was the topic. She looked twenty-three but she had the cheeks and
+eyes of a chubby infant, while her arms and figure had the lank,
+immature effect of a girl of thirteen.
+
+While they sat talking, a dark man in the military uniform of the
+Medico-Surgical Academy entered the caf�. It was Parmet, the man Pavel
+was waiting for. Finding him engaged, the newcomer passed his table
+without greeting him, took a seat in a remote corner and buried himself
+in a book.
+
+Mlle. Safonoff did all the talking. She had not sat at Boulatoff's
+table half an hour nor said much about Miroslav before she had poured
+out some of her most intimate thoughts to him.
+
+"If you think it a pleasure to be the sister of a gendarme officer you
+are mistaken," she said. "It is not agreeable to be treated by everybody
+as though you had been put at the college to spy upon the girls, is it?
+My brother is a better man than the brothers and fathers and
+grandfathers of all the other student-girls put together, I assure you,
+prince. But then, of course, you may think I'm trying to spy on you,
+too."
+
+"No, I don't," said Boulatoff with a laugh, pricking up his ears.
+
+"Don't you, really?" And her eyes bubbled.
+
+"Of course, I don't."
+
+"Oh, if you knew how good he is, my brother. Do you remember the time
+when poor Pievakin left Miroslav? I know you do. You were in the eighth
+class then. Well, I may as well tell you, prince"--she lowered her
+voice--"had it not been for my brother there would have been no end of
+arrests at the railroad station. He simply told his men not to make a
+fuss. You see, I can confide in you without hesitation, for who would
+suspect a Boulatoff of--pardon the word--spying? But I, why, I am the
+sister of a gendarme officer, so it is quite natural to suppose, and so
+forth and so on, don't you know."
+
+"Do you know the girl who made that speech?"
+
+"There you are," she said dolefully. "I happened to be at the other end
+of the room just then. When I tried to find out who she was everybody
+was mum. Fancy, my best girl-friend said to me: 'If I were you, Masha, I
+shouldn't want to know her name if I could. Suppose you utter it in
+sleep and your brother overhears you.' The idiots! They didn't know it
+was my brother who saved that girl from being arrested. And, by the way,
+if she had been arrested by some of his men, it would not have been hard
+for her to escape. I know I am saying more than I should, but I really
+can't help it. You have no idea how I feel about these things. And now,
+at the sight of you, prince--a man from Miroslav--I seem to be going to
+pieces altogether. Well, I don't mean, though, that my brother would
+have let her escape. But then I have an aunt, who is related to the
+warden of the Miroslav prison by marriage, so she can arrange things
+there. Oh, she's the greatest revolutionist you ever saw. Of course, I
+don't know whether you sympathise with these things, prince, but I'll
+tell you frankly, _I_ do. It was that aunt of mine who talked it into
+me. She is simply crazy to do something. She is sorry there are no
+political prisoners in Miroslav. If there were she would get them out.
+She's just itching for a chance to do something of that sort. And yet
+she never met a revolutionist in her life, nor saw a scrap of
+underground paper."
+
+To question the ingenuousness of this gush seemed to be the rankest
+absurdity. The Russian spies of the period were poor actors. Pavel was
+seized by a desire to show her that he, at least, did not suspect her of
+spying, and quite forgetting to restrain the "idiotic breadth" of his
+Russian nature for which he was often rebuked by a certain member of the
+revolutionary Executive Committee who was forever berating his comrades
+for their insufficient caution, he slipped a crisp copy of the _Will of
+the People_ into her hand.
+
+"Put it into your muff," he said.
+
+The colour surged into her chubby face. Her whole figure seemed tense
+with sudden excitement, as though the fine glossy paper in her hand
+were charged with electricity.
+
+"How shall I thank you?" she gasped.
+
+Pavel saw a moist glitter in her eyes, and as he got up, his slender
+erect little frame, too, seemed charged with electricity. When she had
+gone he asked himself whether it had not all been acting, after all. He
+cursed himself for his imprudence, but he said: "Oh, well, what must be
+will be," and as usual the phrase acted like an effectual incantation on
+his frame of mind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Parmet had been dubbed Bismarck, because he bore considerable
+resemblance to Gambetta. Another nickname, one which he had invented
+himself, on a similar theory of contrasts, was Makar. Makar was as
+typically Slavic as his face was Semitic. His military uniform, which he
+had to wear because his Academy was under the auspices of the War
+Department, ill became him. Instead of concealing the rabbinical
+expression of his face, it emphasised it. When they came out of the
+restaurant, a man, shouldering a stick, was running along the
+snow-covered pavement, lighting the street-lamps, as though in dread of
+being forestalled by somebody.
+
+"Guess who that girl is," Pavel said.
+
+"Have I heard of her?"
+
+"No. Quite an amusing sort of a damsel. Seething and steaming for all
+the world like a samovar. You should have seen her calflike ecstasy when
+I handed her something to read. I was afraid she was going to have a
+fit."
+
+Makar trotted silently on, continually curling himself in his wretched
+grey cloak and striking one foot against the other, to knock the caked
+drab-coloured snow off his boots. Pavel wore a new furred coat.
+
+"She may be useful though," Pavel resumed, after a pause. "That is,
+provided she is all she seems to be. Her brother is a gendarme major.
+What do you think of that?"
+
+"Is he?" Makar asked, looking up at his companion in beatific surprise.
+
+"Yes, and she says he's a good fellow, too. Of course, she's quite a
+full-fledged ninny herself, and ought to be taken with a carload of
+salt, but she referred to some facts with which I happen to be
+familiar." While he was describing the girl's aunt, a passing soldier
+saluted Makar, mistaking him for an army officer. Makar, however, was
+too absorbed in his companion's talk to be aware of what was going on
+about him. Pavel shrieked with laughter. "He must be a pretty raw sort
+of recruit to take _you_ for a warrior," he said. When he had finished
+his sketch of the woman who was longing to set somebody free, the
+medical student paused in the middle of the sidewalk.
+
+"Why, she's a godsend, then," he said.
+
+"Moderate your passions, Mr. Army Officer," Pavel said languidly,
+mocking his old gymnasium director. "If she does not turn out to be a
+spy we'll see what we can do with her. She strikes me rather favourably,
+though."
+
+"Why, you oughtn't to neglect her, Pasha. If I were you I would lose no
+time in making her brother's acquaintance. Think of the possibilities of
+it!"
+
+"Bridle your exuberance, young man. Her brother lives many miles from
+here. He is on the hunt for sedition in the most provincial of
+provinces. Want to make a Terrorist of him? Go ahead. He lives in
+Miroslav. There."
+
+"In Miroslav!" Makar echoed, with pride in the capital of his native
+province.
+
+Presently they entered a courtyard and took to climbing a steep stony
+staircase. Strong, inviting odours of cabbage soup and cooked meat
+greeted them at several of the landings. Makar's lodging was on the
+sixth floor. He had moved in only a few days ago and the chief object of
+Pavel's visit was to make a mental note of its location.
+
+The first thing Makar did as he got into the room was to put a pitcher
+on one of his two windows. The windows commanded a little side street,
+and the pitcher was Makar's safety signal. When he had lit his lamp a
+sofa, freshly covered with green oil-cloth, proved to be the best piece
+of furniture in the room, the smell of the oil-cloth mingling with the
+stale odours of tobacco smoke with which the very walls seemed to be
+saturated.
+
+"Ugh, what a room!" Pavel said, sniffing. They talked of a revolutionist
+who had recently been arrested and to whom they referred as "Alexandre."
+Special importance was attached by the authorities to the capture of
+this man, because among the things found at his lodgings was a diagram
+of the Winter Palace with a pencil mark on the imperial dining hall. As
+the prisoner was a conspicuous member of the Terrorists' Executive
+Committee, the natural inference was that another bold plot was under
+way, one which had something to do with the Czar's dining room, but
+which had apparently been frustrated by the discovery of the diagram.
+The palace guard was strongly re-enforced and every precaution was taken
+to insure the monarch's safety. Now, the Terrorists had their man in the
+very heart of the enemy's camp, and the result of the search of
+Alexandre's lodgings was no secret to them. This revolutionist, whose
+gloomy face was out of keeping with his carefully pomaded hair, kid
+gloves, silk hat, showy clothes and carefully trimmed whiskers � la
+Alexander II., was known to Makar as "the Dandy." Less than a year
+before he had obtained a position in the double capacity of spy and
+clerk, at the Third Section of his Majesty's Own Office, and so liked
+was he by his superiors that he had soon been made private secretary to
+the head of the secret service, every document of importance passing
+through his hands. Since then he had been communicating to the Executive
+Committee, now a list of new suspects, now the details of a contemplated
+arrest, now a copy of some secret circular to the gendarme offices of
+the empire.
+
+While they were thus conversing of Alexandre and the Dandy, Pavel
+stretched himself full length on the sofa and dozed off. When he opened
+his eyes, about two hours later, he found Parmet tiptoeing awkwardly up
+and down the room, his shadow a gigantic crab on the wall. Pavel broke
+into a boisterous peal of laughter.
+
+"Here is a figure for you! All that is needed is an artist to set to
+work and paint it."
+
+"Are you awake? Look here, Pasha. Your gendarme's sister and her aunt
+are haunting my mind."
+
+"Why, why, have you fallen in love with both of them at once?" Pavel
+asked as he jumped to his feet and shot his arms toward the ceiling. He
+looked refreshed and full of animal spirits.
+
+"Stop joking, Pasha, pray," Makar said in his purring, mellifluous
+voice. "It irritates me. It's a serious matter I want to speak to you
+about, and here you are bent upon fun." Pavel's story of the gendarme
+officer's sister had stirred in him visions of a mighty system of
+counter-espionage. He had a definite scheme to propose.
+
+Pavel found it difficult to work himself out of his playful mood until
+Makar fell silent and took to pacing the floor resentfully. When he had
+desisted, with a final guffaw over Makar's forlorn air, the medical
+student, warming up to fresh enthusiasm, said:
+
+"Well, to let that prison stand idle would be criminal negligence. That
+girl's aunt must be given a chance."
+
+"What's that?" Pavel said, relapsing into horseplay. "Do you want
+somebody nabbed on purpose to give a bored lady something to excite her
+nerves?" He finished the interrogation rather limply. It flashed upon
+him that what Makar was really aiming at was that some revolutionist
+should volunteer to be arrested on a denunciation from the Dandy or some
+other member of the party with a view to strengthening its position in
+the Third Section.
+
+Makar went on to plead for an organised effort to get into the various
+gendarme offices.
+
+"It is a terrible struggle we are in, Pasha. Our best men fall before
+they have time to turn round. If we had more revolutionists on the other
+side, Alexandre might be a free man now."
+
+"Well, and sooner or later you and I will be where he is now and be
+plunged into the sleep of the righteous, and there won't even be a goat
+to graze at our graves. Let the dead bury the dead, Makashka. We want
+the living for the firing line. We can't afford to let fresh blood turn
+sour in a damp cell, if we can help it."
+
+"But this is 'the firing line'," Makar returned with beseeching, almost
+with tearful emphasis. "If you only gave me a chance to explain myself.
+What I want is to have confusion carried into every branch of the
+government; I want the Czar to be surrounded by a masquerade of enemies,
+so that his henchmen will suspect each other of being either agents of
+the Third Section or revolutionists. Do you see the point? I want the
+Czar to be surrounded by a babel of mistrust and espionage. I want him
+to be dazed, staggered until he succumbs to this nightmare of suspicion
+and hastens to convoke a popular assembly, as Louis XVI. was forced to
+do; I want the inhabitants of our tear-drenched country to be treated
+like human beings without delay. My scheme practically amounts to a
+system or terrorism without violence, and I insist that one good man in
+the enemy's camp is of more value than the death of ten spies." His low,
+velvety voice rang clear, tremulous with pleading fervour; his face
+gleamed with an intellectual relish in his formula of the plan. As he
+spoke, he was twisting his mighty fist, opening and closing it again,
+Talmud-fashion, in unison with the rhythm of his sentences.
+
+Ejaculations like "visionary!" "phrase-maker!" were on the tip of
+Pavel's tongue, but he had not the heart to utter them. Aerial as the
+scheme was, Makar's plea had cast a certain spell over him. It was like
+listening to a beautiful piece of mythology.
+
+"Let us form a special force of men ready to go to prison, to be
+destroyed, if need be," Makar went on. "The loss of one man would mean,
+in each case, the saving of twenty. Think how many important comrades a
+single leak in the Third Section has saved us. It's a matter of plain
+arithmetic."
+
+"Of plain insanity," Pavel finally broke in.
+
+"Don't get excited, Pasha, pray. Can't you let me finish? If I am wrong
+you'll have plenty of time to prove it."
+
+His purring Talmudic voice and the smell of the fresh oil-cloth were
+unbearable to Pavel now.
+
+"It's like this," Makar resumed. "In the first place [he bent down his
+little finger] every honest man is sure to be arrested some day, and
+what difference does it make whether the end comes a few months sooner
+or a few months later? In the second place [he bent down the next
+finger] there must be some more people like that girl's aunt. It is
+quite possible that most of those who would be arrested on this plan
+would get out, and that itself would be a good thing, for it would add
+to the prestige of the party. Everything that reveals the weakness of
+the government on the one hand, and the cleverness and daring of our
+people on the other, is good for the cause. Every success scored by the
+'Will of the People' is a step in the direction of that for which men
+like yourself are staking their lives, Pasha. Don't interrupt me, pray.
+I'll go a step further. I am of the opinion that under certain
+conditions, where an escape is assured, it wouldn't be a bad idea to let
+one's self be arrested just in order to add another name to the list of
+political gaol-breakers, that is to say, to the list of the government's
+fiascos. Every little counts. Every straw increases that weight which
+will finally break the back of Russia's despot."
+
+"Do you really mean what you say, Makar? Do you actually want to be
+arrested?" Pavel asked.
+
+"Not at all. All I want is that another good man should gain the
+confidence of the Third Section and that another political prisoner
+should escape."
+
+"And what if all Mlle. Safonoff says turns out to be as idiotic a dream
+as all this tommyrot of yours?"
+
+"'If one is afraid of wolves one had better keep out of the woods.' You,
+yourself, have taken much greater chances than that, Pasha. If I am
+arrested with papers and the worst comes to the worst they won't hang
+me."
+
+"I see you take it seriously after all. Well, if you think I'll let you
+do anything of the kind you are a fool."
+
+"You can't prevent me from doing what I consider to be right. Nor do I
+want anybody else to send the denunciation which is to result in my
+arrest. I'll send it myself. All I want is that somebody should claim
+credit for it afterward, when I am in prison--on that very day, if
+possible. The search and arrest will be ordered from St. Petersburg, and
+then some of our men will say at the Third Section that the anonymous
+letter was his, adding some details about me. Details can be worked out
+later. Where there is a will there is a way. At any rate, I don't expect
+anybody but myself to bear the moral responsibility for my arrest."
+
+He talked on in the same strain until Pavel sprang to his feet, flushed
+with rage. "It's all posing--that's all there's to it!" he shouted. "On
+the surface it means that you are willing to sacrifice yourself without
+even attracting attention, but in reality this subtle modesty of yours
+is only the most elaborate piece of parading that was ever conceived.
+It's love of applause all the way through, and you are willing to stake
+your life on it. That's all there is about it."
+
+Makar grew yellow in the face and sweat broke out on his forehead. "In
+that case, there's no use talking, of course," he said in a very low
+voice. "If I am a humbug I am a humbug."
+
+"And if you are a fool, you are a fool," Pavel rejoined, with a
+conciliatory growl.
+
+"You need not back out, Pasha. Maybe you are right," Makar rejoined.
+"Who is absolutely free from vanity? Human nature is such a complex
+mechanism. One may be governed by love of approbation and, perhaps,
+also, by a certain adventuresome passion for the danger of the thing.
+The great question is whether there is something besides this. No, it is
+not all posing, Pasha. There are moments when I ask myself why I should
+not live as most people do, but I only have to realise all that is going
+on around us; the savage tyranny, the writhing millions, the hunger,
+the bottomless darkness, the unuttered groans,--I only have to think of
+this and of the dear comrades I have known who have been strangled on
+the gallows or are wasting away in the casemates; I need only picture
+all this, I say, to feel that even if there be an alloy of selfishness
+in my revolutionary interests, yet, in the main, it is this sense of the
+Great Wrong which keeps me from nursing my own safety. Do you know that
+the dangling corpses of our comrades are never absent from my mind? I am
+not without a heart, Pasha."
+
+"Nobody says you are, only you are a confounded dreamer, Makashka,"
+Pavel answered. "We have no time for dreams and poetry. Our struggle is
+one of hard, terrible prose."
+
+"You are even more of a dreamer than I, Pasha," Makar retorted,
+blissfully.
+
+When Makar resumed speaking the last echo of resentment was gone from
+his voice. "After all, one gets more than one gives. When I think of the
+moments of joy the movement affords me, of the ties of friendship with
+so many good people--the cream of the generation, the salt of the earth,
+the best children Russia ever gave birth to--when I think of the
+glorious atmosphere that surrounds me, of the divine ecstasy with which
+I view the future; when I recall all this I feel that I get a sort of
+happiness which no Rothschild could buy. To be kept in solitary
+confinement is anything but a pleasure, to be sure, but is there nothing
+to sweeten one's life there? And how about the thought that over yonder,
+outside, there are people who are going on with the struggle and who
+think of you sometimes? Sooner or later the government will yield. And
+then, oh then somebody--some comrade of ours--will throw the cell-door
+open, and I'll join in the celebration of our triumph. Really, Pasha, I
+am strong as a bull, and a few years of confinement would not kill me.
+While some of our people may die by the hand of the hangman, my life
+would be spared. Did you ever stop to think of the time when the cells
+of Siberia and of Peter and Paul are thrown open and one says to the
+immured comrades, 'Out with you, brothers! You're free! The nation is
+free!' Come, another year or two and this will be realised."
+
+"You had better save your sentimentalities for novices," Pavel said.
+"And, by the way, your eloquence is certainly of more use than your
+dreaming in a dungeon would be."
+
+He was arguing with a rock of stiff-necked will-power.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+MAKAR'S CANVASS.
+
+
+Parmet now gave most of his time to the secret movement, making himself
+useful in a variety of ways. His great unrealised ambition, however, was
+to work in an underground printing office--an offence which at the
+period was punished by a long term of penal servitude in Siberia. He had
+a feeling as though nothing one did for the movement could be regarded
+as a vital service to the cause of free speech as long as it fell short
+of typesetting in a secret printing establishment. He had applied for
+work of this kind several times, but his proverbial absent-mindedness
+stood in his way. Being in the habit of reading some book or newspaper
+as he walked through the streets, he would sometimes catch himself
+drinking in the contents of some "underground" publication in this
+manner. Once as he stood on a street corner intent upon a revolutionary
+leaflet, he heard an infuriated whisper:
+
+"Imbecile! Scoundrel!"
+
+When he raised his eyes he saw the ample back of a compactly built man
+dressed in citizen's clothes except for a broad military cap with a red
+band. This was "the Janitor," so nicknamed because he made it his
+business to go the rounds of "conspiracy houses" every morning and to
+pick a quarrel with those of their occupants who had neglected to
+furnish their windows with safety signals or were guilty of some other
+manifestation of "Russian breadth." The episode antedated the above
+conversation between Makar and Pavel by two months, and the medical
+student had not seen the Janitor since. He dreaded to meet him. At this
+minute, however, he was just the man he wanted to see, for it was he who
+had taken the initiative in getting the Dandy into the Third Section.
+Accordingly, Pavel had no sooner left him than he betook himself to a
+place at which he expected to find that revolutionist. The place was the
+lodging of a man who was known in the organisation as Purring Cat--a
+nickname based on his shaggy eyebrows and moustache. His face was almost
+entirely overgrown with hair. Short of stature, with a thick dark beard
+that reached down to his knees and with blue eyes that peered up from
+under his stern eyebrows, this formidable looking little man, the
+nearest approach to the wax-works version of a Russian Nihilist, was the
+gentlest soul on the Executive Committee. Besides Purring Cat and the
+Janitor, Makar found in the room Andrey, an extremely tall man with
+Tartarian features.
+
+The Janitor greeted Makar with a volley of oaths, stuttering as he
+spoke, as was usually the case when he was angry.
+
+"You have no business to be here," he fulminated. "You are just the man
+to bring a spy in tow. I shouldn't be a bit surprised if you had one at
+your heels now."
+
+"Come, don't fume," Makar pleaded, confusedly. "I won't be absent-minded
+any more. I have taken myself in hand. Besides, my absent-mindedness is
+not without its redeeming feature. You see, I am the last man to be
+suspected of being on my guard; so the spies would never bother me."
+
+Andrey and Purring Cat smiled. The Janitor started to do the same, but
+changed his mind. Instead, he broke into a more violent fit of temper
+and a more painful stutter than before. His compact figure was of medium
+height, his face very blond, with prominent eyes and well-trimmed red
+beard. His military cap matched the passport of a retired army officer
+under which he was registered at the police station. He was supposed to
+be employed at some civil tribunal, and every morning, on the stroke of
+eleven he would leave his lodgings, a portfolio under his arm, his
+military cap slightly cocked--the very personification of the part he
+acted. The name in his passport was Polivanoff. His real name was
+Michailoff, and under that name he was wanted by the gendarmes in
+prominent connection with several attempts on the life of the Czar. He
+had once escaped from under arrest and on another occasion he had
+managed to disappear from a railroad train while it was being searched
+for him. He was one of the ablest and bravest men in the party. His
+un-Russian punctuality and indefatigable attention to detail; his
+practical turn of mind and the way he had of nagging his friends for
+their lack of these qualities, were common topics of banter among the
+Terrorists. He had made a special study of every lane and court in the
+capital by which one might "trash" one's trail. He not only shadowed his
+fellow revolutionists to see if they were aware of being shadowed or
+whether they dressed in accordance with the type implied by their false
+passports, but he also made a practice of spying over the spies of the
+Third Section. With this end in view, he had once rented a room across
+the street from that office--an institution that would have given
+millions for his head. Here he would sit for hours at his window,
+scrutinising every new person who entered the building so as to be able
+to keep track of their movements afterward. Having thus discovered a
+boarding house in which lived an important officer of the secret service
+he had sent the Dandy to hire a room there. The desired appointment had
+then been obtained without difficulty.
+
+When Makar had laid the practical part of his scheme before the three
+men, the Janitor fixed his prominent eyes on him and said, without
+stammering:
+
+"And you are just the chap to do it, aren't you?"
+
+"And why not? It certainly doesn't need much adroitness and vigilance to
+get arrested."
+
+"The devil it does not. A fellow like you would get ten men arrested
+before he fooled the measliest cub spy in the Third Section. Better keep
+your hands off."
+
+"Oh, well, if the escape was really a sure thing, the matter might be
+arranged," Purring Cat interposed, charitably, in a low, gentle voice.
+"Only this is scarcely the time for it." Whereupon Makar, feeling
+encouraged, launched out to describe his far-reaching scheme in detail.
+The look of the Janitor's prominent eyes, however, disturbed him, so
+that he expounded the plan in a rather nerveless way; when he had
+finished, the Janitor declared:
+
+"He's certainly crazy."
+
+Purring Cat's blue eyes looked up under their bushy brows, as he said,
+gravely:
+
+"There may be something in it, though, theoretically at least. In
+reality, however, I am afraid that general state of chaos would rebound
+upon ourselves. The government may get its spies into our circles until
+one does not know who is who. It may become a double-edged weapon, this
+'babel of distrust.' As to that prison scheme it might be tried some
+day. Only don't be in a hurry, Makar."
+
+"And what is your opinion?" Makar addressed himself to Andrey
+solicitously.
+
+Andrey who was a man of few words, and spoke with a slight lisp, said he
+had no definite opinion to offer, but, when Makar pressed him hard, he
+said:
+
+"Well, we have one man there" (meaning the Third Section), "so let us
+not make the mistake of the woman who cut her hen open in order to get
+at all her eggs at once. Still, if the scheme could be worked in some of
+the provinces, it might be worth while. It all depends on circumstances,
+of course."
+
+Makar longed to see Sophia, the daughter of the former governor of St.
+Petersburg. She had taken an active part in one of the most daring
+rescues and was celebrated for the ingenuity and motherly devotion with
+which she gave herself to the "Red Cross" work of the party, supplying
+political prisoners with provisions and keeping them in secret
+communication with their relatives. It was the story of this young
+noblewoman's life which afterwards inspired Turgeneff's prose poem, _The
+Threshold_. Makar thought she might take an active interest in his
+scheme, but she was overwhelmed with other work and inaccessible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A DAY UNDERGROUND.
+
+
+About a week had elapsed, when Pavel read in his morning paper of the
+hanging of three revolutionists in Odessa: two Gentiles and a Jew. He
+had never met these men, but he knew that two of them had not been
+implicated in anything more violent than the diffusion of socialist
+ideas. Also that the parents of the one who belonged to the Jewish race
+were under arrest, condemned to be exiled to Siberia for no other crime
+than their having given birth to an enemy of the existing r�gime.
+
+Pavel moved about his room with a sob of helpless fury in his throat. He
+found feverish satisfaction in the thought that he had some chemicals in
+his overcoat which he was to carry to the dynamite shop of the
+Terrorists. The explosives to be made from it were intended for a new
+attempt upon the life of the Emperor. Not being directly connected with
+the contemplated attack, neither he nor the dynamite makers of the
+organisation had any clear idea about the plot, which was in the hands
+of a special sub-committee, Alexandre's place having been taken by
+another man; but he did know that preparations were under way in the
+Winter Palace.
+
+The dynamite shop was kept by a woman with a deep-chested, almost
+masculine voice, and a man with a squeaky feminine one. They were
+registered as man and wife. She was the daughter of a priest, but she
+looked like a woman of the people and dressed like one--a thick-set
+extremely blonde young woman with coarse yet pleasing features. Her
+revolutionary name was Baska. Her fictitious husband, who was one of the
+chemists of the party, was addressed by the revolutionists as Grisha. He
+had a scholarly face, yet the two had no difficulty in passing among the
+neighbours for a tradesman or shop clerk and his wife. For the greater
+reality of the impersonation and as a special precaution against
+curiosity they made friends with the porter of the house and his wife
+and with the police roundsman of the neighbourhood, often inviting them
+to a glass of vodka. The porter of St. Petersburg, like his brother of
+Paris under the empire, is a political detective "ex-officio." The two
+spies and the police officer were thus turned into unconscious witnesses
+of the young couple's political innocence, for in the first place they
+had many an opportunity to convince themselves that their dwelling was
+free from anything suspicious and, in the second, people who drank vodka
+and went, moreover, on sprees with the house porter, certainly did not
+look like Nihilists.
+
+"Good morning, Pavel," Baska greeted him vivaciously, as she gave his
+hand a hearty squeeze, while her other hand held a smoking cigarette.
+"Just in time! I hate to eat my breakfast all alone. Grisha has another
+bad headache, poor fellow. But I see you, too, have a long face. Where
+did you get it?"
+
+Pavel smiled lugubriously as he handed her the package. He had not the
+heart to disturb her good spirits, and she went on chirping and
+laughing.
+
+Grisha came in, haggard, sickly and trying to smile. The skin of both
+his hands was off. This, like his frequent headaches, was the effect of
+the work he did in these rooms--of inhaling nitroglycerine and kneading
+dynamite with his bare fists.
+
+Baska gayly told how the porter's wife had offered her a salve for her
+"husband," and how the night before, as Grisha was pouring
+nitroglycerine into some dynamite "dough," there was an explosion and
+the house filled with smoke.
+
+"Our next door neighbour knew at once that our kerosene stove exploded
+and set fire to a rag," Baska said with a deep-voiced titter. "She gave
+me quite a lecture on negligence."
+
+"She only wondered why there should be such a strange smell to the
+smoke," Grisha added, his hand to his head.
+
+As Pavel looked at Baska relishing her tea and her muffin and talking
+merrily between gulps, a desire took hold of him to spoil her vivacity.
+It jarred on him to see her enjoy herself while the image of the three
+new gallows was so vivid in his mind.
+
+"You people don't seem to know what's going on in the world," he said
+testily. "They have hanged Malinka, Maidanski and Drobiazgin."
+
+"Have they?" Baska asked paling. She had known two of them personally.
+
+While Pavel took out his newspaper and read the brief despatch, her head
+sank on the table. Her solid frame was convulsed with sobbing.
+
+"Be calm, be calm," Grisha entreated, offering her a glass of water. In
+spite of her excellent physique she was subject to violent hysterical
+fits which were apt to occur at a time when the proffer of neighbourly
+sympathy was least desirable.
+
+She told all she remembered of the executed men, whom she had met in
+the south. But that was not much; so Pavel went to see Purring Cat who,
+being a southerner, had detailed information to give him about the three
+Nihilists. Boulatoff could talk of nothing else that day. When he met
+Makar, in the afternoon, he said:
+
+"People are being strangled right and left and here you are bent on that
+_id�e fixe_ of yours."
+
+"Fine logic, that," Makar replied. "If my _id�e fixe_ had been realised
+a year ago these men would now be free. But this is not the time to talk
+about things of that kind." Instead of mourning the loss of the three
+revolutionists he was in a solemn, religious sort of mood at the thought
+of the new human sacrifices offered on the altar of liberty. He was
+panting to speak about the Jew who had been executed. He was proud of
+the fact that two men of his race had given their lives for the cause
+within five months. The other Jewish revolutionist had been executed in
+Nicolayeff. A letter which he had addressed to the revolutionists a few
+days before his execution, exhorting them not to waste any of the forces
+of the movement on attempts to avenge his death, was enshrined in
+Makar's heart as the most sacred document in the entire literature of
+the struggle. But race pride was contrary to the teachings of the
+movement; so he not only kept these sentiments to himself, but tried to
+suppress them in his own bosom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the evening Pavel took two young cavalry officers of his acquaintance
+to the house of a retired major where a revolutionary meeting was to be
+held. They found the major's drawing room sparkling with military
+uniforms. The gathering was made up of eight officers, two men in
+citizen's clothes, and one woman, the dark long-necked hostess.
+
+Two cheap lithographs, one of General Suvoroff and the other of the
+reigning monarch, occupied the centre of the best wall, in jarring
+disharmony with the refined and somewhat Bohemian character of the rest
+of the room. The two portraits had been put there recently, to bear
+witness to the political "reliability" of the house. The hostess
+presided over a pile of yellow aromatic tobacco, rolling cigarettes for
+her guests and smoking incessantly herself. An idiotic-looking
+man-servant and a peasant girl fresh from the country kept up a supply
+of tea, zwiebacks and preserves. Every time they appeared the hostess,
+whose seat commanded the door, would signal to the company. She did it
+rather perfunctorily, however, the revolutionary discussion proceeding
+undisturbed. The cultured, bookish Russian of the assemblage was Greek
+to the two servants. They talked of the three executions.
+
+Presently two other civilians were announced.
+
+"At last!" the hostess said, getting up from her pile of tobacco in a
+flutter.
+
+The two newcomers were both above medium height, of solid build and
+ruddy-faced; but here their similarity of appearance ceased. One of them
+looked the image of social refinement and elegance, while the clothes
+and general aspect of the other bespoke a citified, prosperous peasant.
+His rough top-boots, the red woolen belt round his coat and the rather
+coarse tint of his florid complexion, like his full Russian beard,
+proclaimed the son of the unenlightened classes. He was taller than his
+companion and remarkably well-built, with a shock of dark brown hair
+thrown back from a high prominent forehead and regular features. He was
+introduced to the gathering as Zachar. He and the stylish-looking man by
+his side whose revolutionary nickname was "My Lord," conveyed the
+effect of a bright, shrewd tradesman and a high-class lawyer bent on
+some legal business.
+
+"If we are late, blame this guide of mine, not me," Zachar said to the
+hostess, in a deep, rather harsh baritone, pointing at his companion.
+"It turned out that he did not know the place very well himself. There
+is a pilot for you." He accepted a glass of tea in a silver holder and
+during the ensuing small talk the room rang with his merriment. His
+jests were commonplace, but his Russian and all he said betrayed the man
+of education. The tradesman's costume was his disguise, and if it became
+him so well it was because his parents were moujiks. Born in serfdom but
+brought up as a nobleman at the expense of his former master, this
+university-bred peasant--a case of extreme rarity--for whom the
+gendarmes were searching in connection with a bold attempt to blow up an
+imperial train, loomed in the minds of the revolutionists as the most
+conspicuous figure of their movement.
+
+"And how is my young philosopher?" he said to Pavel. "I was at your
+place this morning, but found you out, Pasha."
+
+"I'll see you later on," Pavel said dryly. "Philosopher" referred to the
+nature of the studies which Pavel's mother thought him to be pursuing.
+There was a touch of patronage in the way Zachar used the word, and
+Pavel resented it.
+
+As the gathering began to lapse into a graver mood the conversation was
+expectantly left to Zachar, who by degrees accepted the r�le of the
+principal speaker of the evening. That he relished this r�le and was
+fond of a well turned phrase became apparent at once, but the impression
+soon wore off. He compelled attention.
+
+"The practice of nations being inherited like furniture or chickens has
+been out of date for centuries," he said in the course of a ferocious
+attack on the existing adjustment of things. "But our party does not
+demand full justice at once. The Will of the People is not
+inconsiderate. We are willing to project ourselves into the position of
+an old chap with whom the love of power has been bred in the bone. All
+our party does demand, as a first step, is some regard for the rights of
+the individual; of those rights without which the word civilisation is
+of a piece with that puerile sort of hypocrisy as our late war with
+Turkey, when the ambitious old fellow in his unquenchable thirst for
+territory sent his subjects to die for the liberty of Bulgarians so that
+their own children at home might be plunged into more abject slavery
+than ever.
+
+"The government knows, of course, that its days are numbered and that it
+is only cowardice and incapacity for concerted action which make its
+brief respite possible. To retreat honourably, before it is too late, to
+yield to the stern voice of the revolution under some specious
+pretext--this is the step indicated by the political situation, but then
+this is not what the ambitious oldster is after. Is there any wonder he
+has lost his head? So much the better for the revolution. One or two
+decisive blows and the government will topple over. Thanks to the
+splendid army section of the Will of the People, on the one hand, and to
+our powerful Workingmen's Section, on the other, one hundred resolute
+men will be enough to seize the Winter Palace, to cut off all egress,
+arrest the new Czar and, amid the general confusion following the death
+of the old tyrant, proclaim a provisional government. What a glorious
+opportunity to serve one's country!"
+
+His speech lasted an hour and a half. Most of his hearers were recent
+converts, and these the matter-of-fact tone of his utterances took by
+storm. The Third Section had heard of him as an irresistible agitator.
+So he was, and the chief secret of his success lay--despite an effect of
+conscious floridity and bravado--in a sincere depth of conviction
+manifested by a volcanic vehemence of delivery. His speeches took it for
+granted that Russia was at the threshold of a great historical change
+and that his organisation was going to play a leading part in that
+change. He gathered particular assurance from the fact that the "army
+section" that had been formed by his efforts included several officers
+of the court guard whose number he hoped to increase. These court
+officers it was whom his imagination pictured as "cutting off all
+egress" at the Winter Palace. The funds of his party included
+contributions from some high sources. Things seemed to be coming the
+"Will of the People's" way. As he spoke his strong physique seemed to be
+aflame with contagious passion, sweeping along audience and speaker. The
+harshness of his mighty baritone was gone; his peasant face was
+beautiful. Words like "party," "citizen," "National Assembly," are
+winged with the glamour of forbidden fruit in Russia, and when Zachar
+uttered these words, in accents implying that these things were as good
+as realised, his audience was enravished. To all of which, in the
+present instance, should be added the psychological effect of a group of
+dashing army officers, all members of the nobility, reverently listening
+to an address by a peasant. He struck one as a giant of energy and
+courage, of nervous vitality as well as of bodily strength. He had the
+stuff of a political leader in him. Under favourable conditions he would
+have left his mark as one of the strong men of the nineteenth century.
+He carried people along current-fashion rather than magnetised them.
+
+Pavel was the next speaker, but the outraged sense of justice which was
+the keynote of his impassioned plea, coming as it did upon the heels of
+Zachar's peremptory and matter-of-course declarations, sounded out of
+date.
+
+"Oh, it takes an idiot to talk after you, Zachar," he said, breaking off
+in the middle of a sentence. "One feels like being up and doing things,
+not talking. I wonder why we don't start for the Winter Palace, at
+once."
+
+"That's the way I feel, too," chimed in a very young cavalry officer,
+while two older men in brilliant uniforms, were grasping Zachar each by
+one hand. The long-necked hostess was brushing the tears from her eyes
+and calling herself "fool," for joy.
+
+An artillery officer with bad teeth of whom Pavel could not think
+without thinking of the rheumatism of which that revolutionist had once
+complained to him, drew his sword fiercely, the polished steel flaming
+in the bright light of the room, as he said:
+
+"By Jove!"
+
+"Look at him! Look at him!" Zachar shouted.
+
+"Bridle your passions, old boy," Pavel put in.
+
+A minute or two later he called the orator into the next room and handed
+him what looked like a package of tobacco.
+
+Zachar was in high feather over the success of his speech and loath to
+leave the atmosphere of adoration that surrounded him here; but an
+important engagement forced him to take his departure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A quarter of an hour's ride in a tramcar and a short walk through the
+moonlit streets brought him to a deserted corner in the vicinity of the
+Winter Palace, where he was met by a man dressed like an artisan, as
+tall as himself, but slimmer of girth, and the two went on trudging
+along the snow-encrusted sidewalk together. The other man had an
+expressive sickly face which the pallid glare of the moonlight gave a
+ghastly look.
+
+"How is your health?" Zachar asked.
+
+"Bad," the sickly looking man answered, holding out his hand into which
+Zachar put the package of tobacco, saying:
+
+"See if it isn't too heavy for a quarter of a pound."
+
+"It is, rather, but it'll pass," the other replied, weighing the package
+in his hand and then putting it into his pocket. Buried in the tobacco
+was a small quantity of dynamite.
+
+"It's too bad you are not feeling well."
+
+"Yes, my nerves are playing the devil with me. The worst of it is that I
+have got to keep the stuff under my pillow when I sleep. That gives me
+headaches."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder. The evaporations of that stuff do that as a rule.
+But can't you find another place for it?"
+
+"Not for the night. They might go through my trunk then. They are apt to
+come in at any time. Oh, those surprise visits of theirs keep my
+wretched nerves on edge all the time."
+
+While the gendarmerie and the police knew him to be a leader among the
+revolutionary workmen of the capital and were hunting for him all over
+the city, this man, whose name was Stepan Khaltourin, had for the past
+few months been making his home, under the name of Batushkoff, in the
+same building as the Czar, in the Winter Palace, where his work as a
+varnisher was highly valued. He was a self-taught mechanic, unusually
+well-read and clear-headed. Of retiring disposition and a man of few
+words, with an iron will under a bashful and extremely gentle manner,
+he was one of the prominent figures of the Will of the People, having
+been driven to terrorism by the senseless persecutions which he had met
+at the hands of the authorities in his attempts to educate some of his
+fellow-workmen. He now lodged, together with other mechanics, in
+the basement of the Winter Palace, with only one room--the
+guard-room--between the ceiling over his head and the floor of the
+Imperial dining hall. Indeed, the frequent raids which a colonel at the
+head of a group of gendarmes had been making upon that basement since
+the seizure of "Alexandre's" diagram were largely a matter of display
+and red tape. There was more jingling of spurs and flaunting of
+formidable looking moustaches than actual searching or watching. Nowhere
+was the incapacity of Russian officialdom illustrated more glaringly
+than it was in the very home of the Czar. The bold Terrorist for whom
+the police were looking high and low had found little difficulty in
+securing employment here, and one of the first things that had attracted
+his attention in the place was the prevailing state of anarchy and
+demoralisation he found in it. Priceless gems and relics were scattered
+about utterly unguarded; stealing was the common practice of the court
+servants, and orgies at which these regaled their friends from the
+outside world upon wines from the imperial cellars were a nightly
+occurrence. Since Alexandre's arrest the vigilance of the court
+gendarmes had been greatly increased, so that no servant could enter the
+palace without being searched; yet Khaltourin contrived to smuggle in a
+small piece of dynamite every evening, thus gradually accumulating the
+supply that was needed for the terrible work of destruction he was
+preparing.
+
+As to his position within the palace, he played his r�le so well that he
+was the favourite of gendarmes and servants alike, often hearing from
+them stories of the Nihilists and of the great plot to blow up the
+dining hall that was supposed to have been nipped in the bud.
+
+"Well, how is that old gendarme of yours?" Zachar inquired. "Still
+teaching you manners?"
+
+"Yes," Khaltourin answered with a smile. "I am getting sick of his
+attentions, though. But there is something back of them, it appears.
+What do you think he's after? Why, he has a marriageable daughter, so he
+has taken it into his head to make a son-in-law of me."
+
+"Ho-ho-ho-ho!" Zachar exploded, restraining a guffaw.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE CZAR'S ESCAPE.
+
+
+On Tuesday, February 17th, at about six o'clock in the evening, Pavel
+and Makar were sauntering through the streets of the Vassili Island.
+Their conversation languished. While indoors they had had another
+discussion of Makar's scheme, a heart-to-heart talk in which Pavel
+showed signs of yielding; and now that they were out in the snow-dappled
+night they were experiencing that feeling of embarrassment which is the
+aftermath of sentimental communion between two men. When they reached
+the Neva, Pavel cast a glance across, in the direction of the Winter
+Palace. The frozen river looked infinitely wider than it was. Dotted
+with lamps and crossed by streams of home-bound humanity, it lay vast,
+gorgeous, uncanny--a white plain animated with mysterious brightness and
+mysterious motion. The main part of the capital, on the Palace side of
+the Neva, was a world of gloom starred with myriads and myriads of
+lights, each so distinct that one almost felt tempted to count them; all
+this seemingly as far away as the gold-dotted sky overhead. Makar was
+huddling himself in his grey military cloak, his bare hands loosely
+thrust into its sleeves, looking at nothing. Pavel, his furred coat
+unbuttoned, gazed across the Neva.
+
+"Come on," the medical student urged, knocking one foot against the
+other. "It's too cold to be tramping around like this."
+
+"One moment," Pavel responded, impatiently. He had been visiting this
+point at the same hour every day for the past week or two. Makar, who
+did not know of it, relapsed into his revery.
+
+Suddenly there came a dull rolling crash. It burst from the other side,
+and as Pavel and Makar looked across the river they saw that the lights
+of the Winter Palace which had been burning a minute ago, were out,
+leaving a great patch of darkness. The human stream paused. Then came a
+rush of feet on all sides.
+
+"It's in the Palace," Boulatoff whispered; and seizing his companion's
+hand at his side he pressed it with furious strength.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next day the newspapers were allowed to state that the previous
+evening, as the Czar and a royal guest were about to enter the dining
+hall through one door and the other members of the imperial family
+through another, a terrific explosion had occurred, making a hole in the
+floor ten feet long and six wide; that eleven inmates of the guard room,
+which was directly under the dining hall, were killed and fifty-seven
+injured, the Czar's narrow escape having been due to an accidental delay
+of the dinner. The explosion had shattered a number of windows and blown
+out the gas, leaving the palace in complete darkness. Traces of an
+improvised dynamite mine had been discovered in the basement. Three
+artisans employed in the palace were arrested, but their innocence was
+established, while a fourth man, a varnisher named Batushkoff, had
+disappeared. Now that Batushkoff was gone the Third Section learned that
+he was no other than Stepan Khaltourin, one of the active
+revolutionists its agents were looking for.
+
+One week after the explosion the Czar signed a decree which practically
+placed the government in the hands of a Supreme Executive Commission--a
+body especially created to cope with the situation and whose head, Count
+Loris-Melikoff, was invested with all but the powers of a regent. Count
+Melikoff was neither a Slav nor of noble birth. He was the son of an
+Armenian merchant. He was a new figure in St. Petersburg, and when his
+carriage passed along the Neva Prospect his swarthy face with its
+striking Oriental features were pointed out with expressions of
+perplexity. Although one of the two principal heroes of the late war
+with Turkey and recently a governor-general of Kharkoff, he was looked
+upon as an upstart. The extraordinary powers so suddenly vested in him
+took the country by surprise.
+
+He was known for the conciliatory policy toward the Nihilists at which
+he had aimed while he was governor-general of Kharkoff. Accordingly, his
+promotion to what virtually amounted to dictatorship was universally
+interpreted as a sign of weakening on the part of Alexander II. Indeed,
+Melikoff's first pronunciamento from the lofty altitude of his new
+office struck a note of startling novelty. He spoke of the Czar as
+showing "increased confidence in his people" and of "public co�peration"
+as "the main force capable of assisting the government in its effort to
+restore a normal flow of official life"--utterances that were construed
+into a pledge of public participation in affairs of state, into an
+unequivocal hint at representative legislation.
+
+Loris-Melikoff was one of the ablest statesmen Russia had ever produced.
+He was certainly the only high official of his time who did not try to
+prove his devotion to the throne by following in the trodden path of
+repression. He knew that Russia could not be kept from joining in the
+march of Western civilisation and he was not going to serve his personal
+interests by pretending that it could. Instead, he hoped to strengthen
+his position by winning the Czar over to his own moderate liberalism, by
+reconciling him to the logic of history. But the logic of history could
+best have been served by prompt and vigorous action, while the chief of
+the Supreme Executive Commission was rather slow to move. Nor, indeed,
+was he free from interference. The Czar was still susceptible to the
+influence of his unthinking relatives and of his own vindictive nature.
+
+Chaos marked the situation. Loris-Melikoff's first week in office was
+signalised by the most cruel act in the entire history of the
+government's struggle against Nihilism. A gymnasium boy, seventeen years
+old (a Jew), was hanged in Kieff for carrying a revolutionary
+proclamation. The dictator's professions of liberalism were branded as
+hypocrisy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+A MYSTERIOUS ARREST.
+
+
+A young man had been seized with seditious publications. It was the
+first political arrest in Miroslav, and the report was spreading in a
+maze of shifting versions. This much seemed certain: the prisoner
+pretended to be a deaf-mute and so far the gendarmes and the procureur
+had failed to disclose his identity. The local newspaper dared not
+publish the remotest allusion to the matter.
+
+Countess Anna Nicolayevna Varova (Varoff) first heard the news from her
+brother-in-law, the governor, and although the two belonged to that
+exceptional minority which usually discussed topics of this character in
+their normal voices, yet it was in subdued tones that the satrap
+broached the subject. Anna Nicolayevna offered to send for Pavel, who
+had recently arrived from St. Petersburg, after an absence of three
+years, but the governor checked her.
+
+"Never mind, Annette," he said, impatiently, "I've dropped in for a
+minute or two, in passing, don't you know. He called on me yesterday,
+Pasha. Quite a man. Tell him he must look in again and let me see how
+clever he is. Quite a man. How time does fly!" Then sinking his voice,
+he asked: "Have you heard of the fellow they've bagged? One of those
+youngsters who are scaring St. Petersburg out of its wits, you know."
+
+He gave a laugh and fell to blinking gravely.
+
+"What do you mean, George? Did the gendarmes catch a Nihilist?" she
+asked, in dismay. "Did they? Bless me! That's all that's wanted. If
+there is one there must be a whole nest of them." She made a gesture of
+horror--"But who is he, what is he?"
+
+"That I know no more than you do."
+
+"Well, it's too bad, it's really too bad. I thought Miroslav was immune
+from that plague at least." And seeing his worried look she added: "I
+hope it's nothing serious, George."
+
+Governor Boulatoff shook his head. "I don't think it is. Although you
+never can tell nowadays. You never can tell," he repeated, blinking
+absently. "The Armenian doesn't seem to be cleaning those fellows out
+quite so rapidly as one thought he would, does he? They are playing the
+devil with things, that's what they are doing." "One" and "they"
+referred to the Emperor and his advisers.
+
+"Pooh, they'll weary of that parvenu, it's only a matter of time," she
+consoled him.
+
+The old man proceeded to quote from Loris-Melikoff's recent
+declarations, which the countess had heard him satirise several times
+before. "'In the co�peration of the public,'" he declaimed theatrically,
+"'lies the main force capable of assisting the government in its effort
+to restore a normal flow of official life.' Do you understand what all
+this jugglery means? That we are knuckling down to a lot of ragamuffins.
+It means an official confession that the 'flow of official life' has
+been checked by a gang of rascally college boys. 'The public is the main
+force capable of assisting the government!' Charming, isn't it? Might
+as well invite 'the public' to be so kind and elect representatives,
+deputies, or what you may call 'em, start a parliament and have it over
+with."
+
+Anna Nicolayevna made another attempt to bring the conversation back to
+the political prisoner, but her visitor was evidently fighting shy of
+the topic.
+
+"Birch-rods, a good, smart flogging, that's what the public needs," he
+resumed, passionately gnashing his teeth, in response to his own
+thoughts.
+
+"Oh, don't say that, George. After all, one lives in the nineteenth
+century."
+
+But this only spurred him on.
+
+The arrest having been ordered from St. Petersburg, the implication was
+that the presence of the revolutionist in town had escaped the attention
+of the local authorities. So Governor Boulatoff, who had had no
+experience in cases of this kind, wondered whether the affair was not
+likely to affect his own standing. Besides, the governor of Kharkoff had
+recently been killed, and Boulatoff was asking himself whether the
+arrest of the unknown man augured the end of his own peace of mind. This
+he kept to himself, however, and having found some relief in
+animadverting upon the policy of Loris-Melikoff he took leave.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The countess was left with a pang of sympathy for her brother-in-law.
+Not that she had any clear idea of the political situation at which he
+was forever scoffing and carping. She felt sure that his low spirits
+were traceable to loneliness, and her compassion for him revived
+heart-wringing memories of his dead wife, her sister.
+
+The young prince was out in the garden romping about with Kostia, his
+half-brother, now a ten-year-old cadet on sick leave. Anna Nicolayevna
+went to take a look at them through the open window of a rear room. The
+garden was so jammed with fresh-tinted lilacs, so flooded with their
+scent, that it seemed like an explosion of color and fragrance. Two
+Germans were at work with picks and spades. From an invisible spot where
+a new summer house was being constructed came sounds of sawing and
+hammering, while the air near the window rang with a multitudinous
+twitter of sparrows. Pavel was trying to force Kostia into a
+wheelbarrow, the boy kicking and struggling silently, and a huge shaggy
+dog barking at Pavel ferociously.
+
+"Come in, Pasha. I want to speak to you," said Anna Nicolayevna.
+
+The return indoors was a race, in which the gigantic dog took part. The
+convalescent little cadet was beaten.
+
+"Wait till I get well," he said.
+
+"Wait nothing. Your excellency will be rolling along like a water-melon
+all the same. Good-bye, Monsieur le Water-melon!"
+
+Presently Pavel stood before his mother, mopping his flushed, laughing
+face.
+
+"Do you remember his 'express trains' in the garden?" he said. "Now it
+is beneath his dignity, to be sure." He was always trying to prove to
+himself that the present Kostia and the five-year-old boy he used to
+fondle five years ago were one and the same person.
+
+"He's right," said the countess. "He's a baby no longer. It's you who
+are acting like one. Uncle has been here. He was in a hurry, so I didn't
+send for you." Her serious-minded, intellectual son inspired her with a
+certain feeling of timidity. She had not the courage to bring up the
+subject of the political arrest. Her mind was so vague on matters of
+this kind, while Pavel was apparently so well informed and so profound,
+she was sure of making a poor showing. So she told herself that it was
+not a proper topic to discuss in a well-ordered family and kept her own
+counsel.
+
+"I didn't know he was here," he said.
+
+"Poor man! he seems to be feeling lonely."
+
+Pavel made no reply.
+
+"Why, don't you think he does?"
+
+"What matters it whether I do or not," he said, lightly.
+
+"You haven't a bit of heart, Pasha."
+
+He would not be drawn into conversation, treating everything she said
+with an inscrutable, somewhat patronising flippancy that nettled her. At
+last he said he was going out.
+
+"'Looking up old chums' again?" she asked. "And does it mean that you
+are going to dine out once more?"
+
+"I'll try not to, mother," he answered, with a fond smile in his bright,
+aggressive eyes.
+
+His small slender figure, beautifully erect, and his upward-tending,
+frank features haunted her long after he left. She felt like a jealous
+bride. Otherwise he kept her thoughts tinged with sunshine. A great
+attachment on quite new terms had sprung up between mother and son since
+his arrival. At the same time he seemed to belong to a world which she
+was at a loss to make out. Nor did he appear disinclined to talk of his
+life in St. Petersburg--a subject upon which she was continually plying
+him with questions. The trouble was that the questions that beset her
+mind could no more be formulated than a blind man can formulate his
+curiosity as to colour. Moreover, all these questions seemed to come
+crowding upon her when Pavel was away and to vanish the moment she set
+eyes on him. She told herself that he belonged to a different
+generation from hers, that it was the everlasting case of "fathers and
+sons." But this only quickened her jealousy of the "sons" and her
+despair at being classed with the discarded generation. And the keener
+her jealousy, the deeper was her interest in Pasha.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+A BEWILDERING ENCOUNTER.
+
+
+When Pavel was in St. Petersburg Anna Nicolayevna had missed him only
+occasionally. Now that he was with her his absences were a continuous
+torture to her. On the present occasion she sought diversion in a visit
+to Princess Chertogoff where she expected to hear something about the
+mysterious prisoner. Princess Chertogoff was a lame, impoverished
+noblewoman whose daughter was married to the assistant-procureur. In
+higher circles she was looked down upon as a social outcast, so that
+Anna Nicolayevna's visits to her had a surreptitious character and
+something of the charm of forbidden fruit. Pavel's mother was fond of
+the stir her appearance produced in houses of this kind. The curious
+part of it was that the impecunious princess was one of the very few
+persons in the world whose presence irritated her. It seemed as though
+this irritation had a peculiar attraction for her.
+
+It was an early hour in the afternoon. She was received in the vestibule
+by H�l�ne, the assistant-procureur's wife, with an outburst of kisses
+and caresses which had something to do with the young woman's expecting
+to become a mother. Rising in the background was the hostess, Lydia
+Grigorievna Chertogova (Chertogoff) and her gorgeous crutches. She was
+large, dark, and in spite of her made-over gowns, imposingly handsome.
+Aware of the fantastic majesty which these crutches gave her stalwart
+form, she paraded her defect as she did her beautiful dark eyes. At this
+moment it seemed as though the high-polished ebony crutches joined her
+in beaming at the sight of the distinguished visitor. H�l�ne, a small
+woman of twenty-four, usually compact as a billiard ball, was beginning
+to resemble an over-ripe apple.
+
+When the three women found themselves in the drawing room Lydia
+Grigorievna lost no time in turning the conversation on the arrested
+Nihilist. Her son-in-law had carefully abstained from opening his mouth
+on the subject, yet she talked about it authoritatively, with an
+implication of reserved knowledge of still graver import, but H�l�ne
+gave her away.
+
+"Woldemar would not speak about it," she complained, reverently. "'An
+affair of state,' he said. You can't get a single word out of him." She
+exulted in the part he was playing as an exterminator of the enemies of
+the Czar, and in the air-castles she was building as to the promotion to
+which the present case was to pave his way.
+
+"But what do they want, those scamps?" Lydia Grigorievna resumed, in
+soft, pampered accents. "Would they have us live without a Czar? I
+should have them cut to pieces, the rogues. Is it possible that the
+government should be powerless to get rid of them? To think of a handful
+of striplings keeping cabinet ministers in a perpetual state of terror."
+
+"Oh, nobody is really afraid of them," H�l�ne retorted, holding her face
+to the breeze which came in through an open window.
+
+"But your husband is not yet a cabinet minister, dear," her mother said
+with a smile toward the countess.
+
+"Oh, you're always suspecting me of something or other, _mamman_. I was
+not thinking of Woldemar at all."
+
+The charm of her presence, the appealing charm of a pretty young woman
+about to become a mother, added itself to the tenderness and mystery of
+spring. Lydia Grigorievna addressed another smile to the countess, but
+Anna Nicolayevna dropped her glance. The princess went on raging at the
+revolutionists. In reality, however, that handful of striplings who
+"kept cabinet ministers in a perpetual state of terror" had stirred up a
+curiosity in her that sprang from anything but indignation or contempt.
+She was hankering for a specimen of their literature, of those
+publications the very handling of which was apt to bring death. Her
+thirst in this direction was all the keener because she felt sure that
+some of the Nihilist papers that had been confiscated at the arrest of
+the unknown man were upstairs in her son-in-law's desk.
+
+"A constitution may be all very well in Germany or France," she said.
+"This is Russia, not Germany or France or England, thank God. Yet those
+wretches will go around stirring up discontent. On my way home from
+Moscow last winter I heard a passenger say that if we had less bribery
+and more liberty and popular education we would be as good as any nation
+in Western Europe. I knew at once he was a Nihilist. You can tell one by
+the first word he utters. I confess I was afraid to sit near him. He had
+grey side-whiskers, but maybe they were just stuck on. Oh, I should show
+them no mercy."
+
+She was all flushed and ill at ease. She received no encouragement. Her
+sugared enunciation and the false ring of what she said grated on her
+hearer's nerves. Anna Nicolayevna listened in silence. The lame princess
+was a sincere woman coated with a layer of insincerity. But the
+countess thought her the embodiment of affectation and hated her,
+bizarre beauty, enunciation, altered gowns, crutches and all.
+
+Lydia Grigorievna was interrupted by the appearance of the
+assistant-procureur himself. He was tall and frail with a long straight
+straw-coloured mane and pontifical gestures. His figure made one think
+of length in the abstract. As you looked at him he seemed to be
+continually growing in height. H�l�ne had fallen in love with him
+because he resembled the baron in a play she had seen in Moscow.
+
+"I've just looked in to bid you good afternoon, countess," he said. "I
+saw your carriage through the window. But unfortunately--_business
+before pleasure_." It was one of two or three English phrases which he
+kept for occasions of this character and which he mispronounced with
+great self-confidence.
+
+When Anna Nicolayevna got into the street she felt as though she had
+emerged from the suffocating atmosphere of some criminal den. In the May
+breeze, however, and at sight of the river her spirits rose. She
+dismissed her carriage. When she reached the macadamised bank and caught
+the smell of the water it was borne in upon her afresh that it was
+spring. She had passed this very spot, in a sleigh only a short while
+ago, it seemed. Lawns and trees had been covered with snow then; all had
+been stiff with the stiffness of death; whereas now all was tenderly
+alive with verdure and bloom, and wild-flowers smiled upon her at every
+turn. Here it struck her as though spring had just been born; born in
+full attire overnight. Flushed and radiant, with her rusty chin in the
+air and her flat chest slightly thrown out, spinning her parasol, she
+was briskly marching along, a broad streak of water to the right of her,
+a row of orchards to the left. The river beamed. From somewhere
+underneath she heard the clanking of chains of lumber-horses,
+accompanied by the yell of boys. The greased wooden screws of a receding
+cable-ferry were squirming in the air like two erect snakes of silver;
+the brass buttons of a soldier-passenger burned like a column of flames.
+All this and the lilac-laden breeze and Anna Nicolayevna's soul were
+part of something vast, swelling with light and joy. But the breath of
+spring is not all joy. Nature's season of love is a season of yearning.
+One feels like frisking and weeping at once. Spring was with us a year
+ago, but the interval seems many years. It is like revisiting one's home
+after a long absence: the scenes of childhood are a source of delight
+and depression at once. It is like hearing a long forgotten song: the
+melody, however gay, has a dismal note in it. Anna Nicolayevna had not
+been out many minutes when she began to feel encompassed by an immense
+melancholy to which her heart readily responded. There was a vague
+longing in the clear blue sky, in the gleaming water, in the patches of
+grass on either side of the public promenade, in the distant outlines
+across the river, but above all in the overpowering freshness of the
+afternoon air. The travail of an unhappy soul seemed to be somewhere
+nearby. A look of loneliness came into her eyes. She was burning to see
+Pavel, to lay bare her soul to him.
+
+When a passing artisan in top-boots and with glass buttons in his
+waistcoat reverently took off his flat cap she returned the salute with
+motherly fervour and slackened her pace to a more dignified gait. "I'm
+respected and loved by the people," she mentally boasted to Pavel.
+
+Arrived at the bridge, she paused to hand a twenty-copeck piece to a
+blind beggar who sat on the ground by the tollman's booth. He apparently
+recognised her by the way her gloved hand put the coin in his hand. She
+had given him alms as long as she could remember, and usually he made no
+more impression on her than the lamp-posts she passed. This time,
+however, it came back to her how her mother used to send her out of
+their carriage with some money for him. She paused to look at him and to
+listen to his song. She recalled him as a man of thirty or forty with
+thick flaxen hair. Now he was gray and bald. "Great heavens! how time
+does fly!" she exclaimed in her heart, feeling herself an old woman. The
+blind man seemed to be absorbed in his song. All blind beggars look
+alike and they all seem to be singing the same doleful religious tune,
+yet this man, as he sat with his eyes sealed and his head leaned against
+the parapet, gave her a novel sensation. He was listening to his own
+tones, as if they came from an invisible world, like his own, but one
+located somewhere far away.
+
+Anna Nicolayevna gave him a ruble and passed on. Followed by the
+beggar's benedictions, she made to turn into the street which formed the
+continuation of the bridge, when an approaching flour truck brought her
+to a halt. Besides several sacks of meal the waggon carried a cheap old
+trunk, and seated between the trunk and the driver was--Pavel; Pavel
+uncouthly dressed in the garb of an artisan. His rudimentary beard was
+covered with dust; his legs, encased in coarse grimy topboots, were
+dangling in the air. The visor of his flat cap was pushed down over his
+eyes, screening them from the red afternoon sun which sparkled and
+glowed in the glass buttons of his vest. It certainly was Pavel. Anna
+Nicolayevna was panic-stricken. She dared not utter his name.
+
+The toll paid, the truck moved on. The countess followed her son with
+her eyes, until a cab shut him out of view, and then she remained
+standing for some time, staring at the cab. "What does it all mean?" she
+asked herself with sickening curiosity. Finally her eye went to the
+water below. She gazed at its rippling stretches of black and masses of
+shattered silver; at a woman slapping a heap of wash with a wash-beater,
+at a long raft slowly gliding toward the bridge. "Is he disguised? What
+does it all mean? Was it really Pasha?"
+
+Doubt dawned in her mind. In her eagerness to take another look at the
+man on the truck she raised her eyes. After waiting for some moments she
+saw the waggon with the two men as it appeared and forthwith disappeared
+at the other end of the bridge. The thought of the arrested man stunned
+her. Was Pavel a Nihilist? The image of her son had assumed a new, a
+forbidding expression.
+
+The revolutionists moved about on the verge of martyrdom, and as the
+mere acquaintance with one of their number meant destruction, the
+imagination painted them as something akin to living shadows, as beings
+whose very touch brought silence and darkness. People dared not utter
+the word "Nihilist" or "revolutionist" aloud. Anna Nicolayevna belonged
+to the privileged few, but at this moment she dreaded so much as to
+think of her son by these ghastly names. It now appeared to Anna
+Nicolayevna that all through her call at Lydia Grigorievna's she had had
+a presentiment of an approaching calamity. She took the first cab that
+came along.
+
+"As fast as you can drive," she said.
+
+The moment Anna Nicolayevna got home she inquired whether Pavel was in
+his room, and when the porter said that his Highness had not been back
+since he had left, in the morning, a fresh gust of terror smote her
+heart and brain. She stole into his room. On the table lay a German
+pamphlet on Kant and a fresh number of the _Russian Messenger_, the
+ultra-conservative magazine published in Moscow. In several places the
+leaves were cut. A Nihilist was the last person in the world one would
+expect to read this organ of Panslavists. What Anna Nicolayevna did not
+know was that the cut pages of the conservative magazine, which Pavel
+had received from St. Petersburg the day before, contained a hidden
+revolutionary message. Here and there a phrase, word, or a single
+letter, was marked, by means of an inkstain, abrasion or what looked
+like the idle penciling of a reader, these forming half a dozen
+consecutive sentences.
+
+Anna Nicolayevna was perplexed and her perplexity gave her a new thrill
+of hope. She was in a quiver of impatience to see her son and have it
+all out.
+
+The dinner hour came round and Pavel was not there. She could not eat.
+Every little while she paused to listen for a ring of the door bell. She
+sent a servant to his room to see if he had not arrived unheard. He had
+not.
+
+The other people at table were Kostia, in huge red shoulder-straps which
+made his well-fitting uniform look too large for him; Kostia's old
+tutor, a powerful looking German with a bashful florid face, and the
+countess' own old governess, an aged Frenchwoman with a congealed smile
+on her bloodless lips. This restlessness of the countess when Pavel was
+slow in coming was no news to them, but this time she seemed to feel
+particularly uneasy. Silence hung over them. The Frenchwoman's dried-up
+smile turned to a gleam of compassion. The German ate timidly. This
+man's services had practically ceased when Kostia entered the cadet
+corps, but Anna Nicolayevna retained him in the house for his quiet
+piety. She had a feeling that so far as the intelligent classes were
+concerned the simple forms of Protestantism were more compatible with
+religious sincerity than were the iron-bound formalities of her native
+church. So, with her heart thirsting for spiritual interest, she found
+intense pleasure in her theological conversations with this well-read,
+narrow-minded, honest Lutheran, whose religious convictions she envied.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+A GENDARME'S SISTER.
+
+
+When Pavel told his mother that he was going out he expected to meet
+Makar, who had been in Miroslav for the past four days. Once again he
+was going to plead with him to give up his scheme. The affair kept Pavel
+in bad humour, but that morning his mind was occupied by the thought
+that there was an interesting meeting in store for him. In the evening
+he was to make the acquaintance of Clara Yavner, the heroine of the
+Pievakin "demonstration."
+
+On his way down the spacious corridor he was stopped by Onufri, his
+cheeks still hollower and his drooping moustache still longer and
+considerably greyer than of yore. Pavel had once tried to make a convert
+of him, but found him "too stupid for abstract reasoning." Onufri was
+polishing the floor. As Pavel came past he faced half way about and gave
+him a stern look from under his bushy eyebrows.
+
+"They've pinched a gentleman, the blood-guzzlers." Saying which he fell
+to dancing on his foot-cushions again.
+
+"What do you mean?" Pavel asked, turning white as he paused.
+
+"You know what I mean, sir. You know you do," answered Onufri, going on
+with his work.
+
+"Is it true? Who made the arrest? Gendarmes?"
+
+"That's it. I wouldn't bother your Highness if the police'd nabbed a
+common crook, would I?"
+
+The servant bent on his young master a long look of sympathetic
+reproach, adding under his breath:
+
+"You had better give it all up, sir. Better let it go to the devil."
+
+"Give up what? What on earth are you prating about, Onufri?"
+
+A few minutes later, while Pavel was destroying some papers in his room,
+the door swung open and in came Onufri. The old man burst into tears and
+dropped to his knees.
+
+"Take pity, sir," he wailed, kissing Pavel's fingers. "You've played
+with fire long enough, sir. If they put you in prison, the murderers,
+and sent you away it would kill her Highness, your mother."
+
+"Get up, Onufri. I have no patience with you just now, really I
+haven't."
+
+"It's bad enough when your Highness takes chances in another town, but
+if you're mixed up in this here thing, sir----"
+
+"I'm not mixed up 'in this here thing.' Don't bother me. Come, get up.
+Up with you, now. There is a good fellow!"
+
+The old hussar obeyed distressedly.
+
+Instead of going to the place where he expected to see Makar, Pavel went
+to the house of Major Safonoff, the gendarme officer, an
+uncomfortable-looking frame building across the river. As he approached
+it, Masha, the major's sister, who stood at a second story window at
+that moment, apparently waiting for somebody, burst out beckoning to him
+and stamping her feet. Her excited gesticulations drew the attention of
+a knife-grinder and two little girls. Pavel dropped his eyes. "She is a
+perfect idiot," he said to himself in a rage, "and I am another one. The
+idea of taking up with such a creature!"
+
+"Didn't you torture me!" she greeted him on the staircase. "I thought my
+heart was going to snap. Don't be uneasy. I have dismissed our servant.
+There is nobody around." When they reached the low-ceiled parlor, she
+sank her voice and said solemnly, yet with a certain note of triumph:
+"He was arrested at four o'clock yesterday on the railway tracks. The
+gendarme office had information that he was in the habit of taking walks
+there. I happened to be away--think of it! At a time like that I was
+away. Else I should have let you know at once, of course. Anyhow, he's
+there."
+
+"You say it as if it was something to rejoice in," Pavel remarked,
+disguising his rage. "It's quite a serious matter, Maria Gavrilovna."
+
+Mlle. Safonoff stared. "But we'll get him out. Why, are you afraid we
+mayn't? I see you're depressed and that makes me miserable, too. Really
+it does."
+
+"Do I look depressed? Well, I must confess I rather am. It's no laughing
+matter, Maria Gavrilovna," he said, flushing.
+
+"Oh, well, if you are going to talk like that. That is I myself haven't
+the slightest doubt about it. Only you frighten me so. If this thing is
+going to last another week it will drive me mad." Her childish eyes
+shone with tears. "Why should you take such a gloomy view of it? I must
+say it's cruel of you, Pavel Vassilyevich. Everything is just as I
+expected. He is as good as free, I assure you."
+
+Pavel answered, by way of consoling himself as well as her: "Well, maybe
+I do take it too hard. Our chances seem to be good, and--well, we must
+get him out. That's all there is to it."
+
+"Of course we must. Now I like you, Boulatoff. We must and we will, and
+when the story is published--oh, I do wish we could get out special
+proclamations!--anyhow, won't it make a stir!" She paused and then
+resumed, in a new burst of frankness, "I know what makes you uneasy
+about me. The great trouble with me is my lack of tact, isn't it? If I
+had that I would be all right. That's what worries you about me in this
+affair, isn't it, now? You're afraid I may make a mess of the whole
+business. I know you are. Well, and I don't blame you, either. The
+Safonoffs have never been distinguished for their heads. When it happens
+to be a matter of hearts, we hold our own, but brains, well--." She gave
+a laugh. "I tell you what, Boulatoff, I'm afraid of you, and I don't
+care to bear the brunt of this important affair. Anyhow, I want you to
+keep an eye on me. I'll do all you want me to, but you must take the
+responsibility off my shoulders, else I'll go crazy. What makes you
+smile? You think I'm crazy already, don't you?"
+
+"I wasn't smiling at all. So far you have managed things beautifully. I
+confess I'm getting impatient. Well, I do feel wretched, Maria
+Gavrilovna."
+
+She grasped his hand, shook it silently and whispered: "Don't be uneasy.
+We shall win."
+
+When Safonoff came home at the lunch hour he told of the excitement at
+the gendarme office. His manner toward Boulatoff was a non-committal
+mixture which seemed to say: "You and I understand each other perfectly,
+don't we? Still, if you think you can get me to call a spade a spade or
+to help you you are mistaken."
+
+His compact, well-fed figure had the shape of a plum. He was
+perpetually mimicking somebody or chuckling and his speech was full of
+gaps, many of his sentences being rendered in dumb show.
+
+"My chief may get in trouble for having ordered the arrest too soon," he
+said. "We were to let the prisoner--" (he brandished his hand to
+represent a man going around at large) "for some time, so as to let him
+show us with whom he is acquainted. But my chief--" (he struck an
+attitude meant to caricature a decrepit, coughing, old fellow) "was all
+of a tremble for fear the canary-bird might take wing. You see he had
+never arrested a political before. You should have seen our men when we
+took that chap on the railroad track. They were more frightened than he,
+I assure you, prince. They thought he was going to--" (he aimed an
+imaginary dagger at Pavel and burst into laughter). "Monsieur Unknown is
+certainly no coward whatever else he may be. You should have seen the
+look of surprise and contempt he gave me!"
+
+Pavel beamed while Masha's face wore a pained expression. "It's time you
+had left this nasty business of yours, Andrusha," she said.
+
+When Andrusha reached the assistant procureur's part in the case he
+sketched off a pompous imbecile. There was no love lost between the
+public attorney and the gendarme officers, so Safonoff described, with
+many a gurgle of merriment, how, during the attempted examination of the
+prisoner, Zendorf, the assistant procureur (he burlesqued an obeisance
+as the epitome of snobbishness) had tried to impress his uniformed
+rivals with his intellectual and social superiority.
+
+"You see, my chief is a rough and ready sort of customer. Whatever else
+he may be, frills and fakes are not in his line. So he went right at it.
+'Speak up,' he squeaked at the prisoner, 'speak up, or I'll have your
+mouth opened for you.' So Zendorf called him gently to order and fixed
+his dignified peepers at the prisoner. He expected to cast some sort of
+spell over him, I suppose, but it was no go. As to me, I was just
+choking. As bad luck would have it I took it into my head at that moment
+that the best way to make that fellow talk would be to have his armpits
+tickled till he roared. Well, I had to leave the room to have my giggle
+out."
+
+Safonoff was indifferent to his sister's revolutionary ventures because
+he never vividly realised the danger she incurred. His mind retained the
+most lifelike impressions, but its sensitiveness was of the photographic
+kind; it was confined to actual experiences. He had no imagination for
+the future. He was an easy-going man, incapable of fear. People often
+arrived at the conclusion that he was "a fool after all." But then there
+are fools who are endowed with a keen perception and a lively sense of
+character.
+
+Speaking of the warden of the jail, Safonoff impersonated a cringing,
+hand-kissing, crafty time-server. He had never met a convert Jew or
+convert Pole who was not an adventurer and an all-round knave, he said,
+and Rodkevitch was the most typical convert Pole he had ever come
+across. The sight of money took his breath away, gave him the vertigo,
+made his eyes start from their sockets. Rustle a crisp paper ruble in
+his ear and he will faint away.
+
+"He's a candidate for Siberia anyhow and he needs money to pull him out
+of some of the roguish schemes he is tangled up in. The contractors who
+furnish his prisoners sand for flour and garbage for potatoes are his
+partners in some of his outside swindles also. Do you understand,
+prince?" The question was put with special emphasis, which Pavel
+interpreted as a direct hint at the possibility of bribing the warden.
+
+It occurred to Boulatoff that Makar's luggage was quite likely to
+contain some incriminating papers or other things that might aggravate
+the case. To fear this in view of Makar's notorious absent-mindedness
+was quite reasonable. But this was not all. He had been bent upon making
+his arrest as important in the eyes of the Third Section as possible,
+and Pavel was almost certain he had left something in his lodgings on
+purpose. "You never know what you are at with a crazy, obstinate
+bull-dog like that," he thought in a qualm of anxiety.
+
+When Safonoff had gone Pavel wrote a note to his imprisoned friend
+asking for the address of his lodgings.
+
+"Can you get this to him, and an answer brought back?" he demanded of
+Mlle. Safonoff in a peremptory tone.
+
+"I think so. My aunt will probably get it through. I am almost sure of
+it, in fact."
+
+"There you are. You're _almost_ sure. Was this enough to let a man put
+himself in the hands of the Third Section?"
+
+Mlle. Safonoff hurried out of the house in dumb dismay. After an
+interval of less than an hour, which to Pavel seemed a year, she burst
+into the parlour, accompanied by an older woman, whom she introduced as
+her aunt, Daria Stepanovna Shubeyko. Both were breathless with
+excitement. They had the desired address, the sum Makar owed his
+landlady and another note to the landlady. Pavel's heart swelled with
+joy and gratitude, but he did not show it.
+
+"Very well," he said, with a preoccupied scowl. "And now for that trunk
+of his."
+
+The two women went on to describe, continually interrupting each other,
+their plans for setting Makar free, but Pavel checked them.
+
+"We'll discuss it all afterwards," he said. "What we need at this minute
+is a coarse suit of clothes, something to make a fellow look like a
+workman or porter. We must clear his room before his landlady has
+notified the police of his disappearance." The costume was brought by
+Masha. When Pavel emerged from the major's bedroom transformed into a
+laborer, Masha's aunt applauded so violently that he could not resist
+gnashing his teeth at her.
+
+"Excuse me, but I've never seen a real man of action before," she
+pleaded. "Now I feel newly born, really I do. I tell you what,
+Boulatoff, I'll go with you. In case of trouble I may be of some use,
+you know. We can't afford to let an active man like you perish."
+
+"But then if you perish," Pavel answered gayly, "there won't be anybody
+to arrange that escape."
+
+"That's true," she replied forlornly. She was a healthy, good-looking
+woman with a smile so exultantly silly that Pavel could not bear to look
+at it. Every time that smile of hers brightened her full-blooded face,
+he dropped his eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was the risk of his being recognised by somebody in the street.
+Then, too, Makar's lodgings might have been discovered by the police and
+made a trap of. The errand was full of risks, but this only stimulated a
+feeling in which Pavel's passion for this sort of adventure was coupled
+with a desire to vindicate himself before his own conscience by sharing
+in Makar's dangers.
+
+The trip was devoid of all adventure, however. Even his meeting with his
+mother was lost on him. He was sincerely contemplating the blind beggar
+at that moment.
+
+Makar's landlady was a garrulous Jewess. When she learned that her
+lodger had been taken ill at the house of a friend and that the
+workingman had been sent for his things and to pay the bill, she
+launched out into an effusion of bad Russian that taxed Pavel's patience
+sorely. She exacted the address of Makar's friend, so as to send the
+patient some of her marvellous preserves. The prince left with the trunk
+on his shoulder--an excellent contrivance for screening his face from
+view--but it proved too heavy, and when he came across a truckman who
+agreed to take him and his load part of the way to his destination he
+was glad to be relieved of the burden.
+
+While he was in the next room, shedding his disguise, Masha's aunt
+bombarded him with impatient shouts and giggles. When he had opened the
+trunk at last she insisted upon helping him examine its contents,
+whereupon she handled each article she lifted out as she might a holy
+relic; and when the trunk proved to contain nothing of a compromising
+quality even Pavel felt disappointed. Mme. Shubeyko overwhelmed him with
+questions, one of which was:
+
+"Look here, Boulatoff, why shouldn't the people rise and put an end to
+the rule of despotism at once? What on earth are we waiting for?"
+
+"If the people were all like you they would have done so long ago," he
+answered, with a hearty laugh. He warmed to her in an amused way and
+felt like calling her auntie; only that smile of hers continued to annoy
+him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+UNDERGROUND MIROSLAV.
+
+
+Pavel dined at the major's house. He was in high spirits, but the hour
+of his expected meeting with the girl of the Pievakin demonstration was
+drawing near, and his impatience was getting keener every minute. He
+reached the place, a little house occupied by a government clerk named
+Orlovsky and his mother, ahead of time.
+
+"Your name is Boulatoff, is it not?" asked the host, his square Slavic
+nose curling up with the joy of his welcome. Then, crouching before the
+absurdest looking samovar Pavel had ever seen, he explained that his
+mother had gone to his sister's for the night, as she did very often to
+avoid the noise of his gatherings. In the centre of a bare round table
+lay an enormous loaf of rye bread and a great wedge of sugar, near which
+stood an empty candy box, apparently used as a sugar bowl. Pavel divined
+that at least one-half of Orlovsky's salary was spent on the tea, bread
+and butter on which his guests regaled themselves while they talked
+liberty.
+
+"I'm only a private of the revolution," Orlovsky said, trying to blow
+two charcoals into flame until his face glowed like the coals and his
+eyes looked bleared. "But if there is anything I can do command me." At
+his instance the two addressed each other in the familiar diminutives of
+their Christian names--"Pasha" and "Aliosha." While Aliosha was
+struggling with his smoking samovar, Pasha set to work cutting up the
+sugar.
+
+"Wait till you have seen our crowd," said Aliosha, flicking the open
+side of an old top-boot at the samovar by way of bellows. "I tell you
+Miroslav is destined to play a prominent part in the liberation of
+Russia. We have some tip-top fellows and girls. Of course, we're mere
+privates in the ranks of the revolution."
+
+But Pavel's mind was on the speaker's sackcoat of checkered grey, which
+was so tight on him that his prominent thighs were bulging out and the
+garment seemed on the point of bursting. The sight of it annoyed Pavel
+in the same way as Mme. Shubeyko's smile had done, and he asked Orlovsky
+why he should not unbutton himself, to which the other answered, half in
+jest, half in earnest, that he was getting so fat that he was beginning
+to look "like a veritable bourgeois, deuce take it."
+
+"But it makes a fellow uncomfortable to look at you," Pavel shouted,
+irascibly.
+
+"Ah, but that's a question of personal liberty, old man," Orlovsky
+returned in all seriousness. "What right have you, for instance, to
+impose upon me rules as to how I am to wear my coat?"
+
+"That right which limits the liberty of one man by the liberty of other
+men. But this is all foolishness, Aliosha. Upon my word it is. The days
+of hair-splitting are dead and buried. There is plenty of work to
+do--living, practical work."
+
+Orlovsky leaped up from his samovar, a fishy look in his eye, and
+grasping Pavel's hand he pressed it hard and long. Pavel felt in the
+presence of the most provincial Nihilism he had ever come across.
+
+Other members of the Circle came. They all knew the governor's nephew
+by sight. Also that he was "a sympathiser," yet his presence here was a
+stirring surprise to most of them, although they strove to conceal it.
+One man, Orlovsky's immediate superior in office, shook Pavel's hand
+with a grimace which seemed to say: "You're Prince Boulatoff and I am
+only an ordinary government official, but then all titles and ranks will
+soon go to smash." A Jewish gymnasium boy with two bubbling beads for
+eyes made Pavel's acquaintance with a preoccupied air, as if in a hurry
+to get down to more important business. His small, deep-seated eyes
+spurted either merriment or gloom. Elkin had said there was not enough
+of them to make one decent-sized eye, and dubbed him "Cyclops," which
+had since been the boy's revolutionary nickname.
+
+Orlovsky's superior had a vast snow-white forehead that gave his face a
+luminous, aureole-lit effect, but he was an incurable liar. He was one
+of the most devoted members of the Circle, however, and recently he had
+sold all his real estate, turning over the proceeds to the party. As he
+seated himself a telegraph operator in a dazzling uniform sat down by
+his side, saying, in a whisper:
+
+"That was an affected look of yours a moment ago."
+
+"When? What are you talking about?" the man with the sainted forehead
+asked, colouring.
+
+"You know what. You made a face as if you were not glad to see
+Boulatoff. You know you were, weren't you, now?"
+
+"I confess I was."
+
+"Now I like you, old boy. All that is necessary is to take one's self in
+hand. Nothing like self-chastisement."
+
+"Cyclops" bent over to an army captain with a pair of grandiose
+side-whiskers and said something in order to hear himself address a
+Gentile and an army officer in the familiar "thou." Another young Jew, a
+red-headed gymnasium boy named Ginsburg, sat close to the lamp, reading
+a book with near-sighted eyes, the yellow light playing on his
+short-clipped red hair. His father was a notorious usurer and the chief
+go-between in the governor's bribe-taking and money-lending
+transactions. Young Ginsburg robbed his father industriously, dedicating
+the spoils to the socialist movement.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The expectation that that hazy, featureless image which had resided in
+his mind for the past five years would soon stand forth in the flesh and
+with the mist lifted made Pavel restless. When a girl with short hair
+and very sparse teeth told him that Clara Yavner was sure to be around
+in less than fifteen minutes, his heart began to throb. The girl's name
+was Olga Alexandrovna Andronova (Andronoff). She was accompanied by her
+fianc�, a local judge--a middle-aged man with a mass of fluffy hair. The
+judge was perceptibly near-sighted, like Ginsburg, only when he screwed
+up his eyes he looked angry, whereas the short-sightedness of the
+red-headed young man had a beseeching effect. The two girls were great
+friends, and Olga spoke of her chum in terms of persuasive enthusiasm.
+That Boulatoff had special reasons to be interested in Clara Yavner she
+was not aware.
+
+"What has become of her?" she said, looking at the door impatiently.
+
+"You are adding fuel to my curiosity, Olga Alexandrovna," Pavel said. "I
+am beginning to feel somewhat as I once did in the opera, when I was
+waiting to see Patti for the first time."
+
+"And when she came out you were not disappointed, were you?" Olga
+asked, exposing her sparse teeth in a broad, honest smile.
+
+"No," he laughed.
+
+"Well, neither will you be this time."
+
+Pavel said to himself humorously: "I am so excited I am afraid I shall
+fall in love with that girl. But then predictions seldom come true."
+Then he added: "And now that I predict it won't, it will."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When she came at last he said inwardly: "That's what she looks like,
+then! She certainly does not seem to be a fool whatever else she may
+be." That was what people usually said upon their first meeting with
+her: "She seems to be no fool." She was a fair-complexioned Jewish girl
+of good height. To those unfamiliar with the many types of her race she
+might have looked Teutonic. To her own people her face was
+characteristically Jewish, of the blond, hazel-eyed variety. It was a
+rather small face, round and with a slightly flattened effect between
+eyes and mouth that aroused interest. Her good looks were due to a
+peculiar impression of intelligence and character to which this effect
+contributed and to the picturesqueness of her colouring--healthy white
+flesh, clear and firm, set off by an ample crown of fair hair and
+illuminated by the brown light of intense hazel eyes. She had with her a
+two-year-old little girl, her sister's, and accompanying the two was
+Elkin, from whose manner as he entered the crowded room it was easy to
+see, first, that he had told Mlle. Yavner of the revolutionary "general"
+he was going to introduce her to; second, that he was the leader of the
+Circle and the connecting link between it and revolutionary generals.
+
+"I tried to steal away from her," she said to Olga, meaning the little
+girl, "but she ran after us and filled the streets with her cries." She
+smiled--an embarrassed smile which made her intelligent face look still
+more intelligent.
+
+When Boulatoff was introduced to her, by Elkin, she blushed slightly. He
+watched her with keen curiosity. At the same time the judge's fianc�e
+was watching him, in the fond hope that he would indorse her opinion of
+her friend. When Clara averted her face, while speaking to somebody, her
+features became blurred in Pavel's mind, and he sought another look at
+her. Whether Elkin had told her of the effect her "speech" during the
+Pievakin scene had had on him he had no knowledge.
+
+Some of the men in the gathering made a point of ignoring the little
+privileges of the sex, treating the girls "as human beings, not as
+dolls," but Clara and Olga made a joke of it. When Orlovsky offered the
+judge's fianc�e a chair next to Clara's she thanked him much as an
+"unemancipated" girl would have done; whereupon Mlle. Yavner shook her
+finger at her, saying merrily:
+
+"You're getting conservative, Olga. You had better look out."
+
+The Circle was a loose, informal organisation. There were no fixed rules
+or ceremonies for the admission of members nor anything like regularly
+elected officers. Nor, indeed, did the members practise formal communism
+among themselves, although the property of one was to a considerable
+extent the property of all.
+
+The gathering to-night was naturally larger than usual, owing to the
+great news of the day. No one except Pavel knew anything about the
+arrested man, each wondering whether the others did. To betray
+inquisitiveness, however, would have been unconspiratorlike, so as they
+sat about, whispering, in twos or threes, they were at once trying to
+suppress their curiosity and to draw each other out.
+
+The telegraph operator and Orlovsky's superior left early in the
+evening, but there soon came two other members, a sergeant of the
+captain's command and a gawky seminarist with a trick of drawing in his
+neck and throwing out his Adam's apple when he laughed.
+
+The sergeant took a seat beside his officer and the two fell into
+conversation about their regiment, while the theological student at once
+set to plying Pavel with questions. Elkin, in an embroidered
+Little-Russian shirt, sat smoking a pipe and smiling non-committally.
+Every little while he would remove the pipe from his mouth, take a grave
+look at the theologian and resume his pipe and his smile.
+
+The little girl sat on the captain's lap, quietly playing with his sword
+until she fell asleep. When Clara beheld the officer struggling to keep
+his luxurious side-whiskers from waking the child, she took her niece in
+her arms and carried her, with noiseless kisses, toward the door.
+
+"I'll soon be back. It isn't far," she whispered to Orlovsky, declining
+his assistance.
+
+The men followed her out of the room with fond glances. More than half
+of them were in love with her.
+
+When she got back, somewhat short of breath, Boulatoff was describing
+the general feeling in the universities and among working people. His
+talk was vague. His rolling baritone rang dry. And now his grip on the
+subject was weakened still further by the reappearance of the girl in
+whom, during the first few minutes, he instinctively felt a rival centre
+of interest. No sooner, however, had the seminarist attacked the party
+press than the prince became furious and made a favourable impression.
+Once or twice he fell into Zachar's manner and even used several of his
+arguments. The seminarist urged his objections chiefly because he wanted
+to prove to himself and to the others that he was a man of convictions
+and not one to quail before a revolutionary "general." But Pavel took
+him seriously. Once when the seminarist attempted to interrupt him,
+Clara said, forlornly:
+
+"He's bound to be right. He's just bound to be right."
+
+"Don't cry," said Cyclops. Several of the men laughed, and when Clara
+joined them their eyes betrayed her power over them. Nothing betrays
+your feelings toward another person more surely than the way you take
+his merriment.
+
+The most important topic of the evening was a circular letter from the
+Executive Committee of the Will of the People, as Pavel's party was
+called, as to the "preparatory work" that was to pave the way to a final
+uprising. The discussion was left to the judge, Elkin and Pavel. The
+gawky seminarist was silent, with an angry air which implied that the
+arguments one was compelled to follow here were exasperatingly beneath
+one's criticism. The others listened spellbound, though some of them
+scarcely felt convinced. Ingrained in the consciousness of these was the
+idea of an abstract elemental giant, tremendous and immutable as the
+northern winter, of which the blind forces of the army were only a
+personified detail. That this giant should some day, in the near future,
+cease to be did not clearly appeal to their imagination. The boldness,
+therefore, with which the judge and Pavel spoke of these things greatly
+enhanced the fascination of their speeches.
+
+Cyclops, a huge slice of rye bread in his hand, evidently had something
+to say, but did not know how. He was quoting history, blushing,
+sputtering, swallowing his own tongue, and finally he lost himself in a
+jumble of words. Elkin was just the reverse. He was so calm, so glib and
+so lucid of phrase that as long as his speech lasted one was
+involuntarily nodding assent; yet when it was over one did not seem to
+know exactly what he had said or whether he had had anything to say at
+all. At one point he and the judge locked horns and fought long and hard
+without clearly understanding each other, until they proved to be
+arguing on the same side of the issue. Orlovsky, who took it for granted
+that the theoretical discussion was beyond his mental powers, looked on
+with stupid admiration. "Here is a bunch of cracks for you!" his beaming
+face seemed to say.
+
+In the course of a pause Clara whispered something to Olga.
+
+"Why don't you ask it then?" the short-haired girl answered, aloud.
+
+Clara turned pale, as she began to speak. She went straight to the
+point, however, and presently cast off all restraint.
+
+"All this is very well," she said, referring to a certain passage in the
+circular letter, "provided the local authorities really desert the
+throne. But suppose they don't, suppose they prove to be hardened
+conservatives, devoted slaves of the crown? It seems to me as if we were
+inclined to take things for granted--counting without the host, as it
+were."
+
+"Devoted to the crown!" said the gawky theologian. "The fact is that the
+high officials are a mere lot of self-seeking curs."
+
+"Exactly," Pavel thundered, bringing his hands together
+enthusiastically.
+
+Elkin removed the pipe from his mouth and bawled out: "Rats rather than
+curs, I should say; rats that are sure to forsake the ship of state the
+moment it shows signs of danger."
+
+The seminarist was annoyed at this attempt to steal the applause from
+him, but Boulatoff did not like Elkin's manner and offered him no
+encouragement. This disarmed the seminarist's opposition. From this
+moment on he listened to Pavel with friendly nods, as who should say:
+"Now you are hitting it; now you are talking sense!"
+
+"Of course," Pavel resumed, "the pamphlet means we should keep agitating
+until we are sure of our ground. There is a large liberal-minded class
+that does not stir merely because it is made up of a lot of cowards.
+These fellows will rally around our banner the moment the government
+begins to totter. As to the bureaucracy, it is so decayed, so
+worm-eaten, that all it knows at present is how to bend double for an
+increase of salary or promotion in rank. A lot of back-boneless
+flunkeys, that's what they are. You don't actually think they serve the
+Czar from principle?" he asked, addressing himself to Mlle. Yavner.
+
+"The only principle they care for," Elkin interposed, "is, 'To the devil
+with all principles!'"
+
+"Exactly," Pavel assented, with some irritation.
+
+"Yes," the seminarist chimed in, "and when they hear the tocsin of
+Liberty, Equality and Fraternity--"
+
+"Liberty, Equality and Fiddlesticks!" Clara mimicked him, mildly,
+signing to him not to interrupt the speaker.
+
+Pavel went on. He spoke at length, looking mostly at her. He was making
+an effort to convince her that in the event of a revolution the high
+officials would turn cowards, and her face seemed to be saying: "He's
+the nephew of a governor, so he ought to know."
+
+When the yard windows were thrown open the bewhiskered captain sat down
+to the piano and struck up an old national tune, to the accompaniment of
+two male voices. The others continued their talk under cover of the
+music. Pavel made up his mind that the judge and Clara were the most
+level-headed members of the Circle, and decided to seek their
+co�peration in the business which had brought him to Miroslav. Only the
+judge was the more reposeful of the two, as well as incomparably the
+better informed. As a rule he was absorbed in his own logic, while Mlle.
+Yavner was jarred by every false note in others, nervously sensitive to
+all that went on about her, so that when Cyclops, for example, got
+tangled in his own verbosity her eyes would cloud up with vexation and
+she would come to his rescue, summing up his argument in a few clear,
+unobtrusive sentences. There was a glow of enthusiasm in her look which
+she was apparently struggling to suppress. Indeed, she was struggling to
+suppress some feeling or other most of the time. Her outward calm seemed
+to cover an interior of restlessness.
+
+Pavel's unbounded faith in the party instilled new faith into her. The
+great point was that he was a member of the aristocracy. If a man like
+him had his whole heart in the struggle, the movement was certainly not
+without foundation. Moreover, Boulatoff was close to the revolutionary
+centre, and he obviously spoke from personal knowledge. All sorts of
+questions worried her, many of which were answered at the present
+gathering, partly by herself, partly by others. The new era, when there
+would be neither poverty nor oppression, the enchanted era which had won
+her heart, loomed clearer than ever. At one moment as she sat listening,
+her blond hair gleaming golden in the lamplight, her face lit up by a
+look of keen intelligence, Pavel said to himself: "And this Jewish girl
+is the one who had the feeling and the courage to make that rumpus over
+Pievakin! If I became a revolutionist it was the result of gradual
+development, through the help of conditions, books, people; whereas this
+girl acted like one, and in the teeth of grave danger, too, purely on
+the spur of the moment and long before she knew there was any such thing
+as a revolutionary movement; acted like one while I was still a blind,
+hard-hearted milksop of a drone." In the capital he knew a number of
+girls who were continually taking their lives in their hands and several
+of whom were like so many saints to him, but then Mlle. Yavner belonged
+to the realm of his home and his boyhood. What he regarded as an act of
+heroism on her part was hallowed by that sense of special familiarity
+and comprehensibility which clings to things like the old well that
+witnessed our childish games.
+
+She made a very favourable impression on him. If he had been a formal
+candidate for her hand, come "bride-seeing," he could not have studied
+her more closely than he did now. Indeed, so absorbed was he in her that
+once while she was speaking to him laughingly her words fell on a deaf
+ear because at that moment he was remarking to himself: "She laughs in a
+little rising scale, breaking off in a rocket."
+
+"There must be something in her, then," he thought "which was the source
+of that noble feeling and of that courage." He took to scanning her
+afresh, as though looking for a reflection of that something in her
+face, and as he looked at her and thought of the Pievakin
+"demonstration" it gave him pleasure to exaggerate her instrumentality
+in his own political regeneration.
+
+Olga had relieved her fianc� at the piano, and later on when she, too,
+rose from the keyboard, Clara eagerly took her place. There was no life
+in Mlle. Yavner's tones, but the impassioned sway of her head and form
+as she played told of a soul touched with ecstasy; told of the music
+which her fingers failed to evoke from the instrument. And the eyes of
+half a dozen love-stricken men added their rapture to the sounds.
+
+Pavel listened to her melody and breathed the scented night air that
+came in from the little garden in the yard. He reflected that Clara
+might visit the warden's house as a piano teacher. At this it came home
+to him that Makar was in prison, and that unless he escaped he was a
+lost man. He was seized with terror. The piano sang of a lonely ship,
+blue waves, and a starlit night, but to Pavel it spoke of his imprisoned
+friend and his own anguish. He joined in the chorus with ferocious
+ardour. His heart was crying for Makar's liberation and for a thousand
+other things. When she left the piano stool he leaped up to her.
+
+"Allow me to grasp your hand, Clara Rodionovna," he said, as though
+thanking her for the merit of her playing. And then, all unmindful of
+comment, he drew her into a secluded corner and said vehemently:
+
+"I wish also to tell you, Clara Rodionovna, that I have a special reason
+to be glad of knowing you; for if I have a right to be among good people
+it is you whom I have to thank for it." A thick splash of crimson came
+into her face; but before she had time to put her surprise into words,
+he poured forth the story of his awakening and how he had all these five
+years been looking forward to a meeting with her. As he spoke his face
+bore an expression of ecstatic, almost amorous grimness. The girl was
+taken by storm. She was literally dazed. An overwhelming, unspoken
+intimacy established itself between them on the spot.
+
+Olga's face was a blend of beaming triumph and tense perplexity. The men
+were making an effort to treat Boulatoff's sally with discretion, as if
+it were a bit of revolutionary conspiracy and they knew enough to mind
+their own business.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+A WARNING.
+
+
+It was one o'clock when the assemblage broke up. They scattered over
+various sections of the town, Pavel going to his home in the Palace,
+while Clara, accompanied by Elkin and Orlovsky, set off in the direction
+of Paradise Town. But whatever the character of the district one was
+bound for, in their hearts there was the same feeling that they belonged
+to a higher life than did those who slept behind the closed shutters
+they were passing. This feeling made them think of their group as a
+world within a world. Their Circle was a magic one. Somewhere in St.
+Petersburg, Moscow, Kieff, Odessa, Siberia, men and women were being
+slowly tortured, dying on the gallows; a group of brave people still at
+large--the mysterious Executive Committee--was doing things that
+thrilled the empire; and they, members of the Miroslav Circle, were the
+kin of those heroes. As they dispersed through the sleeping town each
+unconsciously remembered the organisation as so many superior beings
+dotting a population of human prose.
+
+"He must be quite close to the Centre," Orlovsky said.
+
+The other two made no answer. It struck Clara as sacrilege to talk of
+Boulatoff, whose fervent face was vivid before her at this minute.
+Particularly unbearable was the allusion to the prince to her because it
+was Orlovsky who made it. The stout government clerk was one of the men
+in love with her, while she often disliked him to abhorrence. She felt a
+sincere friendship for him, yet sometimes when he spoke she would be
+tempted to shut her ears and to gnash her teeth as people do when they
+hear a window pane scratched. This was one of her causeless hatreds with
+which she was perpetually struggling.
+
+Orlovsky construed their irresponsiveness as a rebuke for his speaking
+of the revolutionary "centre" in the street; so he started to tell them
+about his mother. With Clara by his side his tongue would not rest. Not
+so Elkin, who nursed his love in morose silence. When they heard the
+whistle of a distant policeman and the answer of a watchman's rattle by
+way of showing that he had not fallen asleep on his post, Orlovsky
+raised his voice.
+
+"She is getting more pious every day," he said, as though defying the
+invisible policeman to find anything seditious in his words.
+
+Clara's mind was on Boulatoff. The strange avowal of the man whom she
+had never seen before save through the window of a princely carriage
+tingled through her veins in a medley of new-born exaltations. Boulatoff
+did seem to be close to the Executive Committee, and the sentiments of
+that wonderful body, voiced by this high-born young man, the nephew of
+the governor of Miroslav, had lit stirring images in her consciousness.
+Pavel stood out amid the other revolutionists of her acquaintance even
+as the whole Miroslav Circle did in the midst of the rest of her native
+town.
+
+The interchange of signals between policeman and watchman which now and
+then sounded through the stillness of the night reminded her of the
+unknown man the gendarmes had arrested, of the hard glint of chains, of
+gallows. She wondered whether Elkin or Boulatoff knew anything about
+that man. She saw herself rapidly marching toward something at once
+terrible and divine. She was not the only one who followed this
+course--that was the great point. The kindest and best people in
+Miroslav, the best and the wisest in the land, and among them children
+of governors, of noblemen, were consecrated to that same something which
+was both terrible and luring. Her heart went out to her comrades known
+and unknown, and as she beheld a sleepy watchman curled up in the recess
+of his gateway, she exclaimed without words: "I'm going to die for
+you--for you and all the other poor and oppressed people in the world."
+
+Here and there they passed an illuminated window or an open street door,
+through which they saw Jewish artisans at work. They saw the bent forms
+of Jewish tailors, they heard the hammer sounds of Jewish carpenters,
+tinsmiths, blacksmiths, silversmiths; yet all these made no impression
+upon her. There were about 50,000 Jews in Miroslav and as many as
+three-fourths of them were pinched, half-starved mechanics, working
+fourteen hours a day, and once or twice a week all night, to live on rye
+bread and oatmeal soup; yet they made no appeal to her sympathies, while
+the Gentiles who were huddled up in front of the gates she was passing
+did. The great Russian writers whose stories and songs had laid the
+foundation to her love of the masses dealt in Gentiles, not in Jews.
+Nekrasoff bewailed the misery of the Russian moujik, not of the common
+people of her own race. Turgeneff's sketches breathe forth the poetry of
+suffering in a Great-Russian village, not the tragedy and spiritual
+beauty of life among the toiling men and women of her own blood. She had
+never been in Great Russia, in fact; she had never seen those moujiks
+in the flesh. Those she had seen were the Little-Russian peasants, who
+came to Miroslav from the neighbouring villages. Her peasants,
+therefore, were so many literary images, each with the glamour which
+radiates from the pages of an adored author. This was the kind of
+"people" she had in mind when she thought of the _Will of the People_.
+The Jewish realities of which her own home was a part had nothing to do
+with this imaginary world of hers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Clara's home was on a small square which was partly used as a cart-stand
+and in one corner of which, a short distance from Cucumber Market,
+squatted a policeman's hut. This was the district of a certain class of
+artisans and small tradesmen; of harness-makers, trunk-makers,
+wheelwrights; of dealers in tar, salt, herring, leaf tobacco, pipes,
+accordions, cheap finery. The air was pungent with a thousand strong
+odours. The peasants who brought their produce to market were here
+supplied with necessaries and trinkets. The name of the big market-place
+extended to the entire locality, and Paradise Town was just beyond the
+confines of that locality.
+
+The square for which Clara was bound was called Little Market. A gate in
+the centre of one of its four sides, flanked by goose-yards on one side
+and by a row of feed-shops and harness-shops on the other, led into a
+deep and narrow court, known as Boyko's. At this moment the gate was
+closed, its wicket, held ajar by a chain, showing black amid the grey
+gloom of the square.
+
+As Clara and her two escorts came in sight of the spot they saw a man
+sitting on a low wooden bench near the gate.
+
+"Somebody is waiting for me," she said gravely. She thanked them and
+bade them good-bye and they went their several ways.
+
+The man on the bench rose and went to meet her. As he walked toward her
+he leaned heavily on his stout, knotty cane--a pose which she knew to be
+the result of embarrassment. He was a tall, athletic fellow in a long
+spring overcoat, a broad-brimmed felt hat sloping backward on his head.
+He bore striking resemblance to Clara; the same picturesque flatness in
+the middle part of the face, the same expression. Only his hair was
+dark, and his eyes and mouth were milder than hers. They looked like
+brother and sister and, indeed, had been brought up almost as such, but
+they were only cousins. His name was Vladimir Vigdoroff. His family was
+the better-to-do and the worldlier of the two. When he was a boy of four
+and he envied certain other two boys because each of them had a little
+sister, and he had not, he had made one of his cousin. It was his father
+who subsequently paid for Clara's education.
+
+"You here?" Clara said quietly.
+
+He nodded, to say yes, with playful chivalry. They reached the bench in
+silence, and then he said in a decisive, business-like voice which she
+knew to be studied:
+
+"I expected to have a talk with you, Clara. That's why I waited so long.
+But it's too late. Can I see you to-morrow?"
+
+"Certainly. Will you drop in in the afternoon?"
+
+He had evidently expected to be detained. He lingered in silence, and
+she had not the heart to say good-bye. From a neighbouring lane came the
+buzz-buzz of a candlestick-maker's lathe. They were both agitated. She
+had been looking forward to this explanation for some time. They divined
+each other perfectly. As they now stood awkwardly without being able
+either to speak or to part, their minds were in reality saying a good
+deal to each other.
+
+Until recently she had made her home in her uncle's house more than she
+had in her father's. Her piano stood there, her uncle's gift, for which
+there was no room in the basement occupied by her parents. She had kept
+her books there, received her girl friends and often slept there. But
+since her initiation into the secret society she had gradually removed
+her headquarters to her parents' house, and her visits at Vladimir's
+home had become few and far between. Clara had once offered him an
+underground leaflet, whereupon he had nearly fainted with fright at
+sight of it. He had burned the paper in terror and indignation, and
+then, speaking partly like an older brother and partly like the master
+of the house which she was compromising, he had commanded her never
+again to go near people who handled literature of that sort. Accustomed
+to look up to him as her intellectual guide and authority, as the most
+brilliant man within her horizon, she had listened to his attack upon
+Nihilism and Nihilists with meek reserve, but the new influences she had
+fallen under had proven far stronger than his power over her. To relieve
+him from the hazards of her presence in the house she had little by
+little removed her books and practically discontinued her visits. In the
+event of her getting into trouble with the gendarmes her own family was
+too old-fashioned and uneducated, in a modern sense, to be suspected of
+complicity. As to Vladimir, he missed her keenly, as did everybody else
+in the house, but her estrangement had a special sting to it, too, one
+unconnected with their mutual attachment as cousins who had grown up
+together. Clara's consideration for his safety, implying as it did that
+he was too timid and too jealous for his personal security to work for
+the revolution, an inferior being uninitiated into the world of pluck
+and self-sacrifice to which she, until recently his pupil, belonged,
+galled him inordinately.
+
+At last he lost control over himself.
+
+"You are playing with fire, Clara," he said, lingering by the bench.
+
+"I suppose that's what you want to speak to me about," she answered with
+calm earnestness, "but this is hardly the place for a discussion of this
+sort, Volodia."[B]
+
+  [B] Affectionate diminutive of Vladimir.
+
+"If you want me to go home you had better say so in so many words. The
+high-minded interests you are cultivating are scarcely compatible with
+shyness or lack of frankness, Clara."
+
+"Don't be foolish, Volodia. You know you will make fun of yourself for
+having spoken like that."
+
+"I didn't mean to say anything harsh, Clara. But this thing is scarcely
+ever out of my mind. It's a terrible fate you have chosen."
+
+"How do you know I have?" she asked in a meditative tone that implied
+assent.
+
+"How do I know? Can't we have a frank, honest talk for once, Clara? Let
+us go somewhere."
+
+"We can talk here. To be on the safe side of it, let us talk in
+Yiddish."
+
+He made a grimace of repugnance, and seating himself on the bench he
+went on in nervous Russian.
+
+"You have fallen into company that will do you no good, Clara. If you
+are arrested it will break the heart of two families. Is there no soul
+left in you?"
+
+"What put it into your mind that I should be arrested?" she returned,
+lugubriously. "And is that all one ought to be concerned about? All
+Russia is in prison."
+
+"I expected something of that sort. Alluring phrases have made you deaf
+and blind. It is my duty to try to save you before it is too late."
+
+He had come for friendly remonstrance, for an open-hearted explanation,
+but that mood had been shattered the moment he saw her approaching with
+two of her new friends. He persisted in using the didactic tone he had
+been in the habit of taking with her, and he could not help feeling how
+ridiculously out of place it had become. He chafed under a sense of his
+lost authority, and the impotent superiority of his own manner impelled
+him to bitterness.
+
+"Is that what you have come for--to rescue me from empty phrases and bad
+company?"
+
+"Yes, to rescue you from the intoxication of bombast and dangerous
+company, whether you are in a sarcastic mood or not."
+
+"And how are you going to do it, pray?" she asked with rather
+good-natured gaiety.
+
+"Laugh away. Laugh away. Since you took up with those scamps----"
+
+"Scamps! I can't let you speak like that, Volodia. I don't know what you
+mean by 'taking' up with them, but if by 'scamps' you mean people who
+are sacrificing themselves----"
+
+"You misunderstand me----"
+
+"If by scamps you mean people who will be tortured or hanged for
+opposing the tyranny that is crushing us all rather than feather their
+own nests, then it is useless for us to continue this talk."
+
+"Be calm, Clara. You don't wish to misjudge me, do you? Of course, I
+needn't tell you that what you say about sacrificing oneself and all
+that sort of business is no news to me. Some other time, when you are
+not excited, I may have something to say about these things----"
+
+"That everlasting 'something to say!' People are being throttled,
+butchered and you--you have 'something to say.' We are speaking in two
+different languages, Volodia."
+
+"Maybe we are. And I must say you have picked up that new language of
+yours rather quickly. I am not going to enter into a lengthy discussion
+with you to-night. All I will say now is this: You know that four Jewish
+revolutionists have been hanged within the last few months--in Odessa,
+Nicolayeff, Kieff and St. Petersburg. If you think that does the Jewish
+people any good I am very sorry."
+
+"What else would you have Jews do? Roll on feather-beds and collect
+usury? Would that do 'the Jewish people' good?"
+
+"You talk like an anti-Semite, Clara."
+
+"There is no accounting for tastes. You may call it anti-Semitism. You
+may be ashamed of four men who die bravely in a terrible struggle
+against despotism."
+
+He cast an uneasy look in the direction of the police booth, but his
+courage failed him to urge her to lower her voice.
+
+"As for me," she went on, "I certainly am proud of them. I hold their
+names sacred, yes, sacred, sacred, sacred, do you understand? And if you
+intend to continue calling such people scamps then there is nothing left
+for us to say to each other. And, by the way, since when have _you_ been
+a champion of 'the Jewish people'--you who have taught me to keep away
+from everything Jewish; you who are shocked by the very sound of
+Yiddish, by the very sight of a wig or a pair of side-locks; you who are
+continually boasting of the Gentiles you are chumming with; you who
+would give all the Jews in the world for one handshake of a Christian?"
+
+"Well, I am prepared to take abuse, too, to-night. As to my hatred of
+Yiddish and side-locks, that does no harm to anybody. If all Jews
+dropped their antediluvian ways and became assimilated with the Russian
+population half of the unfortunate Jewish question would be solved."
+
+"Oh, this kind of talk is really enough to drive one mad. The whole
+country is choking for breath, and here you are worrying over the Jewish
+question. But then--since when have _you_ been interested in the Jews
+and their 'question?'"
+
+"Whether I have or not, I never helped to aggravate it as those 'heroes'
+of yours do. If there are some few rights which the Jew still enjoys,
+they, too, will be taken away from him on account of that new-fangled
+heroism which has turned your head."
+
+"Nobody has any 'rights.' Everybody is trampled upon, everybody. That's
+what those 'scamps' are struggling to do away with."
+
+"Everybody has to die for that matter, yet who cares to die an unnatural
+death? If the Jews were oppressed like all others and no more, it would
+be another matter, but they are not. Theirs is an unnatural oppression."
+
+"Well, that's what those 'scamps' are struggling for: to do away with
+every sort of oppression. Would you have the Jews keep out of that
+struggle? Would you have them take care of their own precious skins, and
+later on, when life becomes possible in Russia, to come in for a share
+of the fruit of a terrible fight that they carefully stayed away from?"
+
+"Those are dreams, Clara. Dreams and phrases, phrases and dreams. That's
+all you have learned of your new friends. Do you deny the existence of a
+Jewish question?"
+
+She scrutinised his face in the grey half-tones of the gathering dawn
+and said calmly:
+
+"Look here, Volodia, you know you are seizing at this 'Jewish question'
+as a drowning man does at a straw. You know you have no more interest in
+it than I have."
+
+"I am certainly not delighted to see it exist, if that's what you mean."
+
+"May I be frank with you, Volodia? All the Jews of the world might cease
+to exist, for all you care."
+
+"It isn't true. All I want is that they should become Russians, cultured
+Russians."
+
+"Well, as for me there is only one question--the question of plain
+common justice and plain elementary liberty. When this has been achieved
+there won't be any such thing as a Jewish, Polish or Hottentot question.
+Yes, those 'scamps' are the only real friends the Jews have."
+
+"But one cannot live on the golden mist of that glorious future of
+yours, Clara. It takes a saint to do that. Every-day mortals cannot help
+thinking of equal rights before the law in the sordid present."
+
+"Think away! Much good will it do the Jews. The only kind of equal
+rights possible to-day is for Jew and Gentile to die on the same gallows
+for liberty. That's the 'scamps'' view of it." At this the word struck
+her in conjunction with the images of Boulatoff, Olga, the judge, and
+the other members of the Circle, whereupon she burst out, with a stifled
+sob in her voice: "How dare you abuse those people?"
+
+Not only had she broken loose from his tutelage, but he had found
+himself on the defensive. They had changed r�les. The pugnacious tone of
+conviction, almost of inspiration, with which she parried his jibes
+nonplussed him. Usually a bright talker, he was now colourless and
+floundering. And the more he tried to work himself back to his old-time
+mastery the more helplessly at a disadvantage he appeared.
+
+"I don't recognise you, Clara," he said. "They have mesmerised you,
+those phrase-makers."
+
+She leaped to her feet. "I don't intend to hear any more of this abuse,"
+she said. "And the idea of you finding fault with phrase-makers! you of
+all men, you to whom a well-turned phrase is dearer than all else in the
+world! If they make phrases they are willing to suffer for them at
+least."
+
+"Oh well, they have made a perfect savage of you," he retorted under his
+breath. "Good night."
+
+She was left with a sharp twinge of compunction, but she had barely
+dived under the wicket chain when her thoughts reverted to Boulatoff and
+what he had said to her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+CLARA AT HOME.
+
+
+At Boyko's Court the chilly dawn lit up a barricade of wheels, axles,
+and bodies of peasant waggons. Through wide cracks of a fence came the
+shifting light of a lantern and the sleepy cackling of geese. At the far
+end of the deep narrow court hung the pulley chains and bucket of a
+roofed well. Clara went through a spacious subterranean passage, dark as
+a pocket and filled with the odour of paint. It was crowded with stacks
+of trunks, finished and unfinished, but she steered clear of them
+without having to feel her way.
+
+A door swung open, revealing a dimly lighted low-ceiled interior. The
+odour of sleep mingled with the odours of paint and putty.
+
+"Is that you, Tamara?" asked a tall, erect, half-naked old woman in
+Yiddish, Tamara being the Jewish name which had been arbitrarily
+transformed, at Vladimir's instance, into Clara.
+
+"Yes, mamma darling," Clara replied.
+
+"Master of the universe! You get no sleep at all."
+
+The girl kissed her mother gayly. "You know what papa says," she
+rejoined, "'sleep is one sixtieth of death.' Life is better, mamma
+dear."
+
+"I have not studied any of your Gentile books, yet I know enough to
+understand that to be alive is better than to be dead," the tall, erect
+old woman said without smiling. "But if you want to be alive you must
+sleep. Go to bed, go to bed."
+
+There were between them relations of quizzical comradeship, implying
+that each treated the interests of the other with patronising levity,
+with the reservation of a common ground upon which they met on terms of
+equality and ardent friendship.
+
+"By the way," the old woman added, yawning, "Volodia was here. He wants
+to see you."
+
+"I know. I found him at the gate."
+
+"Very well, then, go to bed, go to bed."
+
+"Is father asleep?"
+
+At this a red-bearded little man in yellow drawers and a white shirt
+open at the neck and exposing a hairy breast, burst from an open side
+door.
+
+"How can one sleep when one is not allowed to?" he fired out. "May she
+sink into the earth, her ungodly books and all. I'll break every unclean
+bone in you. Who ever heard of a girl roaming around as late as that?"
+
+"Hush," his wife said with a faint smile, as she urged him back to their
+bed-room, much as she would a child.
+
+The family occupied one large basement room, the better part of which
+was used as a trunk-maker's shop and a kitchen, two narrow strips of its
+space having been partitioned off for bed-rooms. It was Hannah, Clara's
+mother, who conducted the trunk business. The bare wooden boxes came
+from a carpenter's shop and she had them transformed into trunks at her
+house. Clara's father spent his days and evenings in a synagogue,
+studying the Talmud "for its own sake." There were other such scholars
+in Miroslav, the wife in each case supporting the family by engaging in
+earthly business, while her husband was looking after their common
+spiritual welfare in the house of God. Clara's mother was generally
+known as "Hannah the trunk-maker," or "Hannah the Devil." In her very
+humble way she was a shrewd business woman, tireless, scheming, and not
+over-scrupulous, but her nickname had originated long before she was old
+enough to be a devil on Cucumber Market. She was a little girl when
+there appeared in the neighbourhood what Anglo-Saxons would call "Jack
+the Window-Smasher." Window-pane after window-pane was cracked without
+there being the remotest clue to the source of the mischief. The
+bewigged old women said it was an evil spirit, and engaged a "master of
+the name" to exorcise it from the community; but the number of broken
+windows continued to grow. The devil proved to be Hannah, and the most
+startling thing about the matter, according to the bewigged women of the
+neighbourhood, was this, that when caught in the act, she did not even
+cry, but just lowered her eyes and frowned saucily.
+
+Rabbi Rachmiel, as Clara's father was addressed by strangers, was
+innocent of "things of the world" as an infant--a hot-tempered,
+simple-minded scholar, with the eyes and manner of a tiger and the heart
+of a dove. His wife tied his shirt-strings, helped him on with his socks
+and boots, and generally took care of him as she might of a baby. When
+he spoke of worldly things to her, she paid no heed to his talk. When he
+happened to drop a saying from the Talmud she would listen reverently
+for more, without understanding a word of what he said.
+
+Had Clara been a boy her father would have sooner allowed her to be
+burned alive than to be taught "Gentile wisdom." But woman is out of the
+count in the Jewish church, so he neither interfered nor tried to
+understand the effect that Gentile education was having on her.
+
+Father, mother and daughter represented three distinct worlds, Clara
+being as deeply engrossed in her "Gentile wisdom" as Rabbi Rachmiel was
+in his Talmud, or as her mother in her trunks. That the girl belonged to
+a society that was plotting against the Czar the old people had not the
+remotest idea, of course.
+
+Besides Clara and her married sister the old couple had two sons, one of
+them a rabbi in a small town and the other a merchant in the same place.
+
+Clara put out the smoky light of a crude chimneyless little lamp (with a
+piece of wire to work the wick up and down), which had been left burning
+for her. A few streaks of raw daylight crept in through the shutters,
+falling on a pair of big rusty shears fastened to the top of a wooden
+block, on a heap of sheet-iron, and on several rows of old Talmudic
+folios which lined the stretch of wall between Clara's partition and one
+of the two windows.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE COUNTESS' DISCOVERY.
+
+
+As Pavel mounted the majestic staircase of his mother's residence he
+became aware that an abstract facial expression was all his memory
+retained of Mlle. Yavner's likeness. He coveted another glance at her
+much as a man covets to hear again a new song that seems to be singing
+itself in his mind without his being able to reproduce it.
+
+He found his mother sitting up for him, on the verge of a nervous
+collapse. She took him to a large, secluded room, the best in the vast
+house for _t�te-�-t�te_ purposes. It was filled with mementoes, the
+trophies of her father's diplomatic career, with his proud collection of
+rare and costly inkstands, and with odds and ends of ancient furniture,
+each with a proud history as clear-cut as the pedigree of a high-born
+race-horse.
+
+Anna Nicolayevna had planned to lead up to the main question
+diplomatically, but she was scarcely seated on a huge, venerable couch
+(which made her look smaller than ever) than she turned pale and blurted
+out in a whisper:
+
+"Did you cross the bridge this afternoon?"
+
+"No. Why?" He said this with fatigued curiosity and looking her full in
+the face.
+
+She dropped her glance. "I thought I saw you there."
+
+"You were mistaken, then, but what makes you look so uneasy? I did not
+go in that direction at all, but suppose I did. Why, what has happened?"
+
+She cowed before the insistence of his interrogations and beat a
+retreat.
+
+"I am not uneasy at all. I must have been mistaken, then. It is about
+Kostia I have been wanting to speak to you. It is quite a serious
+matter. You see he is too delicate for the military schools. So I was
+thinking of putting him in the gymnasium, but then many of the boys
+there are children of undesirable people. One can't be too careful these
+days." She was now speaking according to her carefully considered
+program, and growing pale once more, she fixed him with a searching
+glance, as she asked: "You must have heard of the man the gendarmes
+caught, haven't you?"
+
+"Oh, you mean the fellow who would not open his mouth," he said with a
+smile. "Quite a sensation for a town like this. In St. Petersburg or
+Moscow they catch them so often it has ceased to be news."
+
+She went on to speak of the evil of Nihilism, Pavel listening with
+growing interest, like a man who had given the matter some
+consideration. Poor Anna Nicolayevna! She was no match for him.
+
+Finally he got up. "Well, I don't really know," he said. "It seems to me
+the trouble lies much deeper than that, _mamman_. Those fellows, the
+Nihilists, don't amount to anything in themselves. If it were not for
+that everlasting Russian helplessness of ours they could do no more harm
+than a group of flies. Our factories and successful farms are all run by
+Germans; we simply can't take care of the least thing."
+
+"But what have factories and farms to do with the pranks of demoralised
+boys?"
+
+He smiled. "But if we were not a helpless, shiftless nation a handful of
+boys couldn't frighten us, could they?"
+
+"Very well. Let us suppose you are a minister. What would you do?"
+
+"What would I do? I shouldn't let things come to such a pass, to begin
+with."
+
+He was tempted to cast circumspection to the winds and to thunder out
+his real impeachment of existing conditions. This, however, he could not
+afford; so he felt like a boat that is being rowed across stream with a
+strong current to tempt her downward. He was sailing in a diagonal
+direction. Every now and then he would let himself drift along, only
+presently to take up his oars and strike out for the bank again. He
+spoke in his loud rapid way. Every now and again he would break off,
+fall to pacing the floor silently and listening to the sound of his own
+voice which continued to ring in his ears, as though his words remained
+suspended in the air.
+
+Anna Nicolayevna--a curled-up little heap capped by an enormous pile of
+glossy auburn hair, in the corner of a huge couch--followed him
+intently. Once or twice she nodded approval to a severe attack upon the
+government, without realising that he was speaking against the Czar. She
+was at a loss to infer whether he was opposed to the new advisers of the
+Emperor in the same way in which her brother-in-law and the
+ultra-conservative Slavophiles were opposed to them or whether he was
+some kind of liberal. He certainly seemed to tend toward the Slavophiles
+in his apparent hatred of foreigners.
+
+"They'll kill him, those murderous youngsters, they are sure to kill
+him," he shouted at one point, speaking of the Czar. "And who is to
+blame? Is such a state of things possible anywhere in Western Europe?"
+
+Anna Nicolayevna's eyes grew red and then filled with tears, as she
+shrank deeper into the corner of the couch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She was left in a frame of mind that was a novel experience to her. Her
+pity was lingering about a stalwart military figure with the gloom and
+glint of martyrdom on his face--the face of Alexander II. Quite apart
+from this was the sense of having been initiated into a strange ecstasy
+of thought and feeling--of bold ideas and broad human sympathies. She
+was in an unwonted state of mental excitement. Pavel seemed to be a
+weightier personage than ever. The haze that enveloped him was
+thickening. Nevertheless his strictures upon Russia's incapacity left
+her rankling with a desire to refute them. That national self-conceit
+which breeds in every child the conviction that his is the greatest
+country in the world and that its superiority is cheerfully conceded by
+all other nations, reasserted itself in the countess with resentful
+emphasis. To be sure, all the skill, ingenuity and taste of the refined
+world came from abroad, but this did not lessen her contempt for
+foreigners any more than did the fact that all acrobats and
+hair-dressers were Germans or Frenchmen. Her childhood had been spent in
+foreign countries and she knew their languages as well as she did her
+own; nevertheless her abstraction of a foreigner was a man who spoke
+broken Russian--a lisping, stammering, cringing imbecile. She revolted
+to think of Russia as being inferior to wretches of this sort, and when
+the bridge incident swept back upon her in all the clearness of fact,
+her blood ran chill again. "He is the man I saw in the waggon after
+all," she said to herself, in dismay.
+
+She went to bed, but tossed about in an agony of restlessness. When the
+darkness of her room began to thin and the brighter objects loomed into
+view, she slipped on a wrapper and seated herself at a window, courting
+composure in the blossom-scented air that came up from the garden; but
+all to no purpose. Ever and anon, after a respite of tranquillity she
+would be seized with a new rush of consternation. Pasha was the man she
+had seen on the bridge, disguised as an artisan; he was a Nihilist.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While Anna Nicolayevna was thus harrowed with doubt, Pavel was pacing
+his room, his heart on the point of bursting with a desire to see his
+mother again and to make a clean breast of it. The notion of her being
+outwitted and made sport of touched him with pity. Come what might, his
+poor noble-hearted mother must be kept in the dark no longer. She would
+appreciate his feelings. He would plead with her, with tears in his eyes
+he would implore her to open her eyes to the appalling inhumanity of the
+prevailing adjustment of things. And as he visioned himself making this
+plea to her, his own sense of the barbarity of the existing regime set
+his blood simmering in him, and quickened his desire to lay it all
+before his mother.
+
+Presently somebody rapped on his door. It was Anna Nicolayevna.
+
+"I must speak to you, Pasha; I can't get any sleep," she said.
+
+They went into a newly-built summer house. The jumble of colour and
+redolence was invaded with light that asserted its presence like a great
+living spirit. The orchard seemed to be worlds away from itself.
+
+As a precaution, they spoke in French.
+
+"Pasha, you are the man I saw on the bridge," she said. "You are a
+Nihilist."
+
+"Sh-h, don't be agitated, mother dear, I beg of you," he replied with
+tender emphasis. "I am going to tell you all. Only first compose
+yourself, mamma darling, and hear me out. Yes, I'm what you call a
+Nihilist, but I am not the man you saw."
+
+"You a Nihilist, Pasha!" she whispered, staring at him, as though a
+great physical change had suddenly come over him. "Anyhow, you have
+nothing to do with the man they have arrested?"
+
+He shook his head and she felt relieved. His avowal of being a Nihilist
+was so startling a confession to make, that she believed all he said. He
+was a Nihilist, then--a Nihilist in the abstract; something shocking, no
+doubt, but remote, indefinite, vague. The concrete Nihilism contained in
+the picture of a man disguised as a laborer and having some thing to do
+with the fellow under arrest--that would have been quite another matter.
+He told her the story of his conversion in simple, heart-felt eloquence;
+he pictured the reign of police terror, the slow massacre of
+school-children in the political dungeons, the brutal fleecing and
+maltreatment of a starving peasantry.
+
+"I found myself in a new world, mother," he said. "It was a world in
+which the children of refined, well-bred families fervently believed
+that he who did not work for the good of the common people was not a man
+of real honour. Indeed, of what use has the nobility been to the world?
+They are a lot of idlers, _mamman_, a lot of good-for-nothings. For
+centuries we have been living on the fat of the earth, luxuriating in
+the toil, misery and ignorance of the peasants. It is to their drudgery
+and squalor that we owe our material and mental well-being. We ought to
+feel ashamed for living at the expense of these degraded, literally
+starving creatures; yet we go on living off their wretchedness and even
+pride ourselves upon doing so. Let us repay our debt to them by working
+for their real emancipation. We have grown fat on serfdom, so we must
+give our blood to undo it, to bring about the reign of liberty. This is
+the sum and substance of our creed, mother. This is the faith that has
+taken hold of me. It is my religion and will be as long as I live."
+
+In his entire experience as a revolutionary speaker he had never felt as
+he did at the present moment.
+
+A host of sparrows burst into song and activity, all together, as though
+at the stroke of a conductor's baton; and at this it seemed as if the
+flood of perfume had taken a spurt and the sunlight had begun to smile
+and speak. He went on in the same strain, and she listened as she would
+to a magic tale that had no bearing upon the personality of her son. His
+voice, sharp and irascible as it often sounded, was yet melodious in its
+undercurrent tone of filial devotion. The vital point, indeed, was that
+at last he was uncovering his soul to her. She was not shocked by what
+she heard. Rather, she was proud of his readiness to sacrifice himself
+for an ideal, and what is more, she felt that his world lured her heart
+also.
+
+"But the Emperor is a noble soul, Pasha," she said. "He has emancipated
+the serfs. If there ever was a friend of the common people the present
+Czar is one."
+
+Her objections found him ready. He had gone over these questions
+hundreds of times before, and he gave her the benefit of all his former
+discussions and reading. At times he would borrow a point or two from
+Zachar's speeches. Touching upon the emancipation of the serfs, he
+contended that Alexander II. had been forced to the measure by the
+disastrous results of the Crimean War; and that the peasants, having
+been defrauded of their land, were now worse off than ever.
+
+"Oh, mother," he suddenly exclaimed, "whenever you think of the
+abolition of serfdom think also of the row of gallows he had erected
+about that very time for noble-minded Polish patriots. Do you remember
+Mme. Oginska, that unfortunate Polish woman we met at the health-resort?
+Gallows, gallows, nothing but gallows in his reign."
+
+When she referred to the late war "in behalf of the oppressed Slavonic
+races of the Balkans," Pavel asked her why the Czar had not first
+thought of his own oppressed Russians, and whether it was not hypocrisy
+to send one's slaves to die for somebody else's freedom. The Emperor had
+secured a constitution for Bulgaria, had he? Why, then, was he hanging
+those who were striving for one in his own land? A war of emancipation
+indeed! It was the old Romanoff greed for territory, for conquest, for
+bloodshed.
+
+He literally bore her down by a gush of arguments, facts, images. Now
+and again he would pause, sit looking at the grass in grim silence, and
+then, burst into another torrent of oratory. It was said of Zachar that
+a single speech of his was enough to make a convert of the most hopeless
+conservative. Pavel was far from possessing any such powers of pleading
+eloquence, when his audience was made up of strangers, but he certainly
+scored a similar victory by the appeal which he was now addressing to
+his mother.
+
+He went to order coffee. When he returned, reveille was sounding in the
+barracks.
+
+"There you have it!" he said. "Do you know what that sound means? It
+means that the youngest, the best forces of the country are turned into
+weapons of human butchery."
+
+The brass notes continued, somewhat cracked at times, but loud and
+vibrant with imperious solemnity.
+
+"It means, too, that people are forced to keep themselves in chains at
+the point of their own bayonets," he added.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next few days were spent by the countess in reading "underground"
+literature. She was devouring paper after paper and pamphlet after
+pamphlet with tremulous absorption. The little pile before her included
+scientific treatises, poetry and articles of a polemical nature, and she
+read it all; but she was chiefly interested in the hair-breadth escapes,
+pluck and martyrdom of the revolutionists. The effect this reading had
+on her was something like the thrilling experience she had gone through
+many years ago when she was engrossed in the Lives of Saints.
+
+"It makes one feel twenty years younger," she said to Pavel, bashfully,
+as she laid down a revolutionary print and took the glasses off her
+tired eyes one forenoon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+PAVEL AT BOYKO'S COURT.
+
+
+Clara was introduced to Mme. Shubeyko, the warden's sister-in-law, and
+to her niece, the gendarme officer's sister. At first communication with
+Makar was held by means of notes concealed in cigarettes and carried to
+and fro by one of the warders, who received half a ruble per errand; but
+Clara was soon installed in the warden's house. Once or twice Pavel
+spoke with Makar directly, by means of handkerchief signals based on the
+same code as the telegraph language which political prisoners rap out to
+each other through their cell walls. These signals Pavel sent from the
+top of a hill across the river from Makar's cell window. To allay
+suspicion he would wave his handkerchief toward Masha or Clara, who
+stood for the purpose on a neighbouring hill, giving the whole
+proceeding the appearance of a flirtation. As to Makar, his cell was in
+an isolated part of the prison, facing the outer wall. Still, this mode
+of communication was exasperatingly slow and attended by some risks
+after all, and Pavel had recourse to it only in case of extreme
+necessity, although to the prisoner it was a welcome diversion.
+
+One day, when Clara, Masha and Pavel were together, he said to the
+gendarme officer's sister, with mystifying gaiety:
+
+"Well, have you discovered the heroine of the Pievakin demonstration?"
+He regretted the question before it had left his lips. Clara was
+annoyed.
+
+"No, why?" Masha asked, looking from him to her.
+
+"I have the honour to introduce--" he said, colouring. For some reason
+Masha did not seem to be agreeably impressed by the announcement, and
+Clara did not fail to notice it.
+
+As it was rather inconvenient for the son of Countess Varoff to be seen
+at the house of a major of gendarmes, Clara was to report to him at the
+residence of her parents. In the depth of the markets and the Jewish
+quarter his identity was unlikely to be known. Clara had lived at the
+warden's house about a fortnight when Pavel's first visit at the trunk
+shop took place. She offered him a rude chair in the small space between
+the partition of her bed-room and the window by the wall that was lined
+with the worn folios of her father's meagre library. The room was
+pervaded by odours of freshly planed wood, putty and rusty tin which the
+breath of spring seemed to intensify rather than to abate.
+
+Motl, Hannah's sole employe, was hammering away at his bindings and
+courting attention by all sorts of vocal quirks and trills. During the
+Days of Awe, the solemn festivals of autumn, he sang in a synagogue
+choir; so he never ceased asserting his musical talents. As Clara's
+visitor took no heed of his flourishes he proceeded to imitate domestic
+animals, church bells, a street organ playing a selection from Il
+Trovatore, and a portly captain drilling his men, but all to no purpose.
+As the noise he was making was a good cover for their talk, she did not
+stop him. At any rate, Motl scarcely understood any Russian.
+
+"I have only seen him at a distance," Clara said, meaning the prisoner.
+"But I know that he eats and sleeps well, and looks comfortable."
+
+"He would look comfortable if you tied him up in a sack. Is he still
+'dumb'?"
+
+She portrayed the warden's bed-ridden and voiceless wife who suffered
+from a disease of the spinal and vocal chords, and the disorder at his
+house and in the prison. She had always wondered at the frequent cases
+of political gaol-breaking, but if every gaol were conducted as this one
+was the number would be much larger, she thought. That vodka was quite
+openly sold and bought in every common gaol in the empire was no news to
+her, but this was a trifle compared to what she had heard of Rodkevich's
+administration. One of his gaolers had told her of imprisoned thieves
+whom he would give leave of absence in order that he might confiscate
+part of their booty when they came back.
+
+"Yes, I think he is a man who would go into any kind of scheme that
+offered money, or--excitement," she said, gravely; and she added with a
+smile: "He might even become a man of principle if there were money in
+it."
+
+"He won't give 'a political' 'leave of absence,' though, will he?" Pavel
+joked. "Still, upon the whole, it looks rather encouraging."
+
+"I think it does."
+
+"Do you?" And his eyes implored her for a more enthusiastic prediction
+of success.
+
+"Indeed I do," she answered soberly. "But whether I do or not, we must
+go to work and get him out."
+
+"This damsel is certainly not without backbone," he said to himself.
+
+He had familiarised himself with the details in the case of almost every
+revolutionist who had escaped or attempted to escape from prison. Some
+of these had made their way through an underground passage; others had
+passed the gateman in the disguise of a soldier or policeman; still
+others had been wrenched from their convoy, while being taken to the
+gendarme office or a photograph gallery. Prince Kropotkin had simply
+made a desperate break for liberty while the gates of the prison
+hospital in which he was confined stood open, a cab outside bearing him
+off to a place of safety. Another political prisoner regained his
+freedom by knocking down a sentinel with brass knuckles, while still
+another, who was awaiting death in Odessa, would have made his escape by
+means of planks laid from his cell window to the top of the prison
+fence, had not these planks proved to be too flimsy. In one place an
+imprisoned army officer slipped away under cover of a flirtation in
+which a girl prisoner had engaged the warden. A revolutionist named
+Myshkin had tried to liberate Chernishevsky, the celebrated critic, by
+appearing at the place of his banishment, in far-away Siberia, in the
+guise of a gendarme officer with an order for the distinguished exile,
+and a similar scheme had been tried on the warden of a prison in
+European Russia. Both these attempts had failed, but then in the case in
+hand there was the hope of Rodkevich, the warden, acting as a willing
+victim. Pavel said he would impersonate one of the gendarmes.
+
+"Some of the gaolers may know you," Mlle. Yavner objected.
+
+"That's quite unlikely, I was away so long. Besides, the thing would
+have to be done in the evening anyhow. I must be on hand. It will be
+necessary."
+
+"You might be recognised after all," she insisted, shyly.
+
+Another project was to have a rope thrown over the prison fence, in a
+secluded corner of the yard. This was to be done at a signal from
+within, while Makar was out for exercise, in the charge of a bribed
+guard. The guard was to raise an alarm when it was too late, telling how
+his prisoner knocked him down and was hoisted out of sight. Or Makar
+might be smuggled out in a barrel on some provision waggon, the
+prescribed examination of the vehicle being performed by a friendly
+gaoler. Whatever plan they took up, Pavel insisted on playing the
+leading part in it. He was for taking Makar away in a closed carriage,
+if need be under cover of pistol shots. Clara urged that in the event
+the equipage had to wait for some time, its presence about the prison
+was sure to arouse dangerous curiosity. Altogether she was in favour of
+a quiet and simple proceeding. Safonoff's house was within easy distance
+from the prison, so if Masha could undertake to keep her brother away
+from home, Clara would prefer to have Makar walk quietly to that place,
+as a first resort, thence to be taken, thoroughly disguised, to the
+"conspiracy house" of the Circle. But Pavel picked the proposition to
+pieces.
+
+Since her initiation into the warden's house Clara had been in a
+peculiarly elevated state of mind, her whole attention being absorbed in
+her mission in which she took great pride. This uplifted mood of hers
+she strove to suppress, and the clear-headed, matter-of-fact way in
+which she faced the grave dangers of her task animated Pavel with a
+feeling of intimate comradeship as well as admiration.
+
+As they now sat in the cleanest and brightest corner of the trunk shop
+he was vaguely sensible of a change in her appearance. Then he noticed
+that instead of the dark woolen dress she had worn at the time of their
+previous meetings she had on a fresh blouse of a light-coloured fabric.
+To be seen in a new colour is in itself becoming to a woman, but this
+blouse of Clara's was evidently a tribute to spring. Her face seemed to
+be suffused with the freshness of the month.
+
+While they sat talking, her mother came in, an elderly Jewess, tall and
+stately, with a shrewd, careworn look, her hair carefully hidden beneath
+a strip of black satin.
+
+"Is that you, Tamara?" she asked without taking notice of the stranger.
+She said something to Motl, made for the door, but suddenly returned,
+addressing herself to her daughter again. She wanted to know something
+about the law of chattel-mortgages, but neither Clara nor her visitor
+could furnish her the desired information.
+
+"Always at those books of theirs, yet when it comes to the point they
+don't know anything," she said, with a smile, as she bustled out of the
+room.
+
+"Are these Talmud books?" Pavel asked, pointing at Rabbi Rachmiel's
+library.
+
+"Yes," Clara nodded with an implied smile in her voice.
+
+"Can you read them?"
+
+"Oh, no," she answered, smiling.
+
+He told her that Makar was a deep Talmudic scholar and talked of the
+Jewish religion, but she offered him no encouragement. She was brimful
+of questions herself. Her inquiries were concerned with the future
+destinies of the human race. With all her practical common sense, she
+had a notion that the era of undimmed equality and universal love would
+dawn almost immediately after the overthrow of Russian tyranny. This, as
+she had been taught by revolutionary publications, was to come as the
+logical continuation of Russia's village communes, once the development
+of this survival of prehistoric communism received free scope. What she
+wanted was a clear and detailed account of life in Future Society.
+
+Her questions and his answers had the character of a theoretical
+discussion. Gradually, however, he mounted to a more animated tone,
+portraying the future with quiet fervour. She listened gravely, her eyes
+full upon his, and this absorbed look spurred him on. But presently her
+mother came in again, this time with a peasant customer, and they went
+out to continue their talk in the open air. There were plenty of
+deserted lanes and bits of open country a short distance off. There was
+a vague gentle understanding between them that it was the golden
+idealism of their talk which had set them yearning for the unhidden sky
+and the aromatic breezes of spring. This upheld their lofty mood while
+they silently trudged through the outskirts of the market place. They
+could not as yet continue their interrupted conversation, and to speak
+of something else would have seemed profanation. At last they emerged on
+a lonely square, formed by an orchard, some houses and barns and the
+ruin of an old barrack. The air was excellent and there was nobody to
+overhear them. Nevertheless when Pavel was about to resume he felt that
+he was not in the mood for it. Nor did she urge him on with any further
+questions.
+
+From the old barracks they passed into a dusty side lane and thence into
+a country road which led to a suburb and ran parallel to the railway
+tracks.
+
+The sun was burning by fits and starts, as it were. In those spots where
+masses of lilacs and fruit blossoms gave way to a broader outlook, the
+road was so flooded with light that Clara had to shield her eyes with
+her hand. Now and again a clump of trees in the distance would fall
+apart to show the snow-crested top of a distant hill and the blueish
+haze of the horizon-line.
+
+Their immediate surroundings were a scrawny, frowzy landscape. The lawns
+in front of the huts they passed, the homes of washerwomen, were
+overspread with drying linen.
+
+"Delightful, isn't it?" Pavel said, inhaling a long draught of the rich,
+animating air and glancing down a ravine choked with nettle. The remark
+was merely a spoken sigh of joy. She made no reply.
+
+They were both hungry, and presently they began to feel tired as well.
+Yet neither of them was disposed to halt or to break silence except by
+an occasional word or two that meant nothing.
+
+At last he said:
+
+"You must be quite fatigued. It's cruel of me."
+
+"I am, but it isn't cruel of you," she answered, stopping short, and
+drawing a deep, smiling breath.
+
+He ran into a washerwoman's hovel, startling a brood of ducklings on his
+way, and soon came back with the information that milk was to be had in
+a trackman's hut beyond a sparse grove to the right.
+
+A few minutes later they sat at a rude table in a miniature garden
+between the shining steel rails of the track and a red-painted cabin. It
+was the fourth track-house from the Miroslav railroad station and was
+generally known as the Fourth Hut. Besides milk and eggs and coarse rye
+bread they found sour soup. They ate heartily, but an echo of their
+exalted dream was still on them. To Pavel this feeling was embodied in
+an atmosphere of femininity that pervaded his consciousness at this
+moment. He was sensible of sitting in front of a pretty, healthy girl
+full of modest courage and undemonstrative inspiration. The lingering
+solemnity of his mood seemed to have something to do with the shimmering
+little hairs which the breeze was stirring on Clara's neck, as she bent
+over her earthen bowl, with the warm colouring of her ear, with the
+elastic firmness of her cheek, with the airiness of her blouse.
+
+A desire stirred in him to speak once more of the part she had
+unconsciously played in his conversion, and at this he felt that if he
+told her the story he would find a peculiar pleasure in exaggerating the
+importance of the effect which her "speech" had produced on his mind.
+But it came over him that Makar was still behind the prison gate and
+that this was not the time to enjoy oneself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+STRAWBERRIES.
+
+
+That walk to the trackman's hut had kindled a new light in Pavel's soul.
+He often found himself craving for a repetition of the experience--not
+merely for Clara's companionship, but for another occasion to walk
+through the fields with her, to sit by her side in the breeze, and,
+above all, for the intimacy of seeing her fatigued and eating heartily.
+She dwelt in his mind as a girl comrade, self-possessed and plucky,
+gifted with grit, tact and spirit; at the same time she lingered in his
+consciousness as a responsive pupil, glowing with restrained enthusiasm
+over his talk, eagerly following him through an ecstasy of lofty dreams.
+These two aspects of her were merged in the sight and odour of healthy,
+magnificently complexioned girlhood between the glint of steel rails and
+the dusty geranium in a trackman's window.
+
+They had another appointment. When he called at the trunkmaker's shop
+Clara greeted him with a hearty handshake. He blushed. His love seemed
+to be gaining on him by leaps and bounds.
+
+"How are things?" he asked.
+
+"First rate, Pavel Vassilyevich. The vegetable man will do it. He's a
+trump, I tell you." She went into details. She was in unusually good
+spirits. They talked business and of the adjustment of things under
+socialism. Pavel, too, was in good humour, yet floating in his mind was
+the same old question: And what if all fails and Makar is removed to St.
+Petersburg?
+
+They met again and again. One day, after they had arrived at certain
+conclusions regarding Makar, Pavel said:
+
+"Shall we take a walk?"
+
+She nodded assent.
+
+"I am again full of questions."
+
+"Again worrying about the future fate of humanity?"
+
+"Yes, I seem to have no end of questions about it. I wonder whether I
+shall remember all those that have occurred to me since I last saw you.
+I ought to have jotted them down."
+
+"You don't want to pump me dry in one day, do you?"
+
+"Well, if the truth must be told, I rather do. You will soon be leaving
+us, I suppose, so I am anxious to strike the iron while it is hot."
+
+The personal question as to the length of his stay sent a little wave of
+warmth through his blood. They set out in the direction of the
+trackman's hut as a matter of course. Instead of following their former
+route, however, they chose, upon a motion from Clara, who was more
+familiar with these suburbs than Pavel, a meandering, hilly course that
+offered them a far better view as well as greater privacy. A stretch of
+rising ground took them to the Beak, a promontory so called for the
+shape of a cliff growing out of its breast. The common people had some
+pretty stories to tell of a gigantic bird of which the rocky beak was a
+part and whose petrified body was now asleep in the bosom of the hill
+that had once been its nest.
+
+Pavel and Clara sat down to rest on the freshly carpeted slope. The town
+clustered before them in a huddle of red, white, green and grey, shot
+with the glitter of a golden-domed cathedral, the river flashing at one
+end like the fragment of an immense sabre. It was warm and quiet. There
+was not a human soul for a considerable distance around. Now and again
+the breeze would gently stir the weeds and the wild-flowers, lingering
+just long enough to scent the hillside with pine odours and then
+withdrawing, on tiptoe, as it were, like a thoughtful friend taking care
+that the two young people were kept supplied with the bracing aroma
+without being disturbed more than was necessary. Once or twice Clara
+held out her chin, sniffing the enchanted air.
+
+"Isn't it delightful!" she said.
+
+"It's a specimen of what life under Society of the Future will feel
+like," Pavel jested, with a wistful smile.
+
+At one point when she addressed him as Pavel Vassilyevich, as she
+usually did, he was tempted to ask her to dispense with his patronymic.
+In the light of the hearty simplicity of manners which prevailed in the
+revolutionary movement they were well enough acquainted to address each
+other by their first names only. Yet when he was about to propose the
+change the courage failed him to do so. Whereupon he said to himself,
+with a deep inward blushing, that the cause of this hesitancy and
+confusion of his was no secret to him.
+
+"Hello there! A strawberry!" she called out, with a childish glee which
+he had not yet seen in her. And flinging herself forward she reached out
+her white girlish hand toward a spot of vivid red. The berry, of that
+tiny oblong delicious variety one saucerful of which would be enough to
+fill a fair-sized room with fragrance, lay ensconced in a bed of sun-lit
+leaves--a pearl of succulent, flaming colour in a setting of green
+gold.
+
+"Oh, I haven't the heart to pick it," she said, staying her hand and
+cooing to the strawberry as she would to a baby: "Won't touch you, berry
+darling. Won't touch you, sweetie."
+
+"Spare its life then," he answered, "I'll see if I can't find others."
+
+And sure enough, after some seeking and peeping and climbing, Pavel came
+upon a spot that was fairly jewelled with strawberries.
+
+"Quite a haul," he shouted down.
+
+She joined him and they went on picking together, each with a thistle
+leaf for a saucer.
+
+"Why, it's literally teeming with them," she said, in a preoccupied
+voice, deeply absorbed in her work. "One, two, three, and four,
+and--seven; why, bless me,--and eight and nine. What a pity we have
+nothing with us. We could get enough to treat the crowd at Orlovsky's."
+
+Pavel made no reply. Whenever he came across a berry that looked
+particularly tempting he would offer it to her silently and resume his
+work. He was oppressively aware of his embarrassment in her presence and
+the consciousness of it made him feel all the more so. He was distinctly
+conscious of a sensation of unrest, both stimulating and numbing, which
+had settled in him since he made her acquaintance. It was at once
+torture and joy, yet when he asked himself which of the two it was, it
+seemed to be neither the one nor the other. Her absence was darkness;
+her presence was light, but pain and pleasure mingled in both. It made
+him feel like a wounded bird, like a mutely suffering child. At this
+moment it blent with the flavour and ruddiness of the berries they were
+both picking, with the pine-breeze that was waiting on them, with the
+subdued lyrics of spring.
+
+And he knew that he was in love.
+
+He had never been touched by more than a first timid whisper of that
+feeling before. It was Sophia, the daughter of the former governor of
+St. Petersburg, whose image had formerly--quite recently, in
+fact--invaded his soul. He had learned immediately that she belonged to
+Zachar and his dawning love had been frightened away. Otherwise his life
+during these five years had been one continuous infatuation of quite
+another kind--the infatuation of moral awakening, of a political
+religion, of the battlefield.
+
+From the Beak they proceeded by the railroad track, now walking over the
+cross-ties, now balancing along the polished top of one rail. She was
+mostly ahead of him, he following her with melting heart. By the time
+they reached the trackman's place, the shadows had grown long and
+solemn. Pavel had no appetite. He ate because Clara did. "Here I am
+watching her eat again," he thought. But the spectacle was devoid of the
+interest he had expected to find in it.
+
+Nevertheless the next morning, upon waking, it burst upon him once more
+that seated within him was something which had not been there about a
+month ago. When he reflected that he had no appointment with Clara for
+these two days, that disquieting force which was both delicious and
+tantalising, the force which enlivened and palsied at once, swelled in
+his throat like a malady. But no, far from having such a bodily quality,
+it had spiritualised his whole being. He seemed unreal to himself, while
+the outside world appeared to him strangely remote, agonisingly
+beautiful, and agonisingly sad--a heart-rending elegy on an unknown
+theme. The disquieting feeling clamoured for the girl's presence--for a
+visit to the scene of their yesterday's berry-picking, at least. He
+struggled, but he had to submit.
+
+To the Beak, then, he betook himself, and for an hour he lay on the
+grass, brooding. Everything around him was in a subdued agitation of
+longing. The welter of gold-cups and clover; the breeze, the fragrance
+and the droning of a nearby grasshopper; the sky overhead and the town
+at his feet--all was dreaming of Clara, yearning for Clara, sighing for
+Clara. Seen in profile the grass and the wild-flowers acquired a new
+charm. When he lay at full length gazing up, the sky seemed perfectly
+flat, like a vast blue ceiling, and the light thin wisps of pearl looked
+like painted cloudlets upon that ceiling. There were moments in this
+reverie of his when the Will of the People was an echo from a dim past,
+when the world's whole struggle, whether for good or for evil, was an
+odd, incomprehensible performance. But then there were others when
+everything was listening for the sound of a heavenly bugle-call; when
+all nature was thirsting for noble deeds and the very stridulation of
+the grasshopper was part of a vast ecstasy.
+
+"That won't do," he said in his heart. "I am making a perfect fool of
+myself, and it may cost us Makar's freedom." As he pictured the Janitor,
+Zachar and his other comrades, and what they would say, if they knew of
+his present frame of mind, he sprang to his feet in a fury of
+determination. "I must get that idiot out of the confounded hole he put
+himself into and get back to work in St. Petersburg. This girl is not
+going to stand in my way any longer." He felt like smashing palaces and
+fortresses. But whatever he was going to do in his freedom from Clara,
+Clara was invariably a looker-on. When he staked his life to liberate
+Makar she was going to be present; after the final blow had been struck
+at despotism, she would read in the newspapers of his prominent part in
+the fight.
+
+The next time he saw her he felt completely in her power.
+
+Clara was in a hurry, but an hour after they had parted he found an
+honest excuse for seeing her again that very day. The appointment was
+made through Mme. Shubeyko, and in the afternoon he called at the trunk
+shop once more.
+
+"We have been ignoring a very important point, Clara Rodionovna," he
+said solicitously. "Since the explosion at the Winter Palace the spies
+have been turning St. Petersburg upside down. They literally don't leave
+a stone unturned. Now, Makar went away before the examinations at the
+Medical Academy and he disappeared from his lodgings without filing
+notice of removal at the police station."
+
+"And if they become curious about his whereabouts the name of the
+Miroslav Province in his papers may put the authorities in mind of their
+Miroslav prisoner," Clara put in, with quick intelligence.
+
+He nodded gloomily and both grew thoughtful.
+
+"They would first send word to Zorki, his native town, though," Pavel
+then said, "to have his people questioned, and I shouldn't be surprised
+if they brought his father over here to be confronted with him."
+
+"That would be the end of it," Clara remarked, in dismay.
+
+The next day Pavel telegraphed it all over to Makar, by means of his
+handkerchief, from the hill which commanded the prisoner's window.
+
+"I have a scheme," Makar's handkerchief flashed back.
+
+"For God's sake don't run away with yourself," Pavel returned. "It's a
+serious matter. Consider it maturely."
+
+"Do you know anybody in Paris or any other foreign city you could write
+to at once?"
+
+"I do. Why?" Pavel replied.
+
+"Get me some foreign paper. I shall write two letters, one to my father
+and one to my wife, both dated at that place. If these letters were sent
+there and that man then sent them to my people at Zorki, it would mean I
+am in Paris. Understand?"
+
+"I do. You are crazy."
+
+"Why? Father will let bygones be bygones. I should tell him the whole
+truth. He is all right."
+
+"He won't fool the gendarmes."
+
+"He will!" the white speck behind the iron bars flicked out vehemently.
+"He'll do it. Provided he is prepared for it."
+
+"You are impossible. If an order came from St. Petersburg your Zorki
+gendarmes would not dare think for themselves. They would just hustle
+him off to Miroslav."
+
+"Then get father away from there."
+
+"They would take your wife, anybody who could identify you."
+
+"Father is better after all. He would look me in the face and say he
+does not know me. He could do it."
+
+"And later go to Siberia for it?"
+
+"You are right. But I don't think the order will be to take him here at
+once. They'll first examine him there. He'll have a chance to fool
+them."
+
+Clara offered to go to Zorki at once, but Makar was for a postponement
+of her "conspiracy trip." Saturday of Comfort was near at hand, and
+then the little Jewish town would be crowded with strangers, so that
+Mlle. Yavner might come and go without attracting attention even in the
+event the local gendarmes had already been put on the case.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+A "CONSPIRACY TRIP."
+
+
+Zorki was in a state of joyous excitement. The "Good Jew" of Gornovo,
+accompanied by a retinue of beadles, secretaries, "reciters,"
+attendants, scribes and hangers on, was pleased to grace the little
+community with his annual visit; so the Pietists had left their
+workshops and places of business to drink in religious ecstasy and to
+scramble for advice, miracles and the blessed leavings from the holy
+man's table. The population of the little town was rapidly increasing by
+an influx of Pietists from neighbouring hamlets.
+
+Clara, with a kerchief round her head, which gave her the appearance of
+an uneducated "daughter of Israel," was watching a group of men and boys
+who stood chattering and joking in front of one of the best houses in
+town, at the edge of the market place. It was in this house where the
+Good Jew made his headquarters every time he came to Zorki and where he
+was now resting from his journey. The sun stood high. A peasant woman
+was nursing her baby in a waggon, patiently waiting for her husband. Two
+elderly peasants in coarse, broad-brimmed straw-hats, one of them with
+an interminable drooping moustache, were leaning against the
+weight-house, smoking silently. For the rest, the market place, enclosed
+by four broken rows of shops, dwellings and two or three government
+offices--squatting one-story frame structures--was almost deserted; but
+one of the two streets bounding it, the one on which we find Clara at
+this minute, was quite alive with people. An opening at one side of the
+square showed a sloping stretch of road and a rectangular section of the
+river, the same as that which gleamed in Miroslav. The knot of men which
+Clara was watching all wore broad flat-topped caps, and, most of them,
+long-skirted coats. A man of fifty-five, short and stocky, with massive
+head and swarthy face, the image of Makar, was the centre of the crowd.
+
+"If you were a Pietist and a decent man," he said, in subdued accents,
+to a red-bearded "oppositionist" with gloomy features, "you would not
+wear that long face of yours. Come, cheer up and don't be a kill-joy!"
+And he slapped him on the back with all his might.
+
+"Stop!" the Oppositionist said, reddening from the blow. "What's got
+into you? What reason have you to be so jolly anyhow?" And addressing
+himself to the bystanders: "He has not had a drop of vodka, yet he will
+make believe he's in his cups."
+
+"What's that?" the swarthy man protested in a soft, mellow basso, "Can't
+a fellow be jolly without filling himself full of vodka? If you were a
+respectable man and a Pietist and not a confounded seek-sorrow of an
+Oppositionist you would not think so. Drink! Why, open the Pentateuch,
+and wherever your eye falls there is drink to make you happy. 'In the
+beginning God created heaven and earth!' Isn't that reason enough for a
+fellow to be jolly?"
+
+The bystanders smiled, some in partisan approbation, others with amused
+superiority, still others with diplomatic ambiguity.
+
+The heavy-set, swarthy man was Makar's father, Yossl Parmet. He bore
+striking resemblance to his son. Clara stood aghast. If he were
+confronted with the Miroslav prisoner, the identity of the Nihilist
+would be betrayed, whether the old man admitted the relationship or not.
+The only way out of it was to avoid such a confrontation by getting
+Yossl away for a few months. But then, once the Miroslav gendarmerie
+learned that a man named Parmet whose home was at Zorki was missing, the
+secret could not last for any length of time. In compliance with Makar's
+wish, Clara decided to take him into her secret. Accordingly, she
+mingled with the men, took part in the joking, and by the time the crowd
+dispersed she and Yossl were talking on terms of partial familiarity.
+Finding an opportune moment, she said to him, with intentional
+mysteriousness:
+
+"There is something I want to speak to you about, Reb Yossl. I have seen
+your son."
+
+The old man gave her a startled, scrutinising glance. Then, his face
+hardening into a preoccupied business-like expression, he said aloud:
+
+"Where are you stopping?"
+
+She named her inn, and the two started thither together. There were so
+many strangers in town, each in quest of an audience with the "Good
+Jew," and Yossl was so close to the holy man, or to those near him, that
+their conversation attracted scarcely any notice.
+
+"It's a very serious matter, Reb Yossl," she said, as they crossed the
+market place. "Nobody is to know anything about it, or it may be bad for
+your son."
+
+"Go ahead," he snarled, turning pale. "Never mind spending time on a
+woman's prefaces. What is up?"
+
+"You know how the educated young people of these days are. There is
+nothing, in fact, the matter. It'll soon be over. But for the present it
+would do him good if the gendarmes knew he was in Paris."
+
+"Why, isn't he in Paris?" Yossl asked morosely. "I received a letter
+from him from there."
+
+"Of course he is. Only, the gendarmes, in case they look for him, and
+they may do so sooner or later, you know, the gendarmes may not believe
+he is there. So it would be a good thing if you could convince them of
+it. Your son would be benefited by it very much."
+
+Yossl took fire.
+
+"On my part let him go to all the black ghosts!" he burst out. "'The
+educated people of these days,' indeed! First he will play with fire and
+then he wants me to fight his battles! Would he have his old father go
+to prison on account of him? He is not in Paris, then? I am as clever as
+you, young woman. I, too, understand a thing or two, though I am not of
+'the educated people of these days!' It is not enough that he has got in
+trouble himself; he wants to drag me in, too. Is that the kind of
+'education' he has got? Is that what he has broken with his wife and
+father for? The ghost take him!"
+
+"Don't be excited, Reb Yossl," Clara pleaded, earnestly. "It's a
+treasure of a son you have and you know it. As to the education he has
+acquired, it is the kind that teaches one to struggle against injustice
+and oppression, things which I know you hate as deeply as your son
+does." A tremour came into her voice, and a slight blush into her
+cheeks, as she added: "Your son is one of those remarkable men who are
+willing to die for the suffering people."
+
+"But who are you?" he asked with a frown, "How did you get here? If you,
+too, are one of those people you had better leave this town at once. I
+don't want to get in trouble on account of you."
+
+They reached the inn, and he paused in front of it, leaning against a
+waggon.
+
+"Never mind who I am," she returned.
+
+"But where is he? Has he been arrested? Good God, what has he been doing
+to himself? What does he want of my old bones? Is he sorry his father is
+still alive?"
+
+"You don't want your son to perish, do you?" she said rather
+pugnaciously. "If you don't, you had better get the gendarmes off his
+track."
+
+She went on arguing with renewed ardour. As he listened, a questioning
+look came into his face. Instead of following her plea he scrutinised
+her suspiciously.
+
+"But why should you pray for him so fervently," he asked significantly.
+"Why should you run risks for his sake? What do you get out of it?"
+
+"Must one get something 'out of it' to do what is right?"
+
+"Ah, may the ghost take the whole lot of you!" Yossl said, with a wave
+of his hand, and walked away. He felt sure that this young woman and his
+son were in love, and he was shocked for the sake of Miriam, Makar's
+divorced wife, as well as for his own.
+
+He made for a slushy narrow lane, but turned back, retracing his steps
+in the direction of the house which was the Good Jew's headquarters, as
+also the home of Miriam. It was the house of her uncle, Arye Weinstein,
+the richest Pietist in Zorki.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Good Jew occupied two expensively furnished rooms which were always
+kept sacred to his use. They were known as "the rabbi's chambers" and
+although the Righteous Man visited Zorki only once a year, nobody was
+ever allowed so much as to sit down in his easy chair. One day, when
+Weinstein caught his little girl playing in the "rabbi's bed room" with
+a skull-cap which the holy man had left there, he flew into one of the
+savage fits of temper for which he was dreaded, and slapped the child's
+face till it bled. The rabbi's chambers were never swept or dusted until
+a day or two before his arrival, and then half a dozen people worked day
+and night to make things worthy of the exalted guest. The "rabbi's
+parlour" opened into a vast room, by far the largest in the house, which
+on Saturdays was usually turned into a synagogue, and was known in town
+as "Weinstein's salon."
+
+Miriam was a very bright, quick-witted little woman, but she was not
+pretty--a pale, sickly, defenceless-looking creature of the kind who
+have no enemies even among their own sex. Her separation from Makar was
+only a nominal affair, in fact, the divorce having been brought about
+against the will of the young couple by her iron-willed uncle, who had
+succeeded in embroiling Yossl with his son as well as with himself soon
+after the true character of Makar's visits to Pani Oginska's house had
+been discovered; but Makar and Miriam had become reconciled, through a
+letter from him, and they had been in secret correspondence ever since.
+Yossl never lost hope of seeing them remarried, and, in order to keep
+the memory of his son fresh in Miriam's mind, he had obeyed the Good Jew
+and made peace with the wealthy Pietist.
+
+Yossl was in charge of the town's weight-house and was commonly known as
+"Yossl the weight-house man." When Feivish (Makar's real first name) was
+old enough to be started on the Talmud, he left the weight-house to his
+wife, devoting himself to the spiritual education of the boy. Every
+time they sat down to the huge book he would pin the edge of Feivish's
+shirt to his collar, leaving the child's back bare to the strap in his
+hand. Whenever his wife protested he would bring her to terms by
+threatening to tell the Good Jew that she would have her son brought up
+as a dunce. He was going to make a "fattened scholar" of him. He was
+going to fatten him on divine Law by main force, even as his wife
+fattened her geese for Passover. He was going to show those
+fish-blooded, sneering Oppositionists that they had no monopoly of the
+Talmud. Often during his lesson a distracted look would come into
+Feivish's dark little eyes, and Yossl's words fell on deaf ears. Then it
+was that the thong would descend on the bare back. Feivish never cried.
+As the blow fell, he would curl himself up with a startled look, that
+haunted Yossl for hours after. Feivish turned out to be a most ardent
+Pietist. Once, for example, in a very cold wintry night, after the Good
+Jew had crossed a snow-covered lawn, Feivish, in a burst of devotion,
+took off his boots and "followed in the foot-steps of the man of
+righteousness" barefoot.
+
+For four years the young couple lived happily, their only woe being the
+death of both children that had been born to them. But the Good Jew said
+"God will have mercy," and Feivish "served his Lord with gladness." But
+this did not last. Feivish was initiated into the world of free thought,
+and gradually the fervent Pietist was transformed into a fervent
+atheist. It was during that period that he first met Pavel and that his
+wife's despotic uncle extorted a divorce from him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While Yossl was twitting the red-headed Oppositionist in front of
+Weinstein's house, Bathsheba, a daughter-in-law of the man of
+substance, a plump, black-eyed beauty of the kind one's mind associates
+with a Turkish harem, beckoned Miriam aside, in one of the rooms within,
+offering her a piece of cake.
+
+"It's from a chunk the Good Jew has tasted," she said, triumphantly.
+"Eat it, and your heart will be lighter."
+
+"It will help me as much as blood-letting helps a dead man," Miriam
+answered with a smile.
+
+"Eat it, I say. You'll get letters more often if you do." For a woman to
+exchange love letters with the man from whom she has been divorced is
+quite a grave sin for a daughter of Israel to commit. The remedy
+Bathsheba recommended was therefore something like the prayer of a thief
+that the Lord may bless his business. But then Miriam questioned the
+power of the rabbi's "leavings" to bring a blessing upon any business.
+She smiled.
+
+"How do you know it is nonsense? Maybe it isn't, after all," Bathsheba
+urged.
+
+"You're a foolish little dear."
+
+"If I were you I should eat it. What can you lose by it?"
+
+Maria, a Gentile servant who had been longer in the house than
+Bathsheba, came in. She spoke Yiddish excellently and was almost like a
+member of the family.
+
+"Take a bite and you will be blessed, Maria," Miriam joked, holding out
+the cake to her. "It's from a piece the Good Jew has tasted."
+
+"If I was a Jewess I would," Maria retorted reproachfully. "It's a sin
+to make mock of a Good Jew."
+
+The other two burst into a laugh.
+
+Left alone, Miriam was about to throw the cake away, but had not the
+heart to do so. She sat eyeing it for some minutes and then, making fun
+of herself, she bit off a morsel. She acted like the Jewess of the
+anecdote, who, to be on the safe side, would kiss the cross and the
+Hebrew prayer book at once.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour later Yossl was flaunting his son's Paris letter and cursing him
+to a new crowd in front of the Good Jew's headquarters.
+
+"The ghost take him!" he said. "Indeed, the ghost is a well-travelled
+fellow. He can get to Paris just as readily as he does to Zorki."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+MAKAR'S FATHER.
+
+
+On Saturday morning Weinstein's salon was crowded with worshippers, all
+married men in their praying shawls and skull-caps. A Good Jew is exempt
+from praying with the congregation, his transports of religious fervour
+being too sacred a proceeding for common mortals to intrude upon.
+Accordingly, the Man of Righteousness was making his devotions in the
+seclusion of the adjoining parlour.
+
+To a stranger unfamiliar with Pietist prayer meetings the crowd here
+gathered would have looked for all the world like the inmates of the
+violent ward in an insane asylum. Most of the worshippers were snapping
+their fingers; the others were clapping their hands, clenching their
+fists with all their might or otherwise gesticulating savagely. They
+were running or jumping about, shrieking, sighing or intoning merrily,
+while here and there a man seemed to be straining every bit of his
+strength to shut his eyes as tightly as possible or to distort his face
+into some painful or grotesque expression. The Gentiles of the province
+called the Pietists Jumping Jacks.
+
+Some of the worshippers gesticulated merely because it was "correct
+form"; others did so from force of habit, or by way of fighting off the
+intrusion of worldly thoughts; still others for the same reason for
+which one yawns when others do. But all these formed a small minority.
+The bulk of the Pietists present, including several people of
+questionable honesty in business matters, were honestly convulsed with a
+contagion of religious rapture. The invisible proximity of the Man of
+Righteousness, the sight of the door that concealed his holy presence,
+keyed them up to the highest pitch of exaltation. Their ears followed
+the "master of prayers" at the Stand, but their minds beheld the Good
+Jew of Gornovo. All hearts converged at the mysterious spot behind that
+door. That which sounded and looked like a pandemonium of voices and
+gestures was in reality a chorus of uplifted souls with the soul of the
+concealed man of God for a "master of prayers."
+
+Weinstein was slapping the wall with both hands. His large figure was
+enveloped in the costliest praying-shawl in the room. All that was seen
+of him were two wrists overgrown with red hair. Now and then he would
+face about and fall to striding up and down meditatively. He was a
+well-fed, ruddy-necked Jew of fifty with a sharp hooked nose sandwiched
+in between two plump florid cheeks, and a small red beard. His
+unbuttoned coat of a rich broadcloth reached down to his heels; his
+trousers were tucked into the tops of well-polished boots. Once or twice
+an unkempt, underfed little man in a tattered shawl and with a figure
+and gait which left no doubt that he was a tailor by trade, barred
+Weinstein's way, snapping his fingers at him; then the two took to
+pacing the room together, shouting and chuckling in rapturous duet as
+they moved along, as is written: "Serve the Lord with gladness, come
+before His presence with singing," or "Because thou servedst not thy God
+with joyfulness and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all
+things; therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies." That the little
+tailor did not enjoy an "abundance of all things" was evident from his
+pinched face and broken shoes. He did not rank high enough in his trade
+to have even Weinstein's clerk for a customer, yet at the Pietist
+gatherings he addressed Weinstein himself by the familiar diminutive of
+his first name and sometimes helped to spank him or to pelt him with
+burrs out of his "gladness of heart."
+
+Yossl Parmet--Makar's father--was tiptoeing about the crowded room,
+smiling and whispering fondly, as though confiding glad news to himself,
+but his heart was not in his prayer. He was thinking of his son and the
+young woman who had come to plead for him. Indeed, Yossl's piety had
+deserted him long since. He clung to the Pietists for the sake of the
+emotional atmosphere that enveloped it and from his sincere admiration
+of the Good Jew's personality rather than from faith. He was fond of
+Miriam and his heart was now torn between jealousy in her behalf and
+anxiety about his son.
+
+The services over, silence fell upon the congregation. The Pietists were
+folding up their shawls, or eyeing the floor expectantly. The minutes
+were passing slowly. The stillness seemed to be growing in intensity.
+Presently a song broke from somebody in a corner. It was a song without
+words, a new tune especially composed for the occasion. Like most
+"Gornovo melodies" it was meant to be gay, and like all of them it was
+pervaded by the mixed sadness of the Exiled People and the brooding,
+far-away plaint of their Slavic neighbours. There is a mingling of fire
+and tears in the Pietist "hop." It isn't without reason that the most
+rabid Oppositionist of Lithuania will sing them on the Rejoicing of the
+Law.
+
+The others in the room had never heard the song before, yet several of
+them fell to at once, seizing the tune by intuition. The rest joined in
+gradually, until the whole assemblage was united in chorus. The import
+of this kind of singing while the Good Jew is in the privacy of his room
+is a plea that he may issue forth and grace the crowd with his presence
+and "some law." They went through the tune again and again, gathering
+zest as they mastered its few simple bars. The melody seemed to be
+climbing up and down, or diving in and out; expostulating with somebody
+as it did so, bewailing somebody or something, appealing in the name of
+some dear event in the past or future. Unable to tell definitely what
+their tune was saying or doing, the singers craved to see the speechless
+song, to make out the words it seemed to be uttering, and because that
+was impossible their hearts were agitated with objectless sympathy and
+longing, and the rabbi was forgotten for awhile. They pitied the unknown
+man who seemed to be climbing or diving all the more because it was in
+their own voices that his incomprehensible words were concealed.
+
+Little by little, however, as the novelty of the air wore off, the
+consciousness that they were beseeching the Man of Righteousness to come
+out to them blent with their yearning sympathy for their melody. They
+ardently believed that the Good Jew's soul had ascended on the wings of
+his ecstasy to the Divine Presence. All eyes were on his door. An
+indescribable ring of solemnity, of awe, of love and of prayer came into
+their voices. Their faces were transfixed with it. The melody was
+pouring out its very heart to the holy man.
+
+Suddenly it all died away. The door flew open and, preceded by a stout
+"supervisor," appeared an elderly man with a flabby-lipped mouth and a
+hooked little nose. He wore a long-skirted coat of black silk with a
+belt of the same material wound several times round his waist, and a
+round cap of sable and velvet. The crowd fell apart in breathless
+excitement. As he advanced through the lane thus formed he was flushed
+and trying to conceal his embarrassment in a look of grief. He seated
+himself at a long table and shut his eyes. Now and then he heaved a
+sigh, swaying his head silently, with absorbed mien. He was supposed to
+be in a trance of lofty meditation, abandoned to thoughts and feelings
+which were to bear his soul to heaven.
+
+The crowd was literally spellbound. Yossl Parmet was pale with unuttered
+sobs. He was perhaps the only man in the room who perceived that the
+holy man was ill at ease, and this gave him a sense of the Good Jew's
+childlike purity which threw him into a veritable frenzy of reverence.
+More than thirty years the master of multitudes and still blushing! When
+Yossl was a young man he had changed his Good Jews several times. He had
+adored them all, but he had not liked them. His soul had found no rest
+until he moved to Zorki and met this Good Jew of Gornovo. Then he felt
+himself in the presence of absolute sincerity, of unsophisticated warmth
+of heart. This Good Jew was a na�ve man, timid and unassertive. He had
+an unfeigned sense of his own supernatural powers, and was somewhat in
+awe of them. He felt as though there was another, a holier being within
+him and he feared that being in the same way as one possessed fears the
+unholy tenant of his soul.
+
+Finally the Good Jew opened his eyes and began to speak. It was a simple
+sermon on a text taken at random from the Bible before him, but his
+listeners sought a hidden meaning, a mystical allusion, in the plainest
+of his words or gestures. Yossl could have instructed him in every
+branch of holy lore, yet he seized upon the exposition thirstily. In the
+first place, he had seen Good Jews who were even less at home in the Law
+than the Good Jew of Gornovo was, so that he felt grateful to him for
+not being a downright ignoramus. In the second place, he knew that he
+actually believed his own words to be inspired.
+
+A few minutes after the sermon the Good Jew beckoned Yossl to a seat by
+his side. Makar's father accepted the invitation in a quiver of
+obsequious gratitude.
+
+"How are you, Yossl? Any news of Feivish?"
+
+"He's in Paris now," Yossl answered with a gesture of disrelish and
+speaking aloud, so that the entire crowd might hear him. He hated to
+tell the holy man a lie, yet he did so readily, the occasion being his
+best opportunity for giving the story wide circulation.
+
+"In Paris!"
+
+"Yes, he has been there since the beginning of summer. I have letters
+from him."
+
+"Letters from Feivish!"
+
+"He wanted to show off I suppose. Wanted his father to see he's in
+Paris. On my part he may go to perdition."
+
+"What is he doing there? Studying medicine in French?"
+
+"That's what he says in his letter. Yes, he has quite broken with
+Judaism, rabbi, quite a Gentile. All that is required to make the
+transformation complete is that he should extort bribes from Jews for
+allowing them to breathe. One Jew he prevents from breathing
+already"--pointing at himself.
+
+The rabbi swayed his head sympathetically.
+
+"What a misfortune! What a misfortune! Men like him could not be had for
+the picking."
+
+"He has left a wound in my heart and it will not heal, rabbi. If this is
+the kind of doctor he is going to be, he won't make much headway. 'I had
+a vineyard,' rabbi," he went on in a lugubrious sing-song, quoting from
+Isaiah, "'I fenced it and gathered out the stones thereof and planted it
+with the choicest vine. What could have been done more to my vineyard
+that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should
+bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?'"
+
+"Don't grieve, my son, I forbid you, do you hear?" the Good Jew said,
+limply. He was deeply touched. "Better give us a song, boys!"
+
+The song burst forth and was taken up by the glad crowd on the lawn,
+some Gentiles, standing at a respectful distance, listening reverently.
+
+Yossl had uncovered to the rabbi only part of his heart's wound. Since
+his son's compulsory divorce Weinstein had personified the cruelties and
+injustices of the whole world to him. When a couple applies for a writ
+of divorcement it is the duty of the rabbi to persuade them from the
+step. God wants no severance of the marriage bond. "When a man divorces
+his first wife, the altar weeps," says the Talmud. Yet Weinstein, who
+had so brutally extorted such a divorce from Feivish, continued to be
+looked upon as a pillar of the faith. All this had stirred a novel
+feeling, a novel trend of thought in Yossl.
+
+The next morning Weinstein's salon was jammed with people begging for
+admission to the Good Jew, who was in the next room.
+
+The scribes were busy writing applications, praying the rabbi to "awaken
+the great mercy of the Master of Mercies."
+
+"My wife is ill, her name is Sarah, daughter of Tevye," one man
+besought. "Do be so kind. If I don't get in at once it may be too late."
+
+Another applicant, with a crippled boy in his arms, sought a blessing
+for the child and himself. One father, whose son had been declared a
+blockhead by his teachers, wanted the Good Jew to pray that the boy
+might get "a good head." A white-haired man was picking a quarrel with
+two other Pietists who were trying to get in front of him. The old man's
+married daughter was childless and her husband did not care for her, so
+he wanted the rabbi to "give her children and grace in the eyes of her
+spouse." Several others wanted dowries for their marriageable daughters.
+That the Master of Mercies would grant the Good Jew's prayer in their
+daughters' behalf was all the more probable because in cases of this
+sort either the Good Jew himself or some of his well-to-do followers
+usually came to the poor man's assistance.
+
+Yossl sat at the corner of the table watching the scene pensively when
+Clara entered the room. The blood rushed to his face as he recognised
+her, and he hastened to take her out into the road.
+
+"What are you doing in this town so long?" he then asked, in a rage. "I
+thought you had left long since. What do you want of us all? Do you want
+to get everybody in trouble?"
+
+"How will I get you in trouble? Am I the only Jewish woman who has come
+to Zorki these few days? Have I no right to be here like everybody else?
+Besides, it's to bid you good-bye that I want to see you now. I am going
+away."
+
+Her few words, uttered with simple earnestness, had a softening effect
+on him.
+
+"You look like a good girl," he said, frowning at her amicably. "Tell
+me frankly: are you and my son having a love affair?"
+
+Clara coloured literally to the roots of her brown hair. She paused to
+regain her self-possession and then said, with a smile at once
+shamefaced and amused:
+
+"It is not true, Reb Yossl. What is more, your son and I are not even
+acquainted."
+
+"Can that be possible!"
+
+"It's the absolute truth I am telling you, Reb Yossl."
+
+He shrugged his shoulder and proceeded to question her on his son's
+case, on his mode of life before he was arrested, on the meaning of the
+struggle to which he had dedicated himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+FROM CELLAR TO PALACE.
+
+
+Meanwhile Pavel, Mme. Shubeyko, Masha, Mlle. Andronoff and her fianc�,
+the near-sighted judge with the fluffy hair, went on with their plot. A
+considerable sum was needed to bribe the warden, the head keeper (a
+bustling little man who was known in the conspiracy as the Sparrow), and
+others. The plotters had five thousand rubles, and in order to obtain
+the rest without delay Pavel went so far as to take his mother into the
+secret. The countess received his story with a thrill of gratitude and
+of a sense of adventure. After a visit to the bank, she handed him ten
+thousand rubles in crisp rainbow-coloured one hundred ruble notes. She
+was pale with emotion as she did so. Her heart was deeper in his
+movement than he supposed. It was as if every barrier standing between
+her and her son had been removed. She was a comrade of his now.
+
+"The only thing that worries me," she said for something to say, "is
+uncle's visits. He has not been here for some time, but if he comes, I
+shan't be able to look him in the face. He is a very good man at heart,
+Pasha."
+
+"Still, you had better make no haste about trying to convert him," Pavel
+answered, with a smile, struggling with the pile of notes.
+
+The bulk of the sum--eight thousand rubles--was to be paid by Mme.
+Shubeyko to the warden, half of it in advance and the other half upon
+the carrying out of the project. Rodkevich pretended to receive the four
+thousand rubles as a loan. He barred all frank discussion of the scheme,
+hinting that he was scarcely a master in his own prison and that all he
+could do was to "overlook things under pressure of business at times."
+As a matter of fact, he scarcely incurred any risks.
+
+Pavel missed Clara keenly. A feverish yearning feeling had settled in
+him, often moving him to tears, but he fought it bravely. Once or twice
+he went to the Beak and indulged in a feast of self-torture, but
+otherwise he worked literally day and night, seeing people,
+deliberating, scheming. The only manifestation of his nervousness was an
+exaggerated air of composure, and as this was lost on his fellow
+plotters, nothing was farther from their thoughts than that he
+experienced a sensation as though his heart were withering within his
+breast and that the cause of it was Clara Yavner.
+
+When he received word of her return he said to himself, in a turmoil of
+joy, terror and impatience, that he could not bear it any longer and
+that he would tell her all the next time they were alone.
+
+He saw her the very next day, at the trunk shop. Both blushed violently.
+The first minutes of their conversation were punctuated with nervous
+pauses, like the first talk of people who have been reconciled after a
+long estrangement. He said to himself: "Now is the time," and vaguely
+felt confident of success, yet he was still in awe of her and all he
+managed to do was to turn the conversation upon his mother.
+
+"I should like you to meet her," he said. "She has heard of you."
+
+"Your mother?" she asked in shamefaced astonishment.
+
+"She is a very good woman," Pavel observed, gravely. "She is in sympathy
+with the movement, you know, although it was only the other day I
+brought her the first few things to read. If it isn't asking too much I
+should like to introduce you to her, Clara Rodionovna. She would be
+delighted."
+
+He paused, but she maintained her air of respectful curiosity, so he
+went on. "She is very enthusiastic. She would like to know some of the
+Miroslav radicals, and I took the liberty of telling her about you. I
+need not tell you that I spoke in a very, very general way about you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One afternoon the Palace, which the trunk-dealer's daughter had known
+all her life as a mysterious, awe-inspiring world whose threshold people
+of her class could never dream of crossing, the Palace threw open its
+imposing doors to her, and she was escorted by Pavel up the immense
+staircase and into the favorite room of Countess Anna Nicolayevna
+Varoff. As it was an unheard-of thing for a Jewish girl to visit the
+Palace, it was agreed, as a safeguard against the inquisitiveness of the
+servants, that she should be known to them by such a typically Russian
+name as Daria Ivanovna Morosoff (Morosova).
+
+Barring the two great statues and an ancient cabinet inlaid with ivory
+and mother-of-pearl, the room was rather below her undefined
+anticipations. Her preconceived notion of the place soon wore off,
+however, under a growing sense of venerable solidity, of a quiet
+magnificence that was a revelation to her.
+
+"I'm awfully glad to know you, Clara Rodionovna, awfully," the countess
+said when the first formalities of greeting were over, and they were
+all seated. This Jewish girl was the first Nihilist she had ever met
+(indeed, Pavel was only "Pasha" after all), and she identified her in
+her mind with every revolutionary assassination and plot she had read
+about. She was flushed with excitement and so put out that she was
+playing with Pavel's fingers as she spoke, as a mother will do with
+those of her little boy. As to Clara, she had an oppressive feeling as
+though the pair of big musty statues, graceful, silent, imposing, were
+haughtily frowning on her presence under this roof. Pavel seemed to be a
+different young man. She scarcely seemed to be acquainted with him. Only
+the sight of Anna Nicolayevna fondling his fingers warmed her heart to
+both. On the other hand, her own smile won the hostess.
+
+The countess released Pavel's hand, moved over to the other end of the
+sofa and huddled herself into the corner, thrusting out her graceful
+elbows and great pile of auburn hair. The presence of Pavel kept her ill
+at ease. Finally she said: "I think you had better leave us two women to
+ourselves, Pasha. We shall understand each other much better then, won't
+we, Clara Rodionovna?"
+
+"I hope so," Clara answered, awkwardly.
+
+Pavel withdrew. In his absence their embarrassment only increased.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next time Clara and Pavel met, in the trunk-shop, he asked her when
+she would call on his mother again.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. The point is I don't know what to do with my hands
+there," she said, with a laugh. "I can't seem to shake off the feeling
+that I am in the house of--in 'the Palace,' don't you know."
+
+It was a hot day, but the air in the basement was quite cool. Motl was
+silently painting a trunk, and Pavel was conscious of the oppressive
+smell of the paint and of the impact of the brush against the wood as he
+answered, with pained stress in his voice.
+
+"But my mother does not feel like a countess. She is above and beyond
+all such things."
+
+"I know she is. Only I somehow don't manage to feel at home there."
+
+"But it's only a matter of habit I am sure. You'll get over it. You
+won't feel that way next time. You must promise me to call to-morrow."
+It was as if Clara's was a superior position in life and as if that
+superiority lay in this, that her home was a squalid trunk-shop, while
+his was a palace.
+
+"If I do, my mind will be in a whirl again," she laughed.
+
+"Oh, it isn't as bad as all that. You must promise me to call on her."
+
+"Can't we put it off--indefinitely?"
+
+"Clara Rodionovna!"
+
+His imploring voice threatened to draw from him the great yearning plea
+that was waiting to be heard, but this same entreating voice of his
+thrilled her so that she hastened to yield.
+
+"Very well," she said.
+
+"Will you come? Oh, it's so kind of you. I am ever so much obliged to
+you--but I declare I am raving like a maniac," he interrupted himself
+with a queer smile that forthwith lapsed into an expression of rage.
+"What I really want to say is that I love you."
+
+The lines of her face hardened. Her rich complexion burst into flame.
+She looked gravely at nothing, as he proceeded:
+
+"It seems to me as though I had felt that way ever since that Pievakin
+episode, Clara Rodionovna. I owe so much to you. If it had not been for
+you I might still be leading the life of a knave and an idiot. What you
+did on that occasion served to open my eyes and showed me the difference
+between light and darkness. And now it seems to me that if you were
+mine, it would infuse great energy and courage into me. I have got so
+used to seeing you, I hate to think of being apart from you for a single
+moment. Oh, you are so dear to me, I am so happy to sit by your side, to
+be allowed to say all this to you."
+
+"You are dear to me, too," she said in great embarrassment.
+
+He grasped her hand in silence, his face a burning amorous red.
+
+On their way to the Beak, after another outburst from him, she spoke in
+measured accents, firm and sad, like the voice of fate.
+
+"I don't know where this will lead us, for either of us or both may be
+arrested at any time, and then this happiness would add so much poison
+to the horrors of prison life. Besides, even if we are not arrested, as
+long as present conditions prevail our love would have to remain hidden
+underground, like our dear movement----"
+
+"My mother will know it. I want her to know it; and if it is possible to
+tell your parents, too----"
+
+"Oh, it would kill them. Theirs is an entirely different world."
+
+"Then, for the present, let them be none the wiser for it. As to my
+mother, she likes you very, very much already and when she hears of it
+she will love you to distraction, Clara Rodionovna. My friends of the
+party will know it, too, of course, and what do we care for the rest of
+this wretched world? But oh, I do wish you could tell your mother, or
+could I speak to her?"
+
+"Oh, that's absolutely impossible," she said in a voice vibrant with a
+suggestion of tears and the music of love at once. "Your mother may
+understand me. We can speak in the same language at least, but my poor
+parents--one might as well tell them I am dead. Well, when the Will of
+the People has scored its great victory and Russia is free, then, if we
+are alive, we shall announce it to my poor parents."
+
+He picked up a stone and flung it with all his might. He was in a fidget
+of suppressed exultation. Now that his suspense was over, they changed
+parts, as it were. The gnawing gloom which had tantalised him during the
+past few weeks had suddenly burst forth in torrents of sunshine; whereas
+in her case the quiet light-hearted happiness which had been the colour
+of her love had given way to an infatuated heart filled with anguish.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He told his mother the news the very next morning. The explanation took
+place in the immense ball-room. It was a windy morning outside, and they
+were marching up and down the parquette of polished light oak, arm in
+arm. Presently they paused at one of the windows facing the garden. They
+could faintly hear the soughing of the wind in the trees. They stood
+gazing at the fluttering leaves, when he said, musingly:
+
+"I have something to tell you, mother. I told Mlle. Yavner I loved her
+and I want you to congratulate me."
+
+"Mlle. Yavner?" she asked, with a look of consternation.
+
+"Yes, Mamma dear, I love her and she loves me and she is the dearest
+woman in the world and you are not going to look upon it in a manner
+unworthy of yourself, are you, dear little mamma mine?" He seized her
+fingers and fell to kissing them and murmuring: "My dear little mamma,
+my dear little mamma." His endearments were too much for her.
+
+"Pasha, Pasha! What are you doing with yourself," she sobbed bitterly.
+
+"Mamma darling! Mamma darling!" he shouted fiercely. "You are not going
+to give way to idiotic, brutal, Asiatic notions that are not really
+yours. Another year or two, perhaps less, and all Russia will be free
+from them and from all her chains, and then one won't have to be shocked
+to hear that a man and a woman who love each other and belong to each
+other are going to marry. Mamma dear, my darling little mamma! You are
+the noblest woman to be found. You are not going to go back on your son
+because he is trying to live like a real human being and not like a
+hypocrite and a brute."
+
+She dared not cry any more.
+
+When Clara came, the countess, turning pale, clasped her vehemently, as
+though pleading for mercy. Clara felt bewildered and terror-stricken,
+and after some perfunctory kisses she loosened her arms, but the Gentile
+woman detained her in an impetuous embrace, as she said: "Be good to me,
+both of you. He is all I have in the world." As she saw an embarrassed
+smile on Clara's beautifully coloured face, she bent forward with a
+sudden impulse and drew her to her bosom again, as though she had just
+made the discovery that the Jewish girl was not unlike other girls after
+all, that there was nothing preternatural about her person or speech.
+Whereupon Clara kissed her passionately and burst into tears.
+
+The countess caressed her, poured out the innermost secrets of her heart
+to her. This Jewish girl whom she had only seen once before heard from
+her the story of her past life, of her childhood, of her two unhappy
+marriages, of her thirst for comradeship with her son, of her
+conversion. The two women became intimate friends, although Clara spoke
+comparatively little.
+
+Nevertheless, that night Anna Nicolayevna vainly courted sleep. Her
+heart was in her mouth. She wished she could implore her son to break
+the engagement, to sever connection with the movement, to abandon all
+his perilous and unconventional pursuits. But she knew that she would
+never have the courage to do so.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+AN UNFORESEEN SUGGESTION.
+
+
+Pavel's prediction concerning Yossl came true, but the identity of the
+province to which the missing medical student belonged and the one in
+which the unknown Nihilist had been arrested escaped the notice of the
+secret service, and the Zorki gendarme officer contented himself with
+appropriating the Paris letter. Chance, however, soon solved the riddle
+for the authorities: a prisoner from Zorki, a drunkard charged with
+petty larceny, recognised Makar in the prison yard.
+
+It was Masha who brought the news to Pavel and Clara.
+
+"The general of gendarmes was there, the assistant procureur, my brother
+and the warden," she said, describing the scene when Parmet was first
+addressed by his name in prison. "It was in the office. When he was
+brought in, my brother says his heart--my brother's heart, I mean--began
+to beat fast. The assistant procureur offered him a chair." She paused,
+with an appealing smile, her hand to her bosom. "My heart, too, is
+beating fearfully at this minute, as I picture the scene. I am too
+imaginative, I am afraid. Well, he pulled up a chair, the assistant
+procureur and said: 'Be seated, Monsieur Parmet.' The prisoner started a
+little, just a little, don't you know, and then he smiled and began to
+rub his eyes, as if he had just been awakened. The general got angry and
+said now there was no use for him to make believe and to keep his mouth
+shut and the assistant procureur said very politely he might as well
+tell them a little more about himself and the people he knew in
+Miroslav, as they were well known to the gendarmes anyhow. They coaxed
+him and coaxed him and coaxed him until he shouted: 'As to myself I have
+the honour of being a member of the Party of the Will of the People. As
+to those I know in Miroslav, I assure you I don't know anybody here.'
+But didn't he tease them! 'I hoped to form some connections here,' he
+said, 'but then you were foolish enough to arrest me without giving me a
+chance. The St. Petersburg gendarmes will laugh at you when they hear of
+the kind of job you have made of it.'"
+
+Pavel roared. He thought Makar's taunting answer would induce the local
+gendarme office to detain him in the hope of discovering his prospective
+"connections."
+
+"Only why should he have said he was a member of the Party of the Will
+of the People? That will aggravate his case," Clara said.
+
+"That was the dream of his life--to say that, and to say it
+triumphantly, to some gendarme officers. At any rate, we have no time to
+lose."
+
+That afternoon Pavel had a talk with Makar from the top of the hill
+overlooking the prison yard.
+
+"Hurrah!" Makar's handkerchief flashed back in answer to his first
+"hello." "They know my name. I had some fun with them."
+
+"It was all right, only for the sake of everything that is noble, don't
+aggravate your case. Otherwise everything looks bright. Answer no more
+of their questions."
+
+"Crazy to wag my tongue. Have not spoken so long. I am trying to make a
+convert of my guard. Pastime."
+
+"Don't, for God's sake don't, or you'll ruin it all. Promise to keep
+silent. Do you?"
+
+"Don't get angry. I can see your handkerchief gnashing its teeth. Only
+one thing more. May I?"
+
+"Hurry up."
+
+"Here, in prison I am openly a citizen of the Social Republic, and the
+Czar is powerless to subdue me. I am in a cell. What more can he do with
+me? But here, in this cell, where his power is most complete, I openly
+defy him, all his gendarmes and army notwithstanding."
+
+Pavel went away, cursing and laughing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Every scheme of the conspirators turned out to be beset with
+insurmountable difficulties. Clara did not tell Pavel all she knew and
+made light of those obstacles with which he was acquainted, but in her
+own heart she was extremely uneasy.
+
+One evening Pavel sat on a bench in front of a public house, smoking a
+cheap pipe. He had a loaded pistol in his pocket and a dagger under his
+vest. The prison was a short distance round the third corner. When one
+of the customers of the public house seated himself by his side Pavel
+engaged him in conversation, talking garrulously in the manner of a
+humble, careworn government clerk.
+
+At last a way had been found for the provision man to take Makar out of
+the prison yard. This was what kept Pavel in this out-of-the-way spot.
+In the near vicinity of the inn stood a droshky. The appearance of the
+provision waggon, full of empty sacks and some barrels, at a corner
+diagonally across the street was to serve as a signal for Pavel to walk
+up to a deserted ditch-bridge, where the runaway was expected to emerge
+from under the sacks and to put on a military cap. Then Makar and
+Boulatoff would gain the droshky, mount it, and be driven to the
+Palace--the best hiding place one could find in all Miroslav.
+
+Pavel was calm, determined, ready to shoot and to be shot at. By degrees
+he grew fidgety. Presently Clara passed along. He rose to his feet and
+went off in the opposite direction, the two meeting in the next street.
+
+"It was a fizzle to-day, but it'll be all right, Pasha," she said in a
+cheery, matter-of-fact voice. "As ill luck would have it, there were
+some people about."
+
+Pavel's brows contracted. "He'll try again, of course."
+
+"Certainly. He will be there in four days."
+
+"Four days! Couldn't he make it sooner?"
+
+"I'll let you know."
+
+"Wait, dearest. Are you sure the people in the prison are not getting
+suspicious about you?" He had asked the question and she had answered it
+more than once before.
+
+"I don't think they are. Mme. Shubeyko and the Sparrow are the only ones
+who know all about it. As to Rodkevitch, he understands it all, of
+course, but he pretends not to. The Sparrow has his 'bosom friend' among
+the keepers, but that man does not know anything about me. I am quite
+sure of it."
+
+"The fewer who know what you are doing there the better, of course.
+Don't be foolhardy, my charming one. Oh, I do wish it was all over.
+Mother wants you to go to the country with her, and I should join you
+two for some time."
+
+With a passionate handshake they parted, Clara directing her steps to
+the prison building. The tremulous solicitude of his warning, his tender
+concern for her safety left a glow of happiness and devotion in her. She
+visioned him with his pistol and dagger and her heart was crushed with
+anxiety. With his hot-blooded temerity he was apt to act rashly, to use
+violence and stake his own life and Makar's before it was necessary.
+Pavel's mode of taking away the prisoner had never appealed to her
+strongly, and now the idea was growing on her of stealing a march on
+Pavel, of bringing about Makar's liberation when her lover was not on
+hand. And the more she thought of thus repaying his loving care for
+herself the keener became her joy in the plan.
+
+Still, the general situation looked so discouraging, that with all her
+thrills of amorous delight, she was in a state of black despair. The
+truth of the matter was that the provision man, who was eager to earn a
+few hundred rubles and to be plucky, had proved to be a most unreliable,
+boastful coward. Clara was cudgelling her brain for some new scheme, for
+some new line of action, when an important suggestion came from an
+unforeseen quarter. Mme. Shubeyko arrived at the prison, all in a
+flutter with a discovery: Father Michail, the prison priest, bore
+considerable resemblance to Makar.
+
+"That's so, but what of it?" Clara said between irritation and agreeable
+surprise.
+
+"What of it! Why,--I have thought it all out, you may be sure of that.
+It all occurred to me only an hour ago. Even less," she said with that
+silly smile of hers which usually so annoyed Pavel and which at this
+moment exasperated Clara even more than it would her quick-tempered
+lover.
+
+"What did occur to you?" Clara asked, with the least bit of venom on the
+"did."
+
+Mme. Shubeyko started to explain, but her listener divined the rest
+herself: Makar might pass out in the disguise of a priest, while Father
+Michail was with the prisoners.
+
+"It's an excellent idea!" she murmured gravely. She could scarcely bring
+herself to believe that the plan had emanated from an absurd brain like
+that of the woman before her.
+
+"Someone could detain Father Michail until it was all safely over," Mme.
+Shubeyko went on. "He's awfully fond of card-playing, and if a pretty
+young lady like yourself was his partner he would never have the heart
+to get up from the table, I know he wouldn't."
+
+The Sparrow, however, overruled the whole plan. Father Michail had been
+connected with the prison for twenty years and the two gatemen knew him
+as they did their own wives. What was more, the day gateman and the
+priest were particularly fond of each other and often exchanged jokes.
+
+Clara's hands dropped to her sides. Then she clenched a fist and said:
+"Oh, nonsense. He'll never know. If Father Michail did not speak to him
+he wouldn't think it strange, would he?"
+
+"No, but the gateman might speak to him. Besides, you'll have to get up
+early to fool him, lady." Every officer in the prison building had his
+nickname, and this vigilant gateman who was a very fat man was known as
+Double Chin. He seemed to be dozing half the time; but the Sparrow
+assured Clara that when his little eyes were shut they saw even better
+than when they were open.
+
+"Nonsense. Your imagination carries you too far. Anyhow, nothing
+venture, nothing have. We must get that man out."
+
+"Ready to serve you, young lady, only if I may say so, I don't like the
+plan at all, young lady."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+VLADIMIR FINDS HIS CAUSE.
+
+
+The next morning, as Clara walked along Kasimir Street, she saw Volodia
+Vigdoroff, her cousin, talking and laughing exuberantly to two elderly
+men in front of the flashy window of a drug store. One of his listeners
+wore a military uniform. It was Dr. Lipnitzky (Jewish physicians had not
+yet been proscribed from the Russian army)--a grey-haired,
+smooth-shaven, pudgy little man with three medals across his breast. It
+was at the Turkish war that he had won these decorations. Clara could
+never look at him without feeling a taste of sickness in her mouth like
+the one she had felt one day shortly after the war, when she was sick in
+bed and the little doctor, bending over, shouted to her to open her
+mouth wider. The best physician in town, he was the terror of his
+uneducated co-religionists. When a Jewish housewife paid him his fee in
+copper instead of silver, or neglected to wrap it up in paper, he would
+make an ugly scene, asking the poor woman at the top of his voice when
+she and others like her would learn to live like human beings.
+Sometimes, when a family failed to pay him altogether, pleading poverty,
+he would call them a lot of prevaricating knaves with a snug little
+hoard in the old woman's stocking, and carry off a copper pan or brass
+candlestick. In every case of this sort, however, the pan or the brass
+candlestick was sure to come back, sometimes with a ruble or two into
+the bargain.
+
+The other man to whom Vigdoroff was speaking was Paul Zundel, the
+musical autocrat of the province. He was as small of stature and as
+irascible as Dr. Lipnitzky--a grey-haired dandy with a Mexican
+complexion and a pair of long black side whiskers tipped with white. He
+was a graduate of a German conservatory and spoke several languages with
+illiterate fluency.
+
+They were both bachelors and both were frequent visitors at the
+governor's house, where they were liked as much for the money they
+usually lost in cards (although in other houses they were known as sharp
+players) as for their professional services. They spent large sums on
+the education of Jewish children and were particularly interested in the
+spread of modern culture among their people. In other words, they
+advocated and worked for the assimilation of their people with the
+"deep-rooted" population. When a Talmud boy was ambitious to give up his
+divine studies for "Gentile books" and his old-fashioned garb for a
+gymnasium uniform, the two eccentric bachelors were his two stars of
+hope.
+
+Vigdoroff overtook Clara as she turned the next corner. They had not met
+since the night when they quarrelled in front of Boyko's court.
+
+"I didn't see you until I happened to turn round," he said.
+
+"He is trying to prove that he is not afraid of being seen in my
+company," she thought to herself, as she said aloud: "I saw you talking
+to Dr. Lipnitzky and Zundel."
+
+They walked in silence a few steps. Then he uttered with a smile:
+
+"Have you taken a vow to give us a wide berth?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"Father and mother are always at me for it. They think I am to blame for
+your sudden estrangement."
+
+"Nobody is to blame, and there is no estrangement. Why use such words?"
+
+"Is it only a matter of words? They are accustomed to look upon you and
+me as brother and sister. Do you deny that our roads have parted?"
+
+"If they have, then, what need is there of writing at the bottom of the
+picture: 'This is a lion?'" she asked testily. "If it's a lion it's a
+lion."
+
+"Would it be better to shut one's eyes to the truth? As for me, common
+ordinary mortal that I am, I try to call a spade a spade."
+
+He spoke with venom, but it was all perfunctory and they were both aware
+of it. Then he described, with exaggerated ardour, the successes
+achieved by the Pupils' Aid Society in which he was now actively
+interested.
+
+Since their talk on the bench in front of Boyko's Court he had been
+longing for some humanitarian cause, for one unassociated with the
+hazards of the revolutionary movement. He would prove to Clara that he
+was no inferior creature. Her taunt that he had seized upon the Jewish
+question, in the course of their debate, merely as a drowning man seizes
+at a straw, and the implication that no phase of the problem of human
+suffering made the slightest appeal to him had left a cruel sting in his
+heart. Since then his thoughts had often turned upon the Jewish
+question, until he found his "cause" in the dissemination of Russian
+culture among his people. Formerly he had been contented with being
+"assimilated" himself. Now he was going to dedicate his best energies to
+the work of lessening that distance between Jew and Gentile, which was,
+so he argued, the source of all the woes of his race. As good luck would
+have it, there was such a thing as difference of opinion. "It is not
+anxiety about my 'precious skin,'" he would picture himself saying to
+Clara, "that keeps me from reading underground prints. Did I believe in
+them I should do as you do. But if you think I live for myself only you
+don't know me. I have another cause, one to which my convictions call me
+and to which I am going to give all that is in me."
+
+"And you?" he asked. "Still planting a paradise on earth?"
+
+She smiled.
+
+"Well, as for me, I content myself with working on such a humble
+beginning as a little bridge across the gap between Jew and Gentile."
+
+He consciously led the way past a Gentile of enormous bulk, who stood in
+the doorway of a furrier's shop. It was Rasgadayeff, the landlord of the
+Vigdoroffs' residence, he himself occupying the inner building on the
+same courtyard. He was a wealthy merchant with the figure of a barrel
+and arms that looked as though they had been hung up to dry, an
+impetuous Great-Russian, illiterate and good-hearted, shrewd in making
+money, but with no sense of its value when it came to spending it. Every
+other week he went off on a hideous spree, and then, besides smashing
+costly mirrors, which is the classical sport of the drunken
+Great-Russian merchant, he would indulge in such pastimes as offering a
+prize to every ten-year-old boy who would drain a tumbler of vodka,
+setting fire to live horses or wrecking the furniture in his own house.
+On such days his wife often sought shelter with the Vigdoroffs for fear
+of being beaten to death. Until a few years ago he had stood at the head
+of the fur trade. Since then a Jewish dealer, who went off on no
+sprees, had been a formidable competitor to him. Rasgadayeff now hated
+Jews in general as he had never done before. The Vigdoroffs were an
+exception. He was sincerely fond of the whole family, and entrusted the
+old man with some of his most important business secrets.
+
+"Our humblest regards to Clara Rodionovna!" he said, with gay suavity,
+taking off his hat. "As also to Vladimir Alexandrovich!"
+
+They returned the salute, and were about to pass on, but he checked
+them.
+
+"A rose of a girl, I tell you that," he went on, addressing himself to
+Vladimir, while he looked at the girl with rather offensive admiration.
+"Young men are fools nowadays. If I were one of them I should take no
+chances with a lassie like that. A plum, a bouquet, a song-bird of a
+mademoiselle. I should propose and get her and waste no time, or--one,
+two, three, and the lovey-dovey may be snapped up by some other fellow."
+
+Clara, who was accustomed to this sort of pleasantry from him, scarcely
+heard what he said. She was smilingly making ready to bow herself away,
+when her cousin asked of the Great-Russian:
+
+"And how is her Illustriousness? Have you seen her lately?"
+
+"She was here yesterday. Quite stuck on you, Vladimir Alexandrovich.
+Sends humblest regards. 'When is your learned young friend going to
+call,' she says. You have a sage of a cousin, Clara Rodionovna, an eagle
+of a fellow, a cabinet minister!"
+
+"All right," Vladimir returned, with an amused smile, yet reddening with
+satisfaction.
+
+Clara remarked to herself that her cousin was flaunting his successes
+with Gentiles before her. When they resumed their walk she inquired
+reluctantly:
+
+"Who is 'her Illustriousness'?"
+
+"Oh, that's that lame tramp of a woman, Princess Chertogoff," he
+rejoined, with gestures of contempt and amusement, yet inwardly tingling
+with vanity at his acquaintance with her impecunious "Illustriousness."
+The wealthy Great-Russian was a large holder of Princess Chertogoff's
+promissory notes, and it was at his house where Vladimir had met her on
+several occasions. The lame noblewoman knew that Rasgadayeff was fond of
+the Vigdoroffs. When she saw the young man last she had, by way of
+currying favour with her creditor, asked the educated son of his
+"favourite Jew" to call on her whenever he was in the mood for it, and
+to "let her hear what was going on among wise men and authors."
+
+Vladimir and Clara passed on. He spoke of Rasgadayeff's latest escapades
+and Clara listened with little bursts of merriment, but their voices did
+not ring true. Presently they exchanged greetings with Ginsburg, the
+notorious money-lender of Miroslav, a small, red-headed man with
+crumpled cheeks and big bulging eyes.
+
+"Here is another treat for you!" Vladimir said, in high spirits.
+"Another specimen of moral perfection. Some gigantic hand must have
+grabbed him by the head, squeezing it like a paper ball till the eyes
+started from their sockets, and then thrown him into a waste basket.
+That's the way he looks." She smiled awkwardly.
+
+He then called her attention to two bewigged old women, both of them
+apparently deaf, who were talking into each other's ear, and then to the
+picturesque figure of a dumpy little shoemaker with a new,
+carefully-shined pair of topboots in his hand. Clara had never been
+interested in things of this sort, but this time, in her eagerness to
+get away, added to a growing sense of awkwardness, his observations
+literally grated on her nerves. At last, when they reached a crossing,
+she stopped, putting out her hand.
+
+"Somebody is waiting for me," she said. "Remember me to uncle and aunt,
+will you?"
+
+"I will. Won't you look in at all?" As she turned to take the side
+street, he added: "Our roads do part, then."
+
+Her appointment was with Orlovsky. She had not attended the gatherings
+of the Circle at his house for a considerable time. He conjectured that
+she was engaged in some revolutionary undertaking of importance. He had
+missed her so abjectly that he had finally decided to avow his love.
+This was what he had made the appointment for. When she came, however,
+he cowed before her rich complexion and intelligent eyes and talked of
+the affairs of the Circle. A similar attempt at a love declaration was
+made that evening by Elkin, with similar results. By way of opening the
+conversation he indulged in a series of virulent taunts upon her long
+absence and the great revolutionary secrets that he said were written on
+her face, after which his efforts to turn the conversation into romantic
+channels proved futile. He came away agonised with jealousy. He was
+jealous of the girl and he was jealous of the mysterious conspiracy in
+which she seemed to be engaged and into which he, her revolutionary
+sponsor, had not been initiated.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As to Vigdoroff, he was seized with a desire to avail himself of
+Princess Chertogoff's invitation, not merely to gratify his personal
+ambition, but also, so he assured himself, as part of his "cause." On
+his way thither he paused once or twice in front of shop windows to
+ascertain whether his face was not strikingly Semitic. "Not offensively
+so, anyhow," he concluded before a mirror at the entrance to a furniture
+store. The mirror reflected a well-made, athletic-looking young man one
+could have told for a college man through a veil. The picturesque
+irregularity of his features, somewhat flat in the middle of the face,
+drew an image of culture, of intellectual interest. He felt on his
+mettle. He would make a favourable impression, and that impression was
+to be another step across the distance not only between Gentile society
+and himself, but between all Jews and all Gentiles. His visit to the
+noblewoman was a mission. He was in an exalted mood.
+
+At the house of Princess Chertogoff he found a cavalry officer and an
+officer of the imperial guards. He was received with patronising
+urbanity. The hostess introduced the two young officers as her sons,
+come from St. Petersburg to take a glimpse at their old mother, and
+Vigdoroff as "one of the brilliant young intellects of our town." This
+was her excuse before her sons for having invited a Jew to the house and
+Vigdoroff was not unaware of it. The cavalryman's face was round and
+stern, while his brother's was oblong and smiling. When they were drunk,
+which happened quite often, their faces would swap expressions. It was
+chiefly owing to their expensive escapades that their mother's fortune
+had passed into the coffers of usurers. The two uniformed men left
+almost immediately, pleading a pressing engagement.
+
+The welcome Vladimir found at this house was one extended by a patroness
+of the fine arts to a devotee of letters. It was not long before
+Vigdoroff found himself fully launched on a favourite subject. Russia's
+supremacy in modern literature and her false modesty became clearer to
+him with every new work of fiction that came from the foreign masters.
+The best models of the German, French or English novel were tainted with
+artificiality. Russia alone produced stories that were absolutely free
+from powder and rouge. He dwelt on Zola's _L'Assommoir_ and Daudet's
+_Nabob_, both of which had appeared a short time before, and each of
+which was looked upon as its author's masterpiece. He saw that his
+hostess neither understood nor cared for these things; that he was
+making a fool of himself; yet, being too ill at ease to stop, he went
+sliding down hill. He spoke by heart as it were, the sound of his own
+voice increasing his embarrassment.
+
+The princess was listening with an air of pompous assent, barely
+following the general drift of his talk. Her majestic crutches terrified
+him.
+
+A man servant brought in a silver samovar and a tray of Little-Russian
+cookies. As Vigdoroff took up his glass of tea the princess said:
+
+"I did not know you were so much of a Russian patriot. Quite an unusual
+thing in an educated young man these days. I certainly agree with you
+that Turgeneff is a good writer. He is perfectly charming."
+
+Later on she asked, with lazy curiosity and in her pampered enunciation:
+
+"Do you really think our novelists greater than the great writers of
+France?"
+
+"I certainly do."
+
+"That's interesting," she said, preparing to get rid of him.
+
+"You see, the average Russian represents a remarkable duality. He is
+simple-hearted and frank, like a child, yet he is possessed of an
+intuitive sense of human nature that would be considered marvellous in
+a sage. In addition, he is the most soulful fellow in the world, and to
+turn his soul inside out, to himself as well as to others, is one of his
+ruling passions. That accounts for the inimitable naturalness and the
+ardent human interest of our literature. Whether Russia knows how to
+construct machinery or not, she certainly knows how to write."
+
+"You do love Russia, and literature, too"--yawning demonstratively. "I
+had an idea Hebrews were only interested in money matters." She smiled,
+an embarrassed smile in which there was as much malice as apology, and
+dismissed him quite unceremoniously.
+
+He got into the street with his face on fire. It was as if he had been
+subjected to some brutal physical indignities. "'I didn't know you were
+so much of a Russian patriot,'" he recalled in his agony. "Of course,
+I'm only a Jew, not a Russian. It makes no difference how many centuries
+my people have lived and suffered here. And I, idiot that I am, make a
+display of my love for Gogol, Turgeneff, Dostoyevski, as if I, 'a mere
+Jew,' had a right to them! She must have thought it was all affectation,
+Jewish cunning. As if a Jew could care for anything but 'money matters.'
+The idea of one of my race caring for books, and for Gentile books,
+too!"
+
+He was as innocent of the world of money as was Clara's father. As to
+the great Russian writers, they were not merely favourite authors with
+him. They were saints, apostles, of a religion of which he was a fervent
+devotee. This, in fact, was the real "cause" which he had mutely served
+for the past six or seven years. Their images, the swing and rhythm of
+their sentences, the flavour of their style, the odour of the pages as
+he had first read them--all this was a sanctuary to him. Yet he had
+always felt as if he had no right to this devotion, as if he were an
+intruder. This was the unspoken tragedy of his life.
+
+Since a boy of ten, when he entered the gymnasium, he had been crying
+out to Russia, his country, to recognise a child in him--not a
+step-child merely. And just because he was looked upon as a step-child
+he loved his native land even more passionately than did his
+fellow-countrymen of Slavic blood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alexander, or Sender, Vigdoroff, Vladimir's father, was known among his
+co-religionists as Sender the Arbitrator. His chief source of income was
+petition-writing and sundry legal business, but the Jews of Miroslav
+often submitted their differences to him. These he settled by the force
+of an imperturbable and magnetic disposition rather than through any
+special gift of judgment and insight. He was full of anecdotes and
+inaggressive humour. It was said of him that people who came to his
+house obdurate and bitter "melted like wax" in his sunny presence. As a
+rule, indeed, it was the contending parties themselves who then found a
+way to an amicable solution of the point at issue, but the credit for it
+was invariably given to Sender the Arbitrator, and his reputation for
+wisdom brought him some Gentile patrons in addition to his Jewish
+clientele. His iron safe always contained large sums in cash or
+valuables entrusted to him by others. When a young couple were engaged
+to be married the girl's marriage-portion was usually deposited with
+Sender the Arbitrator. When security was agreed upon in connection with
+some contract the sum was placed in the hands of Sender the Arbitrator.
+
+His stalwart figure, blond, curling locks and toothless smile; his
+frilled shirt-front, everlasting brown frock-coat and huge meerschaum
+cigar-holder--all this was as familiar to the Jews of Miroslav as the
+public buildings of their town. The business of petition-writing was
+gradually passing into the hands of younger and better educated men,
+graduated lawyers regularly admitted to the bar, and his income was
+dwindling. "I could arbitrate any misunderstanding under the sun except
+the one between Luck and myself," he used to say, smiling toothlessly.
+Still, he made a comfortable income, and money was spent freely not only
+on his household but on all sorts of hangers-on. Vladimir's education
+cost him more than his means warranted. Besides keeping him at the
+gymnasium and then at the university he had hired him private teachers
+of French, German and music. "There are a thousand Gentiles to every
+Jew," was one of his sayings. "That's why every Jew should possess as
+much intelligence as a thousand Gentiles. Else we shall be crushed." He
+was something like a connecting link between the old world and the new.
+He had a large library, mostly made up of German and Hebrew books. His
+house was the haunt of "men of wisdom," that is, people who wrote or
+thought upon modern topics in the language of Isaiah and Jeremiah,
+free-thinkers whose source of inspiration were atheistic ideas expounded
+in the Holy Tongue; yet on Saturday nights his neighbours would gather
+in his drawing room to discuss foreign politics and to chant psalms in
+the dark. He had the head of an agnostic and the heart of an orthodox
+Jew.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when Vladimir reached home. His father was
+in the library, which was also his office, conversing with his
+copyist--a dapper little man whom his employer described as "an artistic
+penman and an artistic fool." The windows were open. The room was
+filled with twilight and with warm air that seemed to be growing softer
+and more genial every minute.
+
+"Is that you, Volodia?" the old man asked.
+
+Volodia only nodded. It was easy to see that he was dejected. His father
+became interested and dismissed the clerk.
+
+"Anything the matter, Volodia?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing is the matter." An answer of this sort usually indicated that
+the young man was burning to unbosom himself of something or other and
+that he needed some coaxing to do so. Intellectually the mutual
+relations of father and son were of a rather peculiar nature. Each
+looked up to the other and courted his approbation without the other
+being aware of it. Their discussions often had the character of an
+epigram-match.
+
+When Volodia had told his father of his experience at the house of the
+lame princess, the old man said:
+
+"I see you are quite excited over it. As for me, that penniless
+spendthrift reminds me of the pig that mistook the nobleman's backyard
+for the interior of his mansion. The backyard was all the pig had seen
+of the place, and money-lenders are the only kind of Jews that lame
+drone has ever had an occasion to know. That she should mistake a
+handful of usurers for the whole Jewish people is the most natural thing
+in the world."
+
+"Oh, but they are all like that, father. Unfortunately the Jewish people
+are just the opposite of women in this respect. Women have a knack of
+flaunting all that is prepossessing and of concealing that which is
+unattractive in them. If the Gentiles see none but the worst Jews there
+are we have ourselves to blame."
+
+"But they don't care to see any other Jews. As a rule, the good Jew has
+no money to lend. They have no use for him. More than half of our
+people are hard-working mechanics on the verge of starvation. Do you
+expect an ornament like your Princess Chertogoff and her precious sons
+to make _their_ acquaintance? Of the rest the great majority are
+starving tradesmen, teachers, Talmudists, dreamers. Would you have a
+Gentile reprobate go to these for a loan?"
+
+Vladimir sat silent awhile, gazing through the open window at the
+thickening dusk. Then he said, listlessly at first, but gathering ardour
+from the relish he took in his own point:
+
+"You are as unjust to the good Gentiles as they are to the good Jews.
+What is needed is more understanding between the two. If the dreamers
+and scholars you refer to could speak Russian and looked less
+antediluvian than they do the prejudice that every Jew is a money-lender
+would gradually disappear. As it is, Jew and Gentile are like two apples
+that come in mutual contact at a point where they are both rotten."
+
+"The Jewish apple was originally sound, Volodia. It's through
+association with their Gentile neighbours that they have been
+demoralised--at the point of contact; our faults are theirs; our virtues
+are our own."
+
+"Oh, this is a very one-sided view to take of it, father," Volodia
+rejoined, resentfully. What he coveted was consolation, not an attack on
+everything that he held dear, that was the soul of his best years and
+ambitions. His father's light-hearted derision of the entire Russian
+people irritated him. "If some Jews become demoralised through contact
+with Gentile knaves, other Jews are uplifted, ennobled, sanctified by
+coming under the influence of the great Russian thinkers, poets, friends
+of the people," he went on, emphasising his words with something like a
+feeling of spite. "Yours is an extremely one-sided view to take,
+father."
+
+The elder Vigdoroff was cowed. He felt himself convicted of
+narrow-mindedness, of retrogression, of fogyism, and by way of
+disproving the charge he put up a defence that was disguised in the form
+of an attack. Vladimir replied bitterly, venting his misery on his
+father. The two found themselves on the verge of one of those feuds
+which sometimes divided them for days without either having the courage
+to take the first step toward a reconciliation, but their discussion was
+broken by the appearance of a servant carrying a lamp. She was followed
+by Vladimir's mother, a mountain of shapeless, trembling flesh with a
+torpid, wide-eyed look. In the yellow light the family likeness between
+father and son came pleasingly into view. Only the face of the one had a
+touch of oriental quaintness in it, while the other's was at once
+mellowed and intensified by the tinge of modern culture. Clara's mother
+was a sister of the elder Vigdoroff, but she resembled him only
+slightly. The girl's features suggested her uncle far more than they did
+her mother.
+
+"Never mind the lamp," the Arbitrator said somewhat irately.
+
+"Never mind the lamp!" his wife said, fixing her torpid eyes on him.
+"Are you crazy? Don't mind him"--to the servant girl. The servant girl
+set the lamp down on the table and withdrew, her big fleshy mistress
+taking a seat by her son's side.
+
+"Go about your business," her husband said, good-naturedly. "You are
+disturbing our discussion. I was just getting started when you came in
+and spoiled the job. Go. There may be some beggar-woman waiting for you
+in the kitchen."
+
+She made a mocking gesture without stirring, and her husband resumed his
+argument.
+
+She was one of a very small number of Jewish women who attended divine
+service on week-days. She was the game of every woman pedlar and beggar
+in town, with whom she usually communed when her husband was out. When
+not thus occupied, buying useless bargains or listening to some poor
+woman's tale of woe, she would spend much of her time in her big easy
+chair, dozing over a portly psalter. Her husband was perpetually
+quizzing her on her piety and her surreptitious bargains. On Fridays,
+when beggars came in troops for their pennies, the Arbitrator would
+sometimes divert himself by encouraging some of them to fall into line
+more than once.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+CLARA BECOMES "ILLEGAL."
+
+
+Late the next afternoon Mme. Shubeyko called at the warden's house with
+a blue silk handkerchief round her face, apparently suffering from a
+swollen cheek or toothache.
+
+An hour or more later, while she and Rodkevich were absorbed in a game
+of cards in the parlour and a solitary star shone out of the
+semi-obscurity of a colorless sky, Makar, clean-shaven and clad as a
+woman, with a blue handkerchief round his face, advanced toward the
+gate. Clara stood in the doorway of the warden's office, watching the
+scene. "Double Chin," the gateman, was still on duty, and as the
+disguised prisoner approached him the impersonation struck her as
+absurdly defective. Another second and all would be lost with a crash.
+Her heart stood still. She shut her eyes with a sick feeling, but the
+next instant she sprang forward, bonnetless, addressing Makar by Mme.
+Shubeyko's name.
+
+"You must not forget to let us know, dear," she said aloud, placing
+herself between him and the gateman and shutting the disguised man from
+view. "A swollen gum is a dangerous thing to neglect, you know. Yes,
+figs and milk. I'll see you down the road, dear."
+
+The heavy key groaned in the lock, the ponderous gate swung open and
+Makar and Clara walked out into the twilight of the street--he with a
+rush of joy, she in a turmoil of triumph and despair. It seemed as if he
+had never vividly hoped to see liberty, and now, suddenly, he had found
+himself breathing the very breath of it; while she who, a minute ago,
+could have walked freely through the streets, was now the quarry of that
+terrible force called government.
+
+As soon as they reached the ditch, a short distance from the prison
+building, Makar pulled off his feminine attire, threw it under the
+little foot-bridge, and put on a government official's cap. Masha, the
+gendarme officer's sister, was to await him round the corner; her house
+was within easy reach from here, and Makar was to be taken there to
+change his disguise and then to be driven to the Palace; but it had all
+come about much sooner than they had expected, and she had not yet
+arrived.
+
+"Never mind. Hire a cab to Cucumber Market," Clara said. "There you can
+cross some streets in the opposite direction and then take another cab
+direct for Theatre Square. A very short walk will bring you to the
+Palace. Don't forget the names: First Cucumber Market and then Theatre
+Square," she repeated, coolly.
+
+He nodded with a reassuring smile, shook her hand warmly, and they
+parted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Double Chin was soon to be relieved. Had he left his post before the
+guards missed Makar, the connection existing between Mme. Shubeyko's
+toothache and Makar's escape would never have been discovered, and Clara
+would have come out uncompromised. But Clara was too slow in returning,
+and the fat gateman was an impressionable, suspicious man, so he
+presently made inquiry. He found that Mme. Shubeyko was still in the
+warden's parlour, nursing her cheek with one hand and holding her cards
+with the other.
+
+In the commotion that followed the discovery Rodkevich wept hysterically
+and beat the gateman, while Mme. Shubeyko went about invoking
+imprecations upon the sly prisoner for stealing her new spring cloak,
+bonnet and parasol.
+
+Meanwhile Clara stood at a point of vantage, watching developments. Had
+Double Chin left the building at the usual hour, without the prison
+betraying any signs of disquiet, she would have returned to her room in
+the warden's house at once, and thus saved her legal existence.
+Otherwise she would have been forced to escape and join the army of the
+"ne-legalny" (illegal), of political outlaws like the majority of
+Pavel's intimate friends in St. Petersburg. About twenty minutes had
+elapsed from the time she had parted from Makar, when she saw human
+figures burst from the prison-gate, accompanied by the violent trill of
+a police whistle. Her heart sank at the sound. From this minute on
+Miroslav would be forbidden ground to her. A _ne-legalny_ is something
+neither dead nor alive, the everlasting prey of gendarmes, policemen,
+spies--of the Czar himself, it seemed; a "cut-off slice;" an outcast
+without the right of being either an outcast or a member of the
+community, a creature without name, home or identity. She was
+appallingly forbidding to herself. But then in the underground world
+_ne-legalny_ is a title of indescribable distinction, and at this moment
+Clara seemed to feel in her own person the sanctity which she had been
+wont to associate with the word.
+
+By ridding herself of her starched collar and ribbon and hastily
+rearranging her hair into a coarse, dishevelled knot she was
+sufficiently transformed to look like a young woman of the masses to
+strangers. She could not go to the Palace without a hat, however, and
+buying one at this hour would have attracted undesirable attention. So
+she first went to the house of Beile, her uneducated sister. Her
+father's address or full name being unknown at the prison, it would be
+some time before the police came to look for her at her sister's.
+
+Beile was a little woman of thirty with glowing dark eyes and a great
+capacity for tears and nagging. She resembled her parents neither in
+looks nor in character, and her mother often wondered "whence she came
+into the family." Her husband, a man learned in the Talmud, was absorbed
+day and night in an effort to build up a small business in hides. As a
+consequence, the space under Beile's bed was usually occupied with raw
+skins and the two-room apartment which they shared with a tailor was
+never free from odours of putrefaction.
+
+Clara entered the room with a smile. The first thing she did was to kiss
+and slap Ruchele, her sister's little girl, and to tickle her baby
+brother under the chin.
+
+"Why, where is your hat?" Beile screamed in amazement.
+
+Her own hat was a matronly bonnet which she never wore except on
+Saturdays, when she would put it on over her wig, tying its two long,
+broad ribbons under her chin.
+
+"It blew off into the river as I was crossing the bridge," Clara
+replied. "That's what brings me here. I want you to get me a hat, Beile,
+but you must do it quickly."
+
+"Are you crazy? Whatever is the matter with you, Clara? Whoever heard of
+a girl taking so little care of her hat that it should drop into the
+water? You don't think you are a daughter of Rothschild, do you? Did you
+ever!"
+
+"That's all right, Beile. We'll talk it all over some other time. Every
+minute is of great value to me."
+
+Beile thought her sister was in a hurry to attend a lesson, so she
+started. As she reached the door, with the baby in her arms, she
+couldn't help facing about again.
+
+"Didn't you go down the bank to look for it?" she asked.
+
+"But I am telling you I have not a moment's time now."
+
+The more irritation she betrayed, the more the other was tempted to nag
+her.
+
+"But somebody must have picked it up. It cost you five rubles and you've
+not worn it ten times."
+
+"Beile! Beile!" Clara groaned.
+
+"Tell me where it is. I'll go and look for it myself. Maybe it is not
+yet too late. Lord of the World, five rubles!"
+
+Clara was left with Ruchele, but she changed her mind.
+
+"I think I'll wait at Motl's house," she said, overtaking her sister,
+with the child by her side. "It's nearer to my lesson."
+
+Motl, the trunk-finisher employed by their mother, lived a considerable
+distance from here. Beile gave her a look full of amazement and dawning
+intelligence.
+
+"At Motl's!" she whispered, sizing up Clara's dishevelled appearance.
+"Where is your collar? A rend into my heart! What have you been doing to
+yourself? Anyhow, go to Motl's. Or, no, go to Feige's. That's much
+better. I'll bring you a hat in ten minutes." Feige was a poor old
+relative of Beile's by marriage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Clara, in a large shepherdess hat and genteel looking, bade her
+sister a hurried good-bye and made for the open gate, Ruchele ran after
+her, yelling so that her mother had to catch her in her arms and carry
+her gagged indoors. That was the only adventure Clara encountered on her
+way to the Palace.
+
+Makar was not there.
+
+She told Pavel of the rescue in general outline, explaining that an
+unexpected opportunity had presented itself and that there had been no
+time for sending word to him. He flew into a rage. So far from being the
+central figure in the affair for which he had been priming himself these
+many weeks he had been left out of it altogether, left out like a ninny
+caught napping. But this was no time for wounded pride. Clara had
+unexpectedly become a _ne-legalny_ and--what was of more immediate
+concern--what had become of Makar?
+
+"I hope he was not taken in the street," he whispered.
+
+"Masha might know. Could you send Onufri?"
+
+Pavel disliked to use the old hussar for errands of this nature, but in
+the present juncture there seemed to be no way out of it.
+
+Onufri brought back a note in which the words were all but leaping with
+excitement.
+
+"No! No! No!" Masha wrote. "He has not been caught. My brother has not
+yet been home. Everybody is nearly crazy! But I can almost see my
+brother chuckling--in his heart of course! Hurrah! Hurrah! Long live the
+revolution!"
+
+"Thank God!" said Clara, shutting her eyes, in a daze of relief.
+
+"He's a trump, after all. If they haven't caught him so far I don't see
+why he should be caught now. He may come in at any moment. But where can
+he be?"
+
+The next morning, at about ten o'clock, when the countess heard the
+doorbell she declared, with intense agitation, that something told her
+it was the governor, and so it was. Clara went into her room.
+
+"Don't leave me for a moment, Pasha," Anna Nicolayevna entreated her
+son. "I am afraid to face him alone. I should be sure to put my foot in
+it, if I did."
+
+"Just leave uncle to me," said Pavel.
+
+The old man looked wan and haggard, and was blinking harder than ever.
+He began by joking Pasha on the rarity of his visits at the
+gubernatorial mansion, but the young man cut him short.
+
+"By the way, uncle, is it true that that fellow, the Nihilist, has
+escaped?" he asked.
+
+"How did it reach you so soon?" the governor asked. "The town must be
+full of it."
+
+"I heard it from a cab-driver last night. It's awful. But how did he get
+out? Say what you will, they are a clever set, those Nihilists."
+
+"Clever nothing! Our gendarmes are the most stupid lot on God's earth.
+That's where the trouble comes in. There was a governess at the warden's
+house. It was she who seems to have managed the whole affair. Of course,
+the warden is a scoundrel, but what does he know of these things? It's
+for the gendarme office to scent a bird of that variety, but then the
+gendarme office is made up of rogues and blockheads. To clip one's
+wings, that's all they are good for. Wherever one turns, he bumps his
+head against the 'independent power' of the gendarmerie. It's a
+government within a government, that's what it is. Else one would be
+able to show St. Petersburg that Miroslav was not the kind of place for
+Nihilists and all sorts of ragamuffins to play the mischief with. Those
+swaggering gendarmes go around poking their noses everywhere, smelling
+nothing but their own grand epaulets, and yet they are beyond the
+control of civil authorities. The consequence is that when something
+happens somebody else is held responsible, because the prisons,
+forsooth, are under the Department of the Interior! To set an example of
+idleness and stupidity is all they seem to be needed for, the gendarmes;
+that's all, that's all."
+
+Pavel agreed with him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another week passed. The police and the gendarmes were still searching
+for Makar and the governess, as much in the dark as ever.
+
+Yossl Parmet, Makar's father, was brought to Miroslav a prisoner, but he
+was soon discharged. He was proud of his son. He now fully realised that
+his Feivish belonged to a secret society made up of educated people who
+preached economic equality and universal brotherhood as well as
+political liberty, and that they were ready to go to prison for their
+ideas. This made a strong appeal to his imagination and sympathies, and
+the fact that his Feivish had outwitted the authorities and escaped from
+prison inclined him to shouts of triumphant laughter. He searched the
+Talmud for similar sentiments, and he found no stint of passages which
+lent themselves to favourable interpretation. A new vista of thought and
+feeling had opened itself to Yossl.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+ON SACRED GROUND.
+
+
+In 1648, when Chmyelnicki's Cossacks slaughtered 40,000 Jews, Miroslav
+was among the cities that fell into their blood-dripping hands. It was a
+small town then; the Jewish population did not exceed eight hundred, but
+these unanimously decided to be slain rather than abandon their faith.
+Not a man, woman or child was spared. The scene of the slaughter, a
+small square in the vicinity of Cucumber Market, is sacred ground to the
+Jews of Miroslav. The Bloody Spot they call it reverently. A synagogue
+stands there and ten recluses find shelter under its roof, so that the
+Word of God may be heard with unbroken continuity within its walls. If
+this house of prayer and divine study were to fall silent for a single
+minute, say the children of the town, the blood of the slain Jews would
+burst into a roar of sobbing that could be heard for seven miles.
+
+But the ten recluses were not the only Talmudists in the place. The Old
+Synagogue, as it was generally called, was the favourite haunt of
+scholars. It was here where Rabbi Rachmiel, Clara's father, spent every
+day and evening in the week except Saturdays and holidays.
+
+It was about eight o'clock of a warm evening, several days after the
+disappearance of the political prisoner. The Old Synagogue was filled
+with people. The evening service was over. Candles flickered on gaunt,
+tallow-stained reading-desks and blazing oil-lamps dangled from the
+ceiling. The recluses were freely gossiping or snoozing; there were so
+many others to do the holy work--a medley of voices and melodies--from
+the enthusiastic soprano of the schoolboy to the dignified drone of the
+elderly merchant; from the conscious, over-elaborate intonation of the
+newly-married young man to the absorbed murmur of the tattered old
+scholar. As to the Talmudists themselves, they found stimulating harmony
+in this chaos. To them it was as if the synagogue itself were singing in
+a hundred voices, an inspired choir that quickened one's intellectual
+passions and poured fire into one's gesticulations.
+
+One of the younger men in the crowd was Makar. Seated in a snug corner,
+with his reading-desk tilted against his breast, he was sincerely
+absorbed in a passage on the slaying of cattle. The treatise is one of
+the most intricate in the Talmud, and he had taken it up as he might a
+game of chess. The lower part of his face was buried in the sloping
+surface of a huge long book, the handle of a tin candlestick hooked to
+the top of the folio. The flame of a guttering candle threw a stream of
+light upon his dusky high forehead and heavy black eyebrows. Slightly
+rocking the desk, he intoned the Chaldaic text and the Yiddish
+interpretations, listening to his own sing-song as one listens, at some
+distance, to a familiar voice.
+
+Rabbi Rachmiel, Clara's father, was studying quietly in a corner, in
+peaceful ignorance of the mad hunt that was going on for his daughter at
+this moment. That this red-bearded little man was the father of the
+Nihilist girl who had brought about his escape Makar had not the least
+idea.
+
+After bidding Clara good-bye on the evening of his rescue, he had taken
+the first cab he came across, getting off at Cucumber Market, as
+directed. After zig-zagging about for five minutes, he was going to hail
+another cab, but checked himself because the man proved to be the same
+who had brought him to Cucumber Market. A boy stopped to look at him,
+whereupon he made up his mind that the official cap which he wore (and
+which had been expected to give him the appearance of a teacher in a
+government school for Jews) scarcely went well with his face, and that
+it must be this cap of his which had attracted the boy's attention. He
+therefore went to a capmaker's shop and bought an ordinary cap, such as
+is worn by the average old-fashioned Jew, explaining to the artisan that
+it was for his father, who had his size. This part of the town he knew
+well, for it was in the centre of the Jewish quarter, not many minutes'
+walk from his former lodgings. The Old Synagogue was in the same
+neighbourhood, and it flashed upon him to seek temporary refuge in the
+celebrated house of worship and learning. Living in such a place was
+like hiding in the depths of the Fourth Century--the age of the Talmud,
+which was still the soul of the Ghetto, still the fountain-head of the
+spiritual and intellectual life of the orthodox Jew. He would be in his
+native element there, at any rate, and would certainly feel more
+comfortable than amid the imposing interiors of a noblewoman's mansion.
+On his way to the synagogue he twisted the hair at his temples till he
+looked as he used to, before he left Zorki. As to his shave, he prepared
+an explanation: he was subject to a species of skin disease that made
+shaving unavoidable.
+
+The assistant beadle at the Old Synagogue was a man with a luxurious
+white beard. He was not learned in the Talmud himself, but he had served
+in the great "house of study" so long that he was familiar with the
+titles of the various volumes and sections in the same way as an old
+servant at a medical college is familiar with anatomical nomenclature.
+He danced attendance on every diligent scholar, and was the terror of
+every boy who romped or talked "words of daily life" over his holy book.
+He was in charge of the synagogue library and the candle supply. His
+salary was no larger than that of a street labourer, yet he had the
+appearance of a stern, prosperous merchant.
+
+When Makar first applied for a book and a candle the assistant beadle
+cast a knowing look at his smooth-shaven face, and then, handing him the
+volume, said:
+
+"You are in the army, aren't you?"
+
+"How do you know, by my shaved face?" Makar asked, sadly.
+
+The assistant beadle smiled assent. The skin-disease story proved
+unnecessary.
+
+"There is many a Talmudist among soldiers nowadays," the old man said.
+"To think of a Child of Law having to live in military bondage, to wear
+a uniform, to shave and to handle a gun!" He regarded Makar as a martyr.
+When he saw him reading his book in a pleasing, absorbed sing-song, he
+paused and watched him with a look of paternal admiration.
+
+"Do you belong here?" he asked later.
+
+"No." He named the first town that came to his tongue.
+
+"Have you relatives here?"
+
+"No. But I have obtained a furlough and am going home. I am waiting for
+a letter and some money. I have left my uniform with a friend."
+
+The assistant beadle asked Makar for news--whether there were any
+rumours of some new war, or of some fresh legislation affecting the
+condition of Jews. The query was made on the supposition that Makar, as
+a member of the Czar's army and one who saw so many officers, could not
+be unfamiliar with what was going on "up above"; and Makar appeased the
+old man's curiosity with some suitable bits of information. The
+assistant beadle was particularly interested in the story of a certain
+colonel, a bitter anti-Semite, who used to beat the Jews in his regiment
+because a Jewish money-lender had him under his thumb. Now this "Jews'
+enemy" lay in bed, stricken with paralysis--a clear case of divine
+reckoning. Did Makar know him? Makar said he did.
+
+The discussion was interrupted by the appearance of a bewigged woman
+with a pound of candles, in commemoration of the anniversary of a death.
+She wanted to make sure that they were going to be used for diligent
+study and not to be thrown away on loafers, and the assistant beadle
+told her that it would be all right and that she had better go home and
+put the children to bed. Another woman, whose boy was studying in a
+corner, was watching his gesticulations with beaming reverence. She had
+an apple for him and a copper coin for the assistant beadle, and when
+she saw Makar looking at her son, she said, nodding her head blissfully:
+
+"Praised be the Master of the World. It is not in vain that I am
+toiling. The boy will be an adornment to my old age."
+
+Later in the evening a woman burst into the synagogue, lamenting and
+wringing her hands. She besought the recluses to pray for her
+newly-married daughter, who was on her death-bed. Makar was deeply
+touched. He felt like a foreigner amid these scenes that had once been
+his own world, and the consciousness of it filled him with melancholy.
+
+He slept at the synagogue. After the service next morning he sent out a
+boy for some bread, butter and pot cheese, and at two o'clock a devout
+widow brought him, at the assistant beadle's recommendation, a pot of
+soup and boiled meat. He ate his dinner with Talmudistic bashfulness,
+the woman looking on piously, and mutely praying to heaven that her
+dinner might agree with the holy man and give him strength for the study
+of God's laws.
+
+Toward evening he ventured out on a stroll through the spacious
+courtyard which lay between the Old Synagogue and several other houses
+of worship. In this yard was a great octagonal basin, celebrated for its
+excellent tea water, with moss-grown spouts and chained wooden dippers.
+He watched the water-bearers with their pails and the girls with their
+jugs--a scene that seemed to have sprung to life from certain passages
+in the Talmud--until he came within a hair's breadth of being recognised
+by his former landlady.
+
+Rabbi Rachmiel was absent from the synagogue that day. When Makar
+returned to the house of study he noticed signs of excitement. The
+recluses and other students were absorbed in whispered, panic-stricken
+conversation. They dared not discuss the news in groups, some even
+pretending to be engrossed in their books, as much as to say: "In case
+it comes to the knowledge of the police that you people are talking
+about it, I want you to remember that I took no part in your gossip."
+The meaning of Clara's disappearance was not quite clear to them. They
+knew in a very dim way that there were people, for the most part
+educated people, who wanted to do away with czars in general, and now it
+appeared that Rabbi Rachmiel's daughter was one of those mysterious
+persons. Those of the Talmudists who knew Clara were trying to imagine
+her as something weird, preternatural, and when her familiar face came
+back to them they uttered subdued exclamations of amazement.
+
+When the news reached Makar he wondered whether it would not be
+advisable for him to decamp at once. But he was so snugly established in
+his present berth that he was loath to abandon it.
+
+Some of the worshippers who dropped in to read a page or two of an
+evening would gather in groups, bandying gossip or talking foreign
+politics, of which, indeed, they had the most grotesque conceptions.
+Here Makar picked up many a side-splitting story illustrative of the
+corruption, intemperance and childlike ineptitude of government
+officials. His attention seized with special eagerness upon a
+description of the demoralised state of things in the printing shop
+connected with the governor's office. There is not an article of
+merchandise over which the Russian authorities maintain a more rigorous
+control than they do over type, every pound, almost every letter of it,
+used in the empire being registered and supposedly kept track of; yet
+the foreman of that shop often offered some of the Czar's own supply for
+sale, and in default of buyers (the licensed private printers of the
+town being too timid to handle this most dangerous species of stolen
+goods) he had once molten a large quantity of new type and sold it for
+scrap lead. Makar could not help picturing the revolutionists in regular
+communication with this man. Nor did his fancy stop there. Gradually all
+the typesetters under that foreman would be supplanted by
+revolutionists, and the Czar's printing office would print the _Will of
+the People_!
+
+Two days elapsed before Rabbi Rachmiel returned. When he did he scarcely
+spoke to anybody. Naturally a man of few words, he now spent every
+minute reading his book with ferocious absorption.
+
+The next day was Friday. In the evening the turmoil of Talmudic accents
+gave way to an ancient chant, at once light-hearted and solemn--the song
+of welcome to Sabbath the Bride. The brass chandeliers, brightly
+burnished, were filled with blazing candles. About half of the seats
+were occupied by worshippers, freshly bathed and most of them in their
+Sabbath clothes. Rabbi Rachmiel wore a beaming face, "in honour of the
+Sabbath," that was plainly the result of effort. As Maker watched him
+chant his Sabbath-eve psalms, the heart of the escaped Nihilist was
+contracted with sympathy and something like a sense of guilt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile Count Loris-Melikoff had abolished the Third Section,
+transferring the secret service to the Interior Department, and while
+the change had not displaced the Dandy from office, yet it materially
+impaired his usefulness to his party.
+
+When Makar returned to St. Petersburg Pavel met him with kisses and hugs
+and punches. The Janitor, whom he saw the next day, shook his hand
+heartily.
+
+"It's all right," he said, looking Makar over with an amused air.
+
+"What are you smiling at?" Parmet demanded, colouring.
+
+"At you. I can't get myself to believe it was really you who made such a
+neat job of it."
+
+"I!" Makar protested, exultingly. "Any idiot would know how to be
+arrested. It's Clara that carried the scheme through."
+
+"Still, there is better stuff in you than I gave you credit for."
+
+Makar was quivering to know something of the use that had been made of
+his arrest, but conspirators ask no questions. Indeed, to try to know as
+little as possible, to avoid information upon anything except that in
+which one was personally participating was (or was supposed to be) an
+iron law of the movement; and now Makar was more jealous of his
+reputation as a conspirator than ever.
+
+"Well, it's all right," the Janitor said, reading his thoughts.
+"Something has been done and it's all right; only under the new system
+it's rather slow work."
+
+Makar did not understand. The abolition of the Third Section had taken
+place while he was in prison. When he heard of the change he said in
+dismay: "Will that affect my scheme?"
+
+"Your scheme? I don't think it will," the Janitor answered mysteriously.
+"Of course, we'll first have to see how the new system works. We must do
+some sounding and watching and studying before we know how to go about
+things. Can't you wait a month or two?"
+
+Makar was silent, then his face broke into a roguish smile.
+
+"I will if you get me into an underground printing office for the
+interval," he returned.
+
+The Janitor took fire. "What has that got to do with your cursed
+scheme?" he said with a slight stutter. "As if I had printing jobs to
+give away!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+A POSTPONED WEDDING.
+
+
+In June of that year, shortly before Makar escaped from prison, the
+unhappy Empress of Russia died after a long illness that was generally
+ascribed to her many years of jealousy and anguish. The Czar signified
+his intention to enter into morganatic wedlock with Princess Dolgoruki
+at once. His sons and brothers remonstrated with him, pleading for a
+postponement of the marriage until the end of a year's mourning; but he
+was passionately devoted to the princess, with whom he had been on terms
+of intimacy for the past few years; he was determined to have these
+relations legitimatised, and, in view of the unrelenting campaign of the
+Terrorists, he felt that he could not do so too soon. Several members of
+the imperial family then went on a foreign tour, and the wedding was
+quietly solemnised on July 31 in Livadia, Crimea, where the Czar and his
+bride remained for a long honeymoon.
+
+Pavel's and Clara's wedding was to take place in the early part of
+October. The relations of the sexes among the Nihilists were based upon
+the highest ideals of purity, and the marriage bond was sacred in the
+best sense of the word, but they were not given to celebrating their
+weddings. When a couple became man and wife the fact was recognised as
+tacitly as it was made known, the adoption by the bride of her husband's
+name being out of the question in a world in which passports and names
+were apt to be changed every day. Still, there were exceptions, and
+Pavel insisted upon being one of these. In his overflowing bliss he
+often cast the spartanism of the movement to the winds, and now he was
+bent upon indulging himself in the "romanticism" of having his wedding
+proclaimed at a gathering of his most intimate friends. This was to be
+done at the close of an important revolutionary meeting, at the same
+lodgings where we once saw Pavel, Zachar and My Lord at a gathering of
+military officers. A high government official who occupied the first
+floor of the same building was giving an elaborate reception which kept
+the house porters busy and the street in front crowded with carriages
+and idlers; so the central organisation of the Party of the Will of the
+People took advantage of the occasion and held one of its general
+meetings under cover of the excitement. The assemblage, which was made
+up of about sixty or seventy persons of both sexes, comprised nearly
+every member of the Executive Committee in town, and some candidates for
+admission to the Executive who were allowed to participate in its
+deliberations without a vote. Most of the revolutionists present had
+taken part in attempts on the life of the Czar, as also in some of the
+recent assassinations. One man, a southerner, was the hero of the most
+sensational rescue during the past few years, having snatched from the
+Kieff prison, in which he had contrived to obtain the position of head
+keeper, three leaders of an extensive revolutionary plot. This man, the
+Janitor and Purring Cat now constituted the Governing Board (a
+sub-committee clothed with dictatorial powers) of the Terrorists'
+Executive.
+
+The police were hunting for the people here gathered throughout the
+empire. Had the present meeting been discovered by spies the whole
+movement would have been seriously crippled for a considerable time.
+Indeed, the complex conspiracies of the Will of the People were an
+element of fatal weakness as well as a manifestation of fascinating
+strength. The Terror absorbed the best resources of the party,
+necessitating highly centralised organisation, with the threads of a
+scattered national propaganda in the hands of a few "illegals" who were
+liable to be seized at any moment.
+
+The street was full of police, but these had all they could do to salute
+the distinguished guests of the first floor and to take care of the
+carriages and the crowd of curiosity seekers.
+
+Partly through Pavel's influence and partly because she was an "illegal"
+and had produced a very favourable impression, Clara had made the
+acquaintance of many of the revolutionary leaders and been admitted as a
+probationary member of the Executive Committee. The present gathering
+was the first general meeting of the central body she had attended.
+
+"So this is the Executive Committee!" she was saying to herself. This,
+then, was the mysterious force that people were talking about in timid
+whispers; that the Czar dreaded; that was going to make everybody free
+and good and happy. This was it, and she was attending its meeting. She
+could scarcely believe her senses that she actually was there. She knew
+many of the members, but she had never seen several of them together.
+The present meeting almost benumbed her with a feeling of reverence,
+awe, and gratitude. Even those she had met often since her arrival in
+St. Petersburg seemed different beings now, as though spiritualised into
+that mysterious force that seemed mightier than the Czar and holier than
+divinity. An overpowering state of exaltation, of something akin to the
+ecstasy of a woman upon taking the veil, came over her. Pavel was dearer
+than ever to her, but in her present mood their love impressed her as a
+jarring note. Self-sacrifice, not personal happiness, was what appealed
+to her, and by degrees she keyed herself up to a frame of mind in which
+her prospective married life seemed a gross profanation of the sanctuary
+to which she had been admitted.
+
+"Let us postpone it, Pasha dear," she whispered to him, with a thrilling
+sense of sacrificing her happiness to the cause.
+
+"Why?" he demanded in perplexity.
+
+They went into the adjoining room. "What is the trouble? What's the
+trouble?" he demanded, light-heartedly.
+
+"No trouble at all, dearest," she answered affectionately. "You are
+dearer than ever to me, but pray let us postpone it."
+
+"But there must be some reason for it," he said with irritation.
+
+"Don't be vexed, Pashenka. There is really no special reason. I simply
+don't feel like being married--yet. I want to give my life to the
+movement, Pasha. I am enjoying too much happiness as it is." She uttered
+it in grave, measured, matter-of-fact accents, but her hazel eyes
+reflected the uplifted state of her soul.
+
+"Oh!" he exclaimed with a mixed sense of relief and adoration. "If
+that's what you mean, all I can say is that I am not worthy of you,
+Clara; but of course, the question of giving our lives to the cause has
+nothing to do with the question of our belonging to each other. Or,
+rather, it's one and the same thing."
+
+She made no reply. The very discussion of the subject jarred on her.
+
+"You are in a peculiar mood now, and you are an angel, anyhow, but
+to-morrow you'll see the matter in a different light."
+
+"At any rate, let us postpone it, Pashenka." And she led the way back to
+the meeting room.
+
+Many of the company knew of the expected announcement, and when they
+heard that it was not to take place they felt sorely disappointed. When
+the business of the meeting had been disposed of, a Terrorist named
+Sablin waggishly drank the health of Mlle. Yavner and the social
+revolution, to the accompaniment of the rapturous band of the first
+floor, and then he began to improvise burlesque verses on her as a
+newcomer, with allusions to her power over Pavel. This revolutionist was
+one of the "twin poets" of the party, his muse, which had a weakness for
+satire, being the gayer of the two. The "grave bard," whose name was
+Morosoff, was in Switzerland now. The two were great chums. As always,
+Sablin was the great convivial spirit of the company. When he was not
+versifying, he was making jokes, telling anecdotes or trying to speak
+Little-Russian to Purring Cat, who, being from Little Russia, answered
+his questions with smiling passivity. Some of his rhymes related to
+Purring Cat's interminable side-whiskers, Zachar's habit of throwing out
+his chest as he walked, the reticence of the tall man with the Tartarian
+face, and, above all, the Janitor's explosions of wrath when one "was
+not continually leering around for spies."
+
+The Janitor cursed him good-humouredly, without stuttering, and resumed
+his discussion with a man who looked like the conventional image of
+Christ, and with Urie, the tall blond man with typical Great-Russian
+features who had introduced Pavel to the Nihilist world and whom he
+still called "Godfather." The gay poet then took to versifying on the
+"three blond beards" of this trio.
+
+Zachar made the most noise, dancing cossack hops till the floor shook
+under his feet, singing at the top of his lungs, filling the large room
+with deafening guffaws. Baska, the light complexioned "housewife" of the
+dynamite shop, who looked like a peasant woman, was the greatest giggler
+of all the women present. Grisha, her passport husband at that shop, and
+her real husband--a thin man with Teutonic features, known among the
+revolutionists as "the German"--were also there.
+
+Sophia, the daughter of the former governor of St. Petersburg, sat by
+Clara's side, smiling her hearty good wishes upon her. She looked like a
+happy little girl, Sophia, her prominent cheeks aglow, and her clear
+blue self-possessed eyes full of affection and sweet-spirited
+penetration. She was engaged to Zachar, and Pavel's courtship had
+enlisted her tender interest. There were several other women at the
+gathering, two or three of them decidedly good-looking.
+
+There was an unpublished poem, "Virgin Soil," by the "gay bard," which
+Clara had heard him recite and which portrayed, among other things, a
+Nihilist woman becoming a mother in her isolated cell. Her child is
+wrested from her arms to perish, and she goes insane. The episode, which
+is part of a bitter satire on a certain official, is based on fact. As
+Clara now thought of it and beheld the demented woman nursing a rag, a
+shudder passed through her frame.
+
+"Cheer up, Clara! Cheer up!" Zachar thundered. "We don't want any long
+faces to-night."
+
+Clara smiled, a sorry smile, and Zachar went on hopping and laughing.
+But when Sophia stroked her hand, smilingly, Clara buried her face in
+her bosom and gave way to a quick sob.
+
+"What does it mean?" Pavel asked.
+
+"Nothing," Clara answered, gleaming through her tears.
+
+There were four or five Jews in the assemblage, but Makar was not among
+them. His cherished dream had been realised at last. He was working in a
+secret printing office. Establishments of this sort were guarded with
+special solicitude, so in view of his absent-mindedness, Makar never
+left the place for fear of bringing back some spy. The other
+revolutionists who worked in the same printing shop and who were
+registered at the police station as residents of the house had each his
+or her day off. Makar alone was not registered. The porters of the house
+had never seen him, and the composing room was his prison.
+
+The only other Jewess in the room was a dark insignificant looking woman
+named Hessia Helfman. She was touchingly bashful, so that at one time
+Clara had offered to befriend her. She had soon discovered, however,
+that the dark little Jewess was in charge of a most important conspiracy
+station. On closer acquaintance Hessia had proved to be quite talkative
+and of an extremely affectionate nature. Clara's attachment to her had
+become greater still when she had learned that Purring Cat was her
+husband. The great thing was that he was a Gentile and a nobleman,
+although not a prince. Clara had told herself that the equality of Jew
+and Gentile and their intermarriage among socialists was a matter of
+course and that the circumstance attracted no special attention on her
+part, but she knew that it did.
+
+As she now looked at Hessia and her husband, she said to herself, with a
+great sense of relief: "She is as good as I, anyhow. If she could marry
+the man she loves I can."
+
+But her joy in this absolution from her self-imposed injunction soon
+faded away. To sacrifice her happiness seemed to her the highest
+happiness this evening. She would surpass Hessia. If there was a world
+in which platonic relations were called for theirs was that world. The
+image of a demented woman fondling a rag in her prison cell came back to
+her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+A SECOND COURTSHIP.
+
+
+The Czar was still in Livadia with his bride, abandoning himself to his
+second youth with a passion that was tinged with the pathos of imminent
+tragedy, when Count Loris-Melikoff telegraphed to him a plea for the
+lives of two revolutionists who had been sentenced to death, one of
+these being Alexandre, the man in whose lodgings the gendarmes had found
+a diagram of the Imperial dining hall. The distinguished Armenian was
+contemplating reforms which he expected to leave no room for terrorism,
+and it was for the sake of these measures as well as of the Emperor
+himself, that he was averse to having the bitterness of the
+revolutionists quickened by new executions. If they only let the Czar
+live until those projects had been carried out, he thought, their
+conspiracies would lose all reason of existence; at any rate, the
+surreptitious support which they received from men of high social
+position would be withdrawn.
+
+But his despatch was followed by one from the Czarowitz, who, echoing
+the views of the anti-Melikoff party at court, urged his father not to
+show signs of weakness, and the sentence was allowed to stand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At about nine o'clock in the morning of a cold autumn day, a fortnight
+after the meeting of the Executive Committee which Clara attended,
+Pavel stood on a chair nailing a clothes rack to the wall. The room was
+Clara's. It was on the fifth floor of a house near a corner, with
+windows commanding the two intersecting streets, where her window
+signals could be seen at a considerable distance. She rented it
+furnished, with samovar service, but the curtains and some bits of
+bric-�-brac had been bought by Pavel who took more interest in these
+things and was handier about the house than she. He himself lived in the
+house of a distant relative, an elderly widow, who took great pride in
+him and had no doubt that he led the life of the average young man of
+his class, that is to say, he spent his nights and his mamma's rubles on
+an endless crop of wild oats. To Clara's landlady he was known as a
+brother of hers. On the present occasion he had found his fianc�e out,
+but a mark on the door had told him that she would soon be back.
+Presently she came in. She wore a tall fur cap and her cheeks gleamed,
+exhaling the freshness of girlish health and of the cold weather of the
+street, but she looked grave. Pavel threw away his hammer and pounced
+down upon her with open arms. She repulsed him gently.
+
+"Stop," she whispered, drearily, unbuttoning her cloak and drawing a
+newspaper from its inner pocket. "There is terrible news this morning."
+
+The execution of Alexandre and the other revolutionist had taken place
+the day before, and the newspapers were allowed to print a very brief
+account of it--how they bade each other good-bye on the scaffold and
+how, when Alexandre saw the death-shroud on his friend, his eyes filled
+with tears. The two condemned men had been great chums for several
+years, Alexandre having once wrested the other from a convoy. Now they
+died together.
+
+As Pavel read the account of the double execution, standing by the
+window, a flush of overpowering despair shot into his chest and diffused
+itself through his legs.
+
+"They have choked them after all," he gasped out.
+
+Clara, who sat at a table watching him, dropped her head on her folded
+arms, in a paroxysm of quick, bitter sobbing.
+
+The few details in the newspaper report gave vividness to the grewsome
+scene. The two executed men had been among Pavel's most intimate
+friends. The image of Alexandre, his arms pinioned, looking on with
+tears while a white shroud was being slipped over his fellow-prisoner,
+was tearing at his heart with cruel insistence.
+
+"Oh, it's terrible, Clarochka!" he moaned, dropping by her side,
+nestling to her, and bursting into tears in her bosom. Then, getting up,
+he took to walking back and forth, vehemently. "They have choked them,
+the blood-drinkers," he muttered. "They have done it after all." He fell
+silent, pacing the floor in despair, and then burst out once again:
+"They have choked them, the vampires."
+
+"But war is war," she said, for something to say to him, her own face
+distorted with her struggle against a flow of tears.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. All I do know is that they have been murdered, that
+they are no more." A minute or two later he turned upon her with a look
+full of ghastly malice. "War did you say? The government can't have
+enough of it, can it? Well, it shall have all the war it wants. The
+party has only shown it the blossoms; the berries are still to come."
+
+The world seemed to be divided into those who had known the two executed
+men personally and those who had not. For the moment there seemed to be
+little in common between him and Clara. She strained him to a seat by
+her side on the sofa again, clasping one of his hands in both of hers,
+and kissed him on the cheek, wetting his temple with her tears.
+
+"Do you know, dearest, I really had a lurking hope they would be
+spared," he said. "I was ashamed to say so, but I did. But no! they
+choked them. They choked them. Idiots that they are. They imagine they
+can hang every honest man in the country."
+
+"Loris-Melikoff is even worse than the Czar. His liberalism is nothing
+but hypocrisy. There can no longer be any question about it."
+
+"He is a rogue of the deepest dye. He is a bungling hypocrite, an
+abominable liar and a mangy coward, that's what he is. But to the devil
+with him! This is not the point. Oh, nothing is the point. Nothing
+except that they have been murdered."
+
+He went to see some of the revolutionists with whom he had shared the
+intimacy of the dead men.
+
+Left alone, Clara began to pace the floor slowly. Not having known
+either Alexandre or the man who had died with him, she was exempt from
+that acute agony of grief which was her lover's; but there was the image
+of two men in death-shrouds, a stirring image of martyrdom, before her
+vision. Pity, the hunger of revenge and a loftier feeling--the thirst of
+self-sacrifice to the cause of liberty--swelled her heart. Back and
+forth she walked, slowly, solemnly, her hands gently clasped behind her,
+her soul in a state of excitement that was coupled with a peculiar state
+of physical tranquillity, her mind apparently seeing things with a
+perspicacity the like of which it had never enjoyed before. Her future,
+her duties, her relation to the rest of the world, her whole life--all
+was wonderfully clear to her, and in spite of her anguish over the death
+of the two men she felt singularly happy. It seemed to be a matter of
+course that her party would now undertake some new plot, one exceeding
+in boldness and magnitude all its predecessors. Many lives would have to
+be staked. She would offer hers. Matrimony was out of the question at a
+time like this. She conjured that image of the insane woman clasping a
+rag to her bosom in support of her position. She longed to be near Pavel
+again. In her mind she embraced him tenderly, argued with him, opened
+her soul to him. It was all so clear. Her mind was so firmly made up.
+She fondly hoped she would make Pavel see it all in the same light.
+
+The explanation took place the next time he called on her, a few days
+later.
+
+"Oh, we shall all have to offer our lives," he replied. "But for God's
+sake love me, Clanya. It will drive me crazy if you don't."
+
+"But I do, I do. I love you with every fibre of my being, Pasha. What
+has put it in your head to doubt it?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. All I do know is that as long as my life is mine I
+cannot exist without you. I am frightfully lonely and that stands in the
+way of my work. Dash it, I feel just as I did last summer before I took
+courage to tell you that I was insanely in love with you."
+
+She drew him to her, with a smile at once of happiness and amusement.
+
+"Poor boy! It's enough to break one's heart. Poor little dear!" she
+joked affectionately.
+
+"I knew you would be making fun of me," he said, yearning upon her.
+"Love me, Clanya, do love me, with all your heart. I cannot live apart
+from you, I cannot, upon my word I cannot," he concluded piteously,
+like a child.
+
+"Do you imagine it's easy for me to be away from you?" she retorted
+earnestly. "I can't be a single hour without you without missing you,
+without feverishly waiting to see you again. As if you did not know it!
+But what can we do? Is this the only sacrifice we are ready to make?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A fortnight had passed. Unknown to her lover, Clara had spoken to the
+Janitor, intimating her readiness to offer her life, and asking for one
+of the most dangerous assignments the Governing Board could give her.
+She was waiting for an answer, when the startling news spread among the
+revolutionists that the Janitor was in the hands of the enemy and that
+the capture of that maniac of caution had been the result of a most
+insane piece of recklessness.
+
+His arrest was one of the heaviest losses the party had yet sustained.
+At the same time the government found a new source of uneasiness in it.
+A large quantity of dynamite and some other things confiscated at his
+lodgings pointed to a vigorous renewal of terroristic activity. Another
+plot on the life of the Emperor seemed to be hatching in the capital,
+yet all efforts of the police and the gendarmes in this connection were
+futile. Indeed, the circumstances of the Janitor's arrest only furnished
+new proof of the ineptitude and shiftlessness of those whose business it
+was to ferret out Nihilism.
+
+A few days before the Janitor was taken the police received word about
+two portraits which had been left for reproduction at a well-known
+photograph gallery and in which the photographer had recognised the two
+Nihilists who had recently been hanged. Instead of a detective being
+detailed, however, to lie in wait for the unknown man, the proprietor of
+the gallery was simply ordered to notify the police when he came for his
+pictures. The unknown man was the Janitor. When he called for the
+photographs, an awkward attempt was made to detain him which aroused his
+suspicion. He pleaded haste and made for the door. When a porter barred
+his way he scared him off by thrusting his hand into an empty
+pistol-pocket. A similar order for photographs of the two executed
+Terrorists had been given by him to another well-known photographer next
+door to the former place, and it was when he called there, a day or two
+after his narrow escape at the adjoining gallery, that he was seized by
+detectives.
+
+When his landlady heard that her "star" lodger, the punctilious
+government official and retired army officer, was neither an official
+nor a retired officer, but a leading Nihilist, she fainted. The
+gendarmes had been hunting for him since he broke away from his captors
+on his way to prison one evening more than two years before. They had
+heard that it was he who subsequently organised the railroad plot near
+Moscow; also that he had been connected with the assassination of the
+chief of gendarmes and with the shooting at the Czar in front of the
+Winter Palace. Yet he had freely moved about the streets of St.
+Petersburg these two years, the busiest agitator and conspirator in the
+city, until, in a moment of morbid foolhardiness, he practically
+surrendered himself to the police.
+
+When Clara heard of his arrest, she clapped her hands together, Yiddish
+fashion. "If the Janitor has been arrested as a result of carelessness,"
+she exclaimed, "then everyone of us ought to hold himself in readiness
+to be taken at any moment."
+
+She repeated the remark the next time she saw Pavel, adding:
+
+"The idea of being a married woman under such conditions!"
+
+"Oh, that's an _id�e fixe_ of yours," he said, testily.
+
+She gave him a look and dropped her eyes, resentfully.
+
+The peace-offering came from him.
+
+"Whew, what a cloud!" he said, pointing at her glum face. "Won't there
+be a single rift in it? Not a wee bit of a one for a single ray to come
+through?"
+
+She smiled, heartily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+A HUNTED MONARCH.
+
+
+The ministers were reporting to the Czar who had recently returned from
+Livadia. They were admitted one at a time. As they sat chatting under
+breath in the blue waiting room, with the white reflection of the snow
+that was falling outside, upon their faces, these elderly men, whose
+names were associated in millions of minds with the notion of infinite
+dignity and power, looked like a group of anxious petitioners in the
+vestibule of some official.
+
+An exception was made for Count Loris-Melikoff, who was with the Czar
+during the audiences of all his colleagues. The Supreme Executive
+Commission over which he had presided had been abolished some four
+months before. Nominally he was now simply in charge of the Department
+of the Interior, but in reality he continued to play the part of
+premier, a position he partly owed to Princess Dolgoruki, the Czar's
+young wife, who set great store by his liberal policy. She was said to
+be a woman of a rather progressive turn of mind, but whether she was or
+not, her fate hung on the life of her imperial husband and every measure
+that was calculated to pacify the Nihilists found a ready advocate in
+her. Indeed, she and the Count were united by a community of personal
+interests; for he had as many enemies at court as she, and his position
+depended upon the life of Alexander II. as much as hers.
+
+The Czar was receiving the ministers in a chamber of moderate size,
+finished in sombre colours, with engaged columns of malachite,
+book-cases of ebony and silver, with carvings representing scenes from
+Russian history, and a large writing table to match. Statues of bronze
+and ivory stood between the book-cases and a striking life-size
+watercolour of Nicholas I. hung on the wall to the right of the Czar's
+chair. The falling snow outside was like a great impenetrable veil
+without beginning or end, descending from some unknown source and
+disappearing into some equally mysterious region. The room, whose high
+walls, dismally imposing, were supposed to hold the destinies of a
+hundred millions of human beings, was filled with lustreless wintry
+light. The Emperor, tall, erect, broad-shouldered, the image of easy
+dignity, but pale and with a touch of weariness in his large oval face,
+wore the undress uniform of a general of infantry. He was sixty-two and
+he was beginning to look it. He listened to the ministers with
+constrained attention. He showed exaggerated interest in the affairs of
+their respective departments, but they could see that his heart was not
+in their talk, and with unuttered maledictions for the upstart
+vice-Emperor, they made short work of their errands. They knew that the
+Interior Department was the only one that commanded the Czar's interest
+in those days.
+
+At last the Emperor and his chief adviser were left alone. Both were
+silent. Loris-Melikoff was as strikingly oriental of feature as
+Alexander II. was European. Notwithstanding his splendid military career
+and uniform he had the appearance of a sharp-witted scientist rather
+than of a warrior. His swarthy complexion, shrewd oriental eyes and
+huge energetic oriental nose, flanked by greyer and longer side-whiskers
+than the Czar's, made him look like a representative of some foreign
+power.
+
+There was pathos in both. Alexander II. had that passion for life which
+comes to an old man upon marrying a pretty young woman. Yet foreigners
+who saw him during this period said that he looked like a hunted man. As
+to Count Melikoff, his advance had been so rapid, he was surrounded by
+so many enemies at court, and the changes by which he was trying to save
+the Czar's life and his own power, were beset by so many obstacles, that
+he could not help feeling like the peasant of the story who was made
+king for one day.
+
+Naturally talkative and genially expansive, the Czar's manner toward
+people who were admitted to his intimacy was one of amiable informality.
+The chief pathos of his fate sprang from the discrepancy between the
+Czar and the man in him, between a vindictive ruthlessness born of a
+blind sense of his autocratic honour and an affectionate, emotional
+nature with less grit than pride. Had he been a common mortal he would
+have made far more friends than enemies.
+
+Count Loris-Melikoff had become accustomed to feel at home in his
+presence. At this minute, however, as the Czar was watching the snow
+flakes, with an air of idle curiosity, the Armenian had an overbearing
+sense of the distance between them. He knew that the Czar was anxious to
+talk about the revolutionists and that he hated to do so. His heart
+contracted with common human pity, yet in the silence that divided them
+it came over him that the man in front of him was the Czar, and a
+feeling of awe seized him like the one he used to experience at sight of
+the Emperor long before he was raised to his present position. This
+feeling passed, however, the moment the Czar began to speak.
+
+"Well?" he said, with sudden directness. "Anything new about that
+Michailoff fellow?" Alexandre Michailoff was the real name of the
+Janitor.
+
+"Nothing new so far, your Majesty," Loris-Melikoff answered
+obsequiously, yet with something like triumph, as if the powerlessness
+of the police were only too natural and substantiated his views on the
+general state of things. "He is one of their chief ringleaders."
+
+"And this has been known all along," the Emperor remarked with sad
+irony. "Such a thing would be inconceivable in any other capital in
+Europe."
+
+"Quite so. But I feel that in other countries, the capture of miscreants
+like ours would be due less to the efficiency of the police than to the
+cordial co�peration of the public. The trouble is that our police is
+thrown on its own resources, Sire. It is practically fighting those
+wretches single-handed."
+
+The Czar had a fit of coughing, the result of asthma. When it had
+subsided, he said with an air of suffering:
+
+"Well, that's your theory. But then their public is not ours. The
+average Russian is not wide-awake enough to co�perate with the
+authorities." He had in mind his own address at Moscow in which he had
+appealed to the community at large for this very assistance in ferreting
+out sedition. The Will of the People had come into existence since then.
+
+"Still, if our public were drawn into active co�peration with the
+Government, if it became habituated to a sense of the monarch's
+confidence in itself, it seems reasonable to suppose that the indolence
+of the community would then disappear. No people is capable of greater
+loyalty to the throne than your Majesty's. All that is needed is to
+lend to this devotion tangibility. This and this alone would enable your
+Majesty to cure the evil. What the body politic needs is judicious
+internal treatment. Surgical operations have proven futile. These are my
+sincerest convictions, your Majesty."
+
+"I know they are," the Czar answered musingly.
+
+"And the great point is, that with the intelligent classes actively
+interested in the preservation of law and order, criminal societies of
+any sort would find themselves without any ground to stand upon."
+
+The Czar had another cough, and then he said, flushing:
+
+"There is a simpler way to leave them without ground to stand upon,
+surgical operations or no surgical operations. Call it what you will.
+There is no sense in pampering them, Melikoff. Why, in western Europe
+they execute common murderers. As to a gang of assassins like that,
+death would be regarded a mild punishment." He lighted a cigarette, but
+forthwith extinguished it and went on with emphasis: "We handle them
+with kid gloves, Melikoff. That's why they take chances."
+
+He spoke with subdued anger, citing the republican uprising led by
+aristocratic army officers in 1825, which his father (the man whose
+portrait was on the right wall) quelled by means of field guns.
+Loris-Melikoff demurred to the comparison, tactfully hinting that there
+would be no betrayal of weakness in inviting the public to participate
+in the extermination of crime by showing it signs of increased imperial
+confidence, and the Czar softened again. He felt that the Armenian knew
+how to save him and he willingly submitted to his and Princess
+Dolgoruki's influence. But Fate was bent on tragedy.
+
+Alexander II. lacked anything but courage. Still, this continuous
+living under fire had gradually unnerved him. The soldier on the
+battlefield finds moral support in the presence of thousands of
+comrades, all facing the same fate as he; whereas he was like a lone man
+on top of a dynamite pile. And if his perils were shared by those about
+him, this only added the agonising consciousness that his person carried
+the shadow of destruction with it, endangering the life of every living
+being that came near him. He knew, for example, that when he was at the
+theatre candles were kept ready, in case the lights were blown out by an
+explosion; that many people stayed away from the playhouse on such
+occasions for fear of being destroyed along with their sovereign. His
+pride would not let him feel low-spirited. He very often forced himself
+to disdain caution, to act with reckless courage. Nevertheless he had a
+dreary, jaded look. The notion that he, the most powerful of men, the
+image of grandeur and human omnipotence, should tremble at every sound,
+wounded his common human pride acutely. The consequence was that this
+mightiest monarch in the world, the gigantic man of sixty-two, every bit
+of him an Emperor, was at heart a terror-stricken infant mutely
+imploring for help. He continued to appear in the streets of the
+capital, accompanied by his usual escort and to return the salutes of
+passers-by with his usual air of majestic ease. Now and then he went to
+the theatre, and occasionally even beyond the scenes for a flirtation
+with the actresses. But the public knew that besides his large uniformed
+escort, his carriage was watched by hordes of detectives in citizen's
+clothes, and that every inch of the ground which he was to traverse was
+all but turned inside out for possible signs of danger. And those who
+were admitted to his presence knew that underneath his grand,
+free-and-easy bearing was a sick heart and a crushed spirit. That the
+enemy was an unknown quantity was one of the sources of his growing
+disquiet. The organised movement might be very large and it might be
+ridiculously small, but with a latent half-Nihilist in the heart of
+every subject. He was beginning to realise at last that he knew his
+people scarcely better than he did the French or the English. He was
+anxious to make peace with that invisible enemy of his, provided it did
+not look as if he did.
+
+He was willing to be deceived, and Loris-Melikoff was about to help him
+deceive himself. But destiny was against them both. He was an honest
+man, Loris-Melikoff, serious-minded, public-spirited, one of the few
+able statesmen Russia ever had; but his path was strewn with thorns.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF A SHOP.
+
+
+A tall man with a reddish beard called at one of the police stations of
+the capital about a cheese store which he was going to open on Little
+Garden Street. He gave his name as Koboseff. When he had gone the
+Captain of the station said to one of his roundsmen:
+
+"That fellow doesn't talk like a tradesman. I asked him a few questions,
+and his answers were rather too polished for a cheese dealer." And
+taking up his pen, he added, with a preoccupied air, "Keep an eye on
+him, will you?"
+
+Little Garden Street was part of a route which the Emperor often took on
+his way to or from his niece's residence, the Micha�l Palace, and
+received the special attention of the police.
+
+The roundsman spoke to the agent of the house where Koboseff had rented
+a basement for his projected shop and dwelling room; whereupon the agent
+recalled that cheesemonger's handwriting had struck him as being too
+good for a man of his class. Inquiry at the town at which Koboseff's
+passport was dated brought the information that a document corresponding
+in every detail to the one in question had actually been issued by the
+local authorities. Koboseff was thus no invented name, and as the
+description in the passport agreed with the appearance of the man who
+had rented the basement, the St. Petersburg police saw no ground for
+further suspicion.
+
+The cheese shop was opened in the early part of January, Koboseff having
+moved in with a fair-complexioned woman whom he introduced as his wife.
+Some three or four weeks later the head porter of the house notified the
+police that Koboseff had boasted of the flourishing state of his
+business, whereas in reality his shop attracted but very scant custom.
+At the same time it was pointed out that there was a well-established
+and prosperous cheese store close by, that the basement occupied by the
+Koboseffs was scarcely the place one would naturally select for the
+purpose, and that the rent was strikingly too high for the amount of
+business Koboseff could expect to do there. To cap the climax, there was
+some lively gossip among the neighbours about Mme. Koboseff, who had
+been seen smoking cigarettes--a habit quite unusual for a woman of the
+lower classes--and who often stayed out all night.
+
+"Koboseff" was Uric Bogdanovich, Pavel's "Godfather," and "Mme.
+Koboseff" was Baska, formerly "housewife" of the dynamite shop and a
+year previous to that in charge of a house in the south near which
+Zachar and others attempted to blow up an imperial train.
+
+The cheese shop was often visited by Zachar, Purring Cat, the reticent
+stalwart man with the Tartarian features, Pavel and other
+revolutionists. The police kept close watch on the place, but, according
+to all reports, no suspicious persons were ever seen to enter it. Upon
+the whole the Koboseffs seemed to be real tradesmen, and as the
+information concerning their passport was satisfactory, they were not
+disturbed. A slim little man named Kurilloff who had played the part of
+errand boy at the cheese shop had been arrested, but his detention had
+nothing to do with the Koboseffs, and the police of Little Garden
+Street had no idea of the arrest, while the officers who had made it
+were unaware of the prisoner's connection with a suspicious shop.
+
+"If I were you I'd make missus behave," the head porter of the house
+once said to Koboseff, speaking of his "wife."
+
+"Right you are," the cheesemonger replied. "Only my old woman is a tough
+customer to handle, you know. I do tell her she had better mind the
+house and ought to be ashamed of herself to smoke cigarettes, but she
+doesn't care a rap, not she."
+
+"I would teach her if she was _my_ wife."
+
+The cheesemonger made a gesture of despair, and the porter said to
+himself that there was nothing suspicious about him; that he was simply
+a fellow without backbone and a fool, qualities which seemed to account
+for Koboseff's incompetence as a business man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, Clanya," Pavel said to Mlle. Yavner, lazily addressing her in the
+diminutive of his own coining. "I am afraid I shall have to exile you
+for some time."
+
+"Exile me?" she asked absently without lifting her eyes from a heap of
+type she was sorting and putting up in packages. She sat across the
+table from the sofa upon which he was cuddling himself drowsily as a cat
+does before a fireside.
+
+"Yes, that's what I'll have to do--pack you off, put you in a box, nail
+you up tight, stick a label on it and ship you somewhere. 'To places not
+so very distant,'" he added, mocking the official phrase used in
+transporting people to eastern Siberia.
+
+She raised her eyes from her work, her fingers stiff and black with lead
+dust. "What are you driving at, Pasha? Anything up? Or is it merely one
+of those jokes under which one must write in big letters: 'This is a
+joke?'"
+
+"Is _that_ a joke?" he asked, and burst into laughter.
+
+She resumed her work. The type she was sorting was intended for a
+revolutionary printing office, having been sent to St. Petersburg by
+Masha Safonoff, who had bought it of the foreman of the government's
+printing office in Miroslav.
+
+"Oh, to all the diabolical devils with that type of yours, Clanya. Can't
+you sit down by a fellow's side for a minute or two?"
+
+She got up, washed her hands and complied with his wish. As she played
+with his hand she noticed the trace of blisters on his palm. Her face
+darkened; but she asked no questions. After a little she demanded: "What
+did you mean by 'exiling' me?"
+
+"Oh dash it all, Clanya. It's something serious. I'll tell it to you
+some other time. I'm too lazy to be serious." He would have preferred to
+be sprawling like this with her hands in his; luxuriating in the gleam
+of her intelligent blue eyes and in the feminine atmosphere of her
+person; but his excuse that it was "too serious" only sharpened her
+determination to know what it was without delay.
+
+"What is it, Pasha?"
+
+"There you are," he said peevishly. "One can't have a minute's rest from
+business, not a minute's rest."
+
+"Why did you hasten to speak of 'exiling' me, then?" she retorted
+tartly. "Why didn't you keep it to yourself until you were again in a
+mood for 'business'?"
+
+He had not kept it to himself simply because it was not easy for him to
+keep anything from her. He was more apt to fly into a temper with her
+than she with him, but in their mutual relations she was the stronger
+vessel of the two and, in an imperceptible, unformulated way, he was
+considerably under her thumb. When he heard or saw something new,
+received some new impression, his first impulse was to share it with
+her. If an opinion was formed in his mind he wondered, sometimes
+timidly, whether she would concur with it. Timidly, because in many
+instances, when he came bubbling over with enthusiasm over some scheme
+of his own, she had cruelly dampened his fervour by merely extricating
+the vital point of his argument from a surrounding tangle of roseate
+phraseology. His great intellectual feast was to be in her room,
+discussing theories, books, people with her. These discussions, which
+sometimes lasted for hours, often called forth a snappish, bitter tone
+on both sides, but they were at once an expression and a fostering
+agency of that spiritual unity which was one of the chief sources of
+their happiness in one another.
+
+"Well, there is very little to tell about," he said at last. "Something
+is under way, and it has been decided to notify all illegals not in it
+to vacate St. Petersburg until it's all over."
+
+The lines of her fresh-tinted face hardened into an expression of
+extreme gravity and her fingers grew limp in his grasp. She withdrew
+them.
+
+"Look at her!" he squeaked in a burst of merriment.
+
+"There is nothing to look at. I am not going." She dropped her glance.
+She divined that his blisters had something to do with the digging of a
+mine in which he took part.
+
+"Is it all settled?"
+
+"Oh, Pasha! Your jesting is so out of place," she returned sullenly. "I
+am not going."
+
+"But the air is getting hot in St. Petersburg. Whew! The police are
+suspicious, of course; they won't leave a stone unturned."
+
+He took hold of her tender girlish hand, but she withdrew it again, with
+a gesture of impatience.
+
+"There will be something to do for you too later on," he comforted her,
+guiltily. "It's going to be a big thing, the biggest of all. You'll come
+back in a month or so."
+
+She made no answer.
+
+The two intersecting streets outside reeked and creaked and glittered
+with the crispness of a typical St. Petersburg frost. It was about ten
+in the morning, in the early part of January. The little parlour was
+delightfully warm, with a dim consciousness of sleigh-furs, hack drivers
+in absurd winter caps, pedestrians huddling themselves and wriggling and
+grunting for an effeminating background to one's sense of shelter. The
+even heat of the white glazed oven seemed to be gleaming and stirring
+over the surface of the tiles like something animate, giving them an
+effect of creamy mellowness that went to one's heart together with the
+delicious warmth they radiated. Ever and anon a sleigh bell would tinkle
+past and sink into Pavel's mood. There was a rhythm to the warm
+stillness of the room. But Clara's silence tormented him.
+
+"We'll discuss it later on, Clanya. I'm too tired now. My brain won't
+work. Let us play school," he pleaded fawningly, in burlesque Russian,
+mimicking the accent of the Czech who taught Latin at the Miroslav
+gymnasium.
+
+"Stop that, pray."
+
+He made a sorry effort to obey her, and finally she yielded, with a
+smile and a Jewish shrug. He played a gymnasium teacher and she a pupil.
+He made her conjugate his name as she would a verb; made puns on
+Clanya, which is an unfinished Russian word meaning to bow, to greet, to
+convey one's regards; mocked and laughed at her enunciation till his
+eyes watered. Gradually he drifted into an impersonation of old Pievakin
+and flew into a passion because her hearty laughter marred the illusion
+of the performance.
+
+"You do need rest, poor thing," she said, looking at his haggard, worn
+face.
+
+"Well, another few weeks and we shall be able to get all the rest we
+want, if not in a cell, or in a quieter place still, in some foreign
+resort, perhaps. I really feel confident we are going to win this time."
+
+"It's about time the party did."
+
+"It will this time, you may be sure of it. And then--by George, the very
+sky will feel hot. Everything seems ready for a general uprising. All
+that is needed is the signal. I can see the barricades going up in the
+streets." He gnashed his teeth and shook her by the shoulders
+exultantly. "Yes, ma'am. And then, Clanya, why, then we won't have to go
+abroad for our vacation. One will be able to breathe in Russia then.
+Won't we give ourselves a spree, eh? But whether here or abroad, I must
+take you for a rest somewhere. Will you marry your love-lorn Pashka
+then? I dare you to say no."
+
+"But I don't want to say no," she answered radiantly.
+
+They went to dinner together and then they parted. As they shook hands
+he peered into her face with a rush of tenderness, as though trying to
+inhale as deep an impression of her as possible in case either of them
+was arrested before they met again. And, indeed, there was quite an
+eventful day in store for her.
+
+One of the persons she was to see later in the afternoon was a man with
+a Greek name. As she approached the house in which he had his lodgings,
+she recognised in the gas-lit distance the high forehead and the boyish
+face of Sophia, the ex-Governor's daughter. Sophia, or Sonia, as she was
+fondly called, was bearing down upon her at a brisk, preoccupied walk.
+As she swept past Clara, without greeting her, she whispered:
+
+"A trap."
+
+The lodging of the man with the queer name had been raided, then, and
+was now held by officers in the hope of ensnaring some of his friends.
+Clara had been at the place several times and she was afraid that the
+porter of the house, in case he stood at his post in the gateway at this
+minute, might recognise her.
+
+The dim opening of the gate loomed as a sickly quadrangular hole
+exhaling nightmare and ruin. Turning sharply back, however, might have
+attracted notice; so Clara entered the first gate on her way, four or
+five houses this side of her destination, and when she reappeared a
+minute or two later, she took the opposite direction. As she turned the
+next corner she found herself abreast of a man she had noticed in the
+streets before. He was fixed in her mind by his height and carriage.
+Extremely tall and narrow-shouldered, he walked like a man with a sore
+neck, swinging one of his long arms to and fro as he moved stiffly
+along. The look he gave her made a very unpleasant impression on her. He
+let her gain on him a little and then she heard his soft rubber-shod
+footsteps behind her.
+
+It is a terrible experience, this sense of being dogged as you walk
+along. It is tantalising enough when your desire to take a look at the
+man at your heels is only a matter of curiosity which for some reason or
+other you cannot gratify. Imagine, then, the mental condition of an
+"illegal" shadowed by a spy or by a man he suspects of being one. He
+tingles with a desire to quicken pace, yet he must walk on with the same
+even, calm step; every minute or two he is seized with an impulse to
+turn on the fellow behind him, yet he must not show the least sign of
+consciousness as to his existence. It is the highest form of torture,
+yet it was the daily experience of every active man or woman of the
+secret organisation; for if the political detectives were spying upon
+pedestrians right and left, the revolutionists, on their part, were apt
+to be suspicious with equal promiscuity. Small wonder that some of them,
+upon being arrested, hailed their prison cell as a welcome place of
+rest, as a relief from the enervating strain of liberty under the
+harrowing conditions of underground life. As a matter of fact this
+wholesale shadowing seldom results in the arrest of a revolutionist.
+Thousands of innocent people were snuffed to one Nihilist, and the
+Nihilists profited by the triviality of suspicion. Most arrests were the
+result of accident.
+
+At the corner of the next large thoroughfare she paused and looked up
+the street for a tram-car. While doing so Clara glanced around her. The
+tall man had disappeared. A tram-car came along shortly and she was
+about to board it when she heard Sonia's voice once more.
+
+"You're being shadowed. Follow me."
+
+Sonia entered a crowded sausage shop, and led the way to the far end of
+it in the rear of an impatient throng. Pending her turn to be waited on,
+she took off her broad-brimmed hat, asking Clara to hold it for her,
+while she adjusted her hair.
+
+"Put it on, and let me have your fur cap," she gestured.
+
+The homely broad-brimmed hat transformed Clara's appearance
+considerably. It made her look shorter and her face seemed larger and
+older.
+
+"I saw a tall fellow turn you over to one with a ruddy mug. The red man
+is waiting for you outside now, but I don't think he had a good look at
+your face. There is a back door over there."
+
+Clara regained the street through the yard, and sure enough, a man with
+a florid face was leisurely smoking a cigarette at the gate post. He
+only gave her a superficial glance and went on watching the street door
+of the shop. She took a public sleigh, ordered the driver to take her to
+the Liteyny Bridge, changed her destination in the middle of the
+journey, and soon after she got off she took another sleigh for quite
+another section of the city. In short, she was "circling," and when she
+thought her trail completely "swept away," she went home on foot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+A REASSURING SEARCH.
+
+
+The capture of the man with the Greek name proved disastrous to the
+Executive Committee. It was the first link in a chain of most important
+arrests. The trap set at his house caught the very tall man with the
+Tartarian features; this led to the arrest of Purring Cat, and the
+residence of Purring Cat, in its turn, ensnared a pretentiously dressed
+man, in whom the superior gendarme officers were amazed to find their
+own trusted secretary, the man whom Makar knew as "the Dandy." Makar's
+arrest at Miroslav had tended to strengthen the Dandy's position
+somewhat, but now that he was in the hands of the enemy himself,
+it seemed as if the medical student's sweeping system of
+"counter-espionage" had burst like a bubble. Makar was in despair. He
+spoke of new plans, of new sacrifices, until Zachar silenced him.
+
+"All in due time, my dear romanticist," he said to him. "A month or two
+later I shall be delighted to be entertained with the fruit of your rich
+fancy; not now, my boy."
+
+The four arrests were a severe blow to the undertaking of which Zachar
+had been placed in charge. He was overworked, dejected, yet thrilling
+with nervous activity. But his own days were numbered. An air of
+impending doom hung over the Czar and his "internal enemies" alike.
+
+Good fortune seemed to attend the state police. While the gendarmes of
+the capital were celebrating their unexpected haul an intellectual
+looking man was locked up in a frontier town as a "vagrant," that is, as
+a man without a passport, who subsequently proved to be one of the
+active Terrorists the detectives had long been looking for. He was the
+"grave bard," one of the twin poets of the party. Shortly after his
+arrest the Russian government received word from the police of the
+German capital that a prominent Russian Nihilist known among his friends
+as "My Lord," a sobriquet due to his elegance of personal appearance and
+address, had spent some time in Berlin and was now on his way to St.
+Petersburg. A German detective followed the man to the frontier and
+then, shadowed by Russian spies, he was tracked to a house on the Neva
+Prospect, the leading street of St. Petersburg. There it was decided to
+arrest him Friday, March 23.
+
+A little after 4 o'clock of that day Zachar and the ex-Governor's
+daughter left their home, where they were registered as brother and
+sister, and took a sleigh, alighting in front of the Public Library, in
+the very heart of the city. Instead of entering the library, however,
+which the sleigh-driver thought to be their destination, they parted,
+continuing their several journeys on foot.
+
+It was an extremely cold afternoon. The beards of pedestrians and
+sleigh-drivers and the manes of horses were glued with frost; their
+breath came in short painful puffs. It was getting dark. The sky was a
+spotless, almost a warm blue. To look at it you would have wondered
+where this sharp, all-benumbing cold came from. There was an air of
+insincerity about the crimson clearness of the afternoon light.
+
+Zachar wore a tall cap of Persian lamb, flattened at the top, and a
+tight-fitting fur coat. He walked briskly, his chest thrown out, his
+full pointed beard hoary with frost, his cheeks red with the biting
+cold.
+
+Presently he found himself shadowed by a man in civilian clothes whom he
+knew to be a gendarme in disguise. It was evident, however, that the spy
+was following him merely as a suspicious person without having any idea
+what sort of man his quarry was, and Zachar, with whom a hunt of this
+kind was a daily occurrence, had no difficulty in "thrashing his trail."
+He was bound for the cheese shop on Little Garden Street. This was
+within a short walk from the Public Library, yet on this occasion it
+took him an hour's "circling" to reach the place.
+
+About ten minutes after Zachar entered the cheesemonger's basement, the
+head porter of the house met two police officers round the corner. One
+of them was the captain of the precinct and the other, one of his
+roundsmen. The Czar was expected to pass through this street in two
+days, so one could not be too watchful over a suspicious place like
+this.
+
+"There is somebody down there now," the head porter said to the captain,
+with servile eagerness. "A big fellow with a long pointed beard. I have
+seen him go down several times before. He looks like a business man, but
+before he started to go down he stopped to look round."
+
+This stopping to look round was, according to a printed police circular,
+one of the symptoms of Nihilism, so the roundsman was ordered to watch
+until the suspicious man should re-emerge from the cheese shop.
+
+When the captain had gone the roundsman brushed out his icicled
+moustache with his finger nails, and said with an air of authority:
+
+"Well, you take your post at the gate and I'll just go and change my
+uniform for citizen's clothes in case it's necessary to see where that
+fellow is going. Keep a sharp lookout on that cursed basement until I
+get back, will you?"
+
+When he returned, in citizen's clothes, he found that the suspicious man
+had left the store and that the head porter had set out after him,
+leaving his assistant in his place.
+
+"There is another man down there now," the assistant porter whispered.
+Presently the new visitor came out of the basement. As he mounted the
+few steps and then crossed over, through the snow, to a sleigh standing
+near by, he kept mopping his face with a handkerchief, thus preventing
+the two spies from getting a look at his features. Seeing that he
+boarded a hackney-sleigh, the roundsman did the same, ordering the
+driver to follow along as closely as possible, but at this he lost time
+in persuading the hackman that he was a policeman in disguise. The two
+sleighs were flying through the snow as fast as their horses could run.
+The policeman was far in the rear. For some ten minutes his eyes were
+riveted to the suspicious man. Presently, however, the vehicle he was
+shadowing turned a corner, and by the time he reached that point it was
+gone. All sorts of sleighs, their bells jingling, were gliding along in
+every direction, but the one he wanted was not among them.
+
+The head porter, who had started after the first man, in the absence of
+the roundsman, had met with a similar defeat. After awhile the hackman
+who had driven the second suspicious man returned to his stand. In
+answer to inquiry he told how his fare had twice changed his
+destination, finally alighted on a street corner, and turned into a
+narrow alley.
+
+Meanwhile Zachar had called on My Lord. It was about seven o'clock. The
+two revolutionists sat chatting in a cheerful gas-lit room, when the
+host was called out into the corridor. As he was long in coming back,
+Zachar went to the door, prepared for the worst. He found the corridor
+full of gendarmes and police. It was evident that they had fought shy of
+raiding My Lord's apartments for fear of violence, and had been
+patiently waiting until his visitor should come out of his own accord.
+Several of the gendarmes made a dash at Zachar, seizing him by both
+arms. One of these was the spy from whom he had "circled" away near the
+Public Library, soon after he had taken leave from the ex-Governor's
+daughter three hours ago. Zachar's presence here was a surprise to this
+gendarme, but the full importance of the man was still unknown to him.
+The officer in command, however, knew who his prisoner was.
+
+"What is your name?" he addressed himself to Zachar, with the exaltation
+of a man come upon a precious find. He knew but too well how anxious the
+government was to capture him, but he had come here to arrest My Lord
+without the remotest idea of finding this revolutionary giant in the
+place.
+
+"Krasnoff," Zachar answered with dignity, in his deep-chested voice.
+
+"I beg your pardon," the officer returned, with a twinkle in his eye. "I
+once had the pleasure of arresting you. Your name is Andrey Ivanovitch
+Jeliaboff."
+
+"Oh, in that case I am pleased to meet you," the prisoner said with
+playful chivalry.
+
+Jeliaboff's arrest made a joyous stir not only in the gendarmerie, but
+also at court. Apart from the attempt to blow up an imperial train in
+the south, in which he had played the leading part, he had been
+described to the authorities as the most gifted and effective agitator
+in the movement.
+
+The police at Little Garden Street were unaware of all this, but the
+conduct of the two men who had visited the cheese shop that afternoon
+seemed decidedly suspicious and lent a glare of colour to the
+irrelevancies that seemed to enfold the place.
+
+The next morning Pavel called on the Koboseffs. As he entered the cheese
+store he saw that the adjoining room was crowded with police officers.
+In his first shock he was only conscious of the gleam of uniforms, of
+Urie's and somebody else's voice and of his own sick despair. But the
+sick feeling ebbed away, leaving him in a state of desperate, pugnacious
+tranquillity, his mind on the revolver in his pocket.
+
+"Hello there!" he shouted, with the self-satisfied disrespect of a man
+of the better classes addressing one of the lower, and at this he
+surveyed the store with an air of contempt, as much as to say: "What a
+den I did strike!"
+
+"Wife," he heard Urie's voice, "there is a gentleman in the shop."
+
+Baska, who had been calmly emptying a barrel of cheese into some boxes,
+wiped her hands upon her apron and stepped behind the counter.
+
+"Is your Holland cheese any good?" Pavel asked, sniffing. "Are you sure
+you can give me a pound of decent stuff?"
+
+She waited on him, simply, and after some more sniffing, at the wrapping
+paper as well as the cheese, he let her make up the package. As he
+walked toward the door his heart stood still for an instant.
+
+He was allowed to go. Whether he was followed by spies he did not know.
+At all events, when he approached his "legal" residence at the house of
+his high-born relative, after an hour's "circling," he felt perfectly
+free from shadowing. He was greatly perplexed to think of the way Urie
+and Baska had been allowed to continue in their r�le of a cheesemonger
+couple; but, at all events, even if the true character of their shop had
+not yet been discovered by the police officers he had seen there, it
+seemed to be a matter of minutes when it would be.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the morning of that day, a few hours before Pavel called on the
+Koboseffs, the police captain of the Little Garden Street precinct had
+asked the prefect of St. Petersburg to have the cheese shop examined
+under the guise of a sanitary inspection. He was still uninformed of the
+arrest of the big fellow with the pointed beard, much less of the fact
+that he had proved to be one of the chieftains of the revolutionary
+organisation, but the story of the two suspicious-looking visitors at
+the cheese shop and their "circling" had made him uneasy. The Czar was
+expected to pass through Little Garden Street on Sunday, which was the
+next day, and one could not ascertain the real character of the
+Koboseffs and their business too soon. Nevertheless the prefect was slow
+to appreciate the situation. Indeed, it is quite characteristic of the
+despotic chaos of a regime like Russia's that on the one hand people are
+thrown into jail to perish there on the merest whim of some gendarme,
+and, on the other, action is often prevented by an excess of red tape
+and indolence in cases where there is ground for the gravest suspicion.
+While hundreds of schoolboys and schoolgirls were wasting away in damp,
+solitary cells because they had been suspected of reading some
+revolutionary leaflet, the occupants of this basement, in whose case
+suspicion was associated with the idea of a plot on the life of the
+Czar, had not even been subjected to the summary search and questioning
+to which every resident in Russia is ever liable.
+
+Finally, after considerable pleading on the part of the police captain,
+General Mrovinsky, a civil engineer of the Health Department, an elderly
+man with a kindly, genial face, was assigned to make the feigned
+inspection.
+
+"Your Excellency will please see if they are not digging a mine there,"
+the police captain said to him, respectfully. "The Emperor often passes
+that shop when he goes to the Riding Schools or to the Micha�l Palace,
+and that cheese dealer and his wife are quite a suspicious-looking
+couple. His Majesty is expected to pass the place to-morrow."
+
+The general entered the cheese shop accompanied by the police captain,
+the captain's lieutenant and the head porter of the house. Koboseff came
+out of the inner rooms to meet them. He turned pale, but this seemed
+natural.
+
+"His Excellency represents the Health Department," said the captain.
+"There is dampness in the next house, and His Excellency wishes to see
+if your place is all right."
+
+"I am sorry to trouble you," said General Mrovinsky, kindly. "But
+dampness is a bad thing to have in one's house, you know."
+
+"There is none here that I know of, sir," Koboseff replied
+deferentially, "but, of course, a fellow must not be too sure, sir."
+
+Baska stood in a corner of the shop, bending over a barrel. While the
+officers talked to Urie she threw a glance at the visitors over her
+shoulder and resumed her work.
+
+The uniformed civil engineer made a close examination of the walls. The
+one facing the street was covered with planking, and Koboseff explained
+that he had had it done as a safeguard against dampness, but that there
+was none.
+
+"But then cheese crumbs are apt to get into the cracks," urged General
+Mrovinsky, taking hold of one of the shelves along that wall. "They
+would decay there, don't you know, and that would be almost as bad as
+dampness, wouldn't it?" He then inspected the two living rooms. In the
+second of these he found a pile of hay.
+
+"It's from our cheese barrels," Koboseff explained; and pointing at
+another pile he added: "And that's coke, sir."
+
+General Mrovinsky picked up a coal, examined it, threw it back and wiped
+his fingers with some of the hay.
+
+"Everything is all right," he said to the police officers, with a look
+of intelligence. He led the way back to the store and then back again to
+the middle room. Here he took a firm hold of the planking that lined the
+wall under the street window. He tried to wrench it off, but it would
+not yield, and he let it go.
+
+"Everything is all right," he said to the captain, seating himself on a
+sofa. A trunk and some pieces of furniture were moved from their places
+and then put back. The general knew a merchant by the name of Koboseff,
+so he asked the cheese dealer if he was a relative of his. Urie said no,
+and after some conversation about the cheese business in general the
+officials went away.
+
+"There is no mine in that place. You can make yourself perfectly easy
+about it," Mrovinsky said to the captain, as they made their way to the
+adjoining basement.
+
+It was while they were conversing leisurely, the old general seated on
+the lounge, that Pavel came in. He was watched narrowly, but he played
+his part well, and as the engineer had already intimated to the police
+officers that there was nothing suspicious about the premises he was not
+even shadowed.
+
+Thus reassured, the police of the locality set to work preparing Little
+Garden Street for the Czar's drive to the Riding School. This included
+an investigation as to the character of the occupants of all the other
+shops and residences facing the street, as well as getting the pavement
+in good repair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+THE RED TERROR.
+
+
+Meanwhile a reform measure which subsequently became known as "the
+constitution of Loris-Melikoff" had been framed and submitted to the
+Czar by the Minister of the Interior. The project called for the
+convocation of a semi-representative assembly to be clothed with
+consultative powers. It was framed in guarded language, great pains
+having been taken to keep out anything like an allusion to parliamentary
+government.
+
+"But it looks like the States-General," the Czar said to Loris-Melikoff.
+The resemblance which the measure bore to the opening chapter in the
+history of the French revolution, where representatives of the three
+estates are convened in consultative parliament, made a disagreeable
+impression on him. Still, the project was ingeniously worded as a
+measure tending to "enhance the confidence of the monarch in his loyal
+subjects"; so, upon a closer reading, the Czar warmed to it, and
+returned the draft to Loris-Melikoff with his hearty approval. This took
+place at 12 o'clock on Sunday, March 13, 1881, one day after the search
+at the cheese store. It was decided to have the document read before the
+cabinet on Wednesday, after which it was to be published over the
+imperial signature in the _Official Messenger_.
+
+The Czar was dressed in the uniform of the Sappers of the Guards, whose
+review he was about to attend at the Micha�l Riding Schools.
+
+"I pray your Majesty to forego the trip," Loris-Melikoff said,
+solicitously.
+
+The Czar smiled. Princess Dolgoruki had made a similar request, and by
+accentuating his danger they both only succeeded in challenging his
+courage. He felt as if in the light of their appeal staying at home
+would mean hiding. Instead of pleading with him for caution
+Loris-Melikoff should have made an effort to secure a suspension of
+hostilities in the enemy's camp. Had the revolutionists been aware of
+what was coming a truce on their part would have been assured. And then,
+little as the project to be divulged resembled a constitution in the
+western sense of the word, it was yet the first approach to
+representative legislation in the history of modern Russia. The
+Nihilists were pledged to abandon their Terror the moment free speech
+had been granted, and although no reference to questions of this
+character was made in the "constitution," certain liberties in that
+direction might have followed as a matter of course, as an offspring of
+the new spirit which the measure was expected to inaugurate. A
+distinguished revolutionary writer has pointed out how easy it would
+have been for Loris-Melikoff to bring his expectations to the knowledge
+of the Executive Committee of the Nihilists by setting a rumour on foot
+among the professional and intellectual classes, many of whose
+representatives, as the Vice-Emperor knew but too well, were in touch
+with the central organization of the Will of the People. Perhaps this
+method of communicating with the revolutionists had not occurred to
+Loris-Melikoff; perhaps the iron-clad secrecy that enclosed his project
+was a necessary protection against the enemies of reform at court.
+However it may have been, neither the revolutionists nor their liberal
+allies had any inkling as to the document about to be published in the
+_Official Messenger_. Instead, they saw the police and the gendarmerie
+continuing their riot of administrative violence; instead, they heard of
+an order by virtue of which a number of revolutionists who had served
+their term within prison walls at Kara, Siberia, and been admitted to
+partial freedom in the penal colony outside, had suddenly been put in
+irons and thrown back into their cells; whereupon some of them had
+committed suicide rather than return to the tortures of their former
+life. All of which had added gall to the bitterness of the
+revolutionists at large and whetted their distrust of the "crafty
+Armenian," as they called Loris-Melikoff.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Czar's favourite coachman, a stalwart, handsome fellow, with a thick
+blond beard and clear blue eyes, sat on the box of the closed imperial
+carriage, waiting in the vast courtyard of the Winter Palace. An escort
+of six lusty Cossacks, two gendarme officers and one of the several
+chiefs of police of the capital held themselves in readiness near by,
+the Cossacks on their mounts, the other three in their open sleighs.
+Presently a great door flew open and the Emperor appeared, accompanied
+by an adjutant and a sergeant of the page corps. He wore a military
+cape-cloak and a helmet. While the page held the carriage door open, the
+Czar said to the coachman:
+
+"By Songsters' Bridge!"
+
+This was not his habitual route to the Riding Schools. Not that he was
+aware of the suspicions which the cheese shop on Little Garden Street
+had aroused. He had not the least idea of the existence of such a shop.
+He had decided on the new route merely as a matter of general
+precaution, in case there was a mine somewhere. As to pistol shots he
+was sufficiently screened by the walls of his carriage as well as by the
+bodies of his cossacks and their horses.
+
+That calm feeling of reverent affection with which the average
+Englishman hails his sovereign is unknown in Russia. But whether with
+reverence or mute imprecations, the coach of a Czar disseminates thrills
+of fright as it proceeds. The cavalcade of horsemen and sleighs, with
+the great lacquered carriage in the centre, was sailing and galloping
+along like a grim alien force, diffusing an atmosphere of terror. To
+those who saw it approaching the fiery cossacks on their fiery horses
+looked like a ferocious band of invaders, their every fibre spoiling for
+violence, rushing onward on an errand of conquest and bloody reckoning.
+
+It was a cloudy day. The streets were covered with discoloured, brownish
+snow; the snow on the roofs, window-sills, cornices, gate-posts, was of
+immaculate whiteness, apparently devoid of weight, smooth and neat, as
+though trimmed by some instrument. There were few people along the route
+followed by the little procession and most of these were in their Sunday
+clothes. Now a civilian snatched off his cap spasmodically, now a
+soldier drew himself up with all his might, as though trying to lift
+himself off his feet. Here and there a drunken citizen was staggering
+along. Every person the carriage passed was scrutinised by every member
+of the escort, by the cossacks as well as by the chief of police and the
+gendarme officers. The Riding Schools were soon reached.
+
+The Emperor left the building less than an hour later. He was
+accompanied by Grand Duke Micha�l, his brother, the two going to the
+Micha�l Palace, where they were to have lunch with the Czar's niece.
+
+Sophia, the ex-governor's daughter, was watching the imperial carriage
+from a point of vantage. Presently she turned into a neighbouring
+street, and passing a fair-complexioned young man in a dark overcoat,
+who held a white package in his hand, she raised her handkerchief to her
+nose. The young man then hurried away toward Catharine Canal. Three
+other men, one of them a gigantic looking fellow, stood at so many
+different points, and at sight of Sophia with her handkerchief to her
+nose, they all started in the same direction as the first man, while the
+young woman walked over to the Neva Prospect from which she crossed a
+bridge to the opposite side of Catharine Canal.
+
+It was half past two when the imperial carriage, surrounded by the six
+cossacks and followed by the gendarme officers and the chief of police,
+set out on their homebound journey. The handsome coachman let out his
+horses. The group was scudding along at top speed. The chief of police
+stood up in his sleigh, one of his gloved hands on the shoulder of his
+driver, as he strained his eyes now to the right now to the left, after
+the manner of the human figure on the face of a certain kind of clocks.
+The carriage turned to the right, passing a detachment of marines who
+saluted the Czar by presenting arms. The carriage was now on one of the
+banks of the Catharine Canal, an iron railing to the right, a row of
+buildings to the left. An employe of a horse-car company, who was
+levelling off a ridge of caked snow at this moment, hastily rested his
+crowbar against the iron railing and bared his head. Some distance in
+front of him a young man in a dark overcoat, and with a white package
+in his hand, was trudging along the canal side of the street. He was
+passed and left in the rear by a man in the uniform of a hospital nurse
+of the guards. On the sidewalk to the left of the Czar, another man,
+also in military uniform, was moving rapidly along, while from the
+opposite direction, in the middle of the snow-covered street, came a boy
+pulling a little sled with a basket of meat on it. Sophia was looking on
+from the other side of the canal.
+
+Colonel Dvorzhitzky (the chief of police) was scanning the sidewalk to
+the left, when a terrific crash went up from under the Czar's carriage.
+It was as if a mass of deafening sound had lain dormant there, in the
+form of a vast closed fan, and the fan had suddenly flown open. The
+colonel's horses reared violently, hurling him over the shoulder of his
+coachman. While he was surveying the left side of the street, the
+employe of the tramway company and several military people, coming up
+alongside the railing, had seen the young man in the dark overcoat lift
+his white package and throw it under the Czar's carriage. The carriage
+came to a sudden halt amid a cloud of smoke and snow dust. A second or
+two passed before any of them could realise what it all meant. The young
+man turned about and broke into a run.
+
+"Catch him! Hold him!" the pedestrians shrieked frantically, dashing
+after the running man.
+
+He had reached a point some thirty feet back of the imperial carriage
+when he was hemmed in. One of the cossacks and the boy lay in the snow
+shrieking. One of the rear corners of the carriage was badly shattered.
+The rest of it was uninjured, but during the first minute or two its
+doors remained closed, so that the bystanders could not tell whether
+the Czar was hurt or not. Then the chief of police rushed up to the
+vehicle and flung the right door open. The Czar was unhurt, but ghastly
+pale. He sat bending slightly forward, his feet on the bearskin covering
+the floor, a gilt ash receiver on a shelf in front of him.
+
+"The guilty man has been caught, your Imperial Majesty!" Colonel
+Dvorzhitzky burst out.
+
+"Has he?" the Emperor asked, in intense agitation.
+
+"He has, your Imperial Majesty. They are holding him. May I offer you to
+finish the journey in my sleigh?"
+
+"Yes, but I first want to see the prisoner."
+
+Pervaded by the conviction that another plot on his life had failed, the
+Czar stepped out of the carriage, and accompanied by a group of
+officers, some from his escort and others from among the passers-by, he
+crossed over to the sidewalk that ran along the canal railing, erect and
+majestic as usual, but extremely pale with excitement, and then turning
+to the right he walked toward where a group of uniformed men were
+holding a fair-complexioned beardless young fellow against the railing.
+People, mostly in military uniforms, came running from every direction.
+
+Somebody asked: "How is the Emperor?"
+
+"Thank God," answered the Czar, "I have escaped, but----" and he pointed
+at the wounded cossack and boy.
+
+"It may be too soon to thank God," said the prisoner.
+
+"Is this the man who did it?" the Czar asked, advancing toward him. "Who
+are you?"
+
+"My name is Glazoff."
+
+The Czar turned back. He had made a few steps, when a man who stood no
+more than three feet from him raised a white object high over his head
+and dashed it to the ground, between the Emperor and himself.
+
+There was another explosion, still more violent and deafening than the
+first. The air was a turmoil of smoke, snow-dust and shreds of uniforms,
+concealing everything else from view. Sophia hurried away.
+
+More than half a minute later, when the chaos had partly cleared away,
+the Czar was seen in a sitting posture on the snow-covered sidewalk,
+leaning against the railing, his large oval head bare, his cape-cloak
+gone. He was breathing hard. His face was in blood, the flesh of his
+bared legs lacerated, the blood gushing from them over the snow. A heap
+of singed, smoking tatters nearby was all that had been left of his
+cloak.
+
+With cries of horror and of overpowering pity the bystanders rushed
+forward. Among them was a man with a bomb under his coat like the two
+which had just exploded. He was one of the four men who had shifted
+their posts when they saw Sophia raising her handkerchief to her nose.
+Had the second bomb failed to do its bloody work, this Terrorist would
+have thrown his missile when the imperial carriage came by his corner.
+As he beheld the Czar on the ground and bleeding, however, he
+instinctively flung himself forward to offer help to the suffering man.
+
+At sight of the prostrated Czar the men who held the author of the first
+explosion, began to shower blows on him.
+
+"Don't," he begged them, shielding his head and face. "I meant the good
+of the people."
+
+Two yards from the Czar lay bleeding the unconscious figure of a
+civilian. Further away were several other prostrated men, in all sorts
+of uniforms.
+
+"Help!" the Czar uttered in a faint voice.
+
+Somebody handed him a handkerchief, which he put to his face, muttering
+"Cold, cold." Several of the marines who had saluted him a few minutes
+ago and two guardsmen placed him on Colonel Dvorzhitzky's sleigh.
+
+When Grand Duke Micha�l appeared on the scene he found his brother
+rapidly sinking.
+
+"Sasha,[C] do you hear me?" he asked him, with tears in his eyes.
+
+  [C] Diminutive of Alexander.
+
+The bystanders, who had never before heard their Czar addressed in the
+form of affectionate familiarity, were thrilled with a feeling of
+heart-tearing pity and of the most fervent devotion. Most of them had
+sobs in their throats.
+
+"Yes," the Czar answered faintly.
+
+"How do you feel, Sasha?"
+
+"To the Palace--quick," the Czar whispered. And upon hearing somebody's
+suggestion that he be taken to the nearest house for immediate relief,
+he uttered:
+
+"Bear me to the palace--there--die----."
+
+He reclined between two cossacks, with a gendarme officer facing him and
+supporting his legs. This is the way he returned home. Pedestrians met
+him with gestures of horrified perplexity and acute commiseration now.
+
+The crowd at one corner of Catharine Canal was a babel of excitement and
+violence. In their mad rush for the man who threw the second bomb, the
+bystanders were accusing each other, grabbing at each other,
+quarrelling, fighting. As Nihilists were for the most part people of
+education, every man who looked college-bred was in danger of his life.
+Among those who were beaten to a pulp in this wild m�l�e were two
+political spies who had the appearance of university students. A shout
+went up that the thrower of the fatal bomb had vaulted over the fence of
+the Micha�l gardens nearby, and then the mob broke down part of that
+fence, and ruined the gardens in a wild but vain search for the
+Terrorist. People were seized and hustled off to the station houses by
+the hundred.
+
+The heir apparent, a fair-complexioned Hercules, was on his way to the
+Winter Palace surrounded by a strong escort of mounted men. It was the
+first time he had appeared in the streets so accompanied. The cluster of
+horsemen and sleighs that had left the palace three hours before never
+returned; this one was coming in its place; but the effect of grim
+detachment, of fierce challenge was the same.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour had elapsed. The flag over the Winter Palace which denotes
+Imperial presence was put at half-mast. Church bells were tolling the
+death of Alexander II. and the accession of Alexander III.
+
+The new Czar was by his father's bedside. He was even more powerfully
+built than he, but he lacked his grace and the light of his intelligent
+eyes--a physical giant with a look of obtuse honesty on a fair, bearded
+round face. An English diplomatist who understood him well has said that
+"he had a mind not only commonplace, but incapable of receiving new
+ideas." When he saw his father breathe his last, he exclaimed: "This is
+what we have come to!"--a celebrated ejaculation which an archbishop
+uttered at the funeral of Peter the Great in 1725. This was his first
+utterance as Emperor of Russia. Its puerile lack of originality was
+characteristic of the man.
+
+Princess Dolgoruki fainted, and she had no sooner been brought to than
+the packing of her trunks was ordered by the sons of her dead husband.
+
+The palace was surrounded by a strong cordon of cossacks. Palace Square
+was thronged, the neighbouring streets were tremulous with subdued
+excitement. Some people were sincerely overcome with grief and horror;
+others were struggling to conceal their exultation. There were such as
+wept and cursed the Nihilists by way of displaying their own loyalty,
+and there were such as burst into tears from the sheer solemnity and
+nervousness of the moment. But the great predominating feeling that
+pervaded these crowds, eclipsing every other sentiment or thought, was
+curiosity. "What is going to happen next?"--this was the question that
+was uppermost in the minds of these people in their present fever of
+excitement. Had a republic been proclaimed with the Executive Committee
+of the Nihilists as a provisional government, they would have sworn
+their allegiance to the bomb-throwers as readily as they did, on the
+morrow, to the son of the assassinated Emperor. Had the Terrorists
+succeeded, the same bearded bishops who blessed and sounded the praises
+of the new Czar would have blessed and sounded the praises of those who
+had killed his father.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pavel was in a suburb of the capital, when he first heard the melancholy
+tolling of the church bells.
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked an elderly man who was walking with a
+sleigh-load of bricks, the reins in his hands.
+
+"They say our little father, the Czar, has been killed," the other
+answered, making the sign of the cross with his free hand. "People say
+the Czarowitz is going to cut down the term of military service. Is it
+true, sir?"
+
+"What is true?" Pavel asked. He was literally dazed with excitement.
+
+"A son of mine is in the army, sir," the other explained reverently. "So
+I wonder if the new Czar will be easier on the soldiers, sir."
+
+Pavel hailed the first hackman he came across. He was burning to know
+the details of the assassination and to tell Clara that the first man he
+accosted on the great news of the hour had shown indifference to the
+death of the monarch.
+
+When his sleigh reached the Neva Prospect, he saw the new Czar,
+surrounded by a cohort of officers in dazzling uniform, passing along
+the thoroughfare. The crowds were greeting him with wild cheers. They
+cheered their own emotions at sight of the man whose father had come to
+so tragic a death, and they cheered their own servility to the master of
+the situation.
+
+These shouts filled Pavel with a mixed sense of defeat and triumph. The
+gloomier feeling predominated. The world looked as usual. It did not
+look as if this cheering, servile, stolid mob would ever rise against
+anything.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening placards bearing the name of the Executive Committee
+appeared on the walls of public buildings. They announced the death of
+Alexander II. and admonished his successor to adopt a liberal policy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+THE REVELATION.
+
+
+Every resident in the capital was being scanned and spied after, and
+every house-porter was kept peeking and seeking and reporting at the
+police station of his precinct. The railway stations were teeming with
+spies and a system was introduced by which every hack-driver was
+expected to spy on his fare. The effect of it all was that the great
+majority of St. Petersburg's population was in a state of unspeakable
+terror. Curiosity, pity and everything else had given way to a nervous
+feeling of self-preservation. People walked through the streets hastily.
+The sight of a policeman was enough to send a twinge of fright into the
+heart of the most loyal government clerk; everybody was afraid of
+everybody else. One avoided to utter such words as "Czar," "police,"
+"government." As to the Nihilists, one literally dreaded to think of
+them. People who had never had a liberal thought in their brain were
+tremulous with distrust of their own souls.
+
+And through all this all-pervading panic Clara was busy posting
+revolutionary proclamations in the streets, distributing tracts among
+students and working-people, keeping "business" appointments with her
+"illegal" friends. Pavel, in his turn, had all he could do to attend to
+the needs of some of the out-of-town "circles." The revolutionists
+throughout the country were clamouring for information, for
+proclamations, for speakers; so that the seventy or eighty men and women
+who formed the innermost organisation were as feverishly busy in their
+way as the police and the gendarmes were in theirs.
+
+The authorities were ransacking the capital for Nihilists in general and
+for the cheesemonger couple in particular, but during the first few
+hours following the two explosions their eagerness was centered on the
+man who had thrown the fatal bomb. The search for that man soon proved
+superfluous, however.
+
+The civilian who was picked up unconscious near where the Czar was
+stricken down had been taken to a hospital. Late in the evening he had a
+brief interval of consciousness.
+
+"Who are you?" an officer then asked him.
+
+"I don't know," he answered. He had a relapse from which he never awoke.
+The front of his body, particularly the inner side of one arm, was
+covered with ghastly wounds, from which experts inferred that at the
+time of the explosion he could not have stood more than three feet from
+the Czar. This, according to some eye-witnesses of the catastrophe, was
+the distance between the deceased monarch and the man who threw the
+second bomb. After two days of searching and sniffing the police
+discovered the unknown man's lodging, where they found some
+revolutionary literature and other evidence that pointed to him as the
+author of the fatal explosion. He had stood so close to the Czar that it
+was impossible for him to make a target of his victim without making one
+of himself. His real name still remained unknown.
+
+As to the first bomb-thrower, he proved to be a college student named
+Rysakoff. In the hands of the gendarme officers and the procureur he
+broke down and told all he knew; but it appeared that he knew very
+little. He had been one of a number of volunteers who offered to attack
+the Emperor under the command of Zachar. When Zachar's arrest became
+known to the Executive Committee things had begun to be rushed. Sophia
+Perovskaya, the ex-governor's daughter, had taken his place, and it was
+decided to make the assault without delay. Zachar had been arrested on
+Friday evening. As it was known to Sophia that the Czar would visit the
+Riding Schools on the next Sunday, the attempt was fixed for that
+occasion. The Terrorists immediately connected with the plot held their
+gatherings at a "conspiracy lodgings" kept by a man and woman Rysakoff
+did not know. There the volunteers met Sophia and one of the inventors
+of the self-igniting shell (the man with the priestly face whom we saw
+at the meeting of the Executive Committee at which Clara's wedding was
+to be celebrated). On Sunday morning (the day of the assassination) the
+volunteers--three college men and an artisan--called at the same
+gathering place. They found two finished bombs there and soon Sophia
+arrived with two more. Where the bomb factory was Rysakoff did not know.
+Sophia explained that it took a whole night to make the four portable
+machines and that more than four volunteers could not be accommodated.
+She then drew a rough map of the Czar's expected route, with four dots
+for the posts of the four bomb-throwers. There were two sets of dots on
+the diagram. In case the Czar failed to include Little Garden Street in
+his route, the Terrorists were to shift their positions to Catharine
+Canal and two neighbouring streets.
+
+That afternoon, as Rysakoff stood on his post near Little Garden Street,
+Sophia passed by him, her handkerchief to her nose (the same sort of
+signal which the same young woman had given a year and a half before to
+the man who fired the mine which blew up the imperial train near
+Moscow). That meant that the Czar was not passing through Little Garden
+Street. Accordingly, Rysakoff hastened over to Catherine Canal. There,
+after he had thrown the bomb and while the Czar was speaking to him, he
+saw the three other volunteers each on his post.
+
+The second bomb-thrower was known to Rysakoff under the name of "the
+Kitten." His real name he did not know.
+
+He also gave the police the address of the "conspiracy lodgings," which
+were located on the sixth floor of a house on Waggon Street, and an hour
+or two later, at midnight, two days after the killing of the Czar, the
+procureur, accompanied by gendarmes and police, knocked at one of the
+doors of that apartment.
+
+"Who is there?" a masculine voice asked from within.
+
+"Police and the procureur."
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"Open the door at once or we'll break it down."
+
+While they were raining blows on the door, a succession of pistol shots
+was heard within. Another door flew open, at the end of the corridor,
+and a woman made her appearance.
+
+"We surrender," she said. "Pray send for a doctor. Look out, don't pass
+through this door. There are explosives there."
+
+Inside they found the fresh corpse of a man lying in a pool of blood. It
+was the gay poet; and the woman was Hessia Helfman, the dark little
+Jewess with the frizzled hair who was married to Purring Cat. It was she
+and the man now lying dead from his own pistol shots who had been in
+charge of this "conspiracy lodgings." Among the things found in the
+apartment were the two bombs which had been brought back from the scene
+of the assassination; the rough map made by Sophia on the morning before
+the attack and a large quantity of revolutionary literature.
+
+The former "conspiracy lodgings" were now a police trap, and on the very
+next morning it caught a big burly man whom Rysakoff identified as
+Timothy Michailoff, the one mechanic among the four men who had been
+armed with bombs on the fatal morning. Michailoff's memorandum book
+furnished the police some important addresses, but the great surprise of
+that eventful week did not come until the following day, March 17th, and
+when it did it was anything but a source of self-congratulation to the
+authorities.
+
+About ten o'clock in the morning of that day the porters of the house on
+Little Garden Street where the Koboseffs kept their shop reported to the
+roundsman that the cheese dealer and his wife had not been home since
+the previous evening, and that their shop was still closed. The
+roundsman, who, like every member of the St. Petersburg police during
+those days, was overworked and badly in need of rest, made no reply. An
+hour later the porter accosted him again:
+
+"The shop is still closed. Customers have been around and there is
+nobody in."
+
+"Oh, I have no time to bother about it."
+
+"But I think I saw something in that store, some strange looking tools,"
+pleaded the porter.
+
+"The devil you did," the roundsman said, as much with irritation as with
+amazement.
+
+The statement was reported to the captain, who communicated it to his
+superiors, until finally an order was obtained to raid the shop. A
+search was made, more thorough than the first, and with quite different
+results. The lounge in the living room upon which General Mrovinsky had
+sat while speaking to Koboseff was found to contain a heap of earth, and
+when the planks under the window of the middle room were removed--the
+very ones which General Mrovinsky had made a feeble attempt to detach in
+the presence of Koboseff and the police--a large yawning hole presented
+itself to view. When this part of the wall had been torn down, the
+aperture proved to be the mouth of a subterranean passage enclosed in
+wood. Seven feet from the shop began a charge of a hundred pounds of
+dynamite with an electric battery near by and wires running along the
+gallery back to the middle room. Everything was in complete readiness.
+All that was necessary to explode the mine was to connect the wires.
+
+As was learned subsequently, this mine had been the leading feature of
+the plot, the bombs having been added in case the Czar left Little
+Garden Street out of his route or the mine failed of its deadly purpose
+for some other reason. Of the existence of such a mine Rysakoff had not
+the remotest idea until he heard of it at the trial.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the Friday afternoon immediately preceding the arrest of Jeliaboff
+(Zachar) the porter of the house where he and Sophia were registered as
+brother and sister met them at the gate as they were leaving the house
+together; and later, at 9 o'clock in the evening, he saw Sophia return
+alone. The next morning, after Jeliaboff had spent his first night in
+prison, the police, in their effort to discover his residence, ordered
+every porter in the city to ascertain who of his tenants had been absent
+from home that night. When the porter rang Sophia's bell that morning
+there was no response. He reported it at the police station where he
+was told to try again. At 2 o'clock he saw Sophia.
+
+"I have received some blanks from the police," he said. "Every tenant
+must state his occupation and place of business."
+
+"My brother is working now," Sophia answered. "When he comes home I'll
+tell him about it."
+
+Two hours later she went out again, and in order to avoid passing the
+porter at the gate, she gained the street through a little dry goods
+shop that had a rear door into that yard, buying something for a
+pretext. She came back, by way of the same dry goods shop, at 9 o'clock
+in the evening and that was the last that was ever seen of her in that
+neighbourhood. The next morning the porter reported the disappearance of
+the couple.
+
+When the police searched the deserted apartment they found a number of
+revolutionary publications, several tin boxes like those which formed
+the shells of the two exploding machines seized at the "conspiracy
+house" kept by Hessia and the "gay poet," and several cheeses bearing
+the same trade-mark as those in Koboseff's shop.
+
+Meanwhile Jeliaboff had heard the solemn tolling of the bells in his
+prison cell. In the excitement of the hour a gendarme on duty in the
+prison corridor answered his questions through the peep-hole, in
+violation of regulations. Jeliaboff at once sent word to the procureur,
+assuming responsibility for the entire plot, as an agent of the
+Executive Committee.
+
+Sophia knew through a certain high official all that transpired between
+Jeliaboff and the procureur. She knew that the authorities were turning
+the capital inside out in their search for the woman who had lived with
+Jeliaboff as his sister and for the Koboseff couple, yet in spite of all
+the pressure the Nihilists brought to bear on her, persuading her to
+seek temporary retirement, she, like Urie and Baska, remained in the
+heart of St. Petersburg, in the very thick of her party's activity.
+Clara saw her at a meeting during that week.
+
+"You need rest, Sonia. You look tired."
+
+"Do I?" Sophia answered with a smile. "So do you. Everybody does these
+days."
+
+Her smile was on her lips only. Her blue eyes were inscrutably grave,
+but Clara saw a blend of lofty exaltation and corroding anguish in them.
+She knew how dear Jeliaboff was to her. She had been craving to speak to
+her of him, of Hessia and of the "gay poet," who had committed suicide
+at the time of Hessia's arrest; but at this moment it was Sophia herself
+who filled her mind.
+
+"Sonia!" Clara said, huskily.
+
+"What is it, child?" the other asked, kindly.
+
+For an answer Clara looked her in the face, smiling shame-facedly. She
+did feel like an infant in her presence, although Sophia, with her small
+stature and fresh boyish face, looked the younger of the two. She did
+not know herself what she wanted to say. She was burning to cover her
+with kisses and to break into sobs on her breast, but Sophia was graver
+and more taciturn than usual to-day, so she held herself in check. Her
+passion for tears was subdued. She sat by Sophia's side absorbed in her
+presence without looking her in the face, tingling with something like
+the feeling of people in a graveyard, in a moment of solemn ecstasy.
+
+Clara came away burdened with unvoiced emotion. She said to herself that
+when she saw Pavel she would find relief in telling him how she adored
+Sophia and how thirsty her heart was because she had not unbosomed
+herself of these feelings to her; but when she and Pavel were alone she
+said nothing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The porters of the house from which Sophia had vanished were asked at
+the police station whether they would be able to single her out in a
+street crowd. They had to admit that they were not sure whether they
+would. She had lived under their eye for eight months, but she had
+always managed to pass through the gate, where they were usually on
+duty, so as to leave no clear impression of her features on their minds.
+Finally, on the sixth day, it was discovered that the proprietress of
+the little dry goods store had a clear recollection of her face. This
+woman, accompanied by a police officer, then spent hours driving about
+through the busiest streets, until, with a shout of mixed joy and
+fright, she pointed out Sophia in a public sleigh.
+
+It was not many days before Kibalchich, the man with the Christlike
+face, who was one of the inventors and makers of the four bombs, and
+another revolutionist were arrested in a caf�, through an address found
+in Timothy Michailoff's note-book.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The trial of the six regicides so far captured, Jeliaboff, Sophia,
+Kibalchich, Hessia, Rysakoff, and Timothy Michailoff, was begun by a
+special Court of the Governing Senate for Political Cases, on April 8.
+That Purring Cat and the man with the Tartarian face, both of whom were
+in prison now, had taken part in the digging of the Koboseff mine, was
+still unknown to the police. Nor had the authorities as yet been
+informed of the fact that another "political" in their hands--the
+undersized man who had played the part of shop-boy to the
+cheese-dealer--had had something to do with the same conspiracy.
+
+Complete reports of the trial appeared in the newspapers, and the
+testimony and speeches of the accused were read and read again.
+
+Jeliaboff ("Zachar") declined a lawyer, taking his defence in his own
+hands. His legal battles with the presiding judge, his resource, his
+tact and his eloquence, made him the central figure of the proceedings.
+He began by challenging the court's jurisdiction in the case. "This
+court represents the crown, one of the two parties concerned," he said,
+"and I submit that in a contention between the government and the
+revolutionary party there could be only one judge--the people; the
+people either by means of a popular vote, or through its rightful
+representatives in parliament assembled, or, at least, a jury
+representing public conscience." Declarations of this kind, Kibalchich's
+narrative as to how the blind brutality of the government had
+transformed peaceful social workers into Terrorists, and the effect of
+simple, dignified sincerity which marked the conduct of all the
+prisoners produced such a profound impression, that at the time of the
+next important political trial scarcely any reports were allowed to be
+published.
+
+The six regicides were sentenced to death, the execution of Hessia
+Helfman, who was about to become a mother, being postponed and later
+commuted. When the parents of Kolotkevich (Purring Cat) asked to be
+allowed to bring up their son's child, the request was refused on the
+ground that it was the child of two regicides and should be brought up
+under special care. The result of this special care was that the child,
+like its pardoned mother, soon died.
+
+Sophia and the four condemned men died on the gallows, on a public
+square. They were taken to their death on two "shame waggons," dressed
+in convict clothes, each with a board inscribed with the words "criminal
+of state" across his or her breast. The procession was accompanied by a
+force of military large enough to conquer a country like Belgium. Sophia
+was the first woman executed on Russian soil since 1719.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+THE CZAR TAKES COURAGE.
+
+
+Alexander III. and his court moved to the long-deserted imperial palace
+at Gatchina, a village 28 English miles from St. Petersburg. The young
+Czar and his entourage were in a state of nervous tension. Economically,
+the country was in the throes of hard times. Districts rich in the
+potentialities of industry and prosperity were in the grip of famine.
+Driven by bad crops and extortionate taxes, thousands of village
+families were abandoning their homes to go begging. Cities were crowded
+with such mendicants from surrounding villages, and the industrial
+centres were full of workmen out of employment. Politically, a
+demoralising feeling of suspense hung over the empire. The masses had
+seen one Czar--the ward of a vigilant guardian angel--prostrated. The
+crown's prestige was shaken, and the Czar's seeking refuge in a secluded
+village did anything but retrieve it. The number of _l�se majest�_ cases
+had suddenly grown so large that by a special imperial ukase these
+offences were transferred from the publicity of the courts to the
+obscure depths of "justice by administrative order." From several places
+came reports of riots against the police, while the universities
+manifested their hostility to the throne quite openly. Subscription
+lists for a monument to the assassinated Czar were torn to pieces and
+those who circulated them were publicly hissed and insulted. The
+portents of turbulence were in the air.
+
+Loris-Melikoff submitted to the new Czar the "constitution" of which
+Alexander II. had approved an hour before his violent death. Alexander
+III. read it and wrote on the margin of the paper: "Very well
+conceived"; and two days later, after the project had been carried at a
+cabinet meeting by a vote of eight against five, the Czar, while
+conversing with his brother, Grand Duke Vladimir, on the measure to be
+introduced, said, joyfully:
+
+"I feel as though a mountain had rolled off my shoulders."
+
+But the conservative party at court had the support of a new power
+behind the throne. M. Pobiedonostzeff, formerly tutor of the present
+Czar and now his favourite adviser, was a man of much stronger purpose
+than Loris-Melikoff. He fought against the innovation tooth and nail,
+and the publication of it in the _Official Messenger_ was postponed from
+day to day. The leader of the Panslavists was invited from Moscow; every
+conservative influence was brought to bear upon a Czar who was
+absolutely incapable of forming his own opinion. All this was done in
+the strictest secrecy from Loris-Melikoff.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile, during Easter week, seven days after the approval of the
+"constitution" by a majority of the ministers and twelve days subsequent
+to the execution of the regicides, a furious anti-Jewish riot broke out
+in Elisavetgrad, a prosperous city in the south. A frenzied drink-crazed
+mob had possession of the town during two days, demolishing and
+pillaging hundreds of houses and shops, covering whole streets with
+debris and reducing thousands of people to beggary. And neighbouring
+towns and villages followed the example of the larger city.
+
+The Czar took alarm. It looked like the prelude to a popular upheaval.
+
+"It's only an anti-Semitic disturbance, your Imperial Majesty,"
+Pobiedonostzeff reassured him. "There was one like that ten years ago,
+in Odessa."
+
+The Elisavetgrad outbreak was, indeed, a purely local affair, but it
+happened at a time that was highly favourable to occurrences of that
+nature. Originally organised by some high-born profligates, victims of a
+gang of Jewish usurers, it had nothing to do with the general situation
+save in so far as there was in the hungry masses a blind disposition to
+attack somebody; a disposition coupled with a feeling that the usual
+ties of law and order had been loosened. When, in addition, the target
+of assault happened to be the stepchild in Russia's family of peoples,
+the one forever kicked and cuffed by the government itself, the rioters'
+sense of security was complete. Moreover, among the victims of Jewish
+usurers were hundreds of army officers and civil officials who lived
+beyond their means, and from these came a direct hint at impunity. The
+attack had been carefully planned, but the imbruted mob acted on its own
+logic, with the result that thousands of artisans, labourers, poor
+tradesmen, teachers, rabbis, dreamers, were plundered and ill-treated
+while the handful of usurers escaped.
+
+The promise of impunity was fulfilled. Neighbouring towns and villages
+followed the example of Elisavetgrad, and ten days later, May 8-9,
+similar atrocities, but with a far greater display of fury and
+bestiality, occurred in Kieff, where a dozen murders and an enormous
+list of wounded and of outraged women was added to the work of
+devastation and plunder. The Kieff authorities encouraged all this in a
+thousand ways, while individual officers and men took part in the
+pandemonium of havoc and rape.
+
+"Easy, boys," said the governor of the province, with an amused smile,
+as he drove past the busy rioters at the head of a procession of
+fashionable spectators.
+
+Loris-Melikoff was scarcely to be held responsible for these
+occurrences. He had his own cares to worry him. The reins were fast
+slipping out of his hands. Indeed, the attitude of governors, chiefs of
+police, military officers, toward the spreading campaign against the
+Jews was a matter of instinct. The "spirit of the moment," as it had
+become customary to denote the epidemic of anti-Jewish feeling in
+official circles, gleamed forth clear and unequivocal, and local
+authorities acted upon it on their own hook. The real meaning of this
+"spirit of the moment" lay in the idea that if there was a state of
+general unrest threatening the safety of the throne, it was spending
+itself on anti-Semitic ferocity; that if a storm-cloud was gathering
+over the crown, an electric rod had been found in the Chosen People.
+
+The Czar took courage.
+
+Two days after the Kieff riot he promulgated a manifesto, framed by
+Pobiedonostzeff, and proclaiming the continuance of unqualified
+iron-handed absolutism. The "constitution" went into the archives.
+Loris-Melikoff's public career had come to a close. General Ignatyeff, a
+corrupt time-server, was appointed Minister of the Interior and a policy
+of restriction and repression was adopted that brought back the days of
+Nicholas I.
+
+Ignatyeff encouraged the "spirit of the moment" with all the means at
+his command. One of the very first things he did was to order the
+expulsion of thousands of Jews from Kieff. At the trial of some of the
+rioters the state attorney unceremoniously acted as advocate for the
+defendants.
+
+The effect of all this upon the public mind was a foregone conclusion.
+The general inference was that anti-Jewish riots met with the
+government's approval. The outrages passed from Kieff to neighbouring
+cities; from there to Odessa; from Odessa to other sections of the
+south. They were spreading throughout the region in which Miroslav is
+located with the continuity of a regular crusade and with a uniformity
+of detail that was eloquent of a common guiding force.
+
+It was a new phase of White Terrorism.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To Pavel the crusade against Clara's race was a source of mixed
+encouragement and anxiety.
+
+"Hurrah, old fellow," he said to Godfather one morning. "It does look as
+though the Russian people could kick, doesn't it?"
+
+"Yes, if they can attack Jewish usurers, I don't see why they could not
+turn upon the government some day."
+
+"And, while they are at it, upon the land-plundering nobility, upon
+fellows like you and me, eh?" He poked Urie in the ribs gleefully.
+
+In his conversations with Clara, however, the subject was never
+broached, and this gave him a sense of guilt and uneasiness. He could
+not help being aware that instead of usurers the chief target of attack
+in every riot, without a single exception, were Jewish artisans,
+labourers, teachers and the poorest tradesmen. And this, so far as Clara
+was concerned, meant that the common people of Pavel's race, for whose
+sake she was facing the solitary cell and the gallows, that these
+Christian people were brutally assaulting and pillaging, reducing to
+beggary and murdering poor honest, innocent people of her own blood,
+Jews like her father, mother, sister, like herself.
+
+But this bare fact did not fit in with Nihilist theory. That golden halo
+which had been painted about the common Christian people by the
+ecstasies of the anti-serfdom movement of twenty years ago had not yet
+faded. The Gentile masses were still deified by the Nihilists. Whatever
+the peasant or workman of Slavic blood did was still sacred,--an
+instinctive step in the direction of liberty and universal happiness.
+The Russian masses were rioting; could there be a better indication of a
+revolutionary awakening? And if the victims of these riots happened to
+be Jews, then the Jews were evidently enemies of the people.
+
+That the crusade was part and parcel of the "white terror" of the throne
+had not yet dawned upon the revolutionists.
+
+As to Clara, she was so completely abandoned to her grief over the death
+of Sophia and the four men that so far the riots (no unheard-of thing in
+the history of the Jews by any means) had made but a feeble appeal to
+her imagination. Centuries seemed to divide her from her race and her
+past. The outbreaks seemed to be taking place in some strange, distant
+country.
+
+The execution of the five regicides had been described quite fully in
+the _Official Messenger_ and the account had been copied in all other
+newspapers. Clara kept the issue of the _Voice_ containing the report in
+a book, and although she knew its salient passages by heart, she often
+consulted the paper, now for this paragraph, now for that. There was a
+sacred mystery in the letters in which the description was printed.
+
+"The five prisoners approached the priests almost at the same moment and
+kissed the cross; after which they were taken by the hangmen each to his
+or her rope." Clara beheld the ropes dangling and Sophia placed under
+one of them, but her aching heart coveted more vividness. Her
+imagination was making desperate efforts to reproduce the scene with the
+tangibility of life. Each time she read how the hangman, dressed in a
+red shirt, slipped the noose about Sophia's neck amid the roll of drums,
+and how he wrenched the stool from under her feet, so that she plunged
+with a jerk, and how the next instant her body hung motionless in the
+air, each time Clara read this she was smitten with an overpowering pang
+of pity and of helpless, aimless, heart-tearing affection. Sometimes she
+would fancy Sophia and her four comrades rescued from the hangman's
+hands a second before their execution, and carried triumphantly through
+the streets by an army of victorious revolutionists, but the next moment
+it would come back to her that this had not been the case, and then the
+re-awakening to reality was even more painful than the original shock.
+If a rescuing force were now ready to attack the hangman and the
+thousand-bayoneted guard around him, it would be too late. Sophia was
+dead, irretrievably dead; there was nobody to rescue. And Clara's heart
+sank in despair. At such moments she would seek relief in those passages
+of the report where the calmness of the condemned revolutionists was
+depicted. "Jeliaboff whispered to his priest, fervently kissed the
+cross, shook his hair and smiled. Fortitude did not forsake Jeliaboff,
+Sophia and particularly Kibalchich (the man with the face of Christ) to
+the very moment of donning the white-hooded death-gown"--these passages
+gave Clara thrills of religious bliss.
+
+Pavel often talked to her about the execution, raved, cursed the
+government; but Clara usually remained gloomily taciturn. The wound in
+her soul was something too sacred to be talked about. Words seemed to
+her like sacrilege. Their hearts understood each other well enough, why,
+then, allow language to intrude upon their speechless communion? Some of
+his effusions and outbursts jarred on her. On the other hand, her
+silences made him restless.
+
+"You'll go insane if you keep this up," he once said, irascibly.
+
+"I don't care if I do," she answered. "Don't nag me, Pashenka, pray."
+
+"But the thing is becoming an _id�e fixe_ in your mind, upon my word it
+is. Can't you try and get back to your senses? What is death after all?
+Absolute freedom from suffering, that's all. There is nothing to go
+crazy over anyhow. There is nothing but a dear, a glorious, a beautiful
+memory of them, and that will live as long as there is such a thing as
+history in the world."
+
+She made no reply. She tried to picture Sophia free from suffering, but
+this only sharpened her pain. Sophia not existing? The formula was even
+more terrible than death. In reality, however, her atheism was powerless
+to obliterate her visions. Sophia existed somewhere, only she was
+solemnly remote, as though estranged from her. Clara could have almost
+cried to her, imploring for recognition.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But this mood of hers could not last forever. Sooner or later she would
+awaken to the full extent of the riots and to the fact that they were
+raging in the vicinity of Miroslav, threatening the safety of her
+nearest relatives. How would she take it then? The question intruded
+upon Pavel's peace of mind again and again.
+
+For the present, however, she was taken up with her thoughts of Sophia,
+Zachar or Hessia. Poor Hessia! They had robbed her of her baby, the
+thugs, even as they had that woman of the "gay bard's" poem. "To lead a
+married life under conditions such as ours is pure madness," she said to
+herself.
+
+One afternoon, as she and her lover sat on the lounge, embracing and
+kissing deliriously, she suddenly sprang to her feet, her cheeks
+burning, kissed Pavel on his forehead and crossed over to the window.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders resentfully.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+A HUNTED PEOPLE.
+
+
+It was Friday night at the Old Synagogue, but the cheery voices of
+Sabbath Eve were not there. The air of having cast one's cares aside was
+missing. Instead of a light-hearted turmoil of melody there was a hushed
+murmur that betrayed suspense and timidity. Ever and anon some
+worshipper would break off his hymn and strain his ears for a fancied
+sound outside. The half hour spent away from home seemed many hours.
+Very few people were present and none of these wore their Sabbath
+clothes. Most of the other synagogues were closed altogether. Rabbi
+Rachmiel, Clara's father, and several others were abandoned to an
+ecstasy of devotion, but their subdued tones had in them the fervent
+plea of Atonement Day, the tearful plea for an enrolment in the Book of
+Life rather than the joyous solemnity that proclaims the advent of the
+Higher Soul. The illumination in honour of Sabbath the Bride was a sorry
+spectacle. The jumble of brass chandeliers hung unburnished and most of
+them were empty. The synagogue had a troubled, a cowed look. It dared
+not shine brightly, nor burst into song merrily lest it should irritate
+the Gentiles. Here and there a man sat at his prayer book weeping
+quietly.
+
+Members of the congregation who had not been on speaking terms for years
+had made peace, as a matter of course. The spreading frenzy of the
+Gentile population impressed them as an impersonal, elemental force.
+They were clinging to each other with the taciturnity of ship-passengers
+when the vessel shudders in the grip of danger. And not only did they
+nestle to each other, but the entire present generation felt drawn to
+all the former generations of their hunted race. The terrors of the
+Inquisition, the massacres, the exiles, the humiliations, of which one
+usually thought as something belonging to the province of books
+exclusively, had suddenly become realities. The Bloody Spot, the site of
+the present synagogue, where 800 Jews had been slain more than two
+centuries ago, gleamed redder than ever in every mind. It was both
+terrifying and a spiritual relief to beseech the souls of those eight
+hundred martyrs to pray for their panic-stricken descendants. The
+Russian Jews of 1881 felt themselves a living continuation of the entire
+tearful history of their people.
+
+When the service was over, at last, the usual "Good Sabbath! Good
+Sabbath!" always so full of festivity, was uttered in lugubrious
+whispers, which really meant: "May God take pity upon us." Nor was there
+a rush for the door. Quick, noisy movements were carefully avoided in
+these days.
+
+Some of the worshippers had slowly filed out, when there was a stir, and
+the crowd scrambled back with terrified faces.
+
+"Two Gentiles are coming, an army officer and a man in civilian
+clothes," said some of those who came running back.
+
+The look of terror gave way to one of eager curiosity. The appearance of
+two refined Gentiles was not the way an anti-Jewish riot was usually
+ushered in.
+
+The "two Gentiles" turned out to be Dr. Lipnitzky and Vladimir
+Vigdoroff, the one in his military uniform, and the other in a summer
+suit of rough duck. When they were recognised they were greeted with
+looks of affection and expectancy. The pious old-fashioned people who
+had hitherto regarded Dr. Lipnitzky despairingly as more Gentile than
+Jew, now thought of him tenderly as an advocate of Israel in the enemy's
+camp.
+
+"Don't be so scared," the little doctor said with friendly acerbity, as
+he paused in the centre of the synagogue. "We are Jews like
+yourselves--the same kind of Jews all of us. We were passing by, so we
+thought we would look in. We saw the synagogue was almost dark, though
+it is still so early. The lights could not yet have gone out. It's
+enough to break one's heart." He was choking with embarrassment and
+emotion and his words produced a profound effect. People of his class
+were not in the habit of attending divine service. The doctor's military
+uniform, in fact, had never been seen in a synagogue before. But the
+great point was that instead of Russian or Germanised Yiddish which he
+habitually affected with uneducated Jews he was now speaking in the
+plain, unembellished vernacular of the Ghetto. His listeners knew that
+he was the son of a poor illiterate brick-maker, a plain "Yiddish Jew"
+like themselves, yet they could scarcely trust their ears. They eyed his
+shoulder-straps and sword-hilt, and it seemed incredible that the man
+who wore these things was the man who was speaking this fluent, robust
+Yiddish. His halo of inaccessible superiority had suddenly faded away.
+Everybody warmed to him.
+
+"We'll be here to-morrow, we'll attend the service. And next Saturday,
+too. Every Saturday. We're Jews." He could not go on. Some of his
+listeners had tears in their eyes. Vladimir was biting his lips
+nervously.
+
+"Still, it is not to see you cry that we have come to you," the doctor
+resumed: but he was interrupted by Clara's father, who, advancing toward
+him with glaring eyes, said, in a voice shrill with rage:
+
+"Now that Jewish blood is flowing in rivers you people come to do
+penance! It is too late. It is the sins of men like yourselves that have
+brought this punishment upon us. A Gentile Jew is even worse than a born
+Gentile." He put up his fists to his temples and gasped: "Better become
+Christians! Better become Christians!"
+
+The crowd had listened with bated breath, but at last somebody said: "Oh
+shut up!" and similar shouts burst from forty or fifty other men.
+
+"We are all Jews, all brethren."
+
+"We'll settle old scores some other time."
+
+"A good heart is as good as piety."
+
+"Yes, but why don't you give the doctor a chance to speak?" Vladimir
+stepped up to his uncle and pleaded with him.
+
+"Who is he?" said Dr. Lipnitzky with a smile. "Is he crazy?" And flying
+into a passion, he was about to address Rabbi Rachmiel, but held himself
+in check. A feeble old man of eighty with a very white beard was arguing
+from the Talmud with Clara's father.
+
+"'The sinner who returns to God may stand upon ground upon which the
+righteous are not allowed to stand,'" he quoted. "Again, 'Through
+penance even one's sins are turned to good deeds.'"
+
+When Rabbi Rachmiel tried to reply, he was shouted down by the crowd.
+They were yelling and gesticulating at him, when somebody mounted a
+bench and fell to swishing his arms violently. "Hush!" he said in a
+ferocious whisper. "Do you want to attract a mob?" His words had an
+immediate effect, and then Rabbi Rachmiel said to his nephew, in much
+milder but deeply grieved accents:
+
+"Do you know what the Talmud says? 'As long as you shall do the will of
+God no strange people shall domineer over you, but if you don't do the
+will of God, God will hand you over to a low people, and not merely to a
+low people, but to the beasts of a low people.'"
+
+"All right, rabbi. This is not the time for argument," the doctor said,
+kindly. "I have some important information for you all, for all of us.
+There won't be any rioting in this town. You may be sure of it. That's
+what my young friend and I have dropped in to tell you. I have seen the
+governor"--his listeners pressed eagerly forward--"there will be plenty
+of protection. The main point is that you should not tempt the Gentiles
+to start a riot by showing them that you dread one. Don't hide, nor keep
+your shops closed, as that would only whet one's appetite for mischief.
+Do you understand what I say to you? This is the governor's opinion and
+mine too. Everybody's."
+
+His auditors nodded vigorous and beaming assent.
+
+"He particularly warns the Jews not to undertake anything in the way of
+self-defence. That would only arouse ill-feeling. Besides, it's against
+the law. It could not be tolerated. Do you understand what I am saying
+or do you not? Every precaution has been taken and there is really no
+danger. Do you understand? There is no danger, and if you go about your
+business and make no fuss it will be all right. I have spoken to several
+officers of my regiment, too. Of course, you wouldn't have to look hard
+to find a Jew-hater among them, but they spoke in a friendly way and
+some of them are really good-natured fellows. They assured me that if
+the troops were called out they would protect our people with all their
+hearts."
+
+Every man in the group looked like a prisoner when the jury announces an
+acquittal. Some, in a flutter of joy, hastened to carry the news to
+their wives and children. The majority hung about the uniformed man, as
+if ready to stay all night in his salutary presence, while one man even
+ventured to say quite familiarly: "May you live long for this, doctor.
+Why, you have put new souls into us." Whereupon he was told by another
+man, through clenched teeth, that it was just like him to push himself
+forward.
+
+Each man had his own tale of woe to tell, his own questions to ask. One
+man, whose appearance and manner indicated that he was a tin-smith, had
+a son at the gymnasium and a Gentile neighbour whose wife became green
+with envy as often as she saw the Jewish boy in his handsome uniform.
+She was much better off than the tin-smith yet her children were
+receiving no education.
+
+"But why should you pay any attention to her?" Dr. Lipnitzky asked.
+
+"I don't, but my wife does. You know how women are, doctor. They take
+everything hard. Last week the Gentile woman said aloud that it was
+impudent on the part of Jews to dress their boys up in gymnasium
+uniforms, as if they were noblemen, and that it was time Miroslav did
+like all God-fearing towns and started a riot against the Jews. So my
+wife is afraid to let the boy wear the uniform, and I think she is
+right, too. Let the eyes of that Gentile woman creep out of their
+sockets without looking at the child's uniform. It is vacation time
+anyhow. But the boy, he cried all day and made a rumpus and said the
+school authorities would punish him if he was seen in the street without
+his uniform. Is it true, doctor? I am only an ignorant workman. What do
+I know?"
+
+"Yes, it is true, and tell your wife not to mind that woman," answered
+Dr. Lipnitzky, exchanging a woebegone look with Vladimir.
+
+"I have some goods lying at the railroad station for me," said a little
+man with a puckered forehead. "It has been there about a month. 'Shall I
+take it to the shop so that the rioters may have some more goods to
+pillage?' I thought to myself. Would you really advise me to receive it,
+doctor?"
+
+Dr. Lipnitzky took fire. "Do you want me to sign a guarantee for it?" he
+said. "Do you want me to be responsible for the goods? You people are an
+awful lot."
+
+"I was merely asking your advice, doctor," the man with the puckered
+forehead answered, wretchedly. "You can't do much business these days,
+anyhow. The best Gentiles won't pay. One has nothing but a book full of
+debts. Besides, when the door flies open one's soul sinks. And when a
+Gentile customer comes in you pray God that he may leave your shop as
+soon as possible. For who knows but his visit may be a put-up job and
+that all he wants is to pick a quarrel as a signal for a lot of other
+rowdies to break in?"
+
+"And the Gentile sees your cowardice," the doctor cut in with an effect
+of continuing the man's story, "and becomes arrogant, and this is the
+way a riot is hatched." By degrees he resumed his superior manner and
+his Germanised Yiddish, but his tone remained warm.
+
+"Arrogant!" said a tall, stooped, neatly-dressed jeweller. "You have
+told us of some honest officers, doctor. Well, the other day an army
+officer came into my place with a lady. He selected a ring for her, and
+when I said it was forty rubles, he made no answer, but sent the lady
+away with the ring, and then--you should have seen him break out at me.
+I had put him to shame before a lady, he said. He was good for forty
+times forty dollars, and all the Jews were a lot of cut-throats and
+blood-suckers; that all we were good for was to ask officers to protect
+us against rioters, and that my shop was made up of ill-gotten wealth
+anyhow. I had never seen the man before and I insisted upon being paid;
+but he made such a noise, I was afraid a crowd might gather. So I let
+him go, but I sent out my salesman after him and he found out his name.
+Then I went before his colonel" (the jeweller named the regiment), "but
+what do you think the colonel said: 'He's a nice fellow. I shall never
+believe it of him. And if he owes you some money, he'll pay you. At a
+time like this you Jews oughtn't to press your claims too hard.' That's
+what the colonel said."
+
+When a shabby cap-maker with thick bloodless lips told how he had let a
+rough-looking Gentile leave his shop in a new cap without paying for it,
+the doctor flew into a passion.
+
+"Why did you? Why did you?" he growled, stamping his feet, just as he
+would when the relatives of a patient neglected to comply with his
+orders. "It is just like you people. I would have you flayed for this."
+
+This only encouraged the cap-maker to go into the humour of the episode.
+
+"I was poking around the market place, with a high pile of caps on
+either hand," he said, "when I saw a Gentile with a face like a carrot
+covered full of warts. 'Aren't you ashamed to wear such a cap?' says I.
+'Aren't you ashamed to spoil a handsome face like yours by that rusty,
+horrid old thing on your head?'"
+
+"Oh, I would have you spanked," the little doctor snarled smilingly.
+Whereupon several of the bystanders also smiled.
+
+"Hold on, doctor. I spanked myself. Well, the Gentile was not hard to
+persuade, though when we got at my place he was rather hard to please.
+He kept me plucking caps from the ceiling until the very pole in my hand
+got tired of the job. At last he was suited. I thought he would ask how
+much. He didn't. He did say something, but that was about anti-Jewish
+riots. 'This cap will do,' he then said, 'Good-bye old man,' and made
+for the door. And when I rushed after him and asked for the money he
+turned on me and stuck the biggest fig[D] you ever saw into my face.
+Since then when I see the good looks of a Gentile spoiled by a horrid
+old cap I try not to take it to heart."
+
+  [D] A sign of contempt and defiance consisting in the thumb being put
+  between the next two fingers.
+
+The doctor laughed. "And you let him go without paying?" he asked.
+
+"I should say I did. I was glad he didn't ask for the change."
+
+Another man confessed to having had an experience of this kind, a
+customer having exacted from him change from a ruble which he had never
+paid him.
+
+"He was a tough looking customer, and he made a rumpus, so I thought to
+myself, 'Is this the first time I have been out of some cash? Let him go
+hang himself.' And the scoundrel, he gave me a laugh, called me accursed
+Jew into the bargain and went his way."
+
+"Did you ask him to call again?" the cap-maker demanded, and noticing
+Clara's father by his side, he added: "This is not the way Rabbi
+Rachmiel's wife does business, is it? She would make him pay her the
+dollar and the change, too."
+
+The doctor burst into laughter, the others echoing it noisily. Only
+Vladimir's face wore a look of restless gravity. It was the restlessness
+of a man who is trying to nerve himself up to a first public speech. His
+heart was full of something which he was aching to say to these people,
+to unburden himself of, but his courage failed him to take the word.
+Presently a man too timid to seek information in the centre of the
+assembly addressed a whispered inquiry to Vladimir and Vladimir's answer
+attracted the attention of two or three bystanders. Gradually a little
+colony branched off from the main body. He was telling them what he knew
+from the newspapers about the latest anti-Jewish outbreaks in various
+towns; and speaking in a very low voice and in the simplest
+conversational accents, he gradually passed to what weighed on his
+heart. He knew Yiddish very well indeed, yet he had considerable
+difficulty in speaking it, his chief impediment lying in his inability
+to render the cultured language in which he thought into primitive
+speech. His Yiddish was full of Russian and German therefore, but some
+of his listeners understood it all, while the rest missed but an
+occasional phrase.
+
+"People like myself--those who have studied at the gymnasia and
+universities"--he went on in a brooding, plaintive undertone, "feel the
+misery of it all the more keenly because we have been foolish enough to
+imagine ourselves Russians, and to keep aloof from our own people. Many
+of us feel like apologising to every poor suffering Jew in Russia, to
+beg his forgiveness, to implore him to take us back. We were ashamed to
+speak Yiddish. We thought we were Russians. We speak the language of
+the Gentiles, and we love it so dearly; we have adopted their ways and
+customs; we love their literature; everything Russian is so dear to us;
+why should it not be? Is not this our birthplace? But the more we love
+it, the more we try to be like Russians, the more they hate us. My
+uncle, Rabbi Rachmiel, says it is too late to do penance. Well, I do
+feel like a man who comes to confess his sins and to do penance. It is
+the blood and the tears of our brothers and sisters that are calling to
+us to return to our people. And now we see how vain our efforts are to
+be Russians. There was a great Jew whose name was Heinrich Heine." (Two
+of the men manifested their acquaintance with the name by a nod.) "He
+was a great writer of poetry. So he once wrote about his mother--how he
+had abandoned her and sought the love of other women. But he failed to
+find love anywhere, until ultimately he came to the conclusion that the
+only woman in whom he was sure of love was his own dear mother. This is
+the way I feel now. I scarcely ever saw the inside of a synagogue
+before, but now I, like the doctor, belong here. It is not a question of
+religion. I am not religious and cannot be. But I am a Jew and we all
+belong together. And when a synagogue happens to stand on a site like
+this----"
+
+He broke off in the middle of the sentence. His allusion to the massacre
+of two centuries before inspired him with an appalling sense of the
+continuity of Jewish suffering. The others stood about gazing solemnly
+at him, until the scholarly old man of eighty with the very white beard
+broke silence. He raised his veined aged little hands over Vladimir's
+head and said in a nervous treble:
+
+"May God bless you, my son. That's all I have to say."
+
+Vladimir was literally electrified by his words.
+
+"But what do they want of us?" asked a man with a blueish complexion.
+"You say they are good-natured. Do you call it good-natured when one
+acts like a wild beast, bathing in the blood of innocent people?"
+
+"Well, this is the Gentile way of being good-natured," somebody put in,
+with a sneer, before Vladimir had time to answer.
+
+"They have been turned into savages," Vigdoroff then said. He maintained
+the low, mournful voice, though he now put a didactic tone into it.
+"They are blind, ignorant people. They are easily made a catspaw of."
+
+The man with the blueish complexion interrupted him. He spoke of Gentile
+cruelty, of the Inquisition, the Crusades, massacres, and almost with
+tears of rage in his eyes he defied Vladimir to tell him that Jews were
+capable of any such brutalities. Vladimir said no, Jews were not capable
+of any bloodshed, and went on defending the Russian people. The man with
+the sneer was beginning to annoy him. He was an insignificant looking
+fellow with very thin lips and a very thin flat blond beard. Even when
+his face was grave it had a sneering effect. He said very little. Only
+occasionally he would utter a word or two of which nobody else took
+notice. Yet it was chiefly to him that Vladimir was addressing himself.
+But the assembly was soon broken up. Rabbi Rachmiel's wife came in at
+the head of several other women who were not afraid to walk through the
+streets after sundown in these days. They had grown uneasy about their
+husbands' delay.
+
+Vladimir saluted his aunt warmly. They exchanged a few words, but
+nothing was said of Clara. An "illegal" person like her could not be
+mentioned in public.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+A PAPER FROM THE CZAR.
+
+
+A large crowd of peasants, in tall straw hats, many of them with their
+whips in their hands, congregated in front of the bailiff's office at
+Zorki. It was a sultry afternoon in August. A single shirt of coarse
+white linen and a pair of trousers of the same material were all the
+clothes the men wore. The trousers were very wide and baggy but drawn
+tight at the bottom by means of strings, so that they dropped at the
+ankles blouse-fashion, and the loose-fitting shirt fell over the
+trousers with a similar effect. Most of the shirts were embroidered in
+red and blue. Sometimes, as a result of special rivalry among the young
+women, one village will affect gaudier embroidery and more of it than
+its neighbours. This could be seen now at one corner of the crowd where
+a group of peasants, all from the same place, defined itself by the
+flaming red on the upper part of their sleeves. There were women, too,
+in the crowd, the girls in wreaths of artificial flowers and all of them
+in ribbons and coral beads, though some of them were barefoot.
+
+A strong smell of primitive toil emanated from their bodies; primitive
+ideas and primitive interests looked out of their eyes. The northern
+moujik--the Great, or "real," Russian--who speaks the language of
+Turgeneff and Tolstoy, has less poetry than the Little-Russian, but he
+also has less cunning and more abandon. To be sure, the cunning of the
+Zorki peasant is as primitive as his whole mind. Very few men in the
+crowd now standing in front of the bailiff's office could have managed
+to add such two numbers as six and nineteen, or to subtract the weight
+of an empty pail from the weight of a pail of honey. Their book-keeping
+consists of notches on the door-jamb, and their armour in the battle of
+life is a cast-iron distrustfulness.
+
+At last the bailiff made his appearance, adjusted the straps of his
+sword across his breast, and asked what they wanted. A tall old fellow
+with a drooping steel-grey moustache came out of the crowd, hat in hand,
+and bowed deeply, as he said:
+
+"It's like this, your nobleness. We wish to know when that paper from
+the Czar about the Jews will be read to us?"
+
+"What paper from the Czar?" the bailiff asked. "What are you talking
+about?" He was a dry-boned man, but ruddy-faced and with very narrow
+almond-shaped eyes. As he now looked at the crowd through the sharp
+afternoon glare his eyes glistened like two tiny strips of burnished
+metal.
+
+"Your nobleness need not be told what paper. It's about beating the Jews
+and taking away their goods."
+
+The scene was being watched by several Jews, plucky fellows who had come
+in the interests of their people at the risk of being the first victims
+of mob fury. Among these was Yossl, Makar's father, at once the most
+intellectual and strongest looking man in the delegation. In the
+meantime the other Jews, stupefied and sick with fear, had closed their
+shops and dwellings and were hiding in cellars and in garrets, in the
+ruins of an old church and in the woods. Two women gave birth to
+stillborn children during the commotion, one of these at the bedside of
+her little boy who was too sick to be moved.
+
+"You are a fool," the bailiff said to the spokesman, with a smile, as he
+raised his narrow eyes in quest of some Gentile with whom he might share
+the fun. "You are a lot of fools. Better go home. There is no such paper
+in the world. Whoever told you there was?"
+
+"Why, everybody says so. In most places they finished the job long ago.
+Only we are a lot of slow coaches, people say. And then, when the higher
+authorities find out about it, who will be fined or put in jail? We,
+poor peasants. As if we did not have troubles enough as it is."
+
+"What will you be put in jail for?" asked the bailiff, chuckling to
+himself.
+
+Here a younger peasant whispered in the spokesman's ear not to let
+himself be bamboozled.
+
+Speaking with unwonted boldness, born of the conviction that the bailiff
+was suppressing a document of the Czar, the tall fellow said:
+
+"You can't fool us, your nobleness. We are only peasants, but what we
+know we know." And he went on to enumerate villages where, according to
+rumour, the paper had already been read and acted upon. "Although
+uneducated, yet we are not such fools as your nobleness takes us for. If
+it is a ukase direct from the Czar we aren't going to take chances, sir.
+Not we, sir. Better read it to us and let's be done with it. We have no
+time to waste, sir."
+
+One of the Jews was going to make a suggestion, but he was shouted down
+and waved aside.
+
+The bailiff made a gesture of amused despair and turned to go back, when
+the peasants stepped forward, and chattering excitedly, they gave him
+to understand that they would not let him go until he had shown them the
+imperial ukase. The purport of their remonstrance was to the effect that
+the Jews had bribed him to suppress the document. The bailiff took it
+all good-naturedly. In his heart of hearts he was looking forward to the
+sport of an anti-Jewish outbreak with delight; but the noise brought the
+local priest upon the scene--a kindly elderly man with the face of a
+whimpering peasant girl. He was a victim of official injustice himself
+and he implored the crowd to listen to reason. His face, at once comic
+and piteous, was the main cause of his failures. He was a well-educated
+priest, yet he was kept in this obscure town. His sacerdotal locks,
+meant to be long and silken, hung in stiff, wretched little clumps.
+Nevertheless, as he now stood in his purple broad-sleeved gown,
+appealing to the multitude of white figures, his cross sparkling in the
+sun, the spectacle was like a scene of the early days of Christianity.
+
+"It is a great sin to circulate wicked falsehoods like that and it is
+just as much of a sin to credit them," he said in a pained heartfelt
+voice. "Ours is a good Czar. He does not command his children to do
+violence to human beings."
+
+"Oh, well, little father," one peasant broke in. "You don't seem to have
+heard of it. That's all. If the Czar has not ordered it, then why do
+they beat the Jews everywhere else and the police and soldiers stand by
+and see to it that they do the work well?"
+
+The bailiff burst into a horse-laugh and slapped his knees violently.
+The priest's face bore a look of despair.
+
+"Can it be that you believe such foolishness?" he said.
+
+"What do we know? We are only common people. All we do know is that
+whatever happens it is our skin that is peeled off. If we can't get the
+paper we'll do our duty without it."
+
+"That's it, without it!" the others chimed in in excited chorus.
+
+Further parleying made it clear that many of them had no inclination to
+do any personal harm to the Jews or to their property. They were on
+friendly terms with their Jewish neighbours, and all they wanted was to
+get rid of a disagreeable duty. The rest, about half of the entire
+crowd, had had their heads turned with stories of lakes of vodka and
+fabulous piles of loot, but even these proved susceptible to argument.
+
+"Here," Yossl shouted at the top of his voice and with great fervour. "I
+have a scheme, and what will you lose by it if you hear me out? If you
+don't like it, I'll take it back and it won't cost you a cent." The
+intensity of his manner took them by storm. He was allowed to finish.
+"My scheme amounts to this: The Jews will sign a paper taking upon
+themselves all responsibility for your failure to smash their shops and
+houses, so that if the authorities call you to account for violating the
+imperial ukase, we will answer and you will come out clear."
+
+First there was perplexed stillness, then a murmur of distrust, and
+finally a tumult of rejection.
+
+"Crafty Jew! There must be some trick in it!" they yelled sneeringly.
+
+The priest was wiping the perspiration from his forehead. Finally he
+shouted huskily:
+
+"Very well, I'll sign such a paper."
+
+After some more arguing, the plan, in its amended form, was adopted. The
+older men flaunted their experience by insisting upon a formal
+"certificate" bearing the priest's official seal and signature, so that
+when the Czar's inspectors arrived the peasants might have something
+tangible to present. When all this had been complied with, there was
+some portentous talk about the Jews sprinkling the bargain with vodka;
+but having followed the "little father's" advice in the main point the
+peasants were now in a yielding mood toward him generally, and the vodka
+shops being closed, he had no difficulty in getting them to go home
+sober.
+
+A large number of them had to cross the river. To occupy their minds
+while they were waiting for the ferry--a small antediluvian affair which
+could only accommodate about one-fifth of the crowd at a time--the
+priest asked them for a song. And then the quiet evening air resounded
+with those pensive, soulful strains which for depth of melancholy have
+scarcely an equal in the entire range of folk-music. Thus the men who
+might now have been frenzied with the work of pillage, devastation and,
+perhaps, murder, stood transfixed with the poetry of anguish and pity.
+Race distinctions and ukases--how alien and unintelligible these things
+were to the world in which their souls dwelt at this minute! The glint
+of the water grew darker every second. The men on the ferry continued
+their singing. Then somebody on the other side joined in and the melody
+spread in all directions. The fresh ringing treble of a peasant girl,
+peculiarly doleful in its high notes, came from across the water. A
+choir of invisible choirs, scattered along both banks, sang to the night
+of the sadness of human existence.
+
+The Jews returned from their hiding-places, but very few of them went to
+bed that night. The tragedy in many houses was intensified by the
+circumstance that the heads of these families were absent from the town,
+having gone to the Good Jew for prayer and advice as to the spreading
+calamity. Weinstein's spacious rooms were full of neighbours and their
+families. The presence of the man whom one had been accustomed to regard
+as a monument of worldly power had a special attraction for the poorer
+Pietists this evening. Besides, one dreaded the hallucinations of
+solitude and in Weinstein's house one was sure to find company. Most of
+them sat in the large prayer room, keeping close to each other,
+conversing in subdued, melancholy voices, comfortable in the community
+of their woe, as though content to remain in this huddle until the end
+of time. Yossl was curling his black side-locks morosely. The other
+people in the room importuned him for details of the scene in front of
+the bailiff's office, but he was not in the mood for speaking. Weinstein
+was snapping his fingers at his own florid neck, as he walked backward
+and forward. Presently Maria, his Gentile servant, who spoke good
+Yiddish, addressed him, with sad, sympathetic mien:
+
+"Master dear," she said in Yiddish. "Will you let me break a couple of
+windows?"
+
+He did not understand.
+
+"You see," she explained bursting into tears. "If they get at me because
+I did not smash things in your house, I'll be able to swear that I did."
+For an instant he stood surveying her, then, in a spasm of rage and
+misery, he shrieked out:
+
+"Why, certainly! Go ahead! Break, smash, everything you set your eye on.
+You are the princess, we are only Jews. Go smash the whole house." And
+in his frenzy he went breaking windows and chairs, shrieking as he did
+so:
+
+"Here! Look and let your heart rejoice."
+
+"Madman," Yossl said calmly, "you'll alarm the town. They'll think it's
+a riot and the Gentiles will join in."
+
+Weinstein sat down pale and panting. "Go and tell your people to come
+and delight in the sight of a Jew's broken windows," he said to the
+Gentile woman.
+
+She put her hands to her face and left the room sobbing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+THE DEFENCE COMMITTEE.
+
+
+The little man who played the part of errand boy at the cheese shop and
+who was arrested before the work on the mine was well advanced had
+ultimately turned state's evidence. Among the revolutionists he betrayed
+was Pavel, but the prince was known to him under a false name. Still,
+the information furnished by his man, added to some addresses found on
+other captured Nihilists, led to a series of new arrests. The ranks of
+the Will of the People were being rapidly decimated. Grisha, the
+dynamiter, and several other members of the innermost circle were seized
+shortly after the killing of the Czar. The few surviving leaders
+withdrew to the provinces, in some cases only immediately to fall into
+the hands of the police there. Thus in April, after a Jewish student
+girl was arrested in Kieff, the "trap" at her lodgings caught a woman
+and a man who proved to be Baska, the "wife" of the "cheesemonger"
+couple, and her real husband, "the German." Urie (the "cheesemonger"),
+Makar and several other active revolutionists were in Moscow.
+
+One late afternoon Clara was slowly pacing the painted floor of her
+room, her hands clasped behind her, while her lover lay on the lounge,
+watching her through the gathering dusk.
+
+"St. Petersburg is too hot now," he said, breaking a long silence.
+"Everybody is going away."
+
+"There is really no use staying here just at present," she assented,
+sadly, without pausing.
+
+They grew silent again. The gloom of the little parlour was thickening
+so rapidly that it seemed as though the outline of Clara's face, as she
+walked back and forth, became vaguer every time she turned in Pavel's
+direction.
+
+Presently, with a burst of amorous tenderness, he got up, saying:
+
+"Clanya! Let us go for a rest somewhere. You know you need it."
+
+"You need it even more than I do, poor boy," she replied, stepping up
+close to him. "I do wish you would go home for a month or two--or
+somewhere else. As to myself, I should first like to see my parents. The
+riots may strike Miroslav at any moment. If any harm came to them, I
+should never forgive myself. I must get them away from there. That's all
+I can think of." There was an obvious blank in her words. She left
+something unsaid, and the consciousness of it made him uncomfortable.
+
+"But that's easily arranged," he urged. "You can send them money and
+invite them to some safe place."
+
+"That's what I have been thinking of. I am so restless I wish I could
+start to-morrow. It couldn't be arranged too soon. There are persistent
+rumors that a riot is coming there. I shan't be gone long, dearest."
+
+He had it at the tip of his tongue to force a discussion of their
+party's attitude toward the riots and to have it out once for all. In
+his imagined debates with her on the subject he had often exclaimed: "I
+happen to belong to a class of land-robbers and profligates; now,
+suppose the revolution breaks out and my class is attacked by the
+people, will that affect me? A nice revolutionist I should be if it
+did!" This and other arguments were all ready; what he lacked, however,
+was the courage to bring up the topic. As to her promise to marry him
+when the great conspiracy was out of the way, her redeeming it now,
+while she was so tremulously absorbed in the question of her parents'
+safety, could not be thought of.
+
+He gathered her to him and kissed her, at once sympathetically and
+appealingly.
+
+"Go home, Pasha," she besought. "But not to Miroslav. You won't rest
+there. Go to some of your mother's country places, or, perhaps some
+other place would be safer for you. Go and take good care of yourself.
+It would be too terrible if I found you arrested when I got back."
+
+"Will you marry me then?" he asked, impersonating a pampered child.
+
+She nodded, in the same playful spirit, and again her reticence brought
+disquiet to his heart. "Something tells me she'll never be mine," he
+thought with a sigh.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While the government was actively fomenting the riots, making an
+electric rod of the Jews, the Nihilists persisted in mistaking them for
+revolutionary kindling wood. While the "Chronicle of Arrests" in the
+revolutionary organ included a large number of Jewish names, several of
+them of persons conspicuous in the movement and noted for their pluck,
+another page of the same issue contained a letter from the riot-ridden
+district that was strongly flavoured with anti-Semitism. Moreover, a
+proclamation, addressed to the peasantry, was printed on an
+"underground" press, naming the Czar, the landlords and the Jews as
+enemies of the people. This proclamation met with a storm of
+disapproval, however, on the part of Gentiles and Jews alike, and was
+withdrawn from circulation. Chaos reigned in the minds of the Nihilists.
+Their party was disorganised, their thinkers for the most part buried,
+dead or alive, the editorial management of their publications in the
+hands of the weakest man on the Executive Committee, of one who several
+years later sent, from Paris, a most servile petition to the Czar,
+abjuring his former views and begging permission to return home as an
+advocate of unqualified absolutism and panslavism.
+
+The attitude of the Nihilists toward the Jewish population in general
+was thus anything but sympathetic; and yet, so far as the higher strata
+of the movement were concerned, the personal relations between Jew and
+Gentile were not affected by this circumstance in the slightest degree.
+The feeling of intimate comradeship and mutual devotion between the two
+elements was left unmarred, as if one's views on the Jewish question
+were purely a matter of abstract reasoning without any bearing on the
+Jew of flesh and blood one happened to know.
+
+More than this, in their blind theorising according to preconceived
+formulas, most of the active Jewish Nihilists shut their eyes to the
+actual state of things and joined their Gentile comrades in applauding
+the riots as an encouraging sign of the times, as "a popular
+revolutionary protest."
+
+Pavel longed to discuss the riots with Makar. When he saw him, however,
+he found him far more interested in the "new revolutionary program" upon
+which he was engaged than in the anti-Semitic crusade.
+
+"As if it was the first time Jewish blood had been shed," he said,
+answering a question from Pavel, half-heartedly. "The entire history of
+the Jews is one continuous riot. Indeed, the present outbreaks are a
+mere flea-bite to what they have undergone before. So, what has
+happened to make one revise one's views on the movement? One might as
+well stay away from the _Will of the People_ because, forsooth, Jews
+were burned by Gentiles in the 15th century. Nonsense."
+
+"Clara doesn't seem to take it quite so easy," Pavel thought to himself.
+
+"Clara has gone to meet her parents," he said, thirsting to talk of her.
+
+"Has she? There may be a riot in Miroslav at any time. I wonder how
+Zorki is getting along. But then my father will be able to take care of
+himself,--and of Miriam, too," he added, lukewarmly. The only thing of
+which he could have spoken with enthusiasm in these days was his
+program.
+
+Pavel came away hankering for more conversation about his fianc�e and
+about the riots. Instead of seeking rest and safety, as he had promised
+Clara to do, he coveted a new sort of excitement and danger. He felt
+that there was something wrong about that crusade, and he had a
+sportsmanlike craving to see it for himself. Lacking the courage to
+criticise his party, he accused himself of allowing his revolutionary
+convictions to be affected by the interests of his love; yet he
+continued to pray in his heart that the Jews of Miroslav, at least,
+might be spared. He read all he found in the newspapers about the
+atrocities, and on taking up a paper he would tremble lest it should
+contain news of a riot in his birthplace.
+
+When he read of the Miroslav panic he went there at once.
+
+"If it's really a riot she'll never come back to me," he brooded,
+wretchedly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The rumours of an impending catastrophe were assuming definite outline
+in Miroslav. A date was mentioned and tall Great-Russians in red
+shirts--specialists at the business--were said to have been seen about
+town. Great-Russia is and has always been strictly without the pale of
+Jewish settlement, it being one of the characteristic features of the
+anti-Semitic riots of the period that their leaders were imported from
+the rabble in those districts in which very few people had an idea what
+a Jew looked like.
+
+The Jews of Miroslav sent a snug bribe to Pavel's uncle, but their agent
+came back with the money. The governor had commissioned him to assure
+them that everything would be done to make an outbreak impossible, but
+"gratitude" he would not accept. The Jews took alarm. "If he doesn't eat
+honey," they said, in the phrase of a current proverb, "then it looks
+bad indeed." When a deputation of representative men called on him he
+lost his temper.
+
+"You Jews are too intense, that's what's the trouble with you," he said,
+blinking his eyes. "I have let you know twice that there is no cause for
+alarm, yet it seems that it is not enough for you." When he had softened
+down he talked quite at length, although in a haughty tone of authority
+and immeasurable aloofness, of the steps he had taken. The main point
+was that the Jews should not tempt people to lawlessness by betraying
+anxiety. He delivered quite a lecture on the point. The deputation came
+away greatly encouraged. They knew of the extensive business relations
+which the managers of his estates had with Jewish merchants, and they
+argued, among themselves, that a riot, involving as it usually did the
+wholesale destruction of Jewish property and a general demoralisation of
+business, could not but entail serious financial losses upon himself.
+This was in keeping with declarations made by the boards of trade at
+Moscow, Warsaw and Kharkoff, the three chief centres of Russian
+commerce, regarding the anti-Jewish crusade. These bodies had pointed
+out the importance of the Jews of the south as the prime movers of local
+industry, as almost the exclusive connecting link between the south of
+Russia and the world markets of Germany and England; accordingly, they
+had protested against the anti-Semitic campaign as a source of ruin to
+the economic interests of the whole empire. All this the members of the
+deputation were aware of, so they saw no reason to doubt the sincerity
+of the governor's pledges. His advice not to put the thought of a riot
+in the popular mind by a demonstration of timidity produced a strong
+impression.
+
+The upshot was that the Jews of Miroslav were afraid to be afraid. A
+singular mood took hold of them. Everybody made an effort to act upon
+the presumption that Miroslav was immune, that it was in an exceptional
+position, and at the same time everyone read suspense and mortal fear in
+the eyes of everyone else. It was like walking in one's stocking feet
+with a spectacular effect of making a noise. Jewish women still avoided
+the proximity of Christian men, and a Jewish face that did not look
+Jewish was still eyed enviously as a shield against violence. The only
+tangible manifestation of the spirit advocated by the governor was a
+slight lengthening of business hours. Since the beginning of the panic
+Jewish tradesmen had been closing their shops before it was quite
+dark--three or four hours earlier than usual. Now they compromised on
+keeping them open until the street lamps were lit. Nevertheless those of
+them who depended on Christian trade continued to treat their customers
+with a gentleness and a fawning attention that had nothing to do with
+the ordinary blandishments of the counter. Inveterate rogues among
+Jewish tradesmen became honest men. On the other hand a most respectable
+Gentile often yielded to temptation that amounted to downright robbery,
+while the license of "shady Christian characters" was asserting itself
+more portentously every day.
+
+A queer story came from one of the suburbs. When three Gentiles wearing
+red shirts entered an out-of-the-way house to inquire the road, their
+appearance frightened the two Jewish women they found there out of the
+place, whereupon one of these, in a frenzy of terror, jumped into a well
+and was drowned. Meanwhile the three strangers, finding themselves
+alone, stripped the house of its valuables--a finale which struck the
+fancy of a notorious thief and his gang, who then put on red shirts and
+made a practice of plundering Jewish houses after scaring away their
+occupants. The thief was known as Petroucha Sivoucha, which, foregoing
+the rhyme, may be rendered as Cheap Vodka Pete. When he was arrested at
+last he said, impersonating a simple-minded peasant:
+
+"But it was only Jewish stuff and everybody says a Gentile is welcome to
+it nowadays, that such is the will of our little father, the Czar."
+
+The riots continued to spread, and while they did, General Ignatyeff,
+the new Minister of the Interior, announced measure after measure
+against the Jews. In a country where every official is perpetually
+craning his neck toward the capital, it was only natural that an
+attitude like this on the part of the Minister of the Interior should
+create an atmosphere of anti-Semitic partiality amid which justice to
+the Jew became impossible. Ignatyeff knew of the widespread rumour as to
+the existence of an imperial ukase ordering the peasantry to plunder
+and commit violence upon the Jews. Apart from his official sources of
+information, the newspapers were full of instances showing the effect of
+that rumour, yet he did nothing to stop it or to disabuse the minds of
+the peasantry in that connection. This was interpreted by the officials
+as a sign that the rumour was not meant to be stopped, and it was not.
+
+Governor Boulatoff's encouraging answers to the Jews of his province
+brought to Miroslav hundreds of people from other towns. Some of these
+were victims of former atrocities, left without shelter in their native
+places; others had not yet been through an anti-Semitic outbreak, but
+dreaded one.
+
+While people from other provinces were flocking to Miroslav in quest of
+safety the leading Miroslav families were quietly sending their wives
+and children abroad and taking their valuables to the government bank.
+The offices of Dr. Lipnitzky and of Sender the Arbitrator, Vladimir's
+father, were visited by scores of panic-stricken people daily.
+
+"The rich people put their money and their plate in the bank," said a
+teamster's wife to Vladimir and his father, "but what shall we do with
+our traps?"
+
+"Don't worry, my dear woman, there will be no riot in Miroslav," the
+Arbitrator reassured her.
+
+"It's all very well to say don't worry," the woman retorted sharply.
+"You people can afford to say it, because your house is safe. But if
+they kill my husband's horse and destroy his truck, we'll have to go
+begging. It did not come easy, I can assure you." She burst into tears.
+"The years that it has taken to save it all up, the pinching, the
+scrimping--all in order that a thousand ghosts might have something to
+grab. And what are we going to do with ourselves? Where shall we hide?
+As to my husband and myself, well, all they can do is to kill us, but
+how about the children?" And again she burst into sobs.
+
+When an old woman who had two unmarried daughters, "both as handsome as
+a tree," described her despair concerning them, Vladimir's mother
+invited the girls to stay with her until the storm was over. And then
+scores of other mothers begged her, with heart-breaking lamentations and
+kisses, to take pity on their daughters also; which she could not do for
+sheer lack of room.
+
+The Vigdoroffs felt reasonably safe because Rasgadayeff, their Gentile
+landlord and friend, was sure to keep the marauders away. Indeed, the
+example of all previous outbreaks had shown that in most cases it was
+enough for any Gentile to tell the rioters that he was the proprietor of
+the house and that there were no Jews on his premises for them to pass
+cordially on, and Rasgadayeff was one of the conspicuous and popular
+figures in the Gentile community of the town. It is true that he was
+looking forward to an anti-Semitic upheaval with joy himself, but his
+liking for the Vigdoroffs was sincere.
+
+Vladimir's father went about among his depositors asking to be relieved
+of their money, jewelry or silver spoons. They refused to accept it.
+Finally he moved his iron safe to Rasgadayeff's apartment.
+
+Vladimir was in despair. He felt it quite likely that the panic should
+be father to a catastrophe, as the governor had said. Once when he spoke
+in this strain at his father's table, his mother remarked with light
+irony:
+
+"Look at the brave man. Look at the Cossack of straw."
+
+The retort struck cruelly home. He knew that his heart grew faint every
+time the anti-Semitic mobs pictured themselves vividly in his brain,
+although often, indeed, he had a queer feeling as if it would be
+disappointing to see Miroslav left out of the list of towns that were
+sharing in the tragic notoriety of the year, and visioned himself going
+through the experiences of a most brutal outbreak without facing its
+dangers. The tragedy of his people filled his heart. He watched them in
+their terror, in their misery, in their clinging despairing love of
+their children; he studied their frightened look, their shrinking,
+tremulous attitudes. Every Jewish woman he met struck him as a hunted
+bird, on the alert for the faintest sound, trembling over the fate of
+her nest. He saw many of them packing their things to flee, they did not
+know whither. Indeed, the whole historical life of his race seemed to
+have been spent in packing, in moving, in fleeing without knowing
+whither. "Oh, my poor, my unhappy people!" Vladimir said to himself, in
+a spasm of agony, yet with a glow of pleasure in calling them his
+people. In his heart of hearts he knew that while he told everybody to
+take courage his own mind was barren of conviction as to what was the
+best thing to do. He felt crushed. He lost his head.
+
+One day, as Vladimir walked along the street, his attention was arrested
+by a rough-looking young man who was circling round him, and
+scrutinising him now on this side, now on that. He felt annoyed. He was
+not sure that the young man was a Jew, and as he asked him sternly,
+"What are you looking at?" he was conscious of a little qualm of
+timidity.
+
+"Excuse me, sir," the other answered, in Yiddish. "I saw you at the
+synagogue that Friday night. Do you remember?"
+
+They paused. The young man had the manner of a Jewish horse-driver or
+blacksmith. He was robust and broad-shouldered with small very sparse
+teeth, somewhat bow-legged and somewhat cross-eyed. His coat was
+literally in tatters and gave off a strong smell of herring.
+
+"Well?" asked Vladimir.
+
+"I have been wanting to see you, sir, only I have been too bashful." He
+gave a smile, his tongue showing between his sparse teeth.
+
+Vigdoroff rather liked his manner and invited him to his father's house.
+On their way thither the young man said that his name was Zelig and that
+he was a cooper by trade, making a specialty of herring barrels. When
+they found themselves alone in Vladimir's room, Zelig grew still more
+bashful, and after surveying the room, to make sure that they were not
+overheard, he said:
+
+"I want to belong to the committee."
+
+"What committee?"
+
+"You need not be on the lookout with me, sir; I am no babbler."
+
+It appeared that there was a defence committee in town, with educated
+young men at the head, and that in case of a riot it was expected to
+fight "to the last drop of a fellow's blood," as Zelig phrased it. That
+there should be such a thing in Miroslav without him being so much as
+aware of its existence hurt Vladimir keenly.
+
+"I don't know anything about it," he said, blankly.
+
+"Don't you really?" said Zelig. "I was sure you were in it and that you
+could get me in, too. Why, everybody knows about it. Only the committee
+is strict, because if the police hears of it, they'll all be arrested.
+It's against the law." As he offered him more detail of the matter he
+became patronisingly enthusiastic and confided to him the names of Elkin
+and of several university students now on their vacation as the
+organisers and leaders of the movement. Vladimir knew these young men
+and his pain became sharper still.
+
+"But what good will it do?" he said, drily. "It will only lead to
+trouble."
+
+"Trouble! The idea of an educated man speaking like that! Can there be
+more trouble than the Jews are in now? I don't see why we should sell
+ourselves so cheap. Once we are going to be licked, why act like a lot
+of sticks? Let us pay them for their bother at least. Come what may,
+when they attack us, let us go to work and crack their skulls at
+least--with lumps of iron, clubs or even pistols. Let us fondle them so
+that a ghost may get into every bone of theirs." His words were
+accompanied with mighty swings of his shoulders and arms and these
+gesticulations of his had a peculiar effect on Vladimir. They stirred
+his blood, they hypnotised him. "What is the danger? They'll kill us?
+Let them. As if the life of a Jew were worth living! Besides, aren't
+they killing and maiming us anyhow?"
+
+"But look here," Vigdoroff said seriously. "The governor has promised us
+protection and he is perfectly sincere about it. Now if he learns that
+our people take the law in their own hands, it may do us great harm. It
+is a very serious matter."
+
+"Spit upon him, sir! I'm an uneducated man, but the governor--a ghost
+into his father's father!--may all he wishes the Jews befall his own
+head."
+
+"That's all true enough, but now he has promised us protection, and an
+organisation of that kind is against the law and may lead to trouble,"
+Vigdoroff said with perfunctory irritation.
+
+"And an organisation of rioters is not against the law? And robbing and
+killing innocent people is not against the law? Long life to you, sir;
+you're so wise, so educated and yet you are speaking like a baby. Look
+here, sir! If the governor--a plague take him--is as good as his word,
+and he does not allow the riot to get started, well and good. Then we'll
+call the bargain off. But suppose he proves to be neither better nor
+worse than all governors?"
+
+Zelig knew of a number of other Jewish artisans who were anxious to join
+the "committee," and he urged Vigdoroff to visit their gathering and to
+give them a talk like the one Zelig had heard from him at the Synagogue
+on that Friday night. "Oh, that was sweet as sugar," he said, kissing
+two of his dirty fingers. "You see, when it comes to striking a
+scoundrel's snout such a blow as will set his eyes raining sparks, we
+want no help. That we can manage ourselves, but we are only common
+people, and when a smart man like you says a couple of words, they
+simply go melting in a fellow's bones."
+
+"But I don't know anything about the 'committee.'"
+
+Zelig laughed familiarly. "Sender-the-Arbitrator's son doesn't know! If
+you only had the desire, you could belong to it yourself and introduce
+us fellows, too."
+
+"Very well. I'll consider it. And I should advise you men to do the
+same."
+
+"Consider it! We are only plain uneducated people, but we aren't going
+to do any considering. I have a sister, sir, and if a Gentile lays a
+finger on her he'll be a dead man, I can tell you that. Jewish blood is
+being spilled by the bucket and here you are talking of 'considering.'"
+He insisted that Vladimir should attend the meeting of his informal
+society, and Vladimir, completely in his power, promised to do so.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening, in a spacious barn, half of which was crowded with barrels
+of herring, Vladimir found Zelig and some fifteen chums of his. Zelig
+was playing with a huge iron key. He was employed here and the meeting
+was held by his employer's permission. For more than nine persons to
+assemble without a police permit is a crime; so it gave Vigdoroff
+satisfaction to reflect that he was now incurring risks similar to those
+incurred by Clara and her friends. The gathering seemed to be made up of
+mechanics and labourers exclusively. One of the men present was the
+sneering fellow whom Vigdoroff had seen at the synagogue. Of the others
+Vladimir's attention was attracted by two big burly young butchers with
+dried-up blood about their finger-nails, a chimney-sweep, who looked
+like a jet-black negro, with white teeth and red lips, and three men
+with medals from the late war which they apparently expected to act as
+an amulet against Gentile rowdies. The chimney-sweep sat apart, cracking
+sunflower seeds. Now and again he made as though to throw his sooty arms
+round somebody's neck and then burst into laughter over his own joke.
+All the others looked grave. They showed Vigdoroff much respect and
+attention. Even the sneering man made a favourable impression on him
+to-night. Only he himself was so ill at ease he could scarcely take part
+in the conversation. Other men came. When one of these proved to be
+Motl, the trunk-maker in his aunt's employ, Vigdoroff felt somewhat more
+at home.
+
+One of the retired soldiers took to bragging of the courage he and his
+two comrades had shown at the taking of Plevna, and when one of the
+other two signed to him to stop boasting, he said, with a blush:
+
+"I am saying all this because--because--what good did it do us? Does the
+Czar pat us on the head for it? We risked our lives and many of our
+people died under Plevna, and yet if we tried to settle in Great-Russia
+we would be kicked out neck and crop, wouldn't we?"
+
+"Indeed we would, war record, medal and all," one of the other two
+chimed in.
+
+"And why? Because we are Jews. We were not chased home from the firing
+line because we were Jews, were we?"
+
+"Talk of Great-Russia," somebody put in. "As if in a place like Miroslav
+we were allowed to live in peace."
+
+Another man assented with a sigh, adding: "If a thousandth part of the
+courage shown by the Jews in the war was shown in our self-defence
+against Gentiles, the Gentiles would have more respect for us."
+
+The conversation turned on the subject of pistols, but the proposition
+was overruled.
+
+"Before we get pistols and learn to use them we'll be asleep under a
+quilt of earth," said Zelig. "Why, what ails my cooper's hatchet, or a
+hammer, or a plain crowbar?"
+
+Every time Vigdoroff opened his mouth the faces of the others would
+become tense with expectation. But he had nothing to say except to ask
+an occasional question, and every time Zelig, playing with his enormous
+iron key, pressed him for a speech, he would adjure him, in a flutter of
+embarrassment, to let it go this time.
+
+They talked of the prospective fight in phrases like "forwarding a
+remittance to one's snout" or "pulling up sharp under a fellow's
+peeper," which amused and jarred on him at once. For the rest, there was
+a remarkable flow of common sense, humour and feeling. The gathering
+cast a spell over him. He had come with the partial intention of
+speaking against their scheme, yet now he felt that he could much more
+readily face a gang of armed Gentiles than betray a faint heart to
+these Jewish artisans. Moreover--and this was the great point with him
+at the present moment--he felt that with these men by his side he could
+fling himself into the very thick of the hottest fight. A peculiar sense
+of solemnity and of gratification came over him. He followed their talk
+reverentially. He humbly offered to call on one of the leaders of the
+Defence Committee and to apply for the admission of this group with
+himself as one of its members.
+
+His first dawn of consciousness as he opened his eyes next morning was
+of something exceedingly important and solemn which somehow had the
+flavour of herring. The active participation of a man like Elkin in the
+work of the Defence Committee was a source of disappointment to him. He
+usually kept out of Elkin's way, as much for his venomous pleasantry as
+for his revolutionary affiliations which he divined from his friendship
+with Clara. He wondered whether he meant to give the affair a
+revolutionary character. "He must have warned the other members against
+me as a silk stocking and a coward," Vigdoroff said to himself bitterly.
+"That's probably the way Clara describes me."
+
+The next morning he was surprised by a visit from Elkin himself. The
+revolutionist frowned as he spoke, but this was clearly a disguise for
+his embarrassment.
+
+"Look here, Vigdoroff," he said. "There has not been much love lost
+between you and me, but that's foolish--at a time like this anyhow. We
+must all work together. We are all Jews. I understand you have organised
+a number of good fellows. Let them join the others."
+
+Vigdoroff's heart beat fast, with emotion as well as with a sense of
+flattered pride. He would never have expected Elkin capable of such
+soulful talk. Moreover his speaking of himself as a Jew seemed to imply
+that he had abandoned Nihilism. "So we 'cowards' were not so very wrong
+after all," he thought to himself triumphantly.
+
+"In the first place," he answered, "it wasn't I who organised them. It
+was just the other way, in fact."
+
+"Well, anyhow, let them join the rest."
+
+"Of course we will. Only look here, Elkin. You have been frank with
+me----"
+
+"I know what you mean, but you need not worry. I won't get you in
+trouble," Elkin replied with his usual venom in his lozenge-shaped
+sneer. And then, kindly: "It is not as a Russian revolutionist that I
+have gone into this thing. I am one, as much as ever; I have not changed
+my views a bit, in fact. But that's another matter. All I want to say is
+that in this thing I am as a Jew, as a child of our unhappy, outraged,
+mud-bespattered people."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+THE NIHILISTS' GUARD.
+
+
+Pavel's mother, the countess, had not been in Miroslav since March. She
+lived in retirement on one of her estates in another province, in a
+constant tremour of fear and compunction. The image of Alexander II.
+bleeding in the snow literally haunted her. She took it for granted that
+Pavel had had a hand in the bloody plot, and she felt as though she,
+too, had been a party to it.
+
+To ascertain the situation with regard to the riot rumours Pavel called
+on his uncle, the governor. He found him dozing on a bench in his
+orchard, a stout cane in one hand and a French newspaper in the other.
+The old satrap was dressed in a fresh summer suit of Caucasian silk,
+which somehow emphasised the uncouth fleshiness of his broad nose. He
+was overjoyed to see his nephew, and he plunged into the subject of the
+riots at once and of his own accord. It was evidently one of those
+situations upon which he usually had to unburden his mind to somebody.
+
+"Can you tell me what they are up to in that great city of yours?" he
+said, referring to St. Petersburg and the higher government circles and
+blinking as he spoke. "There is an administration for you! Perhaps you
+younger fellows are smarter than we oldsters. Perhaps, perhaps." He took
+out a golden cigarette case, lit a cigarette and went on blinking,
+sneeringly.
+
+His words implied that Pavel, being one of the younger generation, was,
+morally at least, identified with the administration of the young Czar.
+
+"What do you mean, uncle?" he inquired.
+
+"What do I mean? Why, I mean that they don't want those riots stopped.
+That's plain enough, isn't it?"
+
+This was a slap at the doctrine of Pavel's party concerning the
+outrages, and he resented it as well as he could.
+
+"But you have no evidence for such an accusation, uncle," he said.
+"That's a mere theory of yours."
+
+"I knew you would stick up for your generation. Ha, ha, ha! Quite
+commendable in a young chap, too. Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"But where is your evidence?"
+
+"You want to know too much, Pasha. Too young for that. If they wanted
+the riots stopped, it would be a case of one, two, three, and there she
+goes! That's as much as I can tell you, and if you are really clever you
+can understand the rest yourself."
+
+"He is in league with his fellow fleecers, the Jewish usurers," Pavel
+remarked inwardly. "He simply cannot afford an anti-Jewish
+demonstration, the old bribe-taker."
+
+"Neither can you," a voice retorted from Pavel's heart, "though for
+quite different reasons."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Prince Boulatoff called on Orlovsky, the government clerk in whose house
+the local revolutionists held their meetings. The first thing that
+struck him was Orlovsky's loss of girth.
+
+"Hello, Aliosha," he said heartily, meeting him at the gate.
+
+"Why, Pasha!" The clerk flung himself upon him, and they exchanged three
+prolonged kisses.
+
+"By Jove," Pavel went on, "you are so changed I came near letting you
+pass. Why, what has become of your bulk, old boy? Have you been ill?"
+
+"Not exactly," the other answered, leading the way indoors; then, as his
+face broke into an expression of wan joy, he added: "Been in love, devil
+wrench it. I take these things rather too hard, I suppose, but that's a
+small matter. How have you been? Climbing upward in the service of the
+revolution, aren't you?"
+
+The room was the same. The huge tin samovar stood on the floor.
+
+"Well, and how is your Circle? First-rate fellows all of them," Pavel
+said.
+
+"Yes, indeed. Only we miss Clara now more than ever."
+
+"Anything specially the matter?" Pavel asked, colouring slightly.
+
+"Well, it really used to be a splendid circle--in our humble way, that
+is--but those riots have had a bad effect on us, deuce take it. Remember
+Elkin? It was he who got us together, and now it's he who has brought
+discord into our ranks. He is organising people who want to go to
+America. This is his hobby now."
+
+"Why, have the riots knocked all his socialism out of him?" Pavel asked,
+grimly.
+
+"Oh, no," Orlovsky answered with something like dismay. "I wouldn't say
+that. It's as an organiser of communistic colonies that he is going to
+emigrate. Only he says the Jewish people have a more direct claim upon
+him than Russia."
+
+"There is a revolutionist for you!" Pavel roared, bitterly. "I never did
+attach much importance to that fellow. The sooner he goes the better.
+God speed him."
+
+"You're too hard on him, Pasha. He's a good fellow. If we had Clara here
+she would straighten it all out. We miss her very much. As a matter of
+fact, it was she--indeed, I don't see why I shouldn't tell it to you--it
+was she with whom I was in love."
+
+"Was it?" Pavel asked, colouring.
+
+He paused, in utter confusion, and resumed, without looking at him.
+"Well, you must excuse me, Aliosha, but I fear your frankness goes a bit
+too far. Such things are not meant to be published that way."
+
+"Why? Why? What a funny view you do take of it, Pasha! Suppose a
+fellow's heart is full and he meets an intimate old friend of his, is it
+an indiscretion on his part if he opens his mind to him?"
+
+"I certainly am a friend of yours, and a warm one, too, old boy," Pavel
+replied with a smile. "But still, things of that sort are usually kept
+to oneself."
+
+Several other members came in. The gigantic samovar, the improvised
+sugar bowl, a huge loaf of rye bread, some butter and a lamp made their
+appearance on the table. Elkin dropped in later in the evening. He and
+Pavel had not been conversing five minutes when they quarrelled.
+
+"What you are trying to do is to blend the unblendable--to mix socialism
+with Jewish chauvinism," Boulatoff said in an ill-concealed rage.
+
+"Am I?" the other retorted with one of the most virulent of his sneers.
+"Can socialism be mixed with the welfare of the Russian people
+only?--the welfare of the Russian people with a pailful or two of Jewish
+blood thrown in; in plainer language, socialism can only be mixed with
+anti-Semitism. Is that it?"
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" Pavel hissed. "There are other Jews in the movement,
+lots of them, and one does not hear that kind of stuff from them. They
+have not sickened of the bargain on account of the riots."
+
+"I don't know whom you mean. Perhaps some of them are still under the
+spell of the fact that a Gentile or two will speak to them or even call
+them by their first names."
+
+"Calm down, Elkin," the judge with the fluffy hair and the near-sighted
+eyes interposed. "Come, you won't say that of Clara, for instance?"
+
+"No, not of Clara. But, then, you have not yet heard from her. Sooner or
+later she, too, will open her eyes and come to the conclusion that it is
+wiser to be a socialist for her own people than for those who will
+slaughter and trample upon them. I am sure she will give it all up and
+join the emigration--sooner or later."
+
+"The devil she will," Pavel said quietly, but trembling with fury.
+
+"Yes, she will," Elkin jeered.
+
+Pavel felt like strangling him.
+
+"She is too good a revolutionist to sneak away from the battlefield,"
+snapped Ginsburg, the red-headed son of the usurer, without raising his
+eyes from the table. "Of course, America is a safer place to be a
+socialist in. There are no gendarmes there."
+
+Elkin chuckled. "You had better save your courage for the time the riot
+breaks out in this town," he said. "You know it is coming. It may burst
+out at any moment, and when it does we'll have a chance to see how a
+hero like you behaves himself when the 'revolutionary instincts of the
+people are aroused.'"
+
+"Very well, then, let him go back to the synagogue," Pavel shouted to
+the others, losing all his self-control. "But in that case, what's the
+sense of his hanging around a place like this?"
+
+"Oh, I see, you are afraid I'll send spies to this house, are you? Well,
+there is less danger of that than that you should take a hand in the
+slaughter of Jewish shoemakers, blacksmiths or water-bearers as a bit of
+practical 'equality and fraternity,' I can assure you. But then, after
+all, you may be right. Good-bye, comrades! Don't judge me hard."
+
+Tears stood in Orlovsky's eyes. He, the judge, and Mlle. Andronoff, the
+judge's fianc�e, were for running after him, but the others stopped
+them.
+
+Left to themselves, the group of Nihilists began to discuss the coming
+outbreak. Everyone felt, in view of Elkin's charge, that whatever else
+was done, no effort should be spared to keep the mob from attacking the
+Jewish poor. Much was said about "directing the popular fury into
+revolutionary channels," and "setting the masses upon the government,"
+but most of those who said these things knew in their hearts that they
+might as well talk of directing the ocean into revolutionary channels or
+of setting a tornado upon the Russian government. Orlovsky alone took it
+seriously:
+
+"It begins to look something like, by Jove," he said beamingly. "We'll
+go out, and when the mob gets going, when the revolutionary fighting
+blood is up in them, we'll call out to them that Jewish usurers are not
+the only enemies of the toiling people; that the Czar is at the head of
+all the enemies of the nation. And then, by Jove, Miroslav may set the
+pace to all Russia. See if it doesn't."
+
+The son of the usurer called attention to the extreme smallness of their
+number, but he thought it enough to keep the mob from assaulting working
+people. He knew that his own relatives were all safe personally. As to
+his father's property, he said he would be glad if it was all destroyed
+by the "revolutionary conflagration," and he meant it.
+
+Pavel took no hand in the discussion. Instead, he was pacing to and fro
+mopingly.
+
+At last, after some more speeches, including one by the gawky
+seminarist, who came late and who disagreed with everybody else, it was
+decided that in case of a riot every Gentile member of the Circle should
+be out in the streets, "on picket duty," watching the mob, studying its
+mood and "doing everything possible to lend the disturbance a
+revolutionary character."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Eight Jewish women, including three little girls, were brought to the
+Jewish hospital of Miroslav from a neighbouring town, where they had
+been outraged in the course of an anti-Semitic outbreak. The little
+girls and the prettiest of the other five died soon after they arrived.
+The next day the Gentile district bubbled with obscenity. To be sure,
+there were expressions of horror and pity, too, but the bulk of the
+Christian population, including many an educated and tender-hearted
+woman, treated the matter as a joke. Where a Jew was concerned the moral
+and human point of view had become a reeling blur. The joke had an
+appalling effect. While the stories of pillaged shops kindled the
+popular fancy with the image of staved vodka barrels and pavements
+strewn with costly fabrics, the case of the eight Jewish women gave rise
+to a hideous epidemic of lust. There were thousands of Gentiles for whom
+it became no more possible to pass a pretty Jewish woman than to look
+into the display window of a Jewish shop without thinking of an
+anti-Semitic outbreak.
+
+The storm was gathering. The mutterings of an approaching riot were
+becoming louder and louder. Many Jewish shops were closed. Taverns
+serving as stations for stage lines were crowded with people begging to
+be taken away from the city before it was too late.
+
+The Defence Committee did not rest. The volunteers of the several Jewish
+districts were organised into so many sections, and a signal system was
+perfected by which the various sections were to communicate with each
+other. The raiders were sure to be drunk, it was argued, while the
+Defence Guard would be sober and acting according to a well-considered
+plan. The Guard was spoiling for a fight.
+
+The Nihilists "on picket duty" were strolling around the streets.
+
+Troops were held in readiness and placards had been posted forbidding
+people to assemble in the streets. Having ordered this, Governor
+Boulatoff announced himself ill and in need of a fortnight's leave of
+absence. When a delegation implored him to postpone the journey, he
+replied curtly that all had been done to insure order. He was in bad
+spirits and treated them with unusual rudeness.
+
+He left Miroslav in the morning. At about noontime of the same day the
+town was full of sinister rumours. One of these was about the poisoning
+of twelve Christian wells by Jews.
+
+A few yards off a retired government clerk, in dilapidated though
+carefully shined boots and with a red nose, stood in front of one of the
+governor's placards forbidding people to congregate in the streets, with
+a crowd of illiterate Gentiles about him.
+
+"'So by an All High ukase,'" he pretended to read, "'all people of the
+orthodox Christian faith are hereby ordered to attack the Jews, destroy
+their homes and shops, tear their pillows and drink their vodka and
+wine, take from them all they have plundered from Christians and
+administer a drubbing to them.'"
+
+As he proceeded he worked himself up to a tone of maudlin solemnity.
+
+"Aye, the day of reckoning hath come," he went on. "Let not a man of
+that unchristian tribe escape. Let the blood of Jesus and of his
+followers be avenged." Here, however, he spoiled it all by suddenly
+breaking off with a grin of inebriate roguishness.
+
+The revolutionary seminarist was watching this man philosophically.
+
+Similar scenes occurred in other neighbourhoods. When in one instance
+they had led to an attack upon a rabbinical looking old man who was left
+bleeding and unconscious on the pavement, the troops were ordered out.
+Then there was a scramble for rooms in Gentile hotels. Twenty-five
+rubles a day was charged for a ruble room, and there were a dozen
+applicants for each room. Still, those who had money contrived to find
+shelter. Much greater difficulty was encountered in many cases in
+getting a Christian cabman to take a Jew to a place of refuge. Many a
+Gentile rented part of his dwelling to Jews at an enormous price, a
+guarantee of safety being included in the bargain. Then, too, there was
+a considerable number of Gentiles who received some of their prosperous
+Jewish neighbours into their houses without accepting any offer of
+payment. Prosperous, because the poorer Jews for the most part lived
+huddled together in the Ghetto and were far removed from the Gentile
+population. At Pavel's instance Orlovsky went to take Clara's sister and
+her family to the house of a relative of his, but he found their door
+locked. They were taking refuge with the Vigdoroffs.
+
+Toward five o'clock, when the crimson sunlight was playing on the gold
+steeple of the Church of Our Saviour and the dazzling blue and white of
+hussars' uniforms, a small crowd of men and boys came running to the
+square in front of the sacred structure.
+
+"We want to carry out the holy vessels and banners," said a spokesman to
+an officer. "We hear the Jews have decided to set fire to God's temple."
+
+"We won't let them, you may be sure of that," the hussar officer
+answered. "You can safely go home."
+
+The crowd was slowly dispersing, when a man in a red shirt shouted:
+
+"Boys, I know a Jewish cellar where twenty-five Christian corpses are
+kept in empty vodka casks. Come on!"
+
+The officer did not interfere, and the crowd followed the red-shirt
+round the corner to a closed drink-shop. Half an hour later the streets
+in that locality rang with a drunken sing-song: "Death to the Jews!
+Death to the Christ-killers!"
+
+The shop was the property of a Jew, who was hiding with his family
+somewhere, but the street was inhabited by Gentiles. Meanwhile on a
+little square near Nicholas Street, the best street running through the
+Jewish quarter, a mob of five hundred men and boys, mostly from the scum
+of the population, had seemingly dropped from the sky. A savage
+"Hee-hee-hee!" broke loose, scattered itself, died away, and was taken
+up again with redoubled energy. All over the district Jews, men and
+women, most of them with children clasped in their arms, were running
+along the middle of the streets as people run at the sound of a volcano.
+Some were fleeing from their shops to their homes and some from their
+homes to the hiding places which they had prepared for themselves. The
+eyes of most of them had the hollow look of mortal fear. They ran in
+family groups, holding close to each other. Here and there a man, his
+feet giving way under him, sick and dizzy with fright, would slacken
+pace for a minute, as if giving himself up for lost; then, wiping the
+cold sweat from his face, he would break into a fresh run, more
+desperate than before. Some simply walked quickly, a look of grim
+determination on their faces. Here and there an aged man or woman, too
+feeble to run, were making a pitiful effort to keep up with the younger
+members of their families, who were urging them on with a look of
+ghastly impatience. Often a frail little woman with two or three
+children in her arms could be seen running as she might down a steep
+hill.
+
+Christians stood on the sidewalks, jeering and mimicking their fright
+and making jokes.
+
+Pavel watched the spectacle in a singular state of mental agitation. His
+heart leaped at sight of that chaotic mob as it paraded through the
+streets. Visions of the French Revolution floated through his brain,
+quickening his pulse. "So our people are _not_ incapable of rising!" he
+felt like exclaiming. "The idea of a revolution is _not_ incompatible
+with the idea of Russia!" It was as if all the sacrifices he had been
+making during the past few years had finally been indorsed by life
+itself, as if they were once for all insured against proving to be the
+senseless sacrifices of a modern Don Quixote. He could have embraced
+this mass of human dregs. And while his mind was in this state, the
+panic-stricken men, women and children with oriental features who were
+running past him were stranger than ever to him. He simply could not
+rouse himself to a sense of their being human creatures like himself at
+this moment. It was like a scene on a canvas. Clara did not seem to
+belong to these people; and when it came fully home to him that she
+did, and how these scenes were apt to stand between him and her, his
+heart grew faint within him; whereupon he felt like a traitor to his
+cause, and at the same time he was overcome with a sense of his inward
+anarchy and helplessness.
+
+Within the Jewish houses and on their courtyards there was a rush for
+sub-cellars, garrets, barrels. As they ran, clambered, tiptoed,
+scrambled, they smothered the cries of their frightened babies with
+several cases of unconscious infanticide as a result. Christians
+hastened to assert the immunity of their houses by placing the image of
+the Virgin (a Jewess!) in their windows; and so did many a Jew who had
+procured such images for the purpose. Some smashed their own windows and
+piled up fragments of furniture in front of their doors, to give their
+homes or shops the appearance of having already been visited by mob
+fury. Here and there a man was chalking crosses on his gate or shutters.
+
+While this was in progress several hundred Jews burst from gateways on
+and about Nicholas Street and bore down on the enemy with frantic yells
+in Russian and in Yiddish. They were armed with crowbars, axes, hammers,
+brass knuckles, clubs and what-not. As to the rioters they were mostly
+unarmed. Following the established practice of the crusade, they had
+expected to begin with some hardware store and there to arm themselves
+with battering rams and implements of devastation--an intention which
+they had not yet had time to carry out. At sight of this armed
+multitude, therefore, they were taken aback. Resistance was not what
+they had anticipated. Indeed, for some seconds many of them were under
+the impression that the crowd now descending on them was but another
+horde of hoodlums. They wavered. A crowd of Jewish butchers, lumberers,
+blacksmiths, truck-drivers--the advance guard of the Defence--made a
+dash at them, jeering and howling at the top of their lungs, in Yiddish:
+
+"Let's hack them to pieces! Lively boys! Let's drive right into their
+lungs and livers! Let's make carrot-pudding of them! Bravely, fellows,
+they're drunk as swine!"
+
+At this point Orlovsky and the seminarist instinctively joined the
+rioters. Elkin and Vigdoroff were on the other side. Pavel was looking
+on from the sidewalk.
+
+The Defence was mistaken. The rioters were almost as sober as they, for,
+indeed, it was another part of the stereotyped program of anti-Semitic
+riots that drink-shops should be among the very first targets of attack,
+so that the invaders might fit themselves for the real work of the riot
+by filling themselves full of Jewish vodka. But the Jews, as we have
+seen, descended upon them before they had torn down a single door. What
+the outcome would have been had the two opposing crowds been left to
+themselves is unknown, for a troop of hussars whose commander had been
+watching the scene charged on both when they were a few inches apart,
+and dispersed them both. Some fifty arrests were made, more than
+two-thirds of the prisoners being Jews. The arrested Gentiles went to
+police headquarters singing an anti-Semitic refrain and mimicking the
+frightened cry of Jewish women. Bystanders, some of the Nihilist
+"pickets" among them, shouted:
+
+"Don't fear, boys. You'll soon go home." And the answer was:
+
+"Sure we will, and then we'll give them a shaking-up, the scurvy Jews,
+won't we?"
+
+On another business street some boys threw a few tentative stones at a
+shop window. There being no interference on the part of the military, a
+mob of grown men sprang up. Doors were burst in and rolls of silk and
+woollen stuffs came shooting to the pavement.
+
+"Don't, boys; you had better go home," said a handsome young lieutenant,
+affecting the basso of a general.
+
+The raiders did not desist. While some went on emptying the shop into
+the street others were slashing, tearing or biting at the goods. They
+did it without zest and somewhat nervously, as if still in doubt as to
+the attitude of the authorities. A servant girl unrolled a piece of blue
+velvet over a filthy spot on the cobblestones before a lieutenant of the
+hussars, saying:
+
+"Here, sir! Why dirty the dear little feet of your horse? Here is Jewish
+velvet for them."
+
+"Thank you, my dear girl, but you had better go home," the lieutenant
+answered, smiling. A crumpled mass of unrolled fabrics, silk, woollen,
+velvet, satin, cotton, lay in many-coloured heaps on the pavement and in
+the gutter. The rioters, whose movements were still amateurish and
+lacked snap, soon wearied of the job. Several of them then broke into a
+grocery store and brought forth a barrel of kerosene.
+
+"What are you going to do?" asked the lieutenant.
+
+"We'll pour it over the stuff and set fire to it, your high nobleness."
+
+"That you can't do," the officer returned decisively. "You'll have to go
+home now."
+
+The rioters obeyed at once, many of them taking rolls of silk or velvet
+along.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+THE RIOT.
+
+
+The next morning the Police Master, "in order to avoid bloodshed,"
+issued a proclamation forbidding Jews to leave their houses. The order
+was copied from one that had been issued in other riot-ridden towns
+where, as the Miroslav Police Master knew but too well, it meant that
+the Jews were prevented from uniting for their self-defence and forced
+to await the arrival of the mob, each family in its own isolated
+lodgings. At the same time every soldier of the Jewish faith was called
+back to barracks, none of their number being included in the patrol,
+"for fear of embittering the Christian population."
+
+A peculiar air hung about the city, an air at once of festive idleness
+and suppressed bustle. It looked as it might on the eve of some great
+fair. Gentile workmen, staying away from their shops, were parading the
+streets, many of them shouldering axes, sledge-hammers, bores,
+chisels--their tools of useful toil to be turned to weapons of
+demolition and pillage; peasants from neighbouring villages were
+arriving with sacks, pails, tubs, spades, axes, pitchforks, their
+waggons otherwise empty and ready to be laden with booty. Among the
+people in the streets were gangs of trained rioters, come from towns
+where their work was at an end. The Jews were in their hiding places
+where they had passed the night. Pavel went about alone, avoiding
+company, asking himself questions to which his mind had no answer. He
+was filled with the excitement of a sportsman a few minutes before the
+beginning of a great race; with mental chaos and anxiety.
+
+At one corner of Cucumber Market a group of peasants took off their
+coarse straw hats and bowed to two policemen.
+
+"We are only ignorant peasants," they said. "Will your High Nobleness
+tell us when his Excellency the Police Master will give the order to
+start in?"
+
+"There won't be any order to start in," answered one of the policemen.
+"Move along, move along."
+
+The large market place became white with country people. They were
+getting restive. Their sacks and tubs were hungry for the goods of
+"Christ-killers." Four years ago many of these very people, dressed like
+soldiers, had been driven to the Balkans by a force known to them as the
+Czar, to fire at Turks without having the least idea what sort of
+creatures those people called Turks were or what they had done to be
+fired at. Now they had come here, in obedience to the same force, to rob
+and do violence to Jews. Among the out-of-town looters were two tramps
+who had it whispered about that they were two well-known generals in
+disguise, personal emissaries of the Emperor sent to direct the attack
+upon the Jews. These two were soon put in gaol, but that which they
+personified, the idea that the anti-Jewish riots met with the Czar's
+approval, was left at large. It seized upon soldier and civilian alike.
+People who usually kept at a timid distance from everything in the shape
+of a uniform, were now bandying jests with army lieutenants and police
+captains. The question this morning was not whether one wore the Czar's
+uniform or citizen's clothes, but whether one was a Jew or not. An
+unusual feeling of kinship linked them all together, and the source of
+that feeling was the consciousness that they were not Jews.
+
+It was about nine o'clock when a large seedy-looking man with a bloated,
+sodden face, stepped out of a vast crowd on Cucumber Market, and walked
+jauntily up to a deserted fruit stand. Snatching a handful of hickory
+nuts, he flung it high in the air, then thrust his two index fingers
+into his mouth and blew a loud piercing blast, puffing himself up
+violently as he did so. The sound was echoed by similar sounds in many
+parts of the crowded market place.
+
+"Hee-ee-eeee!" came from a thousand frantic throats.
+
+A long stick was raised with a battered hat for a flag, a hundred human
+swarms rushed in all directions, rending the air with their yells, and
+pandemonium was loose.
+
+There was a scramble for hardware shops, vodka shops and places where
+Jewish women were said to be secreted. Another few minutes and the
+streets were streaming with spirits. The air was filled with the odour
+of alcohol, with the din of broken glass, with the clatter of feet, with
+the impact of battering rams against doors; and coming through this
+general clang, thud and crash of destruction, were smothered groans of
+agony, shrieks of horror and despair, the terror-stricken cry of
+children, the jeers of triumph and lust. Here a row of shops, their
+doors burst in, was sending forth a shower of sugar, kerosene, flour,
+spices, coats, bonnets, wigs, dry goods, crockery, cutlery, toys; there
+a bevy of men were tearing up the street, piling up the cobble-stones
+which others were hurling at shop windows. Some men and women were
+carrying away bucketsful of vodka. Others were bending over casks,
+scooping out the liquid with their caps, hands or even boots; others
+were greedily crouching before barrels, their mouths to the bungholes.
+Here and there a man leaning over a broken cask was guzzling at its
+contents in a torpor of drunkenness. One rioter, holding a sealed bottle
+in his hand and too impatient to look for a corkscrew, smashed its neck
+against the sidewalk, while another man, by his side, broke two similar
+bottles against each other, and then cursed the Jews as he licked wine
+mixed with his own blood off his fingers. Nearby a woman carrying a shoe
+full of vodka toward a four-year-old boy who was seated on a pile of
+logs, yelled frantically:
+
+"Here, my darling! Taste it, precious one, so that when you grow up you
+may say you remember the day when the ill-gotten wealth of Jews was
+smashed by people of the True Faith."
+
+Women and children were serving vodka to the soldiers in cans, teapots,
+saucers, ladles, paper boxes.
+
+Orlovsky mounted a cask and began to shout, wildly:
+
+"Don't drink too much, boys! Don't befog your minds! For this is a great
+historical moment! Only why attack Jews alone? Behold, the Czar is at
+the head of all the blood-suckers in the land!"
+
+Scarcely anybody listened to him. The crowd was too deeply absorbed in
+its orgy. His voice was drowned by a thousand other sounds; his flashing
+eyes and his air-pounding fists were part of a nightmare of brutalised
+faces, attitudes of greed, gesticulations of primitive humanity run
+amuck. Presently, however, a group of belated rowdies came along in
+search of drink. They stopped in front of Orlovsky, eyeing the cask
+under his feet hopefully, the appearance of the bung showing that its
+contents were still intact.
+
+"Who are you, anyhow?" one of them said to the speaker. "It must be the
+Jews who sent you here to talk like that to good Christian people."
+
+"It isn't true. You're mistaken, old boy," Orlovsky answered hoarsely
+and breathing hard, but with a kindly, familiar smile on his flushed,
+perspiring face. "I am one of the best friends you and all the people
+ever had, I mean the good of all of you fellows. What's the use
+attacking Jews only, I say. We had better turn upon the authorities, the
+flunkeys of the Czar----"
+
+"Do you hear what he says?" one of his listeners said, in perplexity,
+nudging the fellow by his side.
+
+"He wants to get us in trouble, the sly fox that he is," somebody
+remarked.
+
+"Sure, he does. And it was by the Jews he was hired to come here. I know
+what I am talking about," growled the man who had spoken first. "Down
+with him, boys!"
+
+"Down with him!" the others echoed, thirstily.
+
+Orlovsky was pulled off and the group of belated rioters, re-enforced by
+some others, rushed at the cask savagely.
+
+Pavel was in another section of the same street. An old little Jewess
+whom he saw run out of a gate struck him as the most pathetic figure he
+had seen that day. Her fright gave her pinched little face something
+like a pout, an air of childlike resentment, as it were. A Gentile boy
+snatched off her wig and held it up, jeering to some bystanders,
+whereupon she covered her gray head with her bony hands, her faith
+forbidding her to expose her hair, and ran on with the same childlike
+pout. A sob of pity caught Pavel in the throat. He was about to offer to
+take her to a place of safety, when an elderly rowdy, apparently
+provoked by her outlandish anxiety about her bare hair, struck her a
+vicious blow on the head, accompanying it with profanity.
+
+"Cur!" Pavel shrieked, springing up to him and landing a smart whack in
+his face.
+
+The rioter looked round with surprise, muttered something and joined the
+looters.
+
+"Come with me, don't be afraid of the scoundrels," Pavel said, taking
+her by the hand. His heart was melting with pity for all the Jews at
+this moment. He felt a rush of yearning tenderness for Clara, and he
+wished she could see him taking care of this woman of her race.
+
+When he saw two marauders hand out gold and silver watches--the spoils
+of a raid--to the patrol, his blood was up again.
+
+"Is that what you are here for, thieves, vermin that you are?" he
+shouted.
+
+"Who is that fellow? Run him in!" somebody said.
+
+He fought desperately, cursing the authorities and calling to the mob to
+turn upon the soldiers, but he was overpowered and carried away half
+dead. When his identity was discovered at Police Headquarters, it caused
+a panic among the officials of the place. He was reverently placed in a
+carriage and taken to the Palace.
+
+The Defence Guard gave the rioters fight in two places, and a desperate
+encounter it was, but it was not to last long. Troops fell upon them,
+beat them with the butts of their rifles and hurled execrations at them
+for violating the police ordinance. Every Jew who was armed and every
+Jew who looked educated, Elkin among them, was arrested. The others were
+driven indoors. Vladimir was brought to police headquarters unconscious,
+with blood gushing from his head.
+
+When the first stack of bedding was pitched out on the sidewalk at
+Nicholas Street, from a residence over a tobacco shop, a man with watery
+eyes and a beautiful Great-Russian beard, one of the leaders, selected
+a big, plump, tempting feather-bed, and opened his pocket-knife with
+dignified deliberation. A crowd of about one thousand stood about in
+breathless silence, as though attending a religious ceremony of great
+solemnity. In order to prolong the spell, the man with the golden beard
+played with the feather-bed awhile, kneading, patting, punching it,
+brandishing his knife over it, like a barbaric high priest performing
+some mystic rite over a captive about to be sacrificed. Then, grasping
+it with sudden ferocity, his teeth a-glitter amid his enormous whiskers,
+his watery eyes flashing murder, he cut a quick, long gash, rent the
+pillow-case apart and hurled its snow-white entrails to the breeze.
+
+"Hurrah! Hurrah!" the mob yelled savagely, as the breeze seized the down
+and flung it in a thousand directions. "Hurrah! Hurrah!"
+
+The other feather-beds and pillows were ripped up, disemboweled and
+emptied by some of the other rioters. The summer-baked street seemed to
+be in the grasp of a snow-storm.
+
+It is one of the characteristics of the housewife of the Ghetto that she
+will put up with a poor meal rather than with an uncomfortable bed. The
+destruction of pillows and featherbeds is therefore the most typical
+scene of anti-Semitic riots in Russia. An Anglo-Saxon crowd viewing a
+prize-fight is not thrilled more deeply at sight of "first-blood" than
+were the rioters of Miroslav at sight of the first cloud of Jewish down.
+Now the outbreak was in full swing. Some of the men came out in
+fashionable clothes, their pockets bulging with plunder. The same work
+of devastation and pillage was going on in many places at once. About
+ten thousand raiders, most of them covered with down, were skirmishing
+about in groups of fifty to one hundred, preceded by one or two leaders
+and accompanied, in some cases, with a band of toy-drums and whistles.
+They went from street to street reconnoitering for houses or shops that
+had not yet been visited. Now it looked like a real anti-Jewish riot.
+Hurrah! Hurrah!
+
+After the pillows came the furniture and other household goods, every
+bit of it either shivered to flinders or carried off. While some were
+busy smashing things or throwing them out of the windows, others were
+stripping off their own clothes and arraying themselves in the best
+coats, trousers, dresses, bonnets, the raided houses contained. A frowzy
+drunken scrub-woman emerged in a gorgeous ball dress, a costly fur cap
+on her head, with two gold watches dangling from her neck. One of these
+gangs was led by a man who wore a woman's jacket of brown plush and a
+high hat. Another leader was decked out in a fashionable summer suit and
+a new straw hat, but his feet were bare and encrusted with dirt. A third
+gang was preceded by a flag consisting of the torn skirt of an outraged
+Jewish woman, the flag-bearer celebrating the exploit as he marched
+along.
+
+Following the looters were dense crowds of spectators, many of them well
+dressed and with the stamp of education and refinement on their faces.
+These included some well known families, members of the aristocracy, who
+watched the scenes of the day from their fashionable equipages.
+Officials, merchants, people of the middle class were out in their best
+clothes. Miroslav made a great gala day of it. The aristocracy was in a
+complacent, race-track mood. Occupants of carriages were exchanging
+greetings and pleasantries. Cavaliers were interpreting to their ladies
+the bedlam of sound, odour and colour. The appearance of a drunken jade
+in a ball dress, strutting with her arms akimbo, in besotted imitation
+of a lady, brought forth bursts of facetious applause. The well-dressed
+spectators tried to steer clear of down and feathers, but that was
+almost impossible. Many streets were so thickly covered with it that it
+deadened the sound of traffic. But then to catch some of the Jewish down
+on one's dress or bonnet or coat was part of the carnival. Where the
+street was strewn with jewelry, silverware or knicknacks, costly
+carpets, fabrics, many a noblewoman scanned the ground with the haze of
+temptation in her eye. "Isn't that cameo perfectly lovely!" And in many,
+many instances the cameo, or the silver tray, or the piece of tapestry
+found its way into the lady's carriage. This was during the early stage
+of the riot. Later on, when all restraint had been cast off, phaetons
+with crests on their sides were filled with plunder. The lame princess
+took home one carriage-load and hurried back for more. At every turn one
+saw a cavalier offering his lady some piece of finery as he might a rose
+or a carnation, and in most cases it was accepted, on the cogent ground
+that if left on the pavement it would be destroyed. On the other hand
+many of the rioters themselves disdained to appropriate anything that
+was not theirs. Very often when a Jew offered his assailants all the
+money he had about him as a ransom the paper money was torn to pieces
+and silver or coppers was flung out into the street, whereupon the crowd
+outside would fall over each other in a wild scramble for shreds of the
+paper or the metal. In one place a man offered the mob all he had in the
+world as a ransom for his daughter's honour, but his money was
+destroyed, his daughter assaulted and he himself mortally wounded. When
+a peasant woman was seen carrying an armful of linen and ribbons out of
+a small shop, she was stopped by one of the rioters.
+
+"Drop that, you old hag," he shouted. "We are no robbers, are we?" He
+added a torrent of unprintable Russian and kicked the woman into a swamp
+of syrup, whisky and flour. A short distance from this spot other
+peasant women were stuffing their sacks lustily, whereupon some of them
+preferred loud linen to black silk and cheap spoons to silver ones. In
+several places large sums of money were plundered. As the bank and check
+system was (and still is) in its very infancy in Miroslav, this meant in
+most cases that people of means were literally reduced to beggary. One
+family was saved from personal violence as well as from the loss of its
+fortune by an iron safe which the looters spent the whole day in vainly
+trying to open. But then, while they were at work on the safe, the
+mother of the family went insane with fright.
+
+Marching side by side with the leaders of the various bands were the
+competitors of Jewish tradesmen or mechanics who acted as guides, each
+pointing out the stores or workshops of his rivals. Thus Rasgadayeff,
+after instructing his wife and servants to see to it that no harm was
+done to his tenants, the Vigdoroffs, had gone to the scene of the
+outbreak, where he directed a crowd of rowdies to the store of his most
+formidable business opponent. The place was raided. A wealth of costly
+furs was cut to pieces and flung into the street, where cans of kerosene
+and pails of tar were emptied over the pile, while more than half as
+much again was carried off intact.
+
+"Boys, no stealing," Rasgadayeff said, in a drunken gibberish, when it
+was too late. All he could save from the marauders for the slashers was
+a sable muff over which two women rioters were fighting desperately.
+
+In the meantime Rasgadayeff's tenants and the people who sought shelter
+in their house,--the family of Clara's sister and the two or three
+strangers--had had a narrow escape from coming face to face with an
+infuriated band of hoodlums. Their presence had been indicated by a
+Gentile woman across the street. Mme. Rasgadayeff had tearfully begged
+the rioters to desist and after some parleying it had been agreed that
+the Vigdoroffs and their guests should be allowed to escape to their
+landlord's apartments before the mob invaded their rooms. From an attic
+window commanding the street Vladimir's parents then saw their household
+effects and their celebrated library--the accumulations of thirty
+years--flung out on the pavement where it was hacked, torn, slashed,
+trampled upon, flooded with water, mixed with a stream of preserves,
+brine, kerosene, vinegar, until the contents of eight rooms and cellar,
+all that for the past thirty years had been their home, were turned into
+two mounds of pulp. The Vigdoroffs watched it all with a peculiar sense
+of remoteness, with a sort of lethargic indifference. When old Vigdoroff
+saw the rioters struggling with the locked drawer of his desk, he
+remarked to his wife:
+
+"Idiots! Why don't they knock out the bottom?" When one of the mob hurt
+his fingers trying to rend an old parchment-bound folio, he emitted a
+mock sigh, quoting the Yiddish proverb: "Too much hurry brings nothing
+but evil." Only when Clara's little niece began to shake and cry in a
+paroxysm of childish anguish, upon seeing her doll in the hands of a
+little girl from across the street, did the whole family burst into
+tears.
+
+"I'm going to kill them. Let them kill me!" the old man said, leaping to
+his feet. But his wife and daughters hung to him, and held him back.
+
+Later on, when the rioters had gone, the family returned to their nest.
+The eight rooms were absolutely empty, as though their occupants had
+moved out.
+
+Gradually the various bands of rioters got into the swing of their work
+and did it with the system and method of an established trade. First the
+pavement was torn up, the cobblestones being piled up and then crashed
+into the windows; the padlocks were then knocked off by means of
+crowbars, hammers or axes and the doors battered down or broken in. Next
+the contents of pillows were cast to the wind, after which, the street
+having thus received its baptism of Jewish down, the real business of
+the rioters was begun by the wreckers and the looters. If the shop
+raided was a clothier's and the freebooters had not yet prinked
+themselves they would do so to begin with, some of them returning to the
+streets in two pairs of trousers, two coats and even two hats. After a
+house or a shop had been gutted and its contents wrecked or plundered it
+would be left to children who would then proceed to play riot on its
+ruins. Here and there a committee followed in the wake of some band,
+ascertaining whether some Jewish dwelling or shop had not been passed
+over, or whether a roll of woollen or a piece of furniture had not been
+left undestroyed. Not a chair, not a pound of candles was allowed to
+remain unshattered. Kerosene was poured over sugar, honey was mixed with
+varnish, ink or milk. It was hard, slow work, this slashing and rending,
+smashing and grinding. Some raiders toiled over a single article till
+they panted for breath. A common sight was a man or a woman tearing at a
+piece of stuff with broken finger-nails and bleeding fingers,
+accompanying their efforts with volleys of profanity at the expense of
+the Jews whose wares seemed as hard to destroy as their owners. In one
+place the mob was blaspheming demoniacally because a heap of ground
+pepper from a wrecked grocery store had thrown them into a convulsion of
+sneezing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The most hideous delirium of brutality was visited upon Paradise,--upon
+that district of narrow streets and lanes in the vicinity of Cucumber
+Market which was the seat of the hardest toil and the blackest need, the
+home of the poorest mechanics, labourers and tradesmen. As though
+enraged by the dearth of things worth destroying, the rioters in this
+section took it out of the Jews in the most bestial forms of cruelty and
+fiendishness their besotted minds could invent. The debris here was made
+up of the cheapest articles of furniture and mechanics' tools. It was
+here that several Jewish women were dragged out into the street and
+victimised, while drunken women and children aided their husbands and
+fathers in their crimes. One woman was caught running through a gale of
+feathers and down, her child clasped in her arms. Another woman was
+chuckling aloud in a fit of insanity, as she passed through the district
+in a cab, when she was pulled off the vehicle. A good-looking girl tried
+to elude the rioters by disguising herself as a man, but she was
+recognised and the only thing that saved her was a savage fight among
+her assailants. A middle-aged woman came out of a house with shrieks of
+horror, imploring an intoxicated army officer to go to the rescue of her
+daughter. The officer followed her indoors, but instead of rescuing the
+younger woman the only thing that saved her own honour was his drunken
+condition. One woman who broke away from two invaders and was about to
+jump out of her window, was driven back at the point of the bayonet by
+one of the soldiers in front of the house.
+
+"We are under orders not to allow any Jews to get out," he explained to
+her, good-naturedly.
+
+"Take pity, oh, do take pity," she was pleading, when her voice was
+choked off by somebody within.
+
+Every synagogue in town was sacked, the holy ark in many cases being
+desecrated in the most revolting manner; while the Scrolls of the Law
+were everywhere cut to ribbons, some of which were wound around cats and
+dogs. One woman met her awful fate upon scrolls from the Old Synagogue
+at the hands of a ruffian who had once heard it said that that was the
+way Titus, the Roman emperor, desecrated the Temple upon taking
+Jerusalem. Two strong Jews who risked their lives in an attempt to
+rescue some of the scrolls were seen running through the streets, their
+precious and rather heavy burden hugged to their hearts. The mob gave
+chase.
+
+"'Hear, O Israel!'" one of the two men shrieked, "'God is God. God is
+one.'"
+
+But the verse, which will keep evil spirits at a respectful distance
+from every Jew who utters it, failed to exercise its powers on the
+rioters. The two men were overtaken and beaten black and blue and the
+scrolls were cut to pieces.
+
+A white-haired musician, venturing out of his hiding place, begged the
+mob to spare his violin which he said was older than he; whereupon the
+instrument was shattered against the old man's head. On another street
+in the same section of the city another Jewish fiddler was made to play
+while his tormentors danced, and when they had finished he had to break
+the violin with his own hands. Pillows were wrenched from under invalids
+to be ripped up and thrown into the street. In one tailoring shop a
+consumptive old man, too feeble to be moved, was found with a bottle of
+milk in his trembling hands, his only food until his children should
+find it safe to crawl back to the house.
+
+"You have drunk enough of our milk, you scabby Christ-killer!" yelled a
+rioter as he knocked the bottle out of the tailor's hand and hit his
+head with a flat-iron.
+
+Little Market in front of Boyko's Court, the home of Clara's father and
+mother, glistened with puddles of vodka, in which cats and dogs,
+overcome by the alcoholic evaporations, lay dead or half-dead. Now and
+then a drunken rioter would crouch before one of these puddles, dip up a
+handful of the muddy stuff with his hands and gulp it thirstily, with an
+inebriate smile of apology to the bystanders. The corner of a lane
+nearby was piled with brass dust and with broken candle-stick moulds. A
+horse trough in the rear of the police booth was full of yolks and
+egg-shells. When the goose market next door to Boyko's Court was raided
+some of the fowls were stabbed or had their necks wrung on the spot,
+while others were driven into the vodka ponds on the square. A hundred
+geese and ducks went splashing through the intoxicating liquid,
+fluttering and cackling. A number of rioters formed a cordon preventing
+them from waddling out and then fell to stabbing them with knives and
+pitchforks, till every pool of vodka was red.
+
+"Jewish geese, curse them! Jewish geese, curse them!" they snarled.
+
+Not very far off, hard by a wall, a Jewish woman was giving birth to a
+child. Presently a Gentile woman with a basket half filled with loot
+took pity on the child and took it home, giving the policeman her
+address, while the mother was left bleeding to death.
+
+It was also in this district of toil and squalor where the most
+desperate fighting was done by the Jews. One lane was held by five of
+them against a mob of fifty for more than half an hour until the five
+men were lugged off to jail, and then the remaining inhabitants of the
+lane became the victims of the most atrocious vengeance in the history
+of the day. A mother defended a garret against a crowd of rioters by
+brandishing a heavy crowbar in front of them. The maddened Gentiles then
+scaled the wall and charged the roof with axes and sledge-hammers. Part
+of the roof gave way. The woman continued to swing the crowbar until she
+fell in a swoon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The houses of the richest Jews were closely guarded by the soldiery and,
+barring one exception, rioters were kept at a safe distance from them.
+Even the house of Ginsburg, the most repugnant usurer in town, was taken
+care of. Some army officers, indeed, directed various bands of roughs to
+the place on the chance of having their promissory notes destroyed, but
+the roughs failed to get near it. There was an instinct in official
+circles that the wrecking of wealthy Jewish homes was apt to develop in
+the masses a taste for playing havoc with "seats of the mighty." For
+after all a man like Ginsburg and a titled plunderer of peasant lands
+are not without their bonds of affinity. The great point was that in
+dealing with Jewish magnates Popular Fury was liable to confuse the Jew
+with the magnate, the question of race with the question of class.
+
+As to the Gentile magnates their attitude toward the rioters was one
+which seemed to say: "You fellows and we are brothers, are we not?" And
+their mansions were safe. Members of the gentry openly joined the
+rioters, some out of sheer hatred of the race, others for the sport of
+the thing, still others honestly succumbing to the contagion of
+beastliness. In the horrid saturnalia of pillage, destruction and rapine
+many a peaceful citizen was drawn into the vortex. A man stands looking
+on curiously, perhaps even with some horror, and gradually he becomes
+restless as do the legs of a dancer when the floor creaks under a medley
+of sliding feet. But then there was a large number of Gentiles who acted
+like human beings. Among these were members of the priesthood, although
+there were holy "little fathers" who pointed out the houses of their
+Jewish neighbours to the mob.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The best friend of the Jews during that day of horrors was Vodka. The
+sons of Israel were made a safety valve of by the government and Vodka
+rendered a similar service to the sons of Israel. It saved scores of
+lives and the honour of scores of women. Hundreds of the fiercest
+rioters were so many tottering wrecks before the atrocities were three
+hours old, while by sundown the number of dead and wounded looters was
+as large as the number of murdered and maimed Jews. Two men were found
+drowned in casks of spirits into which they had apparently let their
+heads sink in a daze of intoxication. A handsome young rioter in a
+crimson blouse staggered over the balustrade of a balcony, hugging a
+Jewish vase, and was killed on the spot. One man was killed in a
+struggle over a Jewish woman and several others had simply drunk
+themselves to death, while a countless number were bruised and disabled
+in the general m�l�e, falling, fighting, injuring themselves with their
+own weapons of destruction.
+
+Toward evening some of the streets had the appearance of a battlefield
+after action. Hundreds of men and women, swollen, bleeding, were
+wallowing in the gutters, in puddles, on the sidewalks, between piles of
+debris, in a revolting stupor of inebriety. Some of them slept several
+hours in this condition and then struggled to their feet to resume
+drinking. The trained rioters had thoughtfully seen to it that some
+casks of vodka, as also some accordions, should be reserved for the
+closing scenes of the bacchanalia.
+
+The moon came out. Her soft mysterious light streamed through the rugged
+holes of shattered unlit windows; over muddy pavements carpeted with
+silks, velvets, satins; over rows and rows of debris-mounds on streets
+snowed under with down; over peasants driving home with waggons laden
+with plunder; over the ghastly figures of sprawling drunkards and the
+beautiful uniforms of patrolling hussars. Silence had settled over most
+of the streets. For blocks and blocks, east and west, north and south,
+there was not an unbroken window pane to be seen, not a light to glitter
+in the distance. The Jewish district, the liveliest district in town,
+had been turned into a "city of death." In other places one often saw a
+single illuminated house on a whole street of darkness and ruin. The
+illuminated house was invariably the abode of Christians. Officers on
+horseback were moving about musingly, the hoofs of their horses silenced
+by thick layers of down. Most streets were impassable for the debris.
+Here and there the jaded sounds of revelry were heard, but there were
+some peasants who had come out of the day's rioting in full control of
+their voices.
+
+Seated on empty boxes and barrels, their fingers gripping new
+accordions, their eyes raised to the moon, a company of rioters on
+Little Market were playing and singing a melancholy, doleful tune. The
+Jews were in their hiding places.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+LIGHT OUT OF DARKNESS.
+
+
+Clara was with her parents in a White-Russian town. The inn at which
+they were stopping was entered through a vast yard, partly occupied by
+fruit-barns. It was the height of the fruit season. The barns and part
+of the yard were lined with straw upon which rose great heaps of apples
+and pears of all sizes and colours. Applewomen, armed with baskets, were
+coming and going, squatting by the juicy mounds, sampling them,
+haggling, quarrelling mildly. Now and then a peasant waggon laden with
+fruit would come creaking through the open gate, attracting general
+attention. A secluded corner of the yard was Clara's and her mother's
+favourite spot for their interminable confidences, a pile of large bulky
+logs serving them as a sofa. The people they saw here and in the streets
+were much shabbier and more insignificant-looking than those of their
+native town and the south in general. The Yavners lived here
+unregistered, as did most of the guests at the inn, the local police
+being too lazy and too "friendly" with the proprietor to trouble his
+patrons about having their passports vised at the station house.
+
+The town was a stronghold of Talmudic learning, and Rabbi Rachmiel felt
+as a passionate art student does on his first visit to Italy. When the
+first excitement of the meeting was over the local scholars were of
+more interest to him than his daughter. His joy was marred by his fear
+of being sent to Siberia in case Clara's (to her parents she was still
+Tamara) identity was discovered by the local police; but he had a rather
+muddled idea of the situation and his wife assured him that there was no
+danger. As to Hannah, she was not the woman to flee from her daughter
+for fear of the police. She could not see enough of Clara. She
+catechised her on her political career and her personal life, and Clara,
+completely under the spell of the meeting and in her mother's power,
+told her more than she had a mind to. What she told her was, indeed, as
+foreign to Hannah's brain as it was to her husband's; but then, in her
+practical old-fashioned way, she realised that her daughter was working
+in the interests of the poor and the oppressed, though she never
+listened to Clara's expositions without a sad, patronising smile.
+
+One day, during one of their intimate talks on the wood-pile, the old
+woman demanded:
+
+"Tell me, Clara, are you married?"
+
+"What has put such an idea in your mind?" Clara returned, reddening. "If
+I were I would have told you long ago."
+
+"Tamara, you are a married woman," Hannah insisted, looking hard at her
+daughter.
+
+"I tell you I am not," Clara said testily.
+
+"Then why did you get red in the face when I said you were? People don't
+get red without reason, do they?"
+
+The young woman's will power seemed to have completely deserted her. "I
+am engaged," she said, "but I am not married, and--let me alone, mamma,
+will you?"
+
+"If you are engaged, then why were you afraid to say so? Is it anything
+to be ashamed of to be engaged? Foolish girl that you are, am I a
+stranger to you? Why don't you tell me who he is, what he is?"
+
+"He is a nice man and that's all I can tell you now, and pray don't ask
+me any more questions, mamma darling."
+
+After a pause the old woman gave her daughter a sharp look and said in a
+whisper: "He must be a Christian, then. Else you wouldn't be afraid to
+tell me who he is."
+
+"He is not," Clara answered lamely, her eyes on a heap of yellow apples
+in the distance.
+
+"He _is_ a Christian, then," Hannah said in consternation. "May the
+blackest ill-luck strike you both."
+
+"Don't! Don't!" Clara entreated her, clapping her hand over her mother's
+mouth, childishly.
+
+"What! You _are_ going to marry a Christian? You _are_ a
+convert-Jewess?" Hannah said in a ghastly whisper.
+
+"No, no, mamma! I have not become a Christian, and I never will. I swear
+I won't. As to him, he is the best man in the world. That's all I can
+tell you for the present. Oh, the young generation is so different from
+the old, mamma!" she snuggled to her, nursing her cheek against hers and
+finding intense pleasure in a conscious imitation of the ways of her own
+childhood; but she was soon repulsed.
+
+"Away from my eyes! May the Black Year understand you. I don't," the old
+woman said. Her face wore an expression of horrified curiosity. Had
+Clara faced her fury with a pugnacious front, it might have led to an
+irretrievable rupture; but she did not. While her mother continued to
+curse, she went on fawning and pleading with filial self-abasement,
+although not without an effect of trying to soothe an angry baby.
+Hannah's curses were an accompaniment to further interrogations and
+gradually became few and far between. Her daughter's engagement and her
+whole mysterious life appealed to an old-fashioned sense of romance and
+adventure in the elderly Jewess; also to a vague idea of a higher
+altruism. Her motherly pride sought satisfaction in the fact that her
+daughter was so kind-hearted as to stake her life for the poor and the
+suffering, and so plucky that she braved the Czar and all his soldiers.
+"It's from me she got all that benevolence and grit," Hannah said to
+herself. As to Rabbi Rachmiel, he asked no questions and his wife was
+not going to disturb his peace of mind.
+
+"There is no distinction between Jew and Gentile among us," Clara said
+in the course of her plea.
+
+"No, there is not," her mother returned. "Only the Gentiles tear the
+Jews to pieces." And at this Clara remembered that circumstance which
+lay like a revolting blemish on her conscience--the attitude of the
+revolutionists toward the riots.
+
+However, these matters got but little consideration from her now. She
+was taken up with her parents. The peculiar intonation with which her
+father chanted grace interested her more than all the "politics" of the
+world. She recognised these trifles with little thrills of joy, as
+though she had been away from home a quarter of a century. When her
+mother took out a pair of brass-rimmed spectacles on making ready to
+read her prayers, Clara exclaimed, with a gasp of unfeigned anguish:
+
+"Spectacles! Since when, mamma darling, since when?"
+
+"Since about six months ago. One gets older, foolish girl, not younger.
+When you are of my age you'll have to use spectacles, too, all your
+Gentile wisdom notwithstanding."
+
+Another day or two and her communions with her mother and the odour of
+apples and pears began to pall on her. She missed Pavel. Her mind was
+more frequently given over to musings upon that atmosphere amid which he
+and she were a pair of lovers than to the fascination of being with her
+father and mother again. She felt the centuries that divided her world
+from theirs more keenly every day. Once, after a long muse by the side
+of her mother, who sat darning stockings in her spectacles, she roused
+herself, with surprise, to the fact that Sophia was no more, that she
+had been hanged. It seemed incredible. And then it seemed incredible
+that she, Clara, was by her mother's side at this moment. She took
+solitary walks, she sought seclusion indoors, she was growing fidgety.
+The change that had come over her was not lost upon her mother.
+
+"You have been rather quick to get tired of your father and mother,
+haven't you?" Hannah said to her one day. "Grieving for your Christian
+fellow? A break into your bones, Tamara!"
+
+Clara blushed all over her face. She was more than grieving for Pavel.
+She pictured him in the hands of the gendarmes or shot in a desperate
+fray with them; she imagined him the victim of the ghastliest
+catastrophes known to the movement, her heart was torn by the wildest
+misgivings.
+
+One afternoon, when her mother was speaking to her and she was making
+feeble efforts to disguise her abstraction, Hannah, losing patience,
+flamed out:
+
+"But what's the use talking to a woman whose mind has been bedeviled by
+a Gentile!"
+
+"Don't, then," Clara snapped back, with great irritation.
+
+"The Black Year has asked you to arrange this meeting. Why don't you go
+back to your Gentile? Go at once to him or your heart will burst."
+
+Clara was cut to the quick, but she mastered herself.
+
+When she read in the newspapers and in a letter from her sister accounts
+of the Miroslav outbreak, her agony was far keener than that of her
+father and mother. The most conspicuous circumstance in every report of
+the riot was the bestial ferocity with which the mob had let itself
+loose on the homes of the poorest and hardest working population in
+those districts of Miroslav known as Paradise and Cucumber Market. She
+knew that neighbourhood as she knew herself. She had been born and bred
+in it. The dearest scenes of her childhood were there. Tears of
+homesickness and of a sense of guilt were choking her.
+
+For the first time it came home to her that these thousands of Jewish
+tailors, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, lumber-drivers, capmakers, coopers,
+labourers, who toiled from fourteen to fifteen hours a day and lived
+literally on the verge of starvation, were as much at least entitled to
+that hallowed name, "The People," as the demonised Russians who were now
+committing those unspeakable atrocities upon them. Yet the organ of her
+party had not a word of sympathy for them! Nay, it treated all Jews,
+without distinction, as a race of fleecers, of human leeches! Russian
+literature of the period was teeming with "fists," or village usurers,
+types of the great Russian provinces in which Jews were not allowed to
+dwell. Drunkenness in these districts was far worse than in those in
+which the liquor traffic was in Jewish hands. And the nobility--was it
+not a caste of spongers and land-robbers? Yet who would dare call the
+entire Russian people a people of human sharks, liquor-dealers and
+usurers, as it was customary to do in the case of the Jews? A Russian
+peasant or labourer was part of the People, while a Jewish tailor,
+blacksmith or carpenter was only a Jew, one of a race of profit-mongers,
+sharpers, parasites.
+
+And this "People," for whose sake she was staking her liberty and her
+life, was wreaking havoc on Jews because they were Jews like her father,
+like her mother, like herself.
+
+People at the inn were talking of the large numbers of Jews that were
+going to America. "America or Palestine?" was the great subject of
+discussion in the three Russian weeklies dedicated to Jewish interests.
+One day Hannah said, gravely:
+
+"I tell you what, Tamara. Drop your Gentile and the foolish work you are
+doing and let us all go to America."
+
+Clara smiled.
+
+"Will it be better if you are caught and put in a black hole?"
+
+Clara smiled again. There was temptation in what her mother said. Being
+in Russia she was liable to be arrested at any moment; almost sure to
+perish in a solitary cell or to be transported to the Siberian mines for
+twenty years. And were not the riots enough to acquit her before her own
+conscience in case she chose to retire from a movement that was
+primarily dedicated to the interests of an anti-Semitic people; from a
+movement that rejoiced in the rioters and had not a word of sympathy for
+their victims?
+
+But an excuse for getting out of the perils of underground life was not
+what she wanted. Rather did she wish for a vindication of her conduct in
+remaining in the Party of the Will of the People in spite of all "the
+People" did against her race. She was under the sway of two forces, each
+of them far mightier than any temptation to be free from danger. One of
+these two forces was Pavel. The other was Public Opinion--the public
+opinion of underground Russia. According to the moral standard of that
+Russia every one who did not share in the hazards of the revolutionary
+movement was a "careerist," a self-seeker absorbed exclusively in the
+feathering of his own nest; the Jew who took the special interests of
+his race specially to heart was a narrow-minded nationalist, and the
+Nihilist who withdrew from the movement was a renegade. The power which
+this "underground" public opinion exerted over her was all the greater
+because of the close ties of affection which, owing to the community of
+the dangers they faced, bound the active revolutionists to each other.
+Pavel and Clara were linked by the bonds of love, but she would have
+staked her life for every other member of the inner circle as readily as
+she would for him.
+
+They were all particularly dear to her because they were a handful of
+survivors of an epidemic of arrests that had swept away so many of their
+prominent comrades. The notion of these people thinking of her as a
+renegade was too horrible to be indulged in for a single moment.
+Besides, who would have had the heart to desert the party now that its
+ranks had been so decimated and each member was of so much value? Still
+more revolting was such an idea to Clara when she thought of the
+Nihilists who had died on the scaffold or were dying of consumption or
+scurvy or going insane in solitary confinement. Sophia, strangled on the
+gallows, was in her grave. Would she, Clara, abandon the cause to which
+that noble woman had given her life?
+
+The long and short of it is that it would have required far more
+courage on her part to go to America and be safe from the Russian
+gendarmes than to live under constant fire as an active "illegal" in her
+native country.
+
+This was the kind of thoughts that were occupying her mind at this
+minute. While her mother was urging her to go to America, she exclaimed
+mutely: "No, Sophia, I shan't desert the cause for which they have
+strangled you. I, too, will die for it." It seemed easy and the height
+of happiness to end one's life as Sophia had done. She saw her dead
+friend vividly, and as her mind scanned the mysterious, far-away image,
+the dear, familiar image, her bosom began to heave and her hand clutched
+her mother's arm in a paroxysm of suppressed tears.
+
+"Water! Water!" Hannah cried into the open doorway. When the water had
+been brought and Clara had gulped down a mouthful of it and fixed a
+faint, wistful smile on her mother, Hannah remarked fiercely:
+
+"The ghost knows what she is thinking of while people talk to her."
+
+Clara went out for a long walk over the old macadamised road that ran
+through the White-Russian town on its way to St. Petersburg. She loved
+to watch the peasant wagons, and, early in the morning and late in the
+evening, the incoming and outgoing stage-coaches. She knew that she was
+going to stay in the thick of the struggle, come what might. Yet the
+riots--more definitely the one of Miroslav--lay like a ruthless living
+reproach in her heart. She wanted to be alone with this Reproach, to
+plead with it, to argue with it, to pick it to pieces. She walked
+through the shabby, narrow streets and along the St. Petersburg highway,
+thinking a thousand thoughts, but she neither pleaded with that
+Reproach, nor argued with it, nor tried to pick it to pieces. Her mind
+was full of Pavel and of Sophia and of her other comrades, living or
+dead. "It is all very well for me to think of going to America and be
+free from danger," she said to herself. "But can Sophia go there? or
+Hessia?"
+
+At one moment it flashed through her brain that to be true to the people
+was to work for it in spite of all its injustices, even as a mother did
+for her child, notwithstanding all the cruelties it might heap on her.
+The highest bliss of martyrdom was to be mobbed by the very crowd for
+whose welfare you sacrificed yourself. To be sure, these thoughts were
+merely a reassertion of the conflict which she sought to settle. They
+offered no answer to the question, Why should she, a Jewess, stake her
+life for a people that was given to pillaging and outraging, to
+mutilating and murdering innocent Jews? They merely made a new statement
+of the fact that she was bent upon doing so. Yet she seized upon the new
+formulation of the problem as if it were the solution she was craving
+for. "I shall bear the cross of the Social Revolution even if the
+Russian people trample upon me and everybody who is dear to me," she
+exclaimed in her heart, feeling at peace with the shade of Sophia.
+
+She walked home in a peculiar state of religious beatitude, as though
+she had made a great discovery, found a golden key to the gravest
+problem of her personal life. Then, being in this uplifted frame of
+mind, she saw light breaking about her. Arguments were offering
+themselves in support of her position. When Russia was free and the
+reign of fraternity and equality had been established the maltreatment
+of man by man in any form would be impossible. Surely there would be no
+question of race or faith then. Anti-Jewish riots were now raging? All
+the more reason, then, to work for Russia's liberty. Indeed, was not
+the condition of the Jews better in free countries than in despotic
+ones? And the Russian peasant, would he in his blind fury run amuck the
+way he did if it were not for the misery and darkness in which he was
+kept by his tyrants? Her heart went out to the mob that was so ignorant
+as to attack people who had done them no harm. And then, once the great
+Reproach had been appeased in her mind, the entire Jewish question,
+riots, legal discriminations and all, appeared a mere trifle compared to
+the great Human Question, the solution of which constituted the chief
+problem of her cause.
+
+The next time her mother indulged in an attack upon Gentiles in general
+and Clara's "Gentile friends" in particular the young woman begged her,
+with tears in her voice, to desist:
+
+"Look at her! I have touched the honour of the Impurity," the old woman
+said, sneering.
+
+"Oh, they are not the Impurity, mamma darling," Clara returned ardently.
+"They are saints; they live and die for the happiness of others. If you
+only knew what kind of people they were!"
+
+"She has actually been bedeviled, as true as I am a daughter of Israel.
+Jews are being torn to pieces by the Gentiles; a Jew isn't allowed to
+breathe, yet she----"
+
+"Oh, they are a different kind of Gentiles, mamma. When that for which
+they struggle has been realised the Jew will breathe freely. Our people
+have no trouble in a country like England. Why? Because the whole
+country has more freedom there. Besides, when the demands of my 'Gentile
+friends' have been realised the Christian mobs won't be so uneducated,
+so blind. They will know who is who, and Jew and Gentile will live in
+peace. All will live in peace, like brothers, mamma."
+
+Hannah listened attentively, so that Clara, elated by the apparent
+effect of her plea, went on, going over aloud the answer that she gave
+her own conscience. When she paused, however, Hannah said with a shrug
+of her shoulders and a mournful nod of her head:
+
+"So you are bound to rot away in prison, aren't you?"
+
+"Don't talk like that, mamma, dear, pray."
+
+"Why shouldn't I? Has somebody else given birth to you? Has somebody
+else brought you up?"
+
+"But why should you make yourself uneasy about me? I _won't_ rot away in
+prison, and if I do, better people than I have met with a fate of that
+kind. I wish I were as good as they were and died as they did."
+
+"A rather peculiar taste," Hannah said with another shrug which seemed
+to add: "She has gone clear daft on those Gentile books of hers, as true
+as I live."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Clara remained in the White-Russian town two days longer than her
+parents. At the moment of parting her mother clung to her desperately.
+
+"Will I ever see you again?" Hannah sobbed. "Daughter mine, daughter
+mine! Will my eyes ever see you again?"
+
+The old Talmudist was weeping into a blue bandanna.
+
+As Clara walked back to her lodging alone the streets of the strange
+town gave her an excruciating sense of desolation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+PAVEL BECOMES "ILLEGAL."
+
+
+A month had elapsed. Clara was in a train, bound for Moscow, where her
+lover was awaiting her arrival. The nearer she drew to her destination
+the more vivid grew his features in her mind and the more violent was
+her fidget. "I am madly in love with him," she said to herself, and the
+very sound of these words in her mind were sweet to her. The few weeks
+of separation seemed to have convinced her that the power of his love
+over her was far greater than she had supposed. Things that had preyed
+upon her mind before now glanced off her imagination. She wept over the
+fate of Hessia and her prison-born child, yet she felt that if Pavel
+asked her to marry him at once she would not have the strength to resist
+him. Nay, to marry him was what her heart coveted above all else in the
+world.
+
+Being an "illegal," she had to slip into the big ancient city quietly.
+As she passed through the streets, alone on a droshky, she made a mental
+note of the difference in general pictorial effect between Moscow and
+St. Petersburg, but she was too excited to give her mind to anything in
+particular.
+
+Her first meeting with Pavel took place in a large caf�, built something
+like a theatre, with two tiers of stalls, a gigantic music box sending
+up great waves of subdued sound from the main floor below. He waited
+for her in front of the building. When she came they just shook hands
+smilingly, and he led the way up one flight of stairs to one of the
+stalls--a fair-sized, oblong private room, its walls covered with red
+plush, with upholstered benching to match.
+
+"I am simply crazy, Clanya!" he whispered, pressing her to him
+tremulously.
+
+At first they both experienced a sense of desuetude and awkwardness, so
+that in spite of his stormy demonstrations he could not look her full in
+the face. But this soon wore off. They were overflowing with joy in one
+another.
+
+A waiter, all in white, suave and hearty as only Great-Russian waiters
+know how to be, brought in "a portion of tea," served in attractive
+teapots of silver, with a glass for the man and a cup for the lady, and
+retired, shutting the door behind him, which subdued the metallic melody
+that filled the room still further and added to the sense of mystery
+that came from it. They talked desultorily and brokenly, of her parents
+and of the revolutionists gathered in Moscow. The subject of the
+Miroslav riot was tactfully broached by Clara herself, but she strove to
+give this part of their incoherent conversation the tone in which people
+usually discuss some sad but long-forgotten event, and she passed to
+some other topic as quickly and imperceptibly as she could. That he had
+seen that riot he did not tell her, though he once caught himself on the
+point of blurting it all out.
+
+When she asked him about the general state of the movement he gradually
+warmed up. The outlook was brilliant, he said.
+
+Urie, the tall blond nobleman with the strikingly Great-Russian
+features, who had played the part of cheesemonger on Little Garden
+Street, St. Petersburg, was in Moscow now, mending the shattered
+organisation. He was the centre of a busy group of revolutionists, Jews
+as well as Slavs. Several well-known veterans of both nationalities, who
+had been living in foreign countries during the past year or two, were
+expected to return to Russia. Everybody was bubbling with enthusiasm and
+activity.
+
+"And your fiery imagination is not inclined to view things in a rather
+roseate light, is it?" she asked, beaming amorously.
+
+"Not a bit," he replied irascibly. "Wait till you have seen it all for
+yourself. The reports from the provinces are all of the most cheerful
+character. New men are springing up everywhere. The revolution is a
+hydra-headed giant, Clanya."
+
+"But who says it isn't?" she asked, with a laugh.
+
+She got up, shot out her arms, saying:
+
+"Now for something to do. I feel like turning mountains upside down.
+Indeed, the revolution is a hydra-headed giant, indeed it is. And you
+are a little dear," she added, bending over him and pressing her cheek
+against his.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They had been married less than a month when he learned from a ciphered
+letter from Masha Safonoff that the gendarmes were looking for him.
+
+"Well, Clanya," he said facetiously, as he entered their apartment one
+afternoon, "you are a princess no longer."
+
+Her face fell.
+
+"Look at her! Look at her! She is grieving over the loss of her title."
+
+"Oh, do stop those silly jokes of yours, Pasha. Must you become
+illegal?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am. I am of the same rank as you. That puts a stop to the airs
+you have been giving yourself." It was in the course of the same
+conversation that he told her of his trip to Miroslav and of all that
+had happened to him there.
+
+They were known here as brother and sister, his legal residence being in
+another place, but now both these residences were abandoned, and they
+moved into a new apartment, in another section of the town, which he
+took great pains to put in tasteful shape. Indeed, so elaborately fitted
+up was it that he fought shy of letting any of his fellow Nihilists know
+their new address. A table against one wall was piled with drawings,
+while standing in a conspicuous corner on the floor were a drawing-board
+and a huge portfolio--accessories of the r�le of a russified German
+artist which he played before the janitor of the house. Before he let
+her see it he had put a vase of fresh roses in the centre of the table.
+
+When he and Clara entered their new home, he said in French, with a
+gallant gesture:
+
+"Madame, permit me to introduce you."
+
+He helped her off with her things and slid into the next room, where he
+busied himself with the samovar. She had with her a fresh copy of the
+_Will of the People_--a sixteen page publication of the size of the
+average weekly printed on fine, smooth paper; so she took it up eagerly.
+Its front page was in mourning for President Garfield. An editorial
+notice signed by the revolutionary executive committee tendered an
+expression of grief and sympathy to the bereaved republic, condemning in
+vigorous language acts of violence in a land "where the free will of the
+people determines not only the law but also the person of the ruler."
+"In such a land," the Nihilist Executive Committee went on to explain,
+"a deed of this sort is a manifestation of that spirit of despotism the
+effacement of which in Russia is the aim of our movement. Violence is
+not to be justified unless it be directed against violence."
+
+The declaration made an exceedingly pleasant impression on Clara.
+
+"Bravo! Bravo!" she called out to her husband, as she peered into the
+inside pages of the paper.
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked her from the next room, distractedly,
+choking with the smoke of his freshly lit samovar.
+
+She made no answer. The same issue of her party's organ devoted several
+columns to the anti-Jewish riots. She began to read these with acute
+misgivings, and, sure enough, they were permeated by a spirit of
+anti-Semitism as puerile as it was heartless. A bitter sense of
+resentment filled her heart. "As long as it does not concern the Jews
+they have all the human sympathy and tact in the world," she thought.
+"The moment there is a Jew in the case they become cruel, short-sighted
+and stupid--everything that is bad and ridiculous."
+
+"What's that you said, Clanya?" Pavel demanded again.
+
+She had difficulty in answering him. "He is a Gentile after all," she
+said to herself. "There is a strain of anti-Semitism in the best of
+them." She was in despair. "What is to be done, then?" she asked
+herself. "Is there no way out of it?" The answer was: "I will bear the
+cross," and once again the formula had a soothing effect on her frame of
+mind. And because it had, the cross gradually ceased to be a cross.
+
+She warmed to her husband with a sense of her own forgiveness, of the
+sacrifices she was making. She felt a new glow of tenderness for him.
+And then, by degrees, things appeared in milder light. Pavel's rapture
+over her was so genuine, his devotion so profound, and the general
+relations between Jew and Gentile in the movement were marked by
+intimacies and attachments so sincere, that the anti-Semitic article
+could not have sprung from any personal taste or sentiment in the
+author. It was evidently a mere matter of revolutionary theory. Justly
+or unjustly, the fact was there: in the popular mind the Jews
+represented the idea of economic oppression. Now, if the masses had
+risen in arms against them, did not that mean that they were beginning
+to attack those they considered their enemies? In the depth of her heart
+there had always lurked some doubt as to whether the submissive, stolid
+Russian masses had it in them ever to rise against anybody. Yet here
+they had! Misguided or not, they had risen against an element of the
+population which they were accustomed to regard as parasites. Was not
+that the sign of revolutionary awakening she had fervently been praying
+for?
+
+She went so far as to charge herself with relapsing into racial
+predilections, with letting her feelings as a Jewess get the better of
+her devotion to the cause of humanity. She was rapidly arguing herself
+into the absurd, inhuman position into which her party had been put by
+the editor of its official organ.
+
+And to prove to herself that her views were deep-rooted and unshakable,
+she said to herself: "If they think in Miroslav I am the only person who
+could restore harmony to their circle, I ought to go there and try to
+persuade Elkin to give up those foolish notions of his." What they were
+saying about her in that town flattered her vanity. The thought of
+appearing in her revolutionary alma mater, in the teeth of the local
+gendarmes and police, an "illegal" known to underground fame, was
+irresistible. Her thirst of adventure in this connection was aroused to
+the highest pitch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At eight o'clock the next morning she sat in a chair, looking at her
+husband, who was still in bed, sleeping peacefully. He had an early
+appointment, but she could not bring herself to wake him. She was going
+to do so a minute or two later, she pleaded with herself, and then they
+would have tea together. The samovar was singing softly in the next
+room. It was of her love and of her happiness it seemed to be singing.
+Her joy in her honeymoon swelled her heart and rose to her throat. "I am
+too happy," she thought. As she remembered her determination to go to
+her native place, she added: "Yes, I am too happy, while Sophia is in
+her grave and Hessia is pining away in her cell. I may be arrested at
+any moment in Miroslav, but I am going to do my duty. I must keep Elkin
+and the others from abandoning the revolution."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+OMINOUS FOOTSTEPS.
+
+
+Clara alighted from the train at a station immediately preceding
+Miroslav. She was met by Olga, the girl with the short hair and sparse
+teeth who was engaged to the judge, the two reaching the city partly on
+a peasant's waggon, partly on foot. At sight of the familiar landscape
+Clara seemed weird to herself. It was her own Miroslav, yet she was
+worse than a stranger in it. She felt like a ghost visiting what was
+once his home. On the other hand, the unmistakable evidences of the
+recent riot contracted her heart with pain and brought back that
+Reproach.
+
+Olga took her to a "conspiracy house." This was a basement in the
+outskirts of the town, whose squatty windows faced the guardhouse of
+military stores and commanded a distant view of the river. The only
+other tenants of that courtyard were three sisters, all of them deaf and
+in a state of semi-idiocy. The basement had been rented soon after
+Clara's flight. It consisted of three rooms, all very meagrely
+furnished. Lying under the sofa of the middle room was a wooden roller,
+which had once been intended for a secret printing office. One of the
+walls was hung with a disorderly pile of clothes of both sexes--the shed
+disguises of passing conspirators.
+
+But very few members were allowed to visit her. Those who were saluted
+her with admiring looks and generally treated her as a heroine, which
+caressed her vanity most pleasantly. With a temerity born of an acquired
+habit of danger, not unmixed with some bravado, Clara was burning to
+visit her parents, her sister and her mother-in-law, and to take a look
+at her native neighbourhood. Her friends made an effort to keep her
+indoors. She would not be restrained, assuring them that she was going
+to take good care of herself, but she finally offered to compromise on a
+meeting with her sister, provided she brought her little girl with her.
+
+"I am crazy to see her," she said, meaning the child.
+
+"See little Ruchele! Why you _are_ crazy, Clara!" Olga declared. "If you
+do all Miroslav will know the very next day that 'Aunt Clara' is in
+town."
+
+"Nonsense. She won't know me. She has not seen me for more than a year.
+Besides, I'll wear my veil. Oh, I must see her; don't oppose me, Olga,
+dear."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The meeting took place on a secluded bit of lawn under a sky suffused
+with the lingering gold of a dying sunset. And sure enough, Ruchele was
+extremely shy of the lady in black. When Clara caught her in her arms
+passionately she set up a scream so loud that her mother wrenched her
+from her aunt's embrace for fear of attracting a crowd from a
+neighboring lane.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A debate between Clara and Elkin was to take place in Orlovsky's house
+the next evening. A few hours before the time set for the gathering
+Clara received an unexpected call from Elkin. This was their first
+meeting since her arrival, and she welcomed him with sincere cordiality.
+She respected him as her first teacher of socialism. As to his love for
+her, which could still be read in his eyes, it flattered her now.
+
+"Well," he said, trying to take a light tone, but betraying agitation.
+"There is some news in town. Clara Yavner has been seen about."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that Clara Yavner has been seen about," he repeated with
+sarcastic articulation. And by way of putting a period to the sentence,
+he opened his lips into a lozenge-shaped sneer and leaned his head
+against the mass of hung-up clothes under which he sat on an oblong
+stool.
+
+She was seated on another tabouret, with her back to the low window. His
+manner exasperated her. "But I have been out only once," she retorted
+calmly, controlling her anger, "and then I was heavily veiled."
+
+"Well, could not some people have recognised you by your figure and
+carriage? I am sure I could. At any rate your cousin, Vigdoroff, was to
+see me a little while ago, for the express purpose of conveying this
+message to you, Clara. The gossips of Cucumber Market are whispering
+about your having been seen in town, 'and in addition to truths no end
+of fibs are being told.' Your mother is quite uneasy about it,
+and--well, Clara, at the risk of having it set down to a desire on my
+part to slip out of the debate, I should suggest that you take no
+further chances and leave Miroslav at once."
+
+"Oh, nonsense. Am I not safe in this basement at least?"
+
+"Yes, I think you are, but if the police should get wind of your
+presence in town, why, they would not leave a stone unturned. They have
+been itching for a chance to tone down their reputation for stupidity
+ever since your disappearance."
+
+She smiled and frowned at once.
+
+"Besides," he went on, leaning back against the clothes and gazing at
+the ceiling, "if that debate is your chief mission here I am willing to
+capitulate in advance. You know I cannot debate with you, Clara. I am
+still in your power. My brain is in a whirl in your presence. It is at
+this moment. If that debate took place I should simply not know what I
+was talking about. You would not wish me to make an exhibition of the
+abject helplessness that comes over me when I see you, would you?"
+
+His words, uttered in monotonous accents, contrasted so sharply with the
+air of mockery that had attended his former attempts at an avowal; they
+sounded so forlornly simple, his spirit was so piteously broken that he
+seemed a changed man. She was touched.
+
+"Don't speak like that," she said kindly. "I'll do as you say. I'll
+leave Miroslav at once."
+
+"Is there absolutely no hope for me, Clara?"
+
+"I am no longer free, Elkin. I am a married woman," she said, flushing
+violently. "Let us change the subject. Tell me something about your
+Americans."
+
+He dropped his eyes, and after a rather long pause he said, blankly:
+
+"Well, pardon me, then. You have my best wishes, Clara. I say it from my
+heart. I shall be your warmest friend as long as I live. I confess I
+dreamed of your joining our party, so that I might be near you, and
+hoped that some day you would become mine."
+
+"The right place for a revolutionist is here, in Russia, Elkin."
+
+"Nobody is going to try to persuade you to leave the movement," he said,
+levelling a meek, longing look at her. "The Russian people act like wild
+beasts toward our poor Jews, Clara; yet they and the Russian revolution
+will ever be dear to our hearts. We appreciate that it is their
+blindness which makes such brutes of them. We shall always think of
+those who are in the fight here; we shall adore you; we shall worship
+you, Clara; and perhaps, too, we shall be able to do something for
+Russian liberty from there. But if you condemn us for joining the
+emigrants, I wish to say this, that if you had been in Miroslav during
+the riot you would perhaps take a more indulgent view of our step. So
+many Jewish revolutionists have sacrificed their lives by 'going to the
+people'--to the Russian people. It's about time some of us at least went
+to our own people. They need us, Clara."
+
+"Look here, Elkin," she said with ardent emphasis, striving to deaden
+the consciousness of his love-lorn look that was breaking her heart,
+"you must not think I am so soulless as to take no interest in the
+victims of those horrors, for I do. I do. I can assure you I do. I have
+been continually discussing this question in my mind. I have studied it.
+My heart is bleeding for our poor Jews, but even if it were solely a
+question of saving the Jews, even then one's duty would be to work for
+the revolution. How many Russian Jews could you transport to America and
+Palestine? Surely not all the five million there are. The great majority
+of them will stay here and be baited, and the only hope of these is a
+liberated Russia. All history tells us that the salvation of the Jews
+lies in liberty and in liberty only. England was the first country to
+grant them the right to breathe because she was the first country where
+the common people wrested rights for themselves. The French revolution
+emancipated the Jews, and so it goes. If there were no parliamentary
+governments in Western Europe, the Jews of Germany, Austria, or Belgium
+would still be treated as they are in Russia. When Russia has some
+freedom at least, her Jews, too, will be treated like human beings."
+
+"But we are not like the Palestinians, Clara. We don't propose to
+estrange ourselves from the revolutionary movement. We shall support it
+with American money, and we hope to fit out expeditions to rescue
+important prisoners from Siberia, and to take them across the Pacific
+Ocean to our commune."
+
+"Dreams!" she said, laughing good-naturedly.
+
+The discussion lasted about an hour longer. He had not the strength to
+get up, and she had not the heart to cut him short. They listened to
+each other's arguments with rapt attention, yet they were both aware of
+the unspoken other discussion--on the pathos of his love--that went on
+between them all the while they talked of the great exodus.
+
+And while she commiserated Elkin and felt flattered by her power over
+him, her heart was full of yearning tenderness for her husband, of joy
+in him and in her honeymoon with him.
+
+When Elkin rose from his seat at last he said:
+
+"By the way, I came near forgetting it--your cousin wants to see you."
+
+"Volodia? Volodia Vigdoroff? I thought he would dread to come near me."
+
+Time being short, the meeting was set for an early hour the very next
+morning. Elkin had made his adieux, but he still lingered. There was an
+extremely awkward stillness which was broken by the appearance of Olga.
+Then he left.
+
+Disclosing the location, or, indeed, the existence, of a "conspiracy
+house" to one uninitiated into underground life was impossible.
+Accordingly, Vladimir was to meet Clara in a scanty pine grove near the
+Nihilists' basement. On his way thither Vladimir was continually looking
+over his shoulder, lest he was being followed by spies. He was flurried
+and the sight of every policeman he met gave him a moment or two of
+abject terror. But the part he had taken in the fight of the Defence
+Guard had left him with a sense of his own potential courage; so he was
+trying to live up to it by keeping this appointment with his "illegal"
+cousin, whom he was so thirsting to see. That she was married he did not
+know. He was going to persuade her to join his American party. At this
+minute, in the high-strung state of his mind, the result of recent
+experiences, he felt as though she were not merely his "second sister,"
+which is Russian for cousin, but a real one. His chief object for
+seeking this interview, however, had been to celebrate his own
+vindication. By her enthusiasm for the revolutionary movement from which
+he stayed away she had formerly made him feel like a coward and a
+nonentity; now, however, that in his judgment the riots plainly meant
+the moral bankruptcy of that movement, so far at least as it concerned
+revolutionists of Jewish blood, he mentally triumphed over her.
+
+The meeting had been fixed for an early hour. The air in the woods was
+cold and piquant with the exhalations of young evergreens. The grass,
+considerably yellowed and strewn with cones, was still beaded with dew,
+save for a small outlet of the clearing which was being rapidly invaded
+by the sun.
+
+They met with warm embraces and kisses.
+
+"Clara, my sister! If you only knew what we have gone through!" he said,
+with the passion of heartfelt tragedy in his subdued voice.
+
+"How is uncle? How is auntie?" she asked with similar emotion.
+
+His kiss and embrace had left an odd sensation in him. He had never had
+an occasion to kiss her before; and now that he had not seen her for
+about a year the contact of his lips with the firm, though somewhat
+faded, cheek of this interesting young woman had revealed to him what
+seemed to be an unnatural and illicit fact that she was not a sister to
+him, but--a woman.
+
+They seated themselves in a sunny spot.
+
+"Are you really going to America, Volodia?" she inquired with a familiar
+smile, carefully hiding her grief.
+
+"I certainly am, and what is more, I want you to come along with us," he
+answered, admiring her figure and the expression of her face as he had
+never done before. "Oh, I am quite in earnest about it, Clara. You see,
+the fist of the rioter has driven it home to me that I am a Jew. I must
+go where my people go. Come, Clara, you have staked your life for the
+Russians long enough, and how have they repaid you? Come and let us do
+something for our own poor unfortunate Jews."
+
+She listened with the attention of one good-naturedly waiving a
+discussion.
+
+"And what has become of that bridge you were building?" she asked.
+
+"And what has become of that gallows, of the martyr's scaffold, which
+you said united Jew and Gentile? Has _that_ done anybody any good? As to
+the bridge I was building across the chasm that divides us from the
+Christians, I admit that it has been wrecked to splinters; wrecked
+unmercifully by that same fist of the rioter. I dreamed of the
+brotherhood of Jew and Gentile and that fist woke me. The only point of
+contact between Jew and Gentile possible to-day is this"--pointing at a
+scar slightly back of his ear, his badge of active service as a member
+of the Defence Committee.
+
+"Why, did you get it in the riot?" she asked with a gesture of horror.
+
+"It's a trifle, of course. Others have been crippled for life, but such
+as this bit of a scar is it will stand me in good stead as a reminder
+that I am a Jew. The fact is now everlastingly engraven on my flesh.
+There is no effacing it now. But joking aside, Clara, I love the Russian
+people as much as I ever did. My heart breaks at the thought of leaving
+Russia. I don't think the Russians themselves are capable of loving
+their people as I do. But it can't be helped. There is an impassable
+chasm between us."
+
+He was conscious of being on his mettle, as though the fiascoes he had
+sustained in his last year's talks with her were being retrieved. As to
+her, there was a look of curiosity and subtle condescension in her eye
+as she listened. But she was thoroughly friendly and warm-hearted, so
+for the moment he saw nothing but encouragement to his flow of
+conversation. From time to time he would be seized with mortal fear lest
+they should be pounced upon by gendarmes, but he never betrayed it.
+
+At one point, when he had put a question to her and paused, she said,
+instead of answering it:
+
+"Really, Volodia, I somehow can't get it into my head that you are
+actually going to America."
+
+"Oh, I am, I am. I am going to that land 'where one's wounded feelings
+are sure of shelter.' Come along, Clara. Haven't you taken risks enough
+in Russia? Come and serve your own people, your poor, trodden people.
+Have not the riots been enough to open your eyes, Clara?"
+
+"As if those were the only riots there were," she returned, pensively.
+"All humanity is in the hands of rioters."
+
+"But our homes are being destroyed, Clara," he urged in an impassioned
+undertone. "Our people are being plundered, maimed, their every feeling
+is outraged, their daughters are assaulted."
+
+"Is there anything new in that?" she asked, in the same pensive tone.
+"Are not the masses robbed of the fruit of their toil? Are they not
+maimed in the workshops or in the army? Are not their daughters reduced
+to dishonour by their own misery and by the lust of the mighty? Are not
+the cities full of human beings without a home? All Russia is
+riot-ridden. The whole world, for that matter. The riots that you are
+dwelling upon are only a detail. Do away with _the_ riot and all the
+others will disappear of themselves."
+
+A note of animation came into her melancholy voice.
+
+"What you 'Americans' propose to do," she continued, "is to clasp a
+handful of victims in your arms and to flee to America with them. Well,
+I have no fault to find with you, Volodia. I wish you and your party
+success. But the great, great bulk of victims, Gentiles as well as Jews,
+remain here, and the rioters--the throne, the bureaucracy, the
+drones--remain with them."
+
+She struck him as amazingly beautiful this morning and she seemed to
+speak as one inspired. He listened to her with a feeling of reverence.
+
+"But you have done enough, Clara," he said when she finished. "You have
+faced dangers enough. Sooner or later you will be taken, and then--" (he
+threw up his hands sadly). "You have a perfect right to save your life
+and liberty now."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"You are a wonderful woman, Clara. By George, you are! Therefore, if you
+are arrested, it will be a great loss not only to your relatives, but to
+all the Jews. Haven't the Gentiles robbed us enough?"
+
+"Would you have them rob us of our sacred principles, too?" she
+retorted, with a faint smile. "Indeed, the right to die for liberty is
+the only right the government cannot take away from the Jew."
+
+"Come to America, Clara."
+
+"Oh, that's utterly impossible, Volodia," she answered, gazing at the
+cones.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The discovery that Prince Boulatoff was prominently connected with the
+underground movement, which originated in the confession of one of his
+revolutionary pupils, had created considerable excitement in St.
+Petersburg. The secret service had no difficulty in securing his
+photograph, and when it was shown to the little man who had acted as an
+errand boy at the celebrated cheese-shop he at once identified him as
+one of those who dug the mine. That Pavel had recently been in Miroslav
+was known to the whole town. Accordingly, the central political
+detective office at St. Petersburg despatched several picked men there
+to scent for his underground trail. These practically took the matter
+out of the hands of the local gendarmes, whom they treated with
+professional contempt. They gradually learned that Pavel had been a
+frequent visitor at Orlovsky's house, and then they took to shadowing
+Orlovsky and those in whose company he was seen. They made discovery
+after discovery.
+
+One of these imported spies was the fellow who once shadowed Clara in
+St. Petersburg--the tall man with the swinging arm and the stiff-looking
+neck whom she met on the day when the revolutionist with the Greek name
+was arrested.
+
+It was about 8 o'clock in the evening, some ten minutes before train
+time, when this spy saw an uneducated Jewish woman in blue spectacles
+crossing the square in front of the station. She seemed familiar to him,
+yet not enough so to attract serious attention.
+
+It was Clara. Her disguise, in addition to the blue spectacles,
+consisted of a heavy Jewish wig, partly covered by a black kerchief, and
+an old-fashioned cloak. To spare her the risk of facing the gendarmes of
+the station, her ticket had been bought for her by somebody else, her
+intention being to slip into her car at the last moment. Having reached
+the place too early, however, she was now trying to kill the interval by
+sauntering about. This time the spy escaped her notice, but a little
+later, less than a minute before the third bell was sounded and while
+she was scurrying through the third class restaurant, she caught sight
+of him, as he stood half leaning against the counter drowsily.
+
+Here he had a much better look at her. She certainly was familiar to
+him, but he was still unable to locate her, and before he knew his own
+mind he let her pass. It was not until the train had pulled out, and its
+rear lights were rapidly sinking into the vast gloom of the night, that
+it dawned upon him that she looked like the girl he used to spy upon in
+St. Petersburg. Blue spectacles as a means of concealing one's identity
+are quite a commonplace article, so he called himself names for not
+having thought of it in time and hastened to telegraph to the gendarmes
+at the next station to arrest the young woman, giving a description of
+Clara's disguise and general appearance.
+
+Some three quarters of an hour later an answer came from the next
+station that the train had been detained for a careful search, but that
+no such woman could be found on it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While that search was in progress Clara, her disguise removed, entered
+the "conspiracy house," where Olga had been waiting for her, in case she
+should have found it inconvenient to board the train.
+
+"There you are!" Olga said, in despair, as she beheld her friend's
+smiling face in the doorway. "What has happened?"
+
+"It's a fizzle, that's all. But it might have been worse than that.
+There is a St. Petersburg fellow at the station. He knows me."
+
+"Did he see you?" Olga demanded breathlessly.
+
+"I should say he did," Clara replied with another smile. "Well, I
+thought it was all up. Gracious! didn't my feet grow weak under me. But
+my star has not gone back on me yet, it seems. I got into one of the
+cars just as the third bell was heard. I was sure he was close behind
+me, but, when I turned around, looking for a seat, I saw he was not
+there. He must have gone to another car for the moment, or something.
+Anyhow, I tried to get out again. I thought I had nothing to lose,
+and--here I am. But look here, Olya[E], are you sure there is nobody
+outside?"
+
+  [E] Diminutive of Olga.
+
+"I think I am," Olga answered firmly. "Why?"
+
+"I thought I saw a queer looking individual as I turned into this
+street. I must have been mistaken. Still, I confess, the presence of
+that fellow in this town is anything but a pleasant surprise to me. I
+don't like it at all. I wonder why we have not heard from Masha about
+him."
+
+The reason they had not heard from her was simply this, that the
+invasion of the St. Petersburg detectives had had such an overbearing
+effect on everybody in the local gendarmerie that her brother had become
+unusually reticent on the affairs of his office even at home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two or three hours had passed, when Clara and Olga heard an ominous
+confusion of footsteps in the vestibule. The next moment the room was
+crowded with men, some in uniforms, others in citizens' clothes. One of
+the St. Petersburg officers rushed to a window where a blue medicine
+bottle--Clara's "window signal"--stood on the sill, to prevent either of
+the two Nihilist girls from removing it by way of warning to their
+friends.
+
+"You here!" the tall, baronial-looking procureur, Princess Chertogoff's
+son-in-law, said to Olga, in amazement. He bowed to her most
+chivalrously, but she turned away from him with a contemptuous gesture.
+
+"And may I ask for _your_ name, Miss," a gendarme officer accosted
+Clara.
+
+"I decline to answer," she returned, simply. Her eyes were on a pistol
+which she saw in the hand of one of the gendarmes.
+
+"You live in Miroslav, don't you?"
+
+Instead of answering this question she sprang at the man who held the
+pistol, seized it from him and began firing at the wall. This was her
+substitute for a removal of the safety signal from the window.
+
+The weapon was instantly knocked out of her hand by a blow with the flat
+of a gleaming sword, and she was forced into a seat, two men holding her
+tightly by the arms, while a third was tying a handkerchief around her
+bleeding hand.
+
+"I merely wanted to alarm the neighbourhood," she said calmly. "But, of
+course, you people will turn it into a case of armed resistance."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Orlovsky learned of Clara's and Olga's arrest, one of his first
+thoughts was about notifying Pavel, of whose relations toward Clara he
+had by this time been informed. It appeared that the only man he knew
+who had "underground" connections in the two capitals and was in a
+position to communicate with Boulatoff was the former leader of the
+Miroslav Circle, Elkin. This, however, did not stop Orlovsky. To Elkin
+he went and explained the situation to him.
+
+"Elkin, darling, you know you are a soul of a fellow," he implored him.
+"Pavel is either in St. Petersburg or in Moscow, and you are the only
+man who could get at him."
+
+Elkin stood, thinking glumly, at the window for a few minutes, and then
+said:
+
+"Very well, I am going."
+
+He started on the same day, accompanied by a spy. That evening Orlovsky,
+the judge and several other members of the Miroslav Circle, were
+arrested at Orlovsky's house, and a few days later news came from Moscow
+that Pavel and Elkin had been taken in a caf�, while Makar had fallen
+into a "trap" at the house of an old friend of Elkin's, who had been
+seized several hours before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+A MESSAGE THROUGH THE WALL.
+
+
+Months had passed. Spring was three or four weeks old, but cell No. --
+on the first floor of the Trubetzkoy Bastion, Fortress of Peter and
+Paul, had not yet tasted its caressing breath. It was a rather spacious,
+high-ceiled vault, but being quite close to the stone fence outside, it
+was practically without the range of sunshine and breeze. Its window,
+which was high overhead, at the top of a sloping stretch of sill, sent
+down twilight at noonday and left it in the grip of night two or three
+hours after. The chill, damp air was laden with a stifling odour of
+must. The lower part of the walls was covered with a thick layer of
+mould which looked like a broad band of heavy tapestry of a
+dark-greenish hue.
+
+The solitary inmate of this pit was walking back and forth diagonally,
+from corner to corner. He wore a loose, shapeless cloak of coarse but
+flimsy material, which he was continually wrapping about his slim,
+emaciated figure. He was shivering. As he walked to and fro, his head
+was for the most part thrown back, his eyes raised to the window, whose
+sloping sill he could have scarcely touched with the tips of his
+fingers. Now and then he paused and turned toward one of the walls, as
+though listening for some sounds, and then, with an air of nerveless
+disappointment, he would resume his walk.
+
+It was Pavel.
+
+The spy who accompanied Elkin from Miroslav to Moscow had shadowed him
+in the ancient city until he saw him with Prince Boulatoff and then with
+Makar and a university student, in whose room the four revolutionists
+were arrested, shortly after, in the course of a heated debate between
+Makar and Elkin on the riots and the question of emigration to America.
+
+During the first few weeks of Pavel's stay in the fortress the guards,
+who had been converted to revolutionary sympathies by a celebrated
+political prisoner named Nechayeff, had carried communications not only
+from prisoner to prisoner, but also from them to the revolutionists at
+large; so that the _Will of the People_ was at one time partly edited
+from this fortress, and a bold plot was even planned by Nechayeff to
+have the Czar locked up in a cell while he visited its cathedral. But
+these relations between the guards and the revolutionists, which lasted
+about a year, had finally been disclosed, and since then Pavel and the
+inmates of the other cells had been treated with brutal stringency.
+
+Pavel's trial was not likely to take place for another year or two,
+but his fate was clear to him: death, probably commuted to
+life-imprisonment, which actually amounted to slow death in a spacious
+grave like this vault, or in the mines of Siberia, was the usual doom of
+men charged with "crimes" like his. His future yawned before him in the
+form of a black, boundless cavern charged with dull, gnawing pain, like
+the pain that was choking him at this moment. The worst part of his
+torture was his solitude. The most inhuman physical suffering seemed
+easier to bear than this speechless, endless, excruciatingly monotonous
+solitude of his. "Oath-men" as the sworn-in attendants of the prison
+were called (under-sized, comical looking fellows, most of them) came
+into his cell three or four times a day--with food, or to put things to
+rights hastily--but neither they nor the gendarmes who invariably
+accompanied them ever answered his questions. One morning, in an excess
+of self-commiseration and resentment at their stolid taciturnity, he had
+spat in the face of a gendarme. He had done so, at the peril of being
+flogged, in the hope of hearing him curse, at least; but the gendarme
+merely wiped his bewhiskered face and went on watching the "oath-man"
+silently.
+
+Whenever Pavel was taken out for his 15-minute walk in a secluded little
+yard, which was once in two days, the sentinels he met would turn their
+backs on him, lest he should see more faces than was absolutely
+necessary. The warden and the prison doctor were the only human beings
+whose voices he could hear, and these were brutally laconic and brutally
+rude or ironical with him. To be taken to the prison office for an
+examination by the procureur was the one diversion which the near future
+held out to him; but then his near future might be a matter of weeks and
+might be a matter of months.
+
+Back and forth he walked, at a spiritless, even pace, as monotonous as
+his days of gloom and misery, as that dull pain which was ceaselessly
+choking his throat and gnawing at his heart. At one moment he paused and
+felt his gums with his fingers. Were they swollen? Was he developing
+scurvy? Or was it mere imagination? He also passed his hand over his
+cheeks, and it seemed to him that they were sunken a little more than
+they had been the day before. But the great subject of his thoughts
+to-day was his mother, and tantalising, heart-crushing thoughts they
+were. Where was she? How was she? Was she alive at all? He pictured her
+committing suicide because of his doom, and the cruel vision persisted.
+And if she was not dead, her life was little better than death. He tried
+to think of something else, but no, the appealing, reproachful image of
+his mother, of his poor dear mother who had scarcely had a day of
+happiness since she married, would not leave his mind. As a matter of
+fact, his efforts to think of something else were scarcely sincere. He
+would not shake that image out of his brain if he could. It was tearing
+his heart to pieces, yet he would rather stand all these tortures than
+shut his mother out of his thoughts. To talk to somebody was the only
+thing that could have saved him from the terrible pang that was
+harrowing him at this moment; but the chimes of the cathedral, which
+played the quarter-hours as well as the hours, and the crash of iron
+bolts at the opening of cells at meal-time were the only sounds that he
+could expect to hear to-day. His heart was writhing within him.
+Something was clutching at his brain. He seemed to feel himself going
+mad. He was tempted to cry at the top of his voice; to cry like a wild
+beast; but, of course, he was not going to give such satisfaction to the
+enemy.
+
+He gazed at the sloping window-sill. For the thousandth time a desire
+took hold of him to mount it and take a look through the glass; and for
+the thousandth time he cast a hopeless glance at his bed, at the table,
+the chair, the wash-stand: they were all nailed to the floor, a large
+earthen water-cup and a salt-cellar made of lead being the only movable
+things in his room.
+
+Four months ago there had been a prisoner in the adjoining cell with
+whom he carried on long conversations by rapping out his words on the
+wall, but one day their talk had been interrupted in the middle of a
+sentence, after which that man had been removed. The cell had long
+remained empty, as could be inferred from the fact that Pavel never
+heard its door opened at meal-time. Since a week ago it had been
+tenanted again, but all his attempts at conversation with his new
+neighbour had so far been futile. His taps on the wall had been left
+unanswered.
+
+Suddenly, as he was now pacing his floor, his heart melting with
+homesickness and anguish at the thought of his mother, he heard a rapid
+succession of fine, dry sounds on the right wall. He started, and,
+breathless and flushed with excitement, he listened. "Who are you?" the
+mould-grown wall demanded.
+
+Pavel cast a look at the peephole in the heavy door, and seeing no eye
+in it, he took a turn or two up and down the room and stopped hard by
+the wall, upon which he rapped out his reply:
+
+"Boulatoff. Who are you?"
+
+"The Emperor of all Africa," came the answer.
+
+"What?" Pavel asked in perplexity. "You have not finished your sentence,
+what were you saying?"
+
+"Begone!" the wall returned. "How dare you doubt my title? I am the
+Emperor of all Africa. How dare you speak to me? Away with you!"
+
+Pavel's heart sank. It was apparently some political prisoner who had
+gone insane in a damp, cold, isolated cell.
+
+"Dear friend, dear comrade!" he implored. "Can't you try and remember
+your name?"
+
+"Begone, or I'll order your arrest, mean slave that you are!" This was
+followed by some incoherencies. Pavel went away from the wall with tears
+in his eyes.
+
+In the afternoon of the third day he was striding to and fro, in
+excellent spirits. He had been in this mood since he opened his eyes
+that morning. Nothing but the most encouraging moments in the history of
+his connection with the movement would come to his mind to-day. He felt
+as though he and all his revolutionary friends were looking at each
+other, and conversing mentally, all as cheerful and happy as he was now.
+Everything pointed toward the speedy triumph of their cause. He beheld
+barricades in the streets of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa; he saw the
+red flag waving; he heard the Marseillaise. He recalled Makar's vision
+of the time when victorious revolutionists would break into the fortress
+of Peter and Paul and take its prisoners out to celebrate the advent of
+liberty with the people. He thought of Clara, and his heart went out to
+her and to their interrupted honeymoon; he imagined her on his arm
+marching with others, he did not know whither, and whispering words of
+love and exultation to her, and once more his heart leaped with joy. He
+recalled jokes, comical situations. He felt like bursting into a roar of
+merriment, when there came a shower of taps on the wall.
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"Boulatoff," Pavel answered, with sadness in his heart. He expected
+other absurdities from his insane neighbour. "And you?"
+
+"Bieliayeff. I am not well. But I feel much better to-day. My lucid
+interval, perhaps. I remember everything."
+
+Pavel had met him two years before. They talked of themselves, of their
+mutual friends, of the last news that had reached Bieliayeff through his
+other wall. It appeared that Bieliayeff's neighbour on that side of his
+cell was Elkin.
+
+Pavel received the information with a thrill of pleasure. He was going
+to ask Bieliayeff to convey a message to his fellow townsman; but at
+this he had an instinctive feeling that there was an eye at the peephole
+and he dropped his hand to his side, pretending to be absorbed in
+thought.
+
+They resumed their conversation a quarter of an hour later.
+
+"Tell Elkin I love him; he is dear to me," Pavel tapped out. "I feel
+guilty and miserable. If it were not for me he would be in America now.
+Besides, I have been unjust to him. This oppresses me more than anything
+else."
+
+These communications through the wall are the most precious things life
+has to offer in living graves like those of the fortress of Peter and
+Paul. The inmate of such a grave will listen to the messages of his
+neighbours with the most strenuous attention, with every faculty in his
+possession, with every fibre of his being; and he will convey every word
+of a long message as if reading it from a written memorandum.
+
+After a lapse of five or ten minutes Bieliayeff came back with Elkin's
+answer.
+
+"He says he loves you," the tap-tap said, "and that it is he who ought
+to apologise. It was he who was unjust. As to his American scheme, he is
+happy to be here. It is sweet to be suffering for liberty, he says."
+
+Makar was at the other end of the same corridor, and a message from him
+reached Pavel by way of a dozen walls.
+
+"Hello, old boy!" it said. "At last I have completed the revolutionary
+programme I have been so long engaged upon. It's a dandy! It is not the
+same I spoke to you about in Moscow. It covers every point beautifully.
+It would save the party from every mistake it has ever made or is liable
+to make."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day Pavel learned that Clara had arrived in the fortress, after a
+long confinement and no end of examinations in Miroslav. She was in
+another part of the building and communicating with her was impossible.
+Pavel scarcely ever thought of anything else. Could it be true that she
+was in the building and he would not even have a chance to see her? He
+was fidgeting and writhing like a bird in a cage.
+
+At last, on a morning, the wall brought him a message from her. It had
+come through walls, floors and ceilings.
+
+"Clanya sends her love," it ran, "and tells him to keep away from the
+damp walls as much as possible."
+
+"Tell Clanya I think of her day and night," he rapped back.
+
+Then a footstep sounded at his door, and with a heart swelling with
+emotion he threw himself upon his bed and buried his face in his hands.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
+
+
+Most inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation found in the original
+text were retained, including:
+
+             "assistant procureur" and "assistant-procureur"
+             "ball-room" and "ball room"
+             "bedroom" and "bed-room"
+             "candlestick" and "candle-stick"
+             "capmaker" and "cap-maker"
+             "Catherine" and "Catharine"
+             "Chernishevsky" and "Chernyshevsky"
+             "cobblestones" and "cobble-stones"
+             "colour" and "color"
+             "drily" and "dryly"
+             "favourite" and "favorite"
+             "featherbeds" and "feather-beds"
+             "fiascos" and "fiascoes"
+             "footsteps" and "foot-steps"
+             "grey" and "gray"
+             "heartfelt" and "heart-felt"
+             "homebound" and "home-bound"
+             "laborer" and "labourer"
+             "market place" and "market-place"
+             "neighbour" and "neighbor"
+             "odour" and "odor"
+             "parlour" and "parlor"
+             "pedlar" and "peddlar"
+             "peephole" and "peep-hole"
+             "realise" and "realize"
+             "regime" and "r�gime"
+             "reverie" and "revery"
+             "Rodkevitch" and "Rodkevich"
+             "rumour" and "rumor"
+             "side whiskers" and "side-whiskers"
+             "stepchild" and "step-child"
+             "topboots" and "top-boots"
+             "tramcar" and "tram-car"
+             "trunkmaker" and "trunk-maker"
+             "undersized" and "under-sized"
+             "Vice-Emperor" and "vice-Emperor"
+             "wagons" and "waggons"
+             "waiting room" and "waiting-room"
+             "woolen" and "woollen"
+
+
+The following corrections were made to the text:
+
+  Page 5:    "ma chere" changed to "ma ch�re"
+             (Don't take it ill, _ma ch�re_." She)
+  Page 8:    "Czarowitch" changed to "Czarowitz"
+             (the present Czar, then still Czarowitz,)
+  Page 15:   "waistcoast" changed to "waistcoat"
+             (pulling at his waistcoat as though)
+  Page 16:   "ecstacy" changed to "ecstasy"
+             (and in his ecstasy over)
+  Page 23:   "Medicis" changed to "Medici"
+             (Venus de Medici--and the)
+  Page 34:   added missing end quote
+             (essence?" For the)
+  Page 36:   "Alexander" changed to "Alexandre"
+             (who saw Alexandre Alexandrovich off)
+  Page 44:   "myterious" changed to "mysterious"
+             (mysterious air of the "radicals")
+  Page 44:   added missing exclamation mark
+             (number of _Forward!_ and another)
+  Page 47:   added missing period
+             (nunnish face. She made quite)
+  Page 65:   "idotic" changed to "idiotic"
+             (restrain the "idiotic breadth" of his)
+  Page 68:   "a l�" changed to "� la"
+             (trimmed whiskers � la Alexander II.,)
+  Page 95:   "Alexandre" changed to "Alexander"
+             (on the part of Alexander II.)
+  Page 104:  missing word "the" added
+             (beaming at the sight)
+  Page 104:  "cosversation" changed to "conversation"
+             (in turning the conversation)
+  Page 114:  "Vassilyevitch" changed to "Vassilyevich"
+             (Pavel Vassilyevich. Everything)
+  Page 130:  "Paval" changed to "Pavel"
+             ("Exactly," Pavel assented,)
+  Page 137:  added missing hyphen
+             (three-fourths of them)
+  Page 145:  added missing end quote
+             (view of it." At this)
+  Page 146:  "Judge" changed to "judge"
+             (Olga, the judge, and the )
+  Page 151:  "t�te-a-t�te" changed to "t�te-�-t�te"
+             (house for _t�te-�-t�te_ purposes.)
+  Page 163:  removed extraneous comma
+             (imprisoned army officer slipped away)
+  Page 166:  "surrounding" changed to "surroundings"
+             (Their immediate surroundings were)
+  Page 167:  "minature" changed to "miniature"
+             (miniature garden between)
+  Page 186:  added missing period
+             (well-travelled fellow. He can)
+  Page 215:  extra quote mark deleted
+             (she says. You have a)
+  Page 219:  "L'Assomoir" changed to "L'Assommoir"
+             (dwelt on Zola's _L'Assommoir_ and)
+  Page 231:  "bood-bye" changed to "good-bye"
+             (a hurried good-bye and made for)
+  Page 242:  added missing hyphen
+             (Meanwhile Count Loris-Melikoff had)
+  Page 248:  "Littlie" changed to "Little"
+             (speak Little-Russian to Purring Cat,)
+  Page 248:  "Littlie" changed to "Little"
+             (from Little Russia, answered)
+  Page 249:  repeated word "the" deleted
+             (by the "gay bard," which Clara)
+  Page 252:  "Lavadia" changed to "Livadia"
+             (still in Livadia with his bride,)
+  Page 254:  "insistance" changed to "insistence"
+             (his heart with cruel insistence.)
+  Page 267:  "Michail" changed to "Micha�l"
+             (residence, the Micha�l Palace,)
+  Page 275:  added missing comma
+             (your fur cap," she gestured.)
+  Page 283:  "street" changed to "Street"
+             (the Little Garden Street precinct had)
+  Page 286:  "street" changed to "Street"
+             (Garden Street for the Czar's drive)
+  Page 288:  "distinquished" changed to "distinguished"
+             (A distinguished revolutionary writer)
+  Page 289:  "street" changed to "Street"
+             (cheese shop on Little Garden Street)
+  Page 294:  added missing comma
+             ("Don't," he begged them,)
+  Page 305:  removed extraneous comma
+             (the prison corridor answered his)
+  Page 326:  changed end double quote to single quote
+             (such a cap?' says I.)
+  Page 333:  "spokeman's" changed to "spokesman's"
+             (whispered in the spokesman's ear)
+  Page 335:  changed period to colon
+             (Finally he shouted huskily:)
+  Page 366:  "street" changed to "Street"
+             (near Nicholas Street, the best street)
+  Page 368:  "street" changed to "Street"
+             (and about Nicholas Street and bore down)
+  Page 373:  "market" changed to "Market"
+             (crowd on Cucumber Market,)
+  Page 374:  "ran" changed to "run"
+             (of primitive humanity run)
+  Page 376:  "street" changed to "Street"
+             (Nicholas Street, from a residence over)
+  Page 380:  "maurauders" changed to "marauders"
+             (the marauders for the slashers)
+  Page 382:  "banners" changed to "hammers"
+             (crowbars, hammers or axes)
+  Page 387:  "stupour" changed to "stupor"
+             (revolting stupor of inebriety.)
+  Page 391:  "sooth" changed to "soothe"
+             (trying to soothe an angry baby.)
+  Page 395:  changed period to colon
+             (Hannah said, gravely:)
+  Page 403:  "street" changed to "Street"
+             (Street, St. Petersburg, was in Moscow)
+  Page 415:  added missing period
+             (in a sunny spot.)
+  Page 420:  added missing period
+             (There is a St. Petersburg)
+  Page 425:  "access" changed to "excess"
+             (One morning in an excess)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The White Terror and The Red, by Abraham Cahan
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE TERROR AND THE RED ***
+
+***** This file should be named 39166-8.txt or 39166-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/9/1/6/39166/
+
+Produced by Rosanna Murphy, Suzanne Shell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/39166-8.zip b/39166-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..88b3785
--- /dev/null
+++ b/39166-8.zip
diff --git a/39166-h.zip b/39166-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6220464
--- /dev/null
+++ b/39166-h.zip
diff --git a/39166-h/39166-h.htm b/39166-h/39166-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..643b3c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/39166-h/39166-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,16868 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+    <title>
+      The White Terror and The Red, by A. Cahan&mdash;A Project Gutenberg eBook.</title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+
+p {
+    text-align: justify;
+    text-indent: 2em;}
+
+p.cap:first-letter { /* text drop caps */
+    float: left;
+	clear: left;
+    margin: -0.1em 0.1em 0em 0em;
+    padding: 0em;
+    line-height: 1em;
+	font-size: 400%;}
+
+h1,h2,h3 { /* all headings centered */
+    text-align: center;
+    clear: both;}
+
+h3+p {text-indent: 0em;}
+
+hr {
+    width: 33%;
+    margin-top: 2em;
+    margin-bottom: 2em;
+    margin-left: auto;
+    margin-right: auto;
+    clear: both;}
+
+hr.tb   {width: 45%;}
+hr.chap {width: 65%}
+
+hr.r65 {
+    width: 65%;
+    margin-top: 6em;
+    margin-bottom: 6em;}
+
+table {
+    margin-left: auto;
+    margin-right: auto;}
+
+ins {
+    text-decoration: none;
+    border-bottom: 1px dashed #add8e6;}
+
+.punct {border-bottom: 1px dashed #f08080;}
+
+.pagenum {
+    /*  visibility: hidden;  */
+    position: absolute;
+    right: 3%;
+    font-size: smaller;
+    color: #a0a0a0;
+    text-align: right;
+    text-indent: 2em;}
+
+.center {text-align: center;}
+
+.right {text-align: right;}
+
+.right-less {
+    text-align: right;
+    margin-right: 5%;}
+
+.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+.discrepancies {
+    list-style-type: none;
+	margin: 0em;
+    padding: 0em;}
+
+.correction {text-decoration: underline;}
+
+.corrections {
+    list-style-type: none;
+    margin: 0em;
+    padding: 0em;}
+
+.corrections li {margin: 0.5em 0.25em;}
+
+.figcenter {
+    margin: auto;
+    text-align: center;}
+
+/* Footnotes */
+.footnotes {
+    border: dashed 1px #808080;
+    background-color: #fafafa;
+    font-family: sans-serif, serif;}
+
+.footnote {margin: auto;}
+
+.label {
+    text-align: left;
+    font-size: 0.8em;
+    vertical-align: top;}
+
+.fnanchor {
+    vertical-align: super;
+    font-size: 0.6em;
+    text-decoration: none;}
+
+/* Transcriber's notes */
+.tnote {
+	margin: 6em auto;}
+
+.tnote, .tnote-end {
+    text-align: justify;
+    padding: 0em 0.75em;
+    font-family: sans-serif, serif;}
+
+.tnote p, .tnote-end p {text-indent: 0em;}
+
+#toc {margin: auto;}
+
+#toc td {padding: 0.25em 0em;}
+
+#toc td.chapter-no {
+    width: 5em;
+    text-align: right;}
+
+#toc td.chapter {
+    text-align: left;
+    text-indent: 2em;}
+
+#toc td.page {text-align: right;}
+
+@media screen {
+    body {
+        width: 80%;
+        max-width: 50em;
+        margin: auto;}
+
+    p {
+        margin: 0.75em auto;}
+
+    .tnote {
+        max-width: 26em;}
+
+    .tnote, .tnote-end {
+        border: 1px dashed #808080;
+        background-color: #fafafa;}}
+
+@media screen, print {
+    #toc {
+        width: 60%;}
+
+    .corrections, .discrepancies {
+        margin: 1em 10%;}}
+
+@media print, handheld {
+    p {
+        margin: 0;}
+
+    ins {
+        border: none;}
+
+    a:link, a:visited {
+        color: black;}
+
+    .tnote p, .tnote-end p {
+        margin: 0.25em 0em;}
+
+    .tnote, .tnote-end, h1, h2 {
+        page-break-before: always;}}
+
+@media handheld {
+    body {
+		margin: 0;
+		padding: 0;
+		width: 95%;}
+
+	.corrections li {
+		margin: 0em;}}
+	</style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The White Terror and The Red, by Abraham Cahan
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: The White Terror and The Red
+       A novel of revolutionary Russia
+
+Author: Abraham Cahan
+
+Release Date: March 16, 2012 [EBook #39166]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE TERROR AND THE RED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Rosanna Murphy, Suzanne Shell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="tnote">
+<p class="center"><b>Transcriber's Notes:</b></p>
+
+<p>Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully
+as possible.</p>
+
+<p>Some corrections of spelling and punctuation have been made.
+In the text they appear <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'likethis'">like
+this</ins> for spelling corrections, while corrections to punctuation
+are marked like <ins class="punct" title="Transcriber's Note: added .">this.</ins>
+The original text appears when hovering the cursor over the marked
+text. A <a href="#tn-end">list of amendments</a> is at the
+end of the text.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i"><span class="pagenum">&nbsp;</span></a></p>
+<div class="center"><span style="font-size: x-large">THE WHITE TERROR AND THE RED</span></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii"><span class="pagenum">&nbsp;</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="r65" /><p><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii"><span class="pagenum">&nbsp;</span></a></p>
+
+<h1>THE WHITE TERROR<br />
+AND<br />
+THE RED<br /><br /></h1>
+
+<h2>A Novel of Revolutionary Russia<br /><br /></h2>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+<h2>A. CAHAN<br /></h2>
+<div class="center">Author of “Yekl” and “The Imported Bridegroom.”<br />
+<br />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 100px;">
+<img src="images/tp.jpg" width="100" height="89" alt=""/>
+</div><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">New York</span><br />
+A. S. BARNES &amp; COMPANY<br />
+1905<br /><br /><br />
+<a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv"><span class="pagenum">&nbsp;</span></a>
+
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1905<br />
+<span class="smcap">By A. S. Barnes &amp; Company</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>All rights reserved</i><br />
+<br />
+<i>Published February, 1905</i><br />
+<i>Second Printing, February, 1905</i><br />
+<i>Third Printing, March, 1905</i><br /></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v"><span class="pagenum">&nbsp;</span></a></p>
+
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table id="toc" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">CHAPTER</td><td class="chapter">&nbsp;</td><td class="page">PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">I.</td><td class="chapter">An Affront to His Czar</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">II.</td><td class="chapter">The White Terror</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_14">14</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">III.</td><td class="chapter">Pievakin Pleads Guilty</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_20">20</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">IV.</td><td class="chapter">The “Demonstration”</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">V.</td><td class="chapter">Pavel’s First Step</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">VI.</td><td class="chapter">A Meeting on New Terms</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">VII.</td><td class="chapter">“Terrorism Without Violence”</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">VIII.</td><td class="chapter">Makar’s Canvass</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">IX.</td><td class="chapter">A Day Underground</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_81">81</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">X.</td><td class="chapter">The Czar’s Escape</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XI.</td><td class="chapter">A Mysterious Arrest</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_97">97</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XII.</td><td class="chapter">A Bewildering Encounter</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_103">103</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XIII.</td><td class="chapter">A Gendarme’s Sister</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_112">112</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XIV.</td><td class="chapter">Underground Miroslav</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_121">121</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XV.</td><td class="chapter">A Warning</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XVI.</td><td class="chapter">Clara at Home</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_147">147</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XVII.</td><td class="chapter">The Countess’ Discovery</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_151">151</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XVIII.</td><td class="chapter">Pavel at Boyko’s Court</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_160">160</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XIX.</td><td class="chapter">Strawberries</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_169">169</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XX.</td><td class="chapter">A “Conspiracy Trip”</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_178">178</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XXI.</td><td class="chapter">Makar’s Father</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_187">187</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XXII.</td><td class="chapter">From Cellar to Palace</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_196">196</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XXIII.</td><td class="chapter">An Unforeseen Suggestion</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_205">205</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XXIV.</td><td class="chapter">Vladimir Finds His Cause</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_211">211</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XXV.</td><td class="chapter">Clara Becomes “Illegal”</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_227">227</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XXVI.</td><td class="chapter">On Sacred Ground</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_235">235</a></td><td><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi"><span class="pagenum">&nbsp;</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XXVII.</td><td class="chapter">A Postponed Wedding</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_244">244</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XXVIII.</td><td class="chapter">A Second Courtship</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_252">252</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XXIX.</td><td class="chapter">A Hunted Monarch</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_260">260</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XXX.</td><td class="chapter">The Mystery of a Shop</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_267">267</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XXXI.</td><td class="chapter">A Reassuring Search</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_277">277</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XXXII.</td><td class="chapter">The Red Terror</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_287">287</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XXXIII.</td><td class="chapter">The Revelation</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_299">299</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XXXIV.</td><td class="chapter">The Czar Takes Courage</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_310">310</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XXXV.</td><td class="chapter">A Hunted People</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_319">319</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XXXVI.</td><td class="chapter">A “Paper from the Czar”</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_331">331</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XXXVII.</td><td class="chapter">The Defence Committee</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_339">339</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XXXVIII.</td><td class="chapter">The Nihilist’s Guard</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_357">357</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XXXIX.</td><td class="chapter">The Riot</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_371">371</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XL.</td><td class="chapter">Light out of Darkness</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_389">389</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XLI.</td><td class="chapter">Pavel Becomes “Illegal”</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_401">401</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XLII.</td><td class="chapter">Ominous Footsteps</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_408">408</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="chapter-no">XLIII.</td><td class="chapter">A Message Through the Wall</td><td class="page"><a href="#Page_423">423</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii"><span class="pagenum">&nbsp;</span></a></p>
+<p><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii"><span class="pagenum">&nbsp;</span></a></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1"><span class="pagenum">[1]</span></a></p>
+
+<h2>THE WHITE TERROR AND THE RED.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<h3>AN AFFRONT TO HIS CZAR.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">ALEXANDER II. passed part of the summer of 1874
+in a German health-resort taking the mineral waters.
+When not in the castle in which he was staying
+with his train he affected the life of an ordinary citizen.
+He did so as much from necessity as from choice. Czar or
+subject, the same water must be drunk at the same spot and
+hour by all who seek its cure. Nor can any distinction
+be made in the matter of the walk which the patient is to
+take after draining his two or three gobletsful.</p>
+
+<p>The promenade at a watering place is a great parade-ground
+for the display of plumage, the gayest and costliest
+gowns being reserved for the procession that follows the
+taking of the remedy; but while the race is under way and
+everybody is striving to throw everybody else into the shade,
+the fact of their being there pierces each dress as with
+“X” rays, showing their flesh to be of the same fragile
+clay.</p>
+
+<p>So the Czar accepted the levelling effect of the place
+good-naturedly and sought diversion in the unsustained
+rôle of a common mortal. Unsustained, because he carried
+his gigantic, beautiful form with a graceful self-importance
+and a martial erectness that betrayed his incognito even<a name="Page_2" id="Page_2"><span class="pagenum">[2]</span></a>
+in the open country stretches to which he would stroll off
+in search of mild adventure and flirtation.</p>
+
+<p>It was a late afternoon in the valley. The river glittered
+crimson. The hills on the other side of the summer town
+were capped by a sultry haze. Donkeys used in ascending
+these hills were trotting about impishly or standing in
+stupid row awaiting custom. The sun blazed down upon
+a parade of a hundred countries, including a jet black
+prince from Africa, a rajah, a Chinaman in dazzling silks,
+a wealthy Galician Jew in atlas, and a pasha with German
+features.</p>
+
+<p>The Czar, his immense figure encased in a light frock
+coat of excellent fit, was sauntering along apparently unaccompanied
+except by his terrier and cane. When saluted
+he would raise his straw hat and nod his enormous well-shaped
+head with a cordiality that bordered on good-fellowship.
+He seemed to relish this exchange of courtesies
+with people who were not his subjects in this little
+republic of physical malady. It was as though he felt
+apart from his autocratic self without feeling out of that
+pampering atmosphere of deference and attention which
+was his second nature; and he gave an effect of inhaling
+his freedom as one does the first whiffs of spring air.</p>
+
+<p>As to his fellow patients, they either discovered something
+majestic in the very dog that followed him, or were
+struck by the knuckles of his ungloved hands, for example,
+as if it were remarkable that they should be the same sort
+of knuckles as their own. He was strikingly well-built
+and strikingly handsome. He wore thick close-cropped
+side whiskers of the kind that is rarely becoming, but his
+face they became very well indeed, adding majesty to a
+cast of large, clear-cut features. It was the most monarchical
+face of its time, and yet it was anything but a strong<a name="Page_3" id="Page_3"><span class="pagenum">[3]</span></a>
+face. His imposing side whiskers and moustache left bare
+a full sensuous mouth and a plump weak chin; his blueish
+eyes gave forth suggestions of melancholy and anguish.
+Interest in him was whetted by stories of his passion for
+Princess Dolgoruki, lady in waiting to the Czarina; so the
+women at the watering place tried to decipher the tale of
+his liaison in those sad amative eyes of his.</p>
+
+<p>Two refined looking, middle-aged women attracted attention
+by the bizarre simplicity with which one of them
+was attired and coiffured. She was extremely pale and
+made one think of an insane asylum or a convent. She
+was grey, while her companion had auburn hair and was
+shorter and flabbier of figure. They were conversing in
+French, but it was not their native tongue. The one with
+the grey hair was Pani Oginska, a Polish woman; the
+other a Russian countess named Anna Nicolayevna Varova
+(Varoff). They had first met, in this watering place, less
+than a fortnight ago, when a chat, in the course of which
+they warmed to each other, led to the discovery that their
+estates lay in neighbouring provinces in Little Russia.
+They were preceded by a slender youth of eighteen in a
+broad-brimmed straw hat and a clean-shaven elderly little
+man in one of soft grey felt. These were Prince Pavel
+Alexeyevich Boulatoff, a son of the countess by a former
+marriage, and Alexandre Alexandrovich Pievakin, his private
+tutor, as well as one of his instructors at the gymnasium<a name="Anchor-A" id="Anchor-A"></a><a title="Go to footnote A" href="#Footnote-A" class="fnanchor">[A]</a>
+of his native town. Pavel’s straw hat was too
+sedate for his childish face and was pushed down so low
+that a delicately sculptured chin and mouth and the
+turned up tip of a rudely hewn Russian nose was all one
+could see under its vast expanse of yellow brim. The old<a name="Page_4" id="Page_4"><span class="pagenum">[4]</span></a>
+man knew no German and this was his first trip abroad,
+so his high-born pupil, who had an advantage over him
+in both these respects, was explaining things to him, with
+an air at once patronising and respectful. Presently Pavel
+interrupted himself.</p>
+
+<p>“The Czar!” he whispered, in a flutter. “The Czar!”
+he repeated over his shoulder, addressing himself to his
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>Pievakin raised his glance, paling as he did so, but was
+so overawed by the sight that he forthwith dropped his
+eyes, a sickly expression on his lips.</p>
+
+<p>When the men came face to face with their monarch
+they made way and snatched off their hats as if they were
+on fire. Countess Varoff, Pavel’s mother, curtseyed
+deeply, her flaccid insignificant little body retreating
+toward the side of the promenade and then sinking to the
+ground; while the Polish woman proceeded on her way
+stiffly without so much as a nod of her head. The Czar
+returned the greeting of the Russian woman gallantly and
+disappeared in the rear of them.</p>
+
+<p>The group walked on in nervous silence, the two women
+now in the lead. When they reached a deserted spot the
+youth suddenly flushed a violent red, and, thrusting out
+his finely chiselled chin at his mother, he said, in quick
+pugnacious full-toned accents as out of keeping with his
+boyish figure as his hat:</p>
+
+<p>“Mother, you are not going to keep up acquaintance
+with a person who has offered an insult to our Czar.”</p>
+
+<p>“Paul! What has come over you?” the countess stammered
+out, colouring abjectly as she paused.</p>
+
+<p>“I mean just what I say, mother.”</p>
+
+<p>The elderly little man by his side looked on sheepishly,
+the cold sweat standing in beads on his forehead.</p><p><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5"><span class="pagenum">[5]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“Don’t mind this wild boy, I beg of you,” Anna Nicolayevna
+said to the Polish woman. “Don’t pay the least
+attention to him. He imagines himself a full grown man,
+but he is merely a silly boy and he gives me no end of
+trouble. Don’t take it ill, <ins title="Transriber's Note: original reads 'ma chere'"><i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">ma chère</i></ins>.” She rattled it off
+in a great flurry of embarrassment, straining the boy back
+tenderly, while she was condemning him.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t take it ill at all,” Pani Oginska answered
+tremulously. “He’s perfectly right. Your acquaintance
+has been a great pleasure to me, countess, but I can see
+that my company at this place would be very inconvenient
+to you. Adieu!”</p>
+
+<p>She walked off toward a row of new cottages, and Anna
+Nicolayevna, the countess, stood gazing after her like one
+petrified.</p>
+
+<p>“You are a savage, Pasha,” she whispered, in Russian.</p>
+
+<p>“Why am I? I have done what is right, and you feel
+it as well as I do,” he returned hotly, in his sedate, compact,
+combative voice, looking from her to his teacher.
+When he was excited he sputtered out his sentences in
+volleys, growling at his listener and seemingly about to
+flounce off. This was the way he spoke now. “Why am
+I a savage? Can you afford to associate with a woman
+who will behave in this impudent, in this rebellious manner
+toward the Czar? Can you, now?”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s neither here nor there,” she said, with irritation,
+as they resumed their walk. “She is a very unhappy
+creature. All that she holds dear has been taken from her.
+Her husband was hanged during the Polish rebellion and
+now her son, a college student, has been torn from her
+and is dying in prison of consumption. If you were not so
+heartless you would have some pity on her.”</p>
+
+<p>“Her husband was hanged and her son is in prison and<a name="Page_6" id="Page_6"><span class="pagenum">[6]</span></a>
+you wish to associate with her! Do you really? What
+do you think of it, Alexandre Alexandrovich?”</p>
+
+<p>“A very painful incident,” Pievakin murmured, wretchedly.</p>
+
+<p>“As if I were eager for her company,” she returned,
+timidly. “As if one could help the chance acquaintances
+that fall into one’s way while travelling. Besides, <i>she</i> is
+no rebel. Indeed, she is one of the most charming women
+I ever met, and to hear her story is enough to break a
+heart of stone. You have no sympathy, Pasha.”</p>
+
+<p>“She is no rebel! Why, if she did in Russia what she
+did here a minute ago she would be hustled off to Siberia
+in short order, and it would serve her right, too. And
+because I don’t want my mother to go with such a person
+I have no sympathy.”</p>
+
+<p>“Pardon me, Anna Nicolayevna,” Pievakin interposed,
+with embarrassed ardour, “but if I were you I should keep
+out of her way. She is an unfortunate woman, but, God
+bless her,&mdash;Pasha is right, I think.”</p>
+
+<p>“I should say I was,” the boy said, triumphantly.
+“She wouldn’t dare do such a thing in Russia, would she?
+But then in Russia a woman of that sort would have no
+chance to do anything of the kind. Oh, I do hate the
+Germans for exposing the Czar to these insults. It is
+simply terrible, terrible. Couldn’t they arrange it so that
+he should not have to rub shoulders with every Tom, Dick
+and Harry and be exposed to every sort of affront? And
+yet when I say so I am a savage and have no heart.” He
+gnashed his teeth and burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>“Hush, dear, I didn’t mean it. Don’t be excited, now.”</p>
+
+<p>“But you did mean it; you know you did.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sh, calm down, Pasha,” the old man besought him,
+and Pavel’s features softened.</p><p><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7"><span class="pagenum">[7]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Alexandre Alexandrovich was the only teacher at the
+high school of whom Pavel was fond. He was an old-fashioned
+little man, with cravats of a former generation
+and with features and movements which conveyed the impression
+that he was forever making ready to bow. His
+cackling good humour when the recitations were correct and
+fluent, his distressed air when they were not; his mixed
+timidity and quick temper&mdash;these things are recalled with
+fond smiles in Miroslav. He was attached to both his
+subjects and when put on his mettle by the attention of his
+class he really knew how to put life into the dullest lesson.
+On such occasions his timid manner would disappear, and
+he would draw himself up, and go strutting back and forth
+with long, defiant steps and hurling out his sentences like a
+domineering rooster. It was only when a lesson of this
+sort was suddenly disturbed by some sally from a scapegrace
+of a pupil that Pievakin would fly into a passion
+and then he would take to jumping about, tearing at his
+own hair, and groaning as though with physical pain.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel was perhaps the most ardent friend Alexandre
+Alexandrovich had in all Miroslav. The young prince
+was in a singular position at the gymnasium. Somehow
+things were always done in a way to make one remember
+that he was Prince Boulatoff and a nephew of the governor
+of the province of which Miroslav was the capital. He
+was the only boy who usually came to school in a carriage
+and it seemed as though the imposing vehicle had the effect
+of isolating him from the other boys. As to his teachers,
+they took a peculiar tone with him&mdash;one of ill-concealed
+reverence which would betray itself with all the more emphasis
+when they tried to take him to task. The upshot
+was that most of the other pupils, including the only other
+prince in the class (who was also the wildest boy in it)<a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"><span class="pagenum">[8]</span></a>
+kept out of Pavel’s way, while those who did not treated
+him with a servility that was even more offensive to him
+than the aloofness of the rest. He had made several attempts
+to get on terms of good fellowship with two or three
+of the boys he liked, but his own effort to laugh and frolic
+with them had jarred on him like a false note. He had
+finally settled down to a manner of haughty reticence, keeping
+an observant eye on his classmates and finding a
+peculiar pleasure in these silent observations.</p>
+
+<p>The only two teachers who did not indulge him were
+Pievakin and the teacher of mathematics, a cheerful hunchback
+with a pale distended face lit by a pair of comical
+blue eyes, whom the boys had dubbed “truncated cone.”
+The teacher of mathematics made Pavel feel his exceptional
+position by treating him with special harshness. As
+to Pievakin, who had begun by addressing the aristocratic
+youth with an embarrassed air, he had gradually adopted
+toward him a manner of fatherly superiority that developed
+in the boy’s heart a filial attachment for the old
+pedagogue. In order to increase his income Pavel had
+made him his private tutor, although he stood high in his
+class and needed no such assistance, and this summer, when
+the old man complained of rheumatism, he had caused his
+mother to invite him to the German resort.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>When they reached their hotel the countess unburdened
+herself to her son’s tutor of certain memories which interested
+her now far more than did her unexpected rupture
+with the Polish woman. She described a court ball at St.
+Petersburg at which the present Czar, then still <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Czarowitch'">Czarowitz</ins>,
+conversed for five minutes with her. She treated
+the gymnasium teacher partly as she would her priest,
+partly as if he were her butler, and now, in her burst of<a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"><span class="pagenum">[9]</span></a>
+reminiscence, she overhauled her past to him with the
+whole-hearted, childlike abandon which is characteristic of
+her race and which put the humble old teacher ill at ease.
+“He told me to take good care of my ‘pretty eyes and
+golden eyebrows,’” she said. “And yet it was for these
+very eyebrows that Pavel’s father disliked me.”</p>
+
+<p>She had been the pet daughter of a wealthy nobleman,
+high in the service of the ministry for foreign affairs, but
+Pavel’s father, and her living husband, from whom she
+was now practically separated, had almost convinced her
+that to be disliked was her just share in life. Her parents
+and sisters were dead. She had a little boy by her second
+marriage, but she was still in love with the shadow of her
+first husband, and the son he had left her was the one
+passion of her life. Having spent her youth in the two
+foreign countries to which her father’s diplomatic career
+took the family, she deprecated, in a dim unformulated
+way, many of the things that surrounded her in her native
+land. She was unable to reconcile her luminous image of
+the Emperor with the mediæval cruelties that were being
+perpetrated by his order. She was at a loss to understand
+how such a gentle-hearted man could send to the gallows
+or to the living graves of Siberia people like the Polish
+patriots. The compulsory religion of the Orthodox Russian
+Church, too, with its iron-clad organisation and
+grotesque uniforms, impressed her as a kind of spiritual
+gendarmerie. Yet she accepted it all as part of that panorama
+of things which whispered the magic word,
+“Russia.” And now the sight of the Czar had rekindled
+memories of her better days and stirred in her a submissive
+sense of her cheerless fate.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel was meanwhile putting the case of the Polish
+woman to Onufri, one of the two servants who accompanied<a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"><span class="pagenum">[10]</span></a>
+them in their present travels&mdash;a retired hussar with a
+formidable moustache in front of a pinched hollow-cheeked
+face.</p>
+
+<p>“Her highness, your mother, is good as an angel, sir,”
+was Onufri’s verdict.</p>
+
+<p>“And you are stupid as a cork,” Pavel snarled. His
+sense of the desecration to which the person of his Czar
+was being subjected by mingling with people like the widow
+of a hanged rebel rankled in his heart. He worked himself
+up to a state of mind in which the very similarity in
+physical appearance between the untitled people with
+whom the Czar and born aristocrats like himself and his
+mother were compelled to mingle at a place like this resort
+struck him as an impertinence on the part of the untitled
+people.</p>
+
+<p>Later when he lay between two German featherbeds and
+Onufri brought him his book and a candle he asked him
+to take a seat by his bedside.</p>
+
+<p>“Why are you such a deuced fool, Onufri?”</p>
+
+<p>“If I am it is God’s business, not mine, nor your highness’.”</p>
+
+<p>“Look here, Onufri. How would you like to have all
+common people black like those darkies?”</p>
+
+<p>The servant spat out in horror and made the sign of the
+cross.</p>
+
+<p>“For shame, sir. What harm have the common people
+done you that you should wish them a horrid thing like
+that? And where does your highness get these cruel
+thoughts? Surely not from your mother. For shame,
+sir.”</p>
+
+<p>“Idiot that you are, it’s mere fancy, just for fun.
+There ought to be some difference between noble people
+and common. There is in some countries, you know.”<a name="Page_11" id="Page_11"><span class="pagenum">[11]</span></a>
+He told him about castes, the slave trade in America and
+passed to the days of chivalry, his favourite topic, until the
+retired hussar’s head sank and a mighty snore rang out of
+his bushy moustache. Pavel flew into a passion.</p>
+
+<p>“Ass!” he shouted, getting half out of bed and shaking
+him fiercely. “Why don’t I fall asleep when you tell me
+stories?”</p>
+
+<p>Onufri started and fell to rubbing one eye, while with
+his other eye he looked about him, as though he had slept
+a week. The stories he often told young Boulatoff mostly
+related to the days of serfdom, which had been abolished
+when Pavel was a boy of five. Onufri’s mother had been
+flogged to death in the presence of her master, Pavel’s
+grandfather, and the former hussar would tell the story
+with a solemnity that reflected his veneration for the
+“good old times” rather than grief over the fate of his
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>That night Pavel dreamed of a pond full of calves that
+were splashing about and laughing in the water. He carried
+them all home and on his way there they were transformed
+into one pair, and the two calves walked about and
+talked just like Onufri and the transformation was no
+transformation at all, the calves being real calves and
+negroes at the same time. When he awoke, in the morning,
+and it came over him that the dream had had something
+to do with Onufri, he was seized with a feeling of
+self-disgust. He thought of the Polish woman and his
+treatment of her, and this, too, appeared in a new light to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three hours later, when the countess returned
+from her morning walk Pavel, dressed to go out, grave
+and mysterious, solemnly handed her a sealed note from
+himself.</p><p><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"><span class="pagenum">[12]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“Don’t open it until I have left,” he said. “I am going
+out for a stroll.”</p>
+
+<p>“What you said yesterday about my being hard-hearted
+and incapable of sympathy,” the letter read, “left a deep
+impression on me. I thought of it almost the first thing
+this morning as I opened my eyes, and it kept me thinking
+all the morning. I looked deep into my soul, I overhauled
+my whole ego. I turned it inside out, and&mdash;well,
+I must say I have come to the conclusion that what you
+said was not devoid of foundation. Not that I am prepared
+to imagine ourselves as having anything to do with a
+woman whose family is a family of rebels and who has the
+audacity to pass our emperor without bowing; but she
+is a human being, too, and her sufferings should have
+aroused some commiseration in me. I envy you, mother.
+Compared to you I really am a hard-hearted, unfeeling
+brute, and it makes me very, very unhappy to think of it.
+My heart is so full at this moment that I am at a loss to
+give expression to what I feel, but you will understand me,
+darling little mother mine. I do <i>not</i> want to be hard and
+cruel, and I want you to help me.</p>
+
+<div class="right-less">
+“Your struggling son,<br />
+<br /></div>
+<div class="right">“<span class="smcap">Pavel</span>.”<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>When Anna Nicolayevna laid down the letter her large
+meek grey eyes first grew red and then filled with tears.
+She sat with her long slim arms loosely folded on a davenport,
+weeping and smiling at once. There was much
+charm in her smile, but, barring it and her mass of fine
+auburn hair, she was certainly not good looking. She was
+small, ungainly, flat-chested, with a large thin-lipped
+mouth and, in spite of her beautiful gowns, with a general
+effect of rustiness.</p><p><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"><span class="pagenum">[13]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>When Pavel and his mother met at dinner he felt so
+embarrassed he could not bring himself to look her in the
+face.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"><span class="pagenum">[14]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE WHITE TERROR.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">MIROSLAV was trisected longitudinally by a clear,
+cheerful river and by Kasimir Street, its principal
+thoroughfare, which contained most of its public
+buildings and best shops. The middle one of the three
+sections thus formed was the home of the higher nobility
+and the official class; the district across the bridge from
+here was inhabited by Christian burghers and workmen,
+with here and there a clay hovel, the home of a peasant
+family, gleaming white in the distant outskirts; while the
+hilly quarter beyond Kasimir Street was the seat of Jewish
+industry and Jewish poverty, part of this neighbourhood
+being occupied by the market places and “the Paradise,”
+as the slums of the town were called ironically. The governor’s
+house, which faced Governor’s Prospect&mdash;a small
+square with a fountain in the centre&mdash;and Anna Nicolayevna’s
+were the two most imposing buildings in Miroslav.</p>
+
+<p>The countess’ residence was the only structure in town
+that had a colonnaded front. The common people called
+it the Palace and the section of Kasimir Street it faced
+the Pillars. The sidewalk opposite was the favourite promenade
+of the younger generation, and every afternoon, in
+auspicious weather, it glittered with the uniforms of army
+officers and gymnasium boys. The Palace was built by
+her grandfather in the closing days of the previous century.<a name="Page_15" id="Page_15"><span class="pagenum">[15]</span></a>
+It abutted on a long narrow lane formed on one
+side by Anna Nicolayevna’s garden and leading to Theatre
+Square, where stood the playhouse and the Nobles’ Club.
+When the white rigidity of these buildings was relieved
+by the grass of its lawns and the foliage of its trees the
+spot was the joy of the town.</p>
+
+<p>During the winter of the year following the countess’
+sojourn at the German watering place, Miroslav was stirred
+by a sensation, the central figure of which was Pavel’s
+tutor, the instructor of geography and history in the local
+gymnasium, Alexandre Alexandrovich Pievakin. Pavel
+was then in the graduating class.</p>
+
+<p>Besides being connected with the male gymnasium Pievakin
+taught at the female high school of Miroslav. The
+town was fond of him and he was fond of the town and
+upon the whole he was contented. One of the things that
+galled him was the fact that his superior, the newly appointed
+director of the school, was his inferior both in
+years and in civil rank. Pievakin was a “councillor of
+state,” while Novikoff, the head of the male gymnasium,
+was only a “collegiate assessor.” Novikoff was a painstaking,
+narrow-minded functionary, superciliously proud
+of his office and slavishly loyal to the letter of the law.
+He was a slender, dark-complexioned man of forty, but
+he tried to look much older and heavier. He copied the
+Czar’s side-whiskers, walked like a corpulent grandee, perpetually
+pulling at his <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'waistcoast'">waistcoat</ins> as though he were burdened
+by a voluminous paunch, and interlarded his speech
+with aphorisms from the Latin Grammar.</p>
+
+<p>One day as the director strutted ponderously along one
+of the two corridors, the word “parliament” fell on his
+ear. It was Pievakin’s voice. The old man was explaining
+something to his class with great ardour. Novikoff<a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"><span class="pagenum">[16]</span></a>
+paused, his lordly walk congealing into the picture of dignified
+attention. The next minute, however, his grandeur
+melted away. His face expressed unfeigned horror.
+Pievakin was drawing an effusive parallel between absolute
+monarchies and limited. This was distinctly in violation
+of the Circular of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment
+enjoining teachers of geography, in cases of this kind, to
+adhere strictly to the bare terminology of the approved
+text-book without venturing into anything like an elucidation.
+Not that Pievakin was betraying any partiality for
+limited monarchies. Indeed, to him the distinction between
+the two forms of government was neither of more
+nor of less interest than the difference between a steppe
+and a prairie or a simoon and a hurricane. It appealed
+to him because it was geography, and in his <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'ecstacy'">ecstasy</ins> over
+the lesson all thought of the Ministry and its Circulars
+had escaped his mind.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon he was summoned to the director’s office
+on the floor below.</p>
+
+<p>Novikoff was at his large, flat-topped desk, studiously
+absorbed in some papers. He silently motioned the teacher
+of geography to a seat, and went on with his feigned work.
+After a lapse of some minutes he straightened up, played
+a few scales upon the brass buttons of his uniform, and
+said:</p>
+
+<p>“It pains me to have to say it, Alexandre Alexandrovich,
+but these are queer times and the passions of youth
+should be moderated, held in check, suppressed, not
+aroused. The imagination of one’s pupils is not to be
+trifled with, Alexandre Alexandrovich.”</p>
+
+<p>He paused mournfully. The little old man, who had
+not the least idea what he was driving at, waited in consternation.
+The room was overheated, and the pause had<a name="Page_17" id="Page_17"><span class="pagenum">[17]</span></a>
+an overpowering effect on him. He felt on the verge of
+fainting.</p>
+
+<p>“The point is,” Novikoff resumed, with a sudden spurt
+in his voice, “that in your class work you sometimes suffer
+yourself to say things that cannot but be regarded as dangerous.
+Dangerous particularly in view of the evil influences
+at work among the young of our generation; in
+view of the very sad fact that college students will disguise
+themselves as peasants&mdash;&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“What do you mean, sir?” Pievakin burst out, reddening
+violently. “How dare you liken me to those fellows?
+I was serving the Czar while you were still a whippersnapper.
+I’m a councillor of state, sir. How dare you
+make these insinuations?”</p>
+
+<p>“I expected as much,” Novikoff answered, nervously
+polishing his buttons. “Defying one’s superior is of a
+piece with the views you’re trying to instill into the minds
+of your scholars.”</p>
+
+<p>“What is of a piece with what? Speak out, sir,” Pievakin
+shrieked.</p>
+
+<p>“Bridle your temper, sir. I can’t allow that.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then tell me what it’s all about,” the teacher of history
+and geography said in a queer, half-beseeching, half-threatening
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, this morning you were expatiating upon the
+blessings of a constitutional government. Yes, sir. There
+are no spies to eavesdrop on one in this building, but it
+seems you never speak so loud nor with so much gusto as
+when you get to the subject of constitutions and parliaments
+and things of that kind.”</p>
+
+<p>“It isn’t true. I merely said a word or two on the
+various forms of government. It’s practically all in Smirnoff’s
+Geography.”</p><p><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18"><span class="pagenum">[18]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“‘Practically’! It’s against the law. I am very sorry,
+but it becomes my duty to report it to the curator.”</p>
+
+<p>Here Pievakin, losing control of himself, shouted
+“Spy!” and “Scoundrel!” and darted out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>This happened at a time when the “peasantist” movement,
+the peaceful, unresisting stage in the history of what
+is commonly known as Nihilism, was at its height. The
+educated young generation was in an ecstasy of altruism.
+It was the period of “going to the people,” when hundreds
+of well-bred men and women, children of the nobility,
+would don peasant garb and go to share the life of the
+tillers of the soil, teaching them to read, talking to them
+of universal love, liberty and equality. The government
+punished this “going to the people” with Asiatic severity.
+Russia has no capital punishment for the slaying of common
+mortals, the average penalty for murder being about
+ten years of penal servitude in Siberia; and this penalty
+the courts were often ordered to impose on absolutely
+peaceable missionaries, on university students who practically
+did the same kind of work as that pursued by the
+“university settlements” in English-speaking countries.
+There were about one thousand of these propagandists in
+the political prisons of the empire, and their number was
+growing. They were kept in solitary confinement in cold,
+damp cells. Scores of them went insane or died of consumption,
+scurvy or suicide before their cases came up for
+trial.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Pievakin’s house was searched by gendarmes, but no
+“underground” literature was discovered there. He was
+not arrested, but spies shadowed his movements and about
+a month after the domiciliary visit he was officially notified
+by the curator’s office that he was to be transferred to the<a name="Page_19" id="Page_19"><span class="pagenum">[19]</span></a>
+four-year “progymnasium” of a small town a considerable
+distance off. This implied that his work was to be restricted
+to boys of fourteen and less in a town out of the way
+of “dangerous tendencies.” He grew thin and haggard
+and a certain look of fright never left his eye. The other
+instructors at the gymnasium, all except one, and many of
+his private acquaintance plainly shunned him. He had become
+one of those people with whom one could not come
+in contact without attracting the undesirable attention of
+the police. One of those who were not afraid to be seen
+in his company was the “truncated cone.” “My crooked
+back is the only one that does not bend,” the deformed man
+would joke. The tacit philosophy of his attitude toward
+the world seemed to be something like this: “You people
+won’t consider me one of you. I am only a hunchback,
+something like an elf, and you will take many an unwelcome
+truth from me which you would resent in one like
+yourselves. So let us proceed on this understanding.”</p>
+
+<p>When Boulatoff heard that his favourite teacher was to
+be exiled to a small town “to render him harmless,” he
+was shocked. Alexandre Alexandrovich Pievakin was the
+last man in the world he would have suspected to be guilty
+of seditious agitation. His only idol at school was thus
+shattered. Pievakin had not the courage to visit the countess’
+house now, and Pavel, on his part, held aloof from
+him. The old man was hateful to him, not only as a rebel,
+but also as an impostor and a hypocrite. He felt duped.
+His blood rankled with disgust and resentment. At the
+same time the situation did not seem quite clear to him.
+Something puzzled him, although he could not have put his
+finger on it.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"><span class="pagenum">[20]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<h3>PIEVAKIN PLEADS GUILTY.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">A LESSON in Latin was in progress. The teacher was
+a blond Czech. Pavel looked at him intently, trying
+to follow the exercises, but he only became
+the more aware of the foreigner’s struggles with Russian
+and made the discovery that his clumsy carriage, as he
+walked up and down the room, was suggestive of a peasant
+woman trying to catch a chicken. His thoughts passed to
+Pievakin and almost at the same instant a question flashed
+into his brain: If Pievakin was unreliable politically, why,
+then, was he getting off so easily? How was it that instead
+of being cut off from the living world, instead of being
+thrown into a dungeon to waste and perish, as was done
+with all fellows of that sort, he was merely transferred
+to another school?</p>
+
+<p>The bell sounded. The Czech put his big flat record-book
+under his arm and left the room. Most of the pupils
+went out soon after. The two long corridors were bubbling
+with boys in blue, a-glitter with nickel-plated buttons
+and silver galloon, some laughing over their experience
+with the lesson just disposed of, others eagerly reviewing
+the one soon to be recited. Pievakin passed along. The
+pupils bowed to him with curious sympathetic looks, and
+he returned their salutes with an air of mixed timidity
+and gratitude. Presently the teacher of mathematics<a name="Page_21" id="Page_21"><span class="pagenum">[21]</span></a>
+emerged from one of the glass doors, his deformity bulging
+through the blue broadcloth of his uniform.</p>
+
+<p>“Alexandre Alexandrovich!” he shouted demonstratively,
+and catching up with him he threw his arm around his
+waist.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel, who had been watching the scene, was about to
+return to his class-room so as to avoid bowing to Pievakin,
+when, by a sudden impulse, he saluted the two teachers,
+and advancing to meet them, with that peculiar air of
+politeness which reminded his classmates of his equipage
+and the colonnade in front of his mother’s mansion, he
+accosted the instructor of history and geography, turning
+pale as he did so:</p>
+
+<p>“May I speak to you, Alexandre Alexandrovich?”
+When the mathematician had withdrawn, he inquired in
+a tone of pain and concern: “What has happened, Alexandre
+Alexandrovich?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I’m in trouble, prince,” the old man faltered. He
+had never addressed the youth by his title before, and there
+was a note of abject supplication in his voice, as if the
+boy could help him. His face had a pinched, cowed look.</p>
+
+<p>“But, Alexandre Alexandrovich, it’s a terrible thing
+they are accusing you of. You’ve been so dear to me,
+Alexandre Alexandrovich. I want to know all. I cannot
+rest, Alexandre Alexandrovich.”</p>
+
+<p>“The story is easily told. A misfortune has befallen
+me. While touching upon the constitutional form of government,
+I was somewhat carried away. That I don’t
+deny. I know it was wrong of me, but I assure you,
+prince, I meant no harm.”</p>
+
+<p>It sounded as though he were a pleading pupil and the
+boy before him his teacher.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel was touched and perplexed.</p><p><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"><span class="pagenum">[22]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“But that’s in the text-book, Alexandre Alexandrovich.”</p>
+
+<p>“To be sure it is. Only the text-book merely uses the
+term without explaining it, while I, absent-mindedly, proceeded
+to do so, which is against the rules, and, as ill luck
+would have it, I warmed up a bit. When I was first asked
+about it I was not aware of having done any wrong. I
+was so shocked, in fact, I lost my temper. That was the
+worst of it. I am a ruined man, prince. Thirty-six years
+have I served the Czar and there is not a blemish on my
+record.”</p>
+
+<p>“But why should you call yourself a ruined man, Alexandre
+Alexandrovich,” Pavel said impetuously. “I don’t
+see why it should be too late to straighten it all out. I’m
+going to see my uncle. Or, better still, my mother will
+see him. We can’t let it go that way. We should all
+be a lot of scoundrels if we did. I’m going to tell him so.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do it, prince, if you can,” the old man said with shamefaced
+eagerness. “I shall never forget it.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>When Pavel came home he found his mother’s sleigh in
+front of the main entrance, her coachman in dazzling attire,
+waiting with pompous stolidity. When the liveried
+porter threw the door open to him and he entered the vestibule
+he saw coming down the immense staircase his mother
+and his five-year-old half-brother, Kostia, dressed for
+their afternoon drive, Anna Nicolayevna in her furs and
+the little fellow in the costume of a Caucasian horseman,
+which became his grave little face charmingly. Following
+at some distance, with a smile of admiration, half servile,
+half sincere, on her fresh German face, was Kostia’s governess.
+She was not dressed for a drive. She was merely
+going to see her charge off.</p><p><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23"><span class="pagenum">[23]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“Mother, I am afraid I shall have to detain you,” Pavel
+said, solemnly. “I wish to speak to you about Alexandre
+Alexandrovich.”</p>
+
+<p>“Won’t it keep?” she asked, with a facetious gesture.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t make fun of it, mother,” he reproached her.
+“It’s a serious matter. My head is in a whirl.”</p>
+
+<p>Kostia was burning to show himself in public in his new
+Circassian cap and when he saw his mother yield he
+screwed up his face for a cry, but he forthwith straightened
+it out again. He scarcely ever cried in Pavel’s presence
+for fear of being called “damsel” by him&mdash;an appellation
+he dreaded more than being locked up alone in
+the schoolroom.</p>
+
+<p>They went into Anna Nicolayevna’s favorite sitting-room,
+a square chamber furnished and decorated in tan, in
+no particular style, but with an eye to the combined suggestions
+of old-time solidity and latter-day elegance. It
+was the embodiment of rest and silence, an effect to which
+two life-sized bronze statues&mdash;a Diana and a Venus de
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Medicis'">Medici</ins>&mdash;and the drowsy ticking of an ancient clock
+contributed not a little. It was known as the English
+room because its former furnishings had been modelled
+after London standards.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel painted Pievakin as a penitent, broken spirit till
+Anna Nicolayevna’s eyes grew red.</p>
+
+<p>“Still, maybe he does hold dangerous views?” she
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Dangerous nothing! It’s all nonsense. He’s more
+loyal than Novikoff anyhow, for Novikoff is a soulless, attitudinising
+nincompoop, while he is the kindliest, most
+conscientious, most soulful man in the world.”</p>
+
+<p>“Unfortunately all this has nothing to do with loyalty,”
+she said, sadly. “This is a very queer world, Pasha. It’s<a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"><span class="pagenum">[24]</span></a>
+just like those wretches who would do away with czars to
+be warm-hearted and good to everybody. They don’t believe
+there ought to be rich and poor, either. When you
+come across a man of this sort keep away from him,
+Pasha.”</p>
+
+<p>“But what has that got to do with Pievakin?” he
+shouted. “The very sight of a Nihilist would be enough
+to frighten him out of his wits. I want you to tell it all to
+uncle, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mamman</i>. Give him no peace until he promises
+you to write to the curator about the poor old man.”</p>
+
+<p>The governor of Miroslav was a Boulatoff, being a cousin
+of Pavel’s deceased father; but he was also related to the
+young man by marriage to his mother’s sister, who had
+died less than a year ago. Anna Nicolayevna promised to
+see her brother-in-law the next morning, but Pavel would
+not wait. He pleaded, he charged her with heartlessness,
+tapping the thick rug with his foot and shaking all over
+as he spoke, until she agreed to go at once.</p>
+
+<p>While she was gone Pavel and Kostia went into the ball
+room and played “hunter and partridge,” a game of the
+gymnasium boys’ inventing. They had not been many
+minutes at it before Pavel had forgotten all about the
+errand on which he had despatched his mother and the
+vast ball room echoed with his voluminous laughter. His
+great pleasure was to tease Kostia until the little boy’s
+mouth would begin to twitch, and then to shake his finger
+at him and say: “Better not cry, Kostia, or you know
+what I am going to call you.” Whereupon Kostia would
+make a desperate effort to look nonchalantly grave and
+Pavel would burst into a new roar of merriment.</p>
+
+<p>Anna Nicolayevna came back converted to a rigorous
+point of view, and although her son had no difficulty in
+convincing her once again that Pievakin deserved mercy, he<a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"><span class="pagenum">[25]</span></a>
+made up his mind to see his uncle himself, and he did so
+the very next morning.</p>
+
+<p>Governor Boulatoff was a massive, worn, blinking old
+satrap, shrewd, tight-fisted, and, what was quite unusual
+for a man of his class, with an eye to business. His nose
+was extremely broad and fleshy, his hair was elaborately
+dressed, and altogether he looked like a successful old
+comedian. Bribe-giving was as universal in Miroslav as
+tipping was in its leading café. One could not turn round
+without showing “gratitude.” The wheels of government
+would not move in the desired direction unless they were
+greased, the price of this “grease” or “gratitude” varying
+all the way from a ten-copeck piece to ten or fifteen
+thousand rubles. Governor Boulatoff, who had come to
+Miroslav a ruined man, was now the largest land-owner in
+the province. Whenever he was in need of ready cash he
+would galvanize into a new lease of life some defunct piece
+of anti-Jewish legislation. This was known among the
+other officials as “pressing the spring”&mdash;the spring of
+the Jewish pocketbook, that is, the invariable effect of the
+proceeding being the appearance of a delegation with a
+snug piece of Jewish “gratitude.” He was continually
+sneering at the powers behind the throne, and mildly striving
+for recognition; yet so comfortable did he feel in this
+city of gardens, card-playing and “gratitude,” from which
+“the Czar was too far off and God too high up,” that he
+was in mortal fear lest the promotion which he coveted
+should come in the form of a transfer to a more important
+province.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel found him in his imposing “den.” The old
+potentate was in his morning gown, freshly bathed, shaved
+and coiffured and smelling of pomade and cigarette smoke.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, my little statesman,” he greeted him in French.<a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"><span class="pagenum">[26]</span></a>
+“What brings you so early this morning? Aren’t you
+going to school at all?” He called him statesman because
+of his ambition to follow in the footsteps of his diplomatic
+grandfather.</p>
+
+<p>“I shall stay away from the first three lessons,” Pavel
+answered. “I cannot rest, uncle. I want to speak to you
+about that unfortunate man.”</p>
+
+<p>The governor was very fond of Pavel, but he persisted
+in treating him as a boy, and the only serious talk young
+Boulatoff got out of him regarding Pievakin was an exhortation
+to give “men of that sort a wide berth.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, uncle&mdash;&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t argue,” the governor interrupted him, blinking
+as he spoke. “This is not the kind of thing for a boy of
+your station to get mixed up in.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, it’s enough to drive one crazy. The poor man is
+sincerely repentant, uncle. He’ll never do it again,
+uncle.”</p>
+
+<p>“I see you’re quite excited over it. Just the kind of
+effect fellows of that stamp will have on the mind of a boy.
+This is just where the danger comes in. Don’t forget your
+name, Pasha. Come, throw it all out of your clever little
+head. There’s a good boy.”</p>
+
+<p>“Uncle darling, he’ll never do it again. Let him stay
+where he is.”</p>
+
+<p>“You’re a foolish boy. Whether he’ll do it again or no,
+his very presence in this town would be a source of danger.
+Whoever sets his eyes on him will say to himself: ‘Here
+is the man who once talked of the way people live under
+a constitution.’ So you see he’ll be a reminder of unlawful
+ideas. We have no use for fellows of this sort. They
+are like living poison. Do you see the point? Let your
+teacher thank his stars the case was not put in the hands<a name="Page_27" id="Page_27"><span class="pagenum">[27]</span></a>
+of the gendarmes entirely, or he would be sent to a colder
+place.”</p>
+
+<p>All this the governor said in the playful manner of one
+conversing with a child and, by way of clinching the matter,
+he explained that he had nothing to do with the case
+and that it was under the jurisdiction of the “curator of
+educational district.”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel was in despair and his being treated as a boy
+threw him into a rage, but he held himself in check for
+Pievakin’s sake.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, the curator will do anything you ask of him,
+uncle,” he said in a tone of entreaty and resentment at
+once.</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t want your uncle to write letters begging for
+a fellow who was foolish enough to get mixed up in such an
+affair as that, do you? I used to think you really cared
+for your uncle.”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel contracted his forehead and put out his chin
+sullenly.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28"><span class="pagenum">[28]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE “DEMONSTRATION.”</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">AT the hour of Pievakin’s departure the Miroslav railway
+station was crowded with gymnasium pupils
+of both sexes, but Pavel was not among them. He
+had not been informed that such a gathering was in contemplation
+at all.</p>
+
+<p>Alexandre Alexandrovich, a satchel slung across his
+breast, wan and haggard, but flushed with excitement, was
+bustling about in a listless, mechanical way. He was accompanied
+by his large family and the teacher of mathematics.
+A number of gendarmes, stalwart, bewhiskered,
+elaborately formidable, were pacing up and down the large
+waiting room. The gendarmerie is the political police of
+the Czar. It forms a special military organisation quite
+distinct from the police proper. A detail of such gendarmes,
+proportionate to the importance of the place, is to
+be found in every railroad station of the country. On this
+occasion, however, the presence of the gendarmes seemed
+to have some special bearing upon the nature of the scene.
+They were all big strapping fellows. Their jingling spurs,
+red epaulets and icy silence belonged to the same category
+of things as the terrible political prisons of Kharkoff and
+St. Petersburg; as the clinking of convict-chains, as the
+frozen wastes of Siberia.</p>
+
+<p>All at once most of the bespurred men disappeared.<a name="Page_29" id="Page_29"><span class="pagenum">[29]</span></a>
+After an absence of two or three minutes they came back,
+considerably re-enforced.</p>
+
+<p>“All gymnasium pupils, ladies and gentlemen, will
+please leave the station,” they called out.</p>
+
+<p>About one-half of the throng struck out for the doors as
+if the place were on fire. Some fifteen or twenty pupils
+stood still, frowning upon the guardians of the Czar’s
+safety, in timid defiance. The rest, a crowd of about two
+hundred, made a lunge in the direction of the corner where
+Alexandre Alexandrovich and his family were pottering
+about some light baggage, when three lusty gendarmes
+planted themselves in front of the little old man.</p>
+
+<p>“Go home, ladies and gentlemen, go home!” Pievakin
+besought his friends, waving his hands and stamping his
+feet desperately.</p>
+
+<p>“Have we no right to say good-bye to our own teacher?”
+one boy ventured.</p>
+
+<p>“Not allowed!” a gendarme answered, sternly. “Get
+out, get out!”</p>
+
+<p>The crowd surged back; but at this point a young
+feminine voice, sonorous with indignation and distress,
+rose above the din of the scramble:</p>
+
+<p>“Good heavens! Can it be that we shall leave without
+saying good-bye to our dear teacher? All they say of him
+is a lie, a malicious lie. They’re a lot of knaves, and he
+is the best man in the world. Let them arrest us if they
+will, let them kill us. It would be a shame if we went
+away like traitors to our dear teacher.”</p>
+
+<p>The rest was lost in a hubbub of shouts and shrieks. In
+their effort to get at the speaker, who was shielded by the
+other pupils, the gendarmes were beating young women
+with their sheathed swords or pulling them by the hair.
+With the exception of a few who had skulked out through<a name="Page_30" id="Page_30"><span class="pagenum">[30]</span></a>
+back doors, the young people now all stood their ground,
+ready to fight.</p>
+
+<p>“Arrest us all!” they yelled. “We all say the same
+thing.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, Alexandre Alexandrovich is the best man in the
+world. There!”</p>
+
+<p>“A better man than Novikoff!”</p>
+
+<p>“Novikoff is a hypocrite and a rogue!”</p>
+
+<p>In the commotion the gendarmes lost sight of the girl
+they were about to arrest. She could not have left the
+room, but then it was not easy to tell her from any of the
+other girls. The gendarmes had seen her at a distance,
+and all they could say was that she was blonde. In their
+eagerness to pick her out, they were rudely scanning every
+young woman in the waiting-room. Had she been arrested
+it would have gone hard with her. As good luck would
+have it, however, Major Safonoff, the officer in command
+of the railroad gendarmes, was the brother of one of the
+girls present. He was a plump, good-natured bachelor,
+and his devotion to his sister, who had been under his
+care since she was a year old, was a source of jests and
+anecdotes. When it occurred to him that the conflict,
+which was beginning to look like a serious affair, was likely
+to cause trouble to his sister, he hastened to make light
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>“Go home, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, in a remonstrative
+amicable voice, taking the matter in his own
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>His friendly tone and his smiling fat face, added to the
+tacit understanding that the girl who had made the speech
+was not to be persecuted, acted as a balm; but the flattering
+notion that the gendarmes had surrendered kindled new
+fighting blood.</p><p><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31"><span class="pagenum">[31]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“Your men have hit ladies. They’ve no right to hit anybody.
+They’re a lot of brutes. All we wanted was to say
+good-bye to Alexandre Alexandrovich.”</p>
+
+<p>“But that’s impossible, so what’s the use getting excited,
+gentlemen? Better go home.”</p>
+
+<p>The pupils obeyed, in a leisurely way, as though leaving
+of their own accord.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>During the following few weeks this “victory” over the
+gendarmes was the great topic of discussion. The personality
+of the girl who “started the demonstration” was
+emblazoned with the halo of heroism. The curious part of
+it was that only a minority of those who had participated
+in the scene had any idea who she was. When the crowd
+at the railroad station had dispersed, the handful that
+knew her whispered her name to some of those who did
+not, so that the number of pupils in the secret was by now
+comparatively large, but it was a “revolutionary” secret,
+so it was guarded most zealously against unreliable pupils
+as well as against the authorities.</p>
+
+<p>One of the page-proofs of the <i>Miroslav Messenger</i> that
+were sent to the censor at midnight contained the following
+paragraph:</p>
+
+<p>“Alexandre Alexandrovich Pievakin, for many years instructor
+of History and Geography at our male gymnasium,
+left for his new place of service yesterday afternoon. A
+large number of gymnasium pupils were at the railway
+station.”</p>
+
+<p>The entire paragraph was stricken out, so that the <i>Messenger</i>
+next morning contained not the remotest reference
+to the departure of the old teacher.</p>
+
+<p>When Pasha heard what had happened at the railway
+station his heart sank.</p><p><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"><span class="pagenum">[32]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“I must speak to you, mother,” he gasped out, bursting
+into her room, after school time. When her companion, a
+dried-up little Frenchwoman with a thriving streak of
+black moustache, had withdrawn, he said: “Mother, I am
+a miserable egoist and a scoundrel.” He told her the story
+of Pievakin’s departure. His dear old teacher was in
+trouble, the victim of a cruel injustice, yet he, Pasha, had
+not even thought of going to see him off. Everybody had
+been there except him. But what tantalised him more
+than anything else was the fact that a girl was the only
+person who had taken a brave noble stand in the old man’s
+behalf. This hurt his knightly sense of honour cruelly.
+He should have been on the scene and done exactly what
+that girl had done.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m an egoist and a coward, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mamman</i>. I hate myself.
+Oh, I do hate myself!”</p>
+
+<p>Anna Nicolayevna’s eyes grew red. She had an impulse
+to fold him in her arms and to offer to take him to Pievakin’s
+new place so that he might protest his sympathy and
+affection for the old man, but her instinct told her that
+this would be improper. Oh, there were so many things
+that made a strong appeal to one’s better feelings which
+were considered improper. So she emitted a sigh of resignation
+and said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel was pacing the floor so vehemently that he came
+near running into and knocking down the life-sized Diana.
+He walked with rapid heavy steps until his brain grew
+dizzy and his despair was dulled as from the effect of
+drink. Suddenly the situation rushed back upon him.</p>
+
+<p>“I tell you what, mother, he’s too good for them,” he
+said, stopping in front of her. “He is better than uncle,
+anyhow.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hush, you mustn’t say that.”</p><p><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33"><span class="pagenum">[33]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“The devil I mustn’t. It’s true.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are impossible, Pasha. Can’t you calm down?”</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll tell you calmly, then: uncle is a bribe-taker and a
+heartless egoist. There.”</p>
+
+<p>“Dear me,” she said, in consternation.</p>
+
+<p>“But you know he is, mother. And do you call that
+loyalty to the Czar? Pievakin is pure as an infant. If
+the Czar knew the real character of both, he would know
+that the poor man could give uncle points in loyalty.”</p>
+
+<p>A few days after this conversation the governor dined at
+“The Palace,” as Countess Varoff’s residence was known
+among the common people of Miroslav. Pavel refused to
+leave his room. When Anna Nicolayevna pleaded his
+uncle’s affection for him, he said:</p>
+
+<p>“His affection be hanged. Who wants the affection of
+a bribe-taker who will let an honest man perish? Look
+here, mother, you have no business to tell him I have
+a headache. I want him to know the truth. Tell him
+it’s men like himself, bribe-takers, cowards, who spread
+sedition, not men like Pievakin. ‘Living poison,’d!
+Tell him he is a lump of living poison himself. Oh, I hate
+him, I do hate him.”</p>
+
+<p>His brain was working feverishly. The image of Pievakin
+with three gendarmes between him and a crowd of
+pupils haunted him. Why could he not be pardoned?
+Was there no mercy in this world? His sense of the
+cruelty of the thing and of his own helplessness seized
+him as with a violent clutch again and again.</p>
+
+<p>Once, as he was reviewing the situation for the thousandth
+time, a voice in him exclaimed: “Pardoned?
+What was Pievakin to be pardoned for? What had he
+done? Why should it be wrong to dwell on the vital features
+of parliamentary government? Such governments<a name="Page_34" id="Page_34"><span class="pagenum">[34]</span></a>
+existed, didn’t they? And if they did, then why should
+one be forbidden to explain their <ins class="punct" title="Transcriber's Note: added &quot;">essence?”</ins> For the first
+time did his attention fix itself on this point, and questions
+came crowding upon him. Where was the sense
+of having such terms as “limited monarchy” in the text-book
+at all, if the pupils were not to be told what this
+meant? Above all, why should the government be afraid
+of such explanations? There seemed to be something
+cowardly, sneaking, about all this which jarred on Pavel’s
+sense of the knightly magnificence of the Czar and left him
+with a bad taste in the mouth, as the phrase is.</p>
+
+<p>Alexandre Alexandrovich, then, had done no wrong,
+and yet he had been banished as “living poison,” treated
+by everybody as a criminal, until he came to believe himself
+one. Why, of course he was better than Novikoff. Novikoff
+was a self-seeking, posing wretch, and all the other
+teachers were cringing and crouching before him; and these
+insects turned their backs upon Alexandre Alexandrovich!
+Corruption passed for loyalty, and a really good man was
+persecuted, hunted down like a wild beast, trampled upon.
+“Trampled upon, trampled upon, trampled upon!” Pavel
+whispered audibly, stamping his foot and gnashing his
+teeth as he did so.</p>
+
+<p>The only gleam of light was the veiled figure of that
+gymnasium girl. She alone had had sympathy and courage
+enough to raise her voice for the poor man. “Why,
+she is a perfect heroine,” he said in his aching heart.</p>
+
+<p>At the gymnasium he felt his loneliness more keenly
+than ever. Wherever he saw a cluster of boys, he felt sure
+they were whispering about the gendarmes and the girl
+who had made the “speech” at the railroad station. His
+pride was gone. He now saw himself an outcast, shut out
+of the most important things life contained.</p><p><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35"><span class="pagenum">[35]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The leader of the “serious-minded” boys in Pavel’s class
+was an underfed Jewish youth, with an anæmic chalky
+face and a cold intelligent look, named Elkin. To Pavel
+he had always been repugnant. Since Pievakin’s departure,
+however, the aristocratic boy had looked at his classmates
+in a new light, and Elkin now even inspired him
+with respect.</p>
+
+<p>“Who is the girl that made that speech at the station?”
+he asked simply. The two had scarcely ever
+spoken before.</p>
+
+<p>Elkin gave Boulatoff a stare of freezing irony, as who
+should say: “What do you think of the assurance of this
+man?” and then, dropping his eyes, he asked:</p>
+
+<p>“What girl?” When he spoke his lips assumed the
+form of two obtuse angles, exposing to view a glistening
+lozenge of white teeth.</p>
+
+<p>“Look here, Elkin, I want to know who that girl is and
+all about the whole affair, and if you think I ought not to
+know it because&mdash;well, because I am a Boulatoff and my
+uncle is the governor, I can assure you that if I had been
+there I should have acted as she did. What’s more, I hate
+myself for not having been there.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” replied Elkin.
+“As to your hating yourself, that’s your own affair.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, however I may feel toward myself, I certainly
+have nothing but contempt for a man like you,” Pasha
+snapped back, paling. “But if you think you can keep it
+from me, you’re mistaken.”</p>
+
+<p>Elkin sized him up with a look full of venom, as he
+said:</p>
+
+<p>“Pitiful wretch! How are you going to find it out?
+Through the political spies?”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel turned red. It was with a great effort that he<a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"><span class="pagenum">[36]</span></a>
+kept himself from striking Elkin. After a pause he said:</p>
+
+<p>“Now, I can tell you from the bottom of my heart that
+you are a knave.”</p>
+
+<p>“Besides,” said Elkin, as though finishing an interrupted
+remark, “most of the gymnasium girls who saw
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Alexander'">Alexandre</ins> Alexandrovich off are daughters of poor, humble
+people, so of what interest would it have been to a man
+in your position?”</p>
+
+<p>Boulatoff stood still for a few moments, and then said
+under his breath:</p>
+
+<p>“Well, you’re a fool as well as a knave,” and turned
+away.</p>
+
+<p>The heroine of the demonstration was hateful to him
+now. She and Elkin seemed to stand at the head of the
+untitled classes all arrayed against him. He retired into
+himself deeper than ever. He abhorred her because she
+had done the right thing, and each time his sympathy for
+Pievakin welled up he hated himself for not having been
+at the station, and her for having been there. He sought
+relief in charging Elkin with cowardice. “What did <i>he</i>
+do there?” he would say to himself. “To think of a lot
+of fellows running away when they are told they can’t
+say good-bye to their martyred teacher, and a girl being
+the only one who has courage enough to act properly. And
+now that she has done it this coward has the face to give
+himself airs, as if he were entitled to credit for her courage.
+If I had been there I should not have run away as Elkin
+and his crew did.”</p>
+
+<p>This placed Elkin and his followers on one side of the
+line and Pavel and the girl on the other. So what right
+had that coward of a Jew to place himself between her
+and him?</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"><span class="pagenum">[37]</span></a></p><hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Toward spring, some two months after the old teacher’s
+departure, and when the incident was beginning to grow
+dim in the public mind, the sensation was suddenly revived
+and greatly intensified by an extraordinary piece of news
+that came from the town to which Pievakin had been transferred:
+The Third Section of His Majesty’s Own Office&mdash;the
+central political detective bureau of the empire&mdash;had
+taken up the case, with the result that the action of the
+Department of Public Instruction had been repudiated as
+dangerously inadequate. The idea of a man like Pievakin
+participating in the education of children! Accordingly,
+the poor old man was now under arrest, condemned to be
+transported to Viatka, a thinly populated province in the
+remote north, where he was to live under police surveillance,
+as a political exile strictly debarred from teaching,
+even in private families.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel was stunned. He received the news as something
+elemental. He could find fault with his uncle, but the
+government at St. Petersburg was a sublime abstract force,
+bathed in the effulgence of the Czar’s personality. It was
+no more open to condemnation than a thunderstorm or a
+turbulent sea. But the incident made an ineffaceable impression
+upon him. It left him with the general feeling
+that there was something inherently cruel in the world.
+And the picture of a pretty girl boldly raising her voice
+for poor Pievakin in the teeth of formidable-looking gendarmes
+and in the midst of a crowd of panic-stricken men
+remained imbedded in his fancy as the emblem of brave
+pity. An importunate sense of jealousy nagged him. He
+often caught himself dreaming of situations in which he
+appeared in a rôle similar to the one she had played at the
+railroad station.</p>
+
+<p>His perceptions and sensibilities took a novel trend.</p><p><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"><span class="pagenum">[38]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>One day, for example, as he walked through Theatre
+Square, he paused to watch an apple-faced ensign, evidently
+fresh from the military school, lecture a middle-aged sergeant.
+The youthful officer sat on a bench, swaggeringly
+leaning back, his new sword gleaming by his side, as he
+questioned the soldier who stood at attention, the picture
+of embarrassment and impotent rage. A young woman,
+probably the sergeant’s wife, sweetheart, or daughter, stood
+aside, looking on wretchedly. Seated on a bench directly
+across the walk were two pretty gymnasium girls. It was
+clear that the whole scene had been gotten up for their
+sake, that the ensign had stopped the poor fellow, who
+was old enough to be his father, and was now putting him
+through this ordeal for the sole purpose of flaunting his
+authority before them. When the sergeant had been allowed
+to go his way, but before he was out of hearing,
+Pavel walked up to the ensign and said aloud:</p>
+
+<p>“I wish to tell you, sir, that you tormented that poor
+man merely to show off.”</p>
+
+<p>“Bravo!” said the two gymnasium girls, clapping their
+hands with all their might; “bravo!”</p>
+
+<p>The ensign sprang to his feet, his apple-cheeks red as
+fire. “What do you mean by interfering with an officer&mdash;in
+the performance of his duty?” he faltered. He apparently
+knew that the young man before him was a nephew
+of the governor.</p>
+
+<p>“Nonsense! You were not performing any duties.
+You were parading. That’s what you were doing.”</p>
+
+<p>The two girls burst into a ringing laugh, whereupon the
+ensign stalked off, mumbling something about having the
+gymnasium boy arrested.</p>
+
+<p>“Mother,” he said, when he came home. “The world
+is divided into tormentors and victims.”</p><p><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"><span class="pagenum">[39]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Anna Nicolayevna gave a laugh that made her rusty
+face interesting. “And what are you&mdash;a tormentor or
+a victim?” she asked. “At any rate you had better throw
+these thoughts out of your mind. They lead to no good,
+Pasha.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40"><span class="pagenum">[40]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<h3>PAVEL’S FIRST STEP.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">WHEN Pavel arrived in St. Petersburg, in the last
+days of July, his recent tribulations seemed a
+thing of the faded past. The capital was a fascinating
+setting for the great university which he was soon
+to enter and in which he was bent upon drinking deep of
+the deepest mysteries of wisdom. His “certificate of maturity”&mdash;his
+gymnasium diploma&mdash;was a solemn proclamation
+of his passage from boyhood to manhood&mdash;a
+change which seemed to assert itself in everything he did.
+He ate maturely, talked maturely, walked maturely. He
+felt like a girl on the eve of her wedding day.</p>
+
+<p>He had not been in the big city for six years, and so
+marked was the distinction between it and the southern
+town from which he hailed, that to his “mature” eyes it
+seemed as if they were seeing it for the first time. The
+multitude of large lusty men, heavily bearded and wearing
+blouses of flaming red; the pink buildings; the melodious
+hucksters; the cherry-peddlars, with their boards piled
+with the succulent fruit on their shoulders; the pitchy odor
+of the overheated streets; the soft, sibilant affectations in
+the speech of the lower classes; the bustling little ferry-boats
+on the Neva&mdash;all this, sanctified by the presence
+of the university buildings across the gay river, made his
+heart throb with a feeling as though Miroslav were a foreign<a name="Page_41" id="Page_41"><span class="pagenum">[41]</span></a>
+town and he were treading the soil of real Russia at
+last.</p>
+
+<p>He matriculated at the Section of Philology and History,
+St. Petersburg. Before starting on his studies, however,
+he went off on a savage debauch with some aristocratic
+young relatives. The debauch lasted a fortnight, and cost
+his mother a small fortune. When he came to the university
+at last, weary of himself and his relatives, he settled
+down to a winter of hard work. But the life at the
+university disturbed his peace of mind. He found the
+students divided into “crammers,” “parquette-scrapers”
+and “radicals.” The last named seemed to be in the majority&mdash;a
+bustling, whispering, preoccupied crowd with
+an effect of being the masters of the situation. There was
+a vast difference between Elkin and his followers and these
+people. Pavel knew that the university was the hotbed
+of the secret movement, of which he was now tempted to
+know something. There was no telling who of his present
+classmates might prove a candidate for the gallows. The
+wide-awake, whispering, mysterious world about him reminded
+him of the Miroslav girl and of his rebuff upon
+trying to discover who she was. When he made an attempt
+to break through the magic circle in which that world was
+enclosed his well-cared-for appearance and high-born manner
+went against him. A feeling of isolation weighed on
+his soul that was much harder to bear than his ostracism
+at the gymnasium had been. Harder to bear, because the
+students who kept away from him here struck him as his
+superiors, and because he had a humble feeling as though
+it were natural that they should hold aloof from him.
+And the image of that Miroslav girl seemed to float over
+these whispering young men, at once luring and repulsing
+him. He often went about with a lump in his throat.</p><p><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42"><span class="pagenum">[42]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>One day he met a girl named Sophia Perovskaya, the
+daughter of a former governor of the Province of St. Petersburg
+and the granddaughter of a celebrated cabinet minister.
+She was a strong-featured, boyish-looking little creature,
+with grave blue eyes beneath a very high forehead.
+He had known her when he was a child. There was something
+in her general appearance now and in the few words
+she said to him which left a peculiar impression on Pavel.
+As he thought of her later it dawned upon him that she
+might belong to the same world as those preoccupied, whispering
+fellow-students of his. He looked her up the same
+day.</p>
+
+<p>“I should like to get something to read, Sophia
+Lvovna,” he said, colouring. “Some of the proscribed
+things, I mean.” Then he added, with an embarrassed
+frown, “Something tells me you could get it for me. If
+I am mistaken, you will have to excuse me.”</p>
+
+<p>The governor’s daughter fixed her blue eyes on him as
+she said, simply:</p>
+
+<p>“All right. I’ll get you something.”</p>
+
+<p>She lent him a volume of the “underground” magazine
+<i>Forward!</i> and some other prints. The tales of valour
+and martyrdom which he found in these publications, added
+to the editorials they contained calling upon the nobility
+to pay the debt they owed to the peasantry by sacrificing
+themselves for their welfare, literally intoxicated him.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear Mother and Comrade,” he wrote in a letter home,
+“I have come to the conclusion that the so-called nobility
+to which I belong has never done anything useful. For
+centuries and centuries and centuries we have been living
+at the expense of those good, honest, overworked people, the
+peasantry. It is enough to drive one to suicide. Yes,
+mamma darling, we are a race of drones and robbers. The<a name="Page_43" id="Page_43"><span class="pagenum">[43]</span></a>
+ignorant, unkempt moujiks that we treat like beasts are
+in reality angels compared to us. There is something in
+them&mdash;in their traditions and in the inherent purity of
+their souls&mdash;which should inspire us with reverence. Yet
+they are literally starved and three-fourths of their toil
+goes to maintain the army and the titled classes.”</p>
+
+<p>Further down in the same letter he said: “Every great
+writer in the history of our literature has been in prison
+or exiled. Our noblest thinker and critic, Chernyshevsky,
+is languishing in Siberia. Why? Why? My hair stands
+erect when I think of these things.”</p>
+
+<p>When it came to posting the letter, it dawned upon him
+that such sentiments were not to be trusted to the mails,
+and, feeling himself a conspirator, he committed the epistle
+to the flames.</p>
+
+<p>He was touched by the spirit of that peasant worship&mdash;the
+religion of the “penitent nobility”&mdash;which was the
+spirit of the best unproscribed literature of the day as well
+as of the “underground” movement. Turgeneff owed the
+origin of his fame to the peasant portraits of his <i>Notes of
+a Huntsman</i>. Nekrasoff, the leading poet of the period,
+and a score of other writers were perpetually glorifying
+the peasant, going into ecstasies over him, bewailing him.
+The peasant they drew was a creature of flesh-and-blood
+reality, but shed over him was the golden halo of idealism.
+The central doctrine of the movement was a theory that
+the survival of the communistic element in the Russian
+village, was destined to become the basis of the country’s
+economic and political salvation; that Russia would leap
+into an ideal social arrangement without having to pass
+through capitalism; that her semi-barbaric peasant, kindly
+and innocent as a dove and the martyr of centuries, carried
+in his person the future glory, moral as well as material,<a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"><span class="pagenum">[44]</span></a>
+of his unhappy country. As to the living peasant, he had
+no more knowledge of this adoration of himself (nor
+capacity to grasp the meaning of the movement, if an attempt
+had been made to explain it to him) than a squirrel
+has of the presence of a “q” in the spelling of its name.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Sophia disappeared from St. Petersburg, and Pavel
+found himself cut off from the “underground” world once
+more. The prints she had left him only served to excite
+his craving for others of the same character. The preoccupied,
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'myterious'">mysterious</ins> air of the “radicals” at the university
+tantalised him. He was in a veritable fever of envy, resentment,
+intellectual and spiritual thirst. He subscribed
+liberally to the various revolutionary funds that were continually
+being raised under the guise of charity, and otherwise
+tried to manifest his sympathy with the movement,
+all to no purpose. His contributions were accepted, but
+his advances were repulsed. One day he approached a
+student whom he had once given ten rubles “for a needy
+family”&mdash;a thin fellow with a very long neck and the
+face of a chicken.</p>
+
+<p>“I should like to get something to read,” he said, trying
+to copy the tone of familiar simplicity which he had used
+with Sophia. “I have read one number of <ins class="punct" title="Transcriber's Note: added !"><i>Forward!</i></ins> and
+another thing or two, but that’s all I have been able to
+get.”</p>
+
+<p>“Pardon me,” the chicken-face answered, colouring, “I
+really don’t know what you mean. Can’t you get those
+books in the book-stores or in the public library?”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel was left with an acute pang of self-pity. He felt
+like a pampered child undergoing ill-treatment at the
+hands of strangers. His mother and all his relatives
+thought so much of him, while these fellows, who would<a name="Page_45" id="Page_45"><span class="pagenum">[45]</span></a>
+deem it a privilege to talk to any of them, were treating
+him as a nobody and a spy. The tears came to his eyes.
+But presently he clenched his fists and said to himself, “I
+<i>will</i> be admitted to their set.”</p>
+
+<p>In his fidget he happened to think of Pani Oginska. As
+the scene at the German watering-place came back to him,
+he was seized with a desire to efface the affront he had
+offered her. “How can I rest until I have seen her and
+asked her pardon?” he said to himself. “If I were a real
+man and not a mere phrase-monger I should start out on
+the journey at once. But, of course, I won’t do anything
+of the kind, and writing of such things is impossible. I
+<i>am</i> a phrase-maker. That’s all I am.”</p>
+
+<p>But he soliloquized himself into the reflection that Pani
+Oginska was likely to know some of her imprisoned son’s
+friends, if, indeed, she was not in the “underground”
+world herself, and the very next morning found him in a
+railway car, bound for the south.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Pani Oginska’s estate was near the boundary line between
+the province to which it belonged and the one whose
+capital was Miroslav, a considerable distance from a railway
+station. Pavel covered that distance in a post-sleigh
+drawn by a troika. His way lay in the steppe region. It
+was a very cold forenoon in mid-winter. The horses’
+manes were covered with frost; the postilion was bundled
+up so heavily that he looked like an old woman. The sun
+shone out of a blue, unconcerned sky upon a waste of eery
+whiteness. There were ridges of drifts and there were
+black patches of bare ground, but the general perspective
+unfolded an unbroken plane of snow, a level expanse
+stretching on either side of the smooth road, seemingly
+endless and bottomless, destitute of any trace of life save<a name="Page_46" id="Page_46"><span class="pagenum">[46]</span></a>
+for an occasional inn by the roadside or the snow-bound
+hovel and outhouses of a shepherd in the distance&mdash;a
+domain of silence and numb monotony. That this desert
+of frozen sterility would four or five months later, be
+transformed into a world of grass and birds seemed as
+inconceivable as the sudden disappearance of the ocean.</p>
+
+<p>The last few versts were an eternity. Pavel’s heart
+leaped with a foretaste of the exciting interview.</p>
+
+<p>“Lively, my man,” he pressed the postilion. “Can’t
+your horses get a move on them?”</p>
+
+<p>The postilion nodded his muffled head and set up a
+fierce yelp, for all the world like a wolf giving chase;
+whereupon the animals, apparently scared to death, broke
+into a desperate gallop, the scud flying, the sleigh dashing
+along like an electric car in open country, its bell ringing
+frostily.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s better,” Pavel shouted with a thrill of physical
+pleasure and speaking with difficulty for the breakneck
+speed that seemed to fling the breath out of his lungs.
+“That’s better, my man. You shall get a good tip. But
+where have you learned the trick?”</p>
+
+<p>The postilion gave a muffled grunt of appreciation and
+went on howling with all his might.</p>
+
+<p>They passed through a small village. The chimneys of
+some of the white clay hovels on either side of the road
+poured out clouds of sweetish, nauseating smoke. Wood
+being scarce in these parts, the peasantry made fuel of
+manure.</p>
+
+<p>At last the sleigh swung into the great front yard of Pani
+Oginska’s manor house. It was greeted by the curious eyes
+of half a dozen servants. Pavel entered a warm vestibule
+with a painted floor, where he found waiting to meet him
+Pani Oginska and an aged man with hair as white as the<a name="Page_47" id="Page_47"><span class="pagenum">[47]</span></a>
+snow without. He bowed politely and asked, in French,
+with nervous timidity:</p>
+
+<p>“Do you remember me, Madame Oginska?”</p>
+
+<p>She screwed up her eyes as she scanned his flushed,
+frozen face.</p>
+
+<p>“Prince Boulatoff!” she said in a perplexed whisper.</p>
+
+<p>“I have come all the way from St. Petersburg to beg
+your pardon, Madame Oginska,” he fired out. “I acted
+like a brute on that occasion. I was an idiotic boy. Forgive
+me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Have you actually come all the way from St. Petersburg,
+to tell me that?” she asked with a hearty peal of
+laughter. She introduced him to the white-haired man,
+her father, who first made a bow full of old-fashioned
+dignity and then gave Pavel’s cold hand a doddering grasp.</p>
+
+<p>“So you have really come for that express purpose?”
+Pani Oginska resumed, while a servant was relieving the
+newcomer of his fur-lined coat, fur cap, heavy gloves, muffler
+and storm shoes. “A case of compunction, I suppose?”</p>
+
+<p>Her father followed them as far as the open door of a
+vast, plainly furnished parlour, and after looming on the
+threshold for a minute or two, in an attitude of pained
+dignity, he bowed himself away. Pani Oginska gently
+pressed the young man into a huge, rusty easy-chair, she
+herself remaining in a standing posture, her mind apparently
+divided between hospitality and an important
+errand upon which she seemed to have been bent when
+he arrived. She wore a furred jacket, her head in a
+grey shawl and her feet in heavy top-boots&mdash;a costume
+jarringly out of accord with her pale, delicate, nunnish
+<ins class="punct" title="Transcriber's Note: added .">face.</ins> She made quite a new impression on the young
+prince.</p><p><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"><span class="pagenum">[48]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“I was blind then,” he began, when they were left alone.
+“My eyes were closed.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, you needn’t go into detail,” she rejoined with an
+amused look. “I think I can guess how it has come about.
+You have caught the contagion, haven’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why call it ‘contagion?’ It’s the truth; it’s justice.
+If I hadn’t been such a silly boy when I first had the pleasure
+of meeting you, I should certainly not have acted the
+way I did.”</p>
+
+<p>“A boy? And what are you now, pray? An old man
+with the weight of experience on your shoulders?” she
+asked with motherly gaiety. “Well, we’ll talk it over later
+on, or, indeed, we’ll find better things to talk about; and
+meanwhile I want you to excuse me, prince, and make
+yourself comfortable without me. You are hungry, of
+course?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not at all. I had luncheon at the station.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, you shall have some refreshments at any rate,
+and by and by I shall be back. I am a rather busy woman,
+you see. I have to be my own manager, and there are
+a thousand and one things to look after, and the snow is
+rather deep”&mdash;pointing at her heavy boots. “Well, here
+are some books and magazines. <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Au revoir.</i>” She made
+for the door, but faced about again. “By the way, prince,
+does your mother know of this crazy trip of yours?”</p>
+
+<p>“I confess she does not,” he answered, feeling helplessly
+like a boy. “Why?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why! Because she is the best woman in the world,
+and because it’s too bad you did anything so foolish without
+letting her know at least. By the way, this is anything
+but a desirable place for a young man to visit. Since my
+son got into trouble the police have tried to keep an eye
+on us; but then the police are so stupid. Still, I am sorry<a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"><span class="pagenum">[49]</span></a>
+you didn’t first consult your mother. If you boys would
+only let yourselves be guided by your mothers you would
+be spared many a trouble.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is that the prime object of life&mdash;to guard against
+harm to oneself?” Pavel protested.</p>
+
+<p>She fixed him with a look of amusement, and then remarked
+sadly: “You <i>have</i> caught the contagion, poor
+thing. I’ll write your mother about it. Let her put a
+stop to it if it isn’t too late.”</p>
+
+<p>He took fire. “I don’t know what you are hinting at,
+Madame Oginska,” he said. Asking her to introduce him
+to Nihilists seemed out of the question.</p>
+
+<p>“I am hinting at those ‘circles,’ prince. You probably
+belong to one of them; that’s what I am hinting at. Don’t
+you, now?”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t belong to any circles. Nor do I know what
+you mean, madame.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, well. You have come to ask me not to be offended
+with you, and now it seems to be my turn to ask
+you not to be angry with me. Don’t be uneasy, prince.
+I shan’t write to your mother. Indeed, she couldn’t afford
+to be in correspondence with me at all. However, if you
+really aren’t yet mixed up in those dreadful things”&mdash;there
+was a dubious twinkle in her eye&mdash;“you had better
+keep out of them in the future, too. Think of your charming
+mother and take care of yourself, prince. Well, I have
+got to go. It’s barbaric of me to leave you, but I’ll soon be
+back. Here are some books and magazines. Or wait, I
+have another occupation for you. I want you to meet
+the best Jew in the world. I want you to examine him
+in ‘Gentile lore,’ as his people would put it. They would
+kill me, his people, if they knew he came to read my ‘Gentile
+books.’”</p><p><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"><span class="pagenum">[50]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“He is a brainy fellow,” she went on, leading the way
+through a labyrinth of rooms and corridors, “chockful of
+that Talmud of theirs, don’t you know. Now that he is
+married they are trying to make a business man of him,
+but he prefers worldly wisdom and that sort of thing. I
+let him use my library, the only place he has for his
+‘unholy’ studies, in fact. He is supposed to come on business
+here. He lives in a small town a mile from here.”</p>
+
+<p>She was speaking in Russian now, a language she had
+perfect command of, but which she spoke with a strong
+Polish accent, making it sound to Pavel as though she
+was declaiming poetry. Twelve years ago, before she inherited
+this estate, and when she still lived in Poland, her
+birthplace, she could scarcely speak it at all.</p>
+
+<p>She took him into a room whose walls were lined with
+books, mostly old and worn, and whose two windows looked
+out upon a frozen pond in front of a snow-covered clump
+of trees.</p>
+
+<p>“Monsieur Parmet, Prince Boulatoff,” she said, as a
+man sprang to his feet with the air of one startled from
+mental absorption. He was of strong, ungainly build,
+with the peculiar stamp of rabbinical scholarship on a
+plump, dark-bearded face. “See how much he knows,
+prince. He thinks he can take the examination for a certificate
+of maturity and enter the university. But then
+he thinks he knows everything.” With this she left them
+to themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel was in a whirl of embarrassment and annoyance,
+but the abashed smile of the other mollified him. “What
+I need more than anything else is to be examined in Latin
+and Greek,” Parmet said. “I haven’t had my exercises
+looked over for a long time, and it may be all wrong for all
+I know.” His Russian had a Yiddish accent. He spoke<a name="Page_51" id="Page_51"><span class="pagenum">[51]</span></a>
+in low, purring tones that seemed to soften the heavy outline
+of his figure. He was a lumbering mass of physical
+strength, one of those bearlike giants whom village people
+will describe as bending horseshoes like so many blades of
+grass or driving nails into a wall with their bare knuckles
+for a hammer. His dark-brown eyes shone meekly.</p>
+
+<p>“Have you learned it all by yourself?” Pavel asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Not altogether.”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel began with an air of lofty reluctance, but he was
+soon carried away by the niceties of the ancient syntax,
+and his stiffness melted into didactic animation. As to
+Parmet, his plump, dark face was an image of religious
+ecstasy. Pavel warmed to him. His Talmudic gestures
+and intonation amused him.</p>
+
+<p>“There’s no trouble about your Latin,” he said, familiarly;
+“no trouble whatever.”</p>
+
+<p>“Isn’t there? It was Pani Oginska’s son who gave me
+the first start,” the other said, blissfully, uttering the name
+in a lowered voice. “If it had not been for him I should
+still be immersed in the depths of darkness.”</p>
+
+<p>“‘Immersed in the depths of darkness!’ There is a
+phrase for you! Why should you use high-flown language
+like that?”</p>
+
+<p>Parmet smiled, shrugging his shoulders bashfully.
+“Will you kindly try me on Greek now?” he said.</p>
+
+<p>“One second. That must have been quite a little while
+ago when Pani Oginska’s son taught you, wasn’t it?”</p>
+
+<p>Parmet tiptoed over to the open door, closed it, tiptoed
+back and said: “Not quite two years. If you knew what
+a man of gold he was! They are slowly killing him, the
+murderers. And why? What had he done? He could
+not harm a fly. He is all goodness, an angel like his
+mother. He was of delicate health when they took him,<a name="Page_52" id="Page_52"><span class="pagenum">[52]</span></a>
+and now he is melting like a candle. Why, oh why, should
+men like him have to perish that way?”</p>
+
+<p>“Isn’t it rather risky for you to be coming here?” Pavel
+demanded, looking him over curiously.</p>
+
+<p>Parmet smiled, a queer, outlandish smile, at once naïve
+and knowing, as he replied:</p>
+
+<p>“Risky? No. What does an old-fashioned Jew like
+myself care about politics? I am supposed to come here
+on business. Did you know Eugene?”</p>
+
+<p>“Who is Eugene? Pani Oginska’s son?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes. I thought you knew him.”</p>
+
+<p>“I wish I had. People like him are the only ones worth
+knowing. Most of the others are scoundrels, humbugs,
+cold-blooded egoists; that’s what they are.”</p>
+
+<p>So talking, they gradually confided to each other the
+story of their respective conversions and tribulations.
+Parmet followed the prince’s tale first with a look of childlike
+curiosity and then with an air that betrayed emotion.
+As he listened he kept rubbing his hand nervously. When
+Pavel had concluded, the Jew took to tiptoeing up and
+down the room, stopped in front of him and said, with great
+ardour:</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t grieve, my dear man. I may be able to help you.
+I know a friend of Eugene’s who could put you in touch
+with the proper persons.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is he in St. Petersburg?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, but that’s no matter. He can arrange it. He
+knows somebody there. I’ll see him as soon as I can, even
+if I have to travel many miles for it.”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel grasped his hand silently.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” the other said. “There was a time when I
+thought every Christian hard-hearted and cruel. Now I
+am ashamed of myself for having harboured such ideas in<a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"><span class="pagenum">[53]</span></a>
+my mind. Every Christian whose acquaintance I happen
+to make turns out to be an angel rather than a human
+being.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why these compliments?” Pavel snarled. “Most of
+the Christians I know are knaves. The whole world is
+made up of knaves for that matter.”</p>
+
+<p>When Pani Oginska came home and saw them together,
+she said:</p>
+
+<p>“I knew I should find you two making love to each
+other.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>A month or two after Pavel’s return to St. Petersburg
+a tall blond young man with typical Great-Russian features
+looked him up at the university.</p>
+
+<p>“I have received word from the south about you,” he
+said, without introducing himself.</p>
+
+<p>“I am pleased to meet you,” Pavel returned gruffly,
+“but I hope I won’t be kept on probation and be subjected
+to all sorts of humiliations.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, why,” the other said, in confusion. “I’ll be glad
+to let you have any kind of literature there is and to introduce
+you to other comrades. That’s why I have been
+looking for you. Why should you take it that way?”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel’s face broke into a smile. “Dashed if I know
+why I should. Something possessed me to put on a harsh
+front. It was mere parading, I suppose. Don’t mind it.
+What shall I call you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why&mdash;er&mdash;oh, call me anything,” the other answered,
+colouring.</p>
+
+<p>“Very well, then. I’ll call you Peter; or no, will ‘godfather’
+do? That is, provided you are really going to be
+one to me,” Pavel said, in a vain struggle to suppress his
+exultation.</p><p><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"><span class="pagenum">[54]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“It’ll be all right,” his new acquaintance replied with
+bashful ardour.</p>
+
+<p>“Godfather, then?”</p>
+
+<p>Godfather introduced him to several other “radicals,”
+who gave him underground prints and a list of legitimate
+books for a course of “serious” reading. He
+would stay at home a whole week at a time without
+dressing or going down for his meals, perusing volume
+after volume, paper after paper. When he did dress and
+go out it was to get more books or to seek answers to the
+questions which disturbed his peace. He was in a state
+of vernal agitation, in a fever of lofty impulses. And so
+much like a conspirator did he feel by now, that he no
+longer even thought of opening his mind to his mother.
+Indeed, the change that had come over him was so complete
+that she was not likely to understand him if he had.
+To drive her to despair seemed to be the only result he
+could expect of such a confession. The secret movement
+appealed to him as a host of saints. He longed to be one
+of them, to be martyred with them. It was clear to him
+that some day he would die for the Russian people; die a
+slow, a terrible death; and this slow, terrible death impressed
+him as the highest pinnacle of happiness.</p>
+
+<p>When his mother came to see him, a year later, she
+thought he was in love.</p>
+
+<p>He was in the thick of the movement by that time. He
+was learning shoemaking with a view to settling in a village.
+He would earn his livelihood in the sweat of his
+brow, and he would carry the light of his lofty ideas into
+the hovels of the suffering peasantry. But his plans in
+this direction were never realized. The period of “going
+to the people” soon came to an end.</p>
+
+<p>The mothlike self-immolation of university students continued,<a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"><span class="pagenum">[55]</span></a>
+but the spirit of unresisting martyrdom could not
+last. Violence was bound to result from it.</p>
+
+<p>The next year saw the celebrated “trial of 193,” mostly
+college men and college women. They were charged with
+political propaganda, and the bold stand they took thrilled
+the country. The actual number tried was, indeed, much
+less than 193, for of those who had been kept in prison in
+connection with that case as many as seventy had perished
+in their cold, damp cells while waiting to be arraigned.
+Of those who were tried many were acquitted, but instead
+of regaining their liberty a large number of these were
+transported to Siberia “by administrative order.” Moreover,
+hundreds of people were slowly killed in the dungeons
+or exiled to Siberia without any process of law whatsoever.
+School children were buried in these consumption breeding
+cells; whole families were ruined because one of their members
+was accused of reading a socialist pamphlet. Student
+girls were subjected to indignities by dissolute officials&mdash;all
+“by administrative order.”</p>
+
+<p>The Russian penal code imposes the same penalty for
+disfiguring the eyes of an imperial portrait as it does for
+blinding a live subject of the Czar. But political suspects
+were tortured without regard even to this code.</p>
+
+<p>It gradually dawned upon the propagandists that instead
+of being decimated in a fruitless attempt to get at the common
+people they should first devote themselves to an effort
+in the direction of free speech. By a series of bold attacks
+it was expected to extort the desired reforms from the
+government. Nothing was lawless, so it was argued, when
+directed, in self-defence, against the representatives of a
+system that was the embodiment of bloodthirsty lawlessness.</p>
+
+<p>Thus peaceful missionaries became Terrorists. The government
+inaugurated a system of promiscuous executions;<a name="Page_56" id="Page_56"><span class="pagenum">[56]</span></a>
+the once unresisting propagandists retaliated by assassination
+after assassination. Socialists were hanged for disseminating
+their ideas or for resisting arrest; high officials
+were stabbed or shot down for the bloodthirsty cruelty with
+which they fought the movement; and finally a series of
+plots was inaugurated aiming at the life of the emperor
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>The White Terror of the throne was met by the Red
+Terror of the Revolution.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57"><span class="pagenum">[57]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>A MEETING ON NEW TERMS.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">IT was an evening in the spring, 1879. The parlour of
+a wealthy young engineer in Kharkoff&mdash;a slender little
+man with eyelids that looked swollen and a mouth that
+was usually half-open, giving him a drowsy appearance&mdash;was
+filled with Nihilists come to hear “an important man
+from St. Petersburg.” The governor of the province had
+recently been killed for the maltreatment of political prisoners
+and students of the local university, while a month
+later a bold attempt had been made on the life of the
+Czar at the capital. The new phase of the movement
+was asserting itself with greater and greater emphasis, and
+the address by the stranger, who was no other than Pavel
+Boulatoff, though he was known here as Nikolai, was
+awaited with thrills of impatience.</p>
+
+<p>The room was fairly crowded and the speaker of the
+evening was on hand, but the managers of the gathering
+were waiting for several more listeners. When two of
+these arrived, one of them proved to be Elkin. He and
+Pavel had not met since their graduation from the Miroslav
+gymnasium. Both wore scant growths of beard and
+both looked considerably changed, though Pavel was still
+slim and boyish of figure and Elkin’s face as anæmic
+and chalk-coloured as it had been four years ago. Elkin
+had been expelled from the University for signing some<a name="Page_58" id="Page_58"><span class="pagenum">[58]</span></a>
+sort of petition. Since then he had nominally been engaged
+in revolutionary business. In reality he spent his
+nights in gossip and tea-drinking, and his days in sleep.
+Too proud to sponge on his Nihilist friends for more than
+tea and bread and an occasional cutlet, and too lazy to
+give lessons, he was growing ever thinner and lazier. He
+was a man of spotless honesty, overflowing with venom,
+yet endowed with a certain kind of magnetism.</p>
+
+<p>When Elkin discovered who the important revolutionist
+from St. Petersburg was the blood rushed to his face.
+It was a most disagreeable surprise. But Pavel greeted
+him with a cordiality so free from consciousness, and his
+roaring laughter, as he compared the circumstances of their
+last quarrel and those that surrounded their present meeting,
+was so hearty that Elkin’s hostility gave way to a feeling
+of elation at being so well received by the lion of the evening.
+He was one of the rank and file of the local “Circles,”
+and the prominence into which Pavel’s attention brought
+him at this meeting, in the presence of several of his
+chums, gave him a sense of promotion and triumph. He
+wished he could whisper into the ear of everybody present
+that this important revolutionist who was known to the
+gathering as Nikolai was Prince Boulatoff.</p>
+
+<p>“I am still in the dark as to the identity of that girl,”
+said Pavel.</p>
+
+<p>“I shouldn’t keep it from you now,” the other returned,
+exposing an exultant lozenge of white teeth. “Next time
+we meet in Miroslav I shall look her up and introduce
+you to her. I have not seen her for a long time. She is
+quite an interesting specimen.”</p>
+
+<p>“I should like to meet her very much,” Pavel said earnestly.
+“I have been wanting to know something about her
+all along. You see, if there were a circle in that blessed<a name="Page_59" id="Page_59"><span class="pagenum">[59]</span></a>
+out-of-the-way town of ours one might be able to find out
+things, but if there is I have not seen anybody who knows
+of its existence. I myself have not been there for two
+years.”</p>
+
+<p>“I was there last summer. There is a small circle there.
+At least there are several people who get things through
+me, but that girl I have not seen for a long time.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is it possible? Can it be that you have not tried to
+get her in? Really, a Miroslav circle without her seems
+like Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, she is a lass with some grit to her, and with brains
+too.”</p>
+
+<p>“If she is, we ought to get her in. We ought to get
+her in.”</p>
+
+<p>“She was only sixteen when that affair happened.”</p>
+
+<p>“Was she? Well, you wouldn’t believe it, but my curiosity
+about that girl has been smouldering ever since. If it
+were not for her and for poor Pievakin I might not be in
+the movement now.”</p>
+
+<p>“I see. It needed a little girl to make a convert of a
+great man like you. Well, well. That’s interesting,” Elkin
+remarked, with a lozenge-shaped sneer; but he hastened
+to atone for it by adding, ardently: “You’re right. She
+should be in the circle. I’ll make it my business to see
+her next time I am there. I’ll go there on purpose, in
+fact.”</p>
+
+<p>He was always trying to be clever, for the most part with
+venom in his attempts. Friend or foe, whatever humour
+was his was habitually coloured by an impulse to sting.
+“For the sake of a pretty word he would not spare his
+own father,” as a Russian proverb phrases it, and his
+pretty words or puns were usually tinctured with malice.</p>
+
+<p>He painted the Miroslav girl in the most attractive colours.<a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"><span class="pagenum">[60]</span></a>
+It gave him a peculiar satisfaction to whet Pavel’s
+curiosity and to be able to say mutely: “Indeed, she is
+even more interesting than you suppose, yet while you are
+so crazy to know her, I, who do know her, have not even
+thought of getting her into my Circle.”</p>
+
+<p>When Pavel was making his speech Elkin, whose natural
+inclination was to disapprove, listened with an air of
+patronising concurrence. Pavel’s oratory was of the unsophisticated,
+“hammer-and-tongs,” fiery type, yet its general
+effect, especially when he assailed existing conditions,
+was one of complaint. In spite of the full-throated buzz
+of his voice and the ferocious rush of his words, he conveyed
+the impression of a schoolboy laying his grievance before
+his mother.</p>
+
+<p>Before he took leave from his former classmate the two
+had another talk of the “heroine of the Pievakin demonstration.”
+It was Elkin who brought up the subject, which
+took them back to the time when, from a Nihilist point of
+view, he was Pavel’s superior. He found him a ready
+listener. The student girls of the secret movement, their
+devotion to the cause, their pluck, the inhuman sufferings
+which the government inflicted on those of them who fell
+into its hands,&mdash;all this was the aureole of Pavel’s ecstasy.
+His heart had remained spotless, the wild oats he had sown
+during the first weeks of his stay in the capital notwithstanding.
+The word Woman would fill him with tender
+whisperings of a felicity hallowed by joint sacrifices, of love
+crowned with martyrdom, and it was part of the soliloquies
+which the sex would breathe into his soul to tell himself
+that he owned his conversion to a girl. But these were
+sentimentalities of which the Spartan traditions of the
+underground movement had taught him to be ashamed.
+Moreover, there was really no time for such things.</p><p><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"><span class="pagenum">[61]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>During the following summer and fall mines were laid
+in several places under railway tracks over which the
+Emperor was expected to pass. The revolutionists missed
+their aim, but the Czar’s narrow escape, coupled with the
+gigantic scope of the manifold plot, with the skill and the
+boldness it implied, and with the fact that the digging of
+these subterranean passages had gone on for months without
+attracting notice, made a profound impression. Such
+a display of energy and dexterity on the part of natives
+in a country where one was accustomed to trace every bit
+of enterprise to some foreign agency, could not but produce
+a fascinating effect. The gendarmes were apparently
+no match for the Nihilists.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"><span class="pagenum">[62]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>“TERRORISM WITHOUT VIOLENCE.”</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">ONE afternoon, in December of the same year, Pavel
+sat in a student restaurant, in the capital, eating
+fried steak and watching the door for a man with
+whom he had an appointment. He ate without appetite
+and looked fatigued and overworked. He had been out
+from an early hour, bustling about on perilous business and
+dodging spies. It was extremely exhausting and enervating,
+this prowling about under the perpetual strain of
+danger. He was liable to be arrested at any moment. It
+was like living continually under fire.</p>
+
+<p>The restaurant was full of cigarette smoke and noise.
+Somebody in the rear of Pavel, who evidently had nothing
+to say, was addressing somebody else in high-flown Russian
+and with great gusto. His fine resonant voice, of which
+he was apparently conscious, jarred on Pavel’s nerves, interfering
+with what little relish he had for his meal.
+He was eyeing the design on the frost-covered door-glass
+and lashing himself into a fury over the invisible man’s
+phrase-mongery, when he was accosted by a fair-complexioned
+young woman:</p>
+
+<p>“Pardon me, but if I am not mistaken you are Prince
+Boulatoff?”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s my name. And with whom have I the pleasure&mdash;&mdash;?”</p><p><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63"><span class="pagenum">[63]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“Oh, that would really be uninteresting to know. I’ll
+tell you, though, that I belong to Miroslav.”</p>
+
+<p>He reluctantly invited her to a glass of tea, which she
+accepted, saying: “It may look as if I were forcing myself
+upon your acquaintance, prince, but I really could
+not help it. Whatever comes from Miroslav is irresistible
+to me.” And talking rapidly in effervescent, choking
+sentences, she told him that her name was Maria Andreevna
+Safonova (Safonoff), that she was a student at the Bestusheff
+Women’s College and that her brother was a major
+of gendarmes.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel had heard of there being a daughter or a sister
+of a Miroslav gendarme officer at the Bestusheff College;
+also that she made a favourable impression on her classmates;
+but he had been too busy to give the information
+more than passing notice.</p>
+
+<p>“Is your brother in Miroslav?” he asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, and I can assure you he is a gentleman, even if
+he is in the gendarme service. Some day, I hope, he’ll
+give it up. He is really too good to be in the business.”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel ascribed her ebullition to the nature of the subject,
+but he soon found that she was in the same state of excitement
+when a railroad ticket was the topic. She looked
+twenty-three but she had the cheeks and eyes of a chubby
+infant, while her arms and figure had the lank, immature
+effect of a girl of thirteen.</p>
+
+<p>While they sat talking, a dark man in the military
+uniform of the Medico-Surgical Academy entered the café.
+It was Parmet, the man Pavel was waiting for. Finding
+him engaged, the newcomer passed his table without greeting
+him, took a seat in a remote corner and buried himself
+in a book.</p>
+
+<p>Mlle. Safonoff did all the talking. She had not sat at<a name="Page_64" id="Page_64"><span class="pagenum">[64]</span></a>
+Boulatoff’s table half an hour nor said much about Miroslav
+before she had poured out some of her most intimate
+thoughts to him.</p>
+
+<p>“If you think it a pleasure to be the sister of a gendarme
+officer you are mistaken,” she said. “It is not agreeable
+to be treated by everybody as though you had been put
+at the college to spy upon the girls, is it? My brother
+is a better man than the brothers and fathers and grandfathers
+of all the other student-girls put together, I assure
+you, prince. But then, of course, you may think I’m
+trying to spy on you, too.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, I don’t,” said Boulatoff with a laugh, pricking up
+his ears.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t you, really?” And her eyes bubbled.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course, I don’t.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, if you knew how good he is, my brother. Do you
+remember the time when poor Pievakin left Miroslav?
+I know you do. You were in the eighth class then. Well,
+I may as well tell you, prince”&mdash;she lowered her voice&mdash;“had
+it not been for my brother there would have been
+no end of arrests at the railroad station. He simply told
+his men not to make a fuss. You see, I can confide in
+you without hesitation, for who would suspect a Boulatoff
+of&mdash;pardon the word&mdash;spying? But I, why, I am the
+sister of a gendarme officer, so it is quite natural to suppose,
+and so forth and so on, don’t you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you know the girl who made that speech?”</p>
+
+<p>“There you are,” she said dolefully. “I happened to
+be at the other end of the room just then. When I tried
+to find out who she was everybody was mum. Fancy, my
+best girl-friend said to me: 'If I were you, Masha, I
+shouldn’t want to know her name if I could. Suppose
+you utter it in sleep and your brother overhears you.’ The<a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"><span class="pagenum">[65]</span></a>
+idiots! They didn’t know it was my brother who saved
+that girl from being arrested. And, by the way, if she
+had been arrested by some of his men, it would not have
+been hard for her to escape. I know I am saying more
+than I should, but I really can’t help it. You have no
+idea how I feel about these things. And now, at the
+sight of you, prince&mdash;a man from Miroslav&mdash;I seem
+to be going to pieces altogether. Well, I don’t mean,
+though, that my brother would have let her escape. But
+then I have an aunt, who is related to the warden of the
+Miroslav prison by marriage, so she can arrange things
+there. Oh, she’s the greatest revolutionist you ever saw.
+Of course, I don’t know whether you sympathise with these
+things, prince, but I’ll tell you frankly, <i>I</i> do. It was
+that aunt of mine who talked it into me. She is simply
+crazy to do something. She is sorry there are no political
+prisoners in Miroslav. If there were she would get them
+out. She’s just itching for a chance to do something of
+that sort. And yet she never met a revolutionist in her
+life, nor saw a scrap of underground paper.”</p>
+
+<p>To question the ingenuousness of this gush seemed to be
+the rankest absurdity. The Russian spies of the period
+were poor actors. Pavel was seized by a desire to show
+her that he, at least, did not suspect her of spying, and
+quite forgetting to restrain the “<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'idotic'">idiotic</ins> breadth” of his
+Russian nature for which he was often rebuked by a certain
+member of the revolutionary Executive Committee who was
+forever berating his comrades for their insufficient caution,
+he slipped a crisp copy of the <i>Will of the People</i> into her
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>“Put it into your muff,” he said.</p>
+
+<p>The colour surged into her chubby face. Her whole figure
+seemed tense with sudden excitement, as though the fine<a name="Page_66" id="Page_66"><span class="pagenum">[66]</span></a>
+glossy paper in her hand were charged with electricity.</p>
+
+<p>“How shall I thank you?” she gasped.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel saw a moist glitter in her eyes, and as he got up,
+his slender erect little frame, too, seemed charged with
+electricity. When she had gone he asked himself whether it
+had not all been acting, after all. He cursed himself for
+his imprudence, but he said: “Oh, well, what must be
+will be,” and as usual the phrase acted like an effectual
+incantation on his frame of mind.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Parmet had been dubbed Bismarck, because he bore considerable
+resemblance to Gambetta. Another nickname,
+one which he had invented himself, on a similar theory of
+contrasts, was Makar. Makar was as typically Slavic as
+his face was Semitic. His military uniform, which he
+had to wear because his Academy was under the auspices
+of the War Department, ill became him. Instead of concealing
+the rabbinical expression of his face, it emphasised
+it. When they came out of the restaurant, a man, shouldering
+a stick, was running along the snow-covered pavement,
+lighting the street-lamps, as though in dread of being
+forestalled by somebody.</p>
+
+<p>“Guess who that girl is,” Pavel said.</p>
+
+<p>“Have I heard of her?”</p>
+
+<p>“No. Quite an amusing sort of a damsel. Seething
+and steaming for all the world like a samovar. You should
+have seen her calflike ecstasy when I handed her something
+to read. I was afraid she was going to have a fit.”</p>
+
+<p>Makar trotted silently on, continually curling himself
+in his wretched grey cloak and striking one foot against
+the other, to knock the caked drab-coloured snow off his
+boots. Pavel wore a new furred coat.</p>
+
+<p>“She may be useful though,” Pavel resumed, after a<a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"><span class="pagenum">[67]</span></a>
+pause. “That is, provided she is all she seems to be. Her
+brother is a gendarme major. What do you think of
+that?”</p>
+
+<p>“Is he?” Makar asked, looking up at his companion in
+beatific surprise.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, and she says he’s a good fellow, too. Of course,
+she’s quite a full-fledged ninny herself, and ought to be
+taken with a carload of salt, but she referred to some
+facts with which I happen to be familiar.” While he was
+describing the girl’s aunt, a passing soldier saluted Makar,
+mistaking him for an army officer. Makar, however, was
+too absorbed in his companion’s talk to be aware of what
+was going on about him. Pavel shrieked with laughter.
+“He must be a pretty raw sort of recruit to take <i>you</i>
+for a warrior,” he said. When he had finished his sketch
+of the woman who was longing to set somebody free, the
+medical student paused in the middle of the sidewalk.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, she’s a godsend, then,” he said.</p>
+
+<p>“Moderate your passions, Mr. Army Officer,” Pavel said
+languidly, mocking his old gymnasium director. “If she
+does not turn out to be a spy we’ll see what we can do with
+her. She strikes me rather favourably, though.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, you oughtn’t to neglect her, Pasha. If I were
+you I would lose no time in making her brother’s acquaintance.
+Think of the possibilities of it!”</p>
+
+<p>“Bridle your exuberance, young man. Her brother lives
+many miles from here. He is on the hunt for sedition in
+the most provincial of provinces. Want to make a Terrorist
+of him? Go ahead. He lives in Miroslav. There.”</p>
+
+<p>“In Miroslav!” Makar echoed, with pride in the capital
+of his native province.</p>
+
+<p>Presently they entered a courtyard and took to climbing
+a steep stony staircase. Strong, inviting odours of cabbage<a name="Page_68" id="Page_68"><span class="pagenum">[68]</span></a>
+soup and cooked meat greeted them at several of the landings.
+Makar’s lodging was on the sixth floor. He had
+moved in only a few days ago and the chief object of
+Pavel’s visit was to make a mental note of its location.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing Makar did as he got into the room was
+to put a pitcher on one of his two windows. The windows
+commanded a little side street, and the pitcher was Makar’s
+safety signal. When he had lit his lamp a sofa, freshly
+covered with green oil-cloth, proved to be the best piece
+of furniture in the room, the smell of the oil-cloth mingling
+with the stale odours of tobacco smoke with which the very
+walls seemed to be saturated.</p>
+
+<p>“Ugh, what a room!” Pavel said, sniffing. They talked
+of a revolutionist who had recently been arrested and to
+whom they referred as “Alexandre.” Special importance
+was attached by the authorities to the capture of this man,
+because among the things found at his lodgings was a diagram
+of the Winter Palace with a pencil mark on the
+imperial dining hall. As the prisoner was a conspicuous
+member of the Terrorists’ Executive Committee, the natural
+inference was that another bold plot was under way, one
+which had something to do with the Czar’s dining room,
+but which had apparently been frustrated by the discovery
+of the diagram. The palace guard was strongly re-enforced
+and every precaution was taken to insure the monarch’s
+safety. Now, the Terrorists had their man in the very
+heart of the enemy’s camp, and the result of the search of
+Alexandre’s lodgings was no secret to them. This revolutionist,
+whose gloomy face was out of keeping with his
+carefully pomaded hair, kid gloves, silk hat, showy
+clothes and carefully trimmed whiskers <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'a lá'">à la</ins> Alexander II.,
+was known to Makar as “the Dandy.” Less than a year
+before he had obtained a position in the double capacity<a name="Page_69" id="Page_69"><span class="pagenum">[69]</span></a>
+of spy and clerk, at the Third Section of his Majesty’s
+Own Office, and so liked was he by his superiors that he
+had soon been made private secretary to the head of the
+secret service, every document of importance passing
+through his hands. Since then he had been communicating
+to the Executive Committee, now a list of new suspects, now
+the details of a contemplated arrest, now a copy of some
+secret circular to the gendarme offices of the empire.</p>
+
+<p>While they were thus conversing of Alexandre and the
+Dandy, Pavel stretched himself full length on the sofa
+and dozed off. When he opened his eyes, about two hours
+later, he found Parmet tiptoeing awkwardly up and down
+the room, his shadow a gigantic crab on the wall. Pavel
+broke into a boisterous peal of laughter.</p>
+
+<p>“Here is a figure for you! All that is needed is an
+artist to set to work and paint it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Are you awake? Look here, Pasha. Your gendarme’s
+sister and her aunt are haunting my mind.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, why, have you fallen in love with both of them
+at once?” Pavel asked as he jumped to his feet and shot
+his arms toward the ceiling. He looked refreshed and
+full of animal spirits.</p>
+
+<p>“Stop joking, Pasha, pray,” Makar said in his purring,
+mellifluous voice. “It irritates me. It’s a serious matter
+I want to speak to you about, and here you are bent upon
+fun.” Pavel’s story of the gendarme officer’s sister had
+stirred in him visions of a mighty system of counter-espionage.
+He had a definite scheme to propose.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel found it difficult to work himself out of his playful
+mood until Makar fell silent and took to pacing the
+floor resentfully. When he had desisted, with a final guffaw
+over Makar’s forlorn air, the medical student, warming
+up to fresh enthusiasm, said:</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"><span class="pagenum">[70]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“Well, to let that prison stand idle would be criminal
+negligence. That girl’s aunt must be given a chance.”</p>
+
+<p>“What’s that?” Pavel said, relapsing into horseplay.
+“Do you want somebody nabbed on purpose to give a
+bored lady something to excite her nerves?” He finished
+the interrogation rather limply. It flashed upon him that
+what Makar was really aiming at was that some revolutionist
+should volunteer to be arrested on a denunciation from
+the Dandy or some other member of the party with a
+view to strengthening its position in the Third Section.</p>
+
+<p>Makar went on to plead for an organised effort to get
+into the various gendarme offices.</p>
+
+<p>“It is a terrible struggle we are in, Pasha. Our best
+men fall before they have time to turn round. If we had
+more revolutionists on the other side, Alexandre might be
+a free man now.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, and sooner or later you and I will be where
+he is now and be plunged into the sleep of the righteous,
+and there won’t even be a goat to graze at our graves.
+Let the dead bury the dead, Makashka. We want the living
+for the firing line. We can’t afford to let fresh blood
+turn sour in a damp cell, if we can help it.”</p>
+
+<p>“But this <i>is</i> ‘the firing line’,” Makar returned with
+beseeching, almost with tearful emphasis. “If you only
+gave me a chance to explain myself. What I want is to
+have confusion carried into every branch of the government;
+I want the Czar to be surrounded by a masquerade of
+enemies, so that his henchmen will suspect each other of
+being either agents of the Third Section or revolutionists.
+Do you see the point? I want the Czar to be surrounded
+by a babel of mistrust and espionage. I want him to be
+dazed, staggered until he succumbs to this nightmare of
+suspicion and hastens to convoke a popular assembly, as<a name="Page_71" id="Page_71"><span class="pagenum">[71]</span></a>
+Louis XVI. was forced to do; I want the inhabitants of
+our tear-drenched country to be treated like human beings
+without delay. My scheme practically amounts to a system
+or terrorism without violence, and I insist that one
+good man in the enemy’s camp is of more value than the
+death of ten spies.” His low, velvety voice rang clear,
+tremulous with pleading fervour; his face gleamed with
+an intellectual relish in his formula of the plan. As he
+spoke, he was twisting his mighty fist, opening and closing
+it again, Talmud-fashion, in unison with the rhythm of
+his sentences.</p>
+
+<p>Ejaculations like “visionary!” “phrase-maker!” were
+on the tip of Pavel’s tongue, but he had not the heart to
+utter them. Aerial as the scheme was, Makar’s plea had
+cast a certain spell over him. It was like listening to a
+beautiful piece of mythology.</p>
+
+<p>“Let us form a special force of men ready to go to
+prison, to be destroyed, if need be,” Makar went on. “The
+loss of one man would mean, in each case, the saving of
+twenty. Think how many important comrades a single
+leak in the Third Section has saved us. It’s a matter of
+plain arithmetic.”</p>
+
+<p>“Of plain insanity,” Pavel finally broke in.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t get excited, Pasha, pray. Can’t you let me
+finish? If I am wrong you’ll have plenty of time to prove
+it.”</p>
+
+<p>His purring Talmudic voice and the smell of the fresh
+oil-cloth were unbearable to Pavel now.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s like this,” Makar resumed. “In the first place
+[he bent down his little finger] every honest man is sure
+to be arrested some day, and what difference does it make
+whether the end comes a few months sooner or a few months
+later? In the second place [he bent down the next finger]<a name="Page_72" id="Page_72"><span class="pagenum">[72]</span></a>
+there must be some more people like that girl’s aunt. It
+is quite possible that most of those who would be arrested
+on this plan would get out, and that itself would be a
+good thing, for it would add to the prestige of the party.
+Everything that reveals the weakness of the government
+on the one hand, and the cleverness and daring of our
+people on the other, is good for the cause. Every success
+scored by the ‘Will of the People’ is a step in the direction
+of that for which men like yourself are staking their lives,
+Pasha. Don’t interrupt me, pray. I’ll go a step further.
+I am of the opinion that under certain conditions, where
+an escape is assured, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to let
+one’s self be arrested just in order to add another name
+to the list of political gaol-breakers, that is to say, to the
+list of the government’s fiascos. Every little counts. Every
+straw increases that weight which will finally break the
+back of Russia’s despot.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you really mean what you say, Makar? Do you
+actually want to be arrested?” Pavel asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Not at all. All I want is that another good man should
+gain the confidence of the Third Section and that another
+political prisoner should escape.”</p>
+
+<p>“And what if all Mlle. Safonoff says turns out to be
+as idiotic a dream as all this tommyrot of yours?”</p>
+
+<p>“‘If one is afraid of wolves one had better keep out
+of the woods.’ You, yourself, have taken much greater
+chances than that, Pasha. If I am arrested with papers
+and the worst comes to the worst they won’t hang me.”</p>
+
+<p>“I see you take it seriously after all. Well, if you
+think I’ll let you do anything of the kind you are a fool.”</p>
+
+<p>“You can’t prevent me from doing what I consider to
+be right. Nor do I want anybody else to send the denunciation
+which is to result in my arrest. I’ll send it<a name="Page_73" id="Page_73"><span class="pagenum">[73]</span></a>
+myself. All I want is that somebody should claim credit
+for it afterward, when I am in prison&mdash;on that very
+day, if possible. The search and arrest will be ordered
+from St. Petersburg, and then some of our men will say
+at the Third Section that the anonymous letter was his,
+adding some details about me. Details can be worked out
+later. Where there is a will there is a way. At any rate,
+I don’t expect anybody but myself to bear the moral responsibility
+for my arrest.”</p>
+
+<p>He talked on in the same strain until Pavel sprang to
+his feet, flushed with rage. “It’s all posing&mdash;that’s all
+there’s to it!” he shouted. “On the surface it means
+that you are willing to sacrifice yourself without even attracting
+attention, but in reality this subtle modesty of
+yours is only the most elaborate piece of parading that was
+ever conceived. It’s love of applause all the way through,
+and you are willing to stake your life on it. That’s all
+there is about it.”</p>
+
+<p>Makar grew yellow in the face and sweat broke out on
+his forehead. “In that case, there’s no use talking, of
+course,” he said in a very low voice. “If I am a humbug
+I am a humbug.”</p>
+
+<p>“And if you are a fool, you are a fool,” Pavel rejoined,
+with a conciliatory growl.</p>
+
+<p>“You need not back out, Pasha. Maybe you are right,”
+Makar rejoined. “Who is absolutely free from vanity?
+Human nature is such a complex mechanism. One may
+be governed by love of approbation and, perhaps, also, by
+a certain adventuresome passion for the danger of the thing.
+The great question is whether there is something besides
+this. No, it is not all posing, Pasha. There are moments
+when I ask myself why I should not live as most people
+do, but I only have to realise all that is going on around<a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"><span class="pagenum">[74]</span></a>
+us; the savage tyranny, the writhing millions, the hunger,
+the bottomless darkness, the unuttered groans,&mdash;I only
+have to think of this and of the dear comrades I have known
+who have been strangled on the gallows or are wasting
+away in the casemates; I need only picture all this, I say,
+to feel that even if there be an alloy of selfishness in my
+revolutionary interests, yet, in the main, it is this sense of
+the Great Wrong which keeps me from nursing my own
+safety. Do you know that the dangling corpses of our
+comrades are never absent from my mind? I am not
+without a heart, Pasha.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nobody says you are, only you are a confounded dreamer,
+Makashka,” Pavel answered. “We have no time for
+dreams and poetry. Our struggle is one of hard, terrible
+prose.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are even more of a dreamer than I, Pasha,”
+Makar retorted, blissfully.</p>
+
+<p>When Makar resumed speaking the last echo of resentment
+was gone from his voice. “After all, one gets more
+than one gives. When I think of the moments of joy the
+movement affords me, of the ties of friendship with so many
+good people&mdash;the cream of the generation, the salt of the
+earth, the best children Russia ever gave birth to&mdash;when
+I think of the glorious atmosphere that surrounds me, of
+the divine ecstasy with which I view the future; when I
+recall all this I feel that I get a sort of happiness which
+no Rothschild could buy. To be kept in solitary confinement
+is anything but a pleasure, to be sure, but is there
+nothing to sweeten one’s life there? And how about the
+thought that over yonder, outside, there are people who are
+going on with the struggle and who think of you sometimes?
+Sooner or later the government will yield. And
+then, oh then somebody&mdash;some comrade of ours&mdash;will<a name="Page_75" id="Page_75"><span class="pagenum">[75]</span></a>
+throw the cell-door open, and I’ll join in the celebration of
+our triumph. Really, Pasha, I am strong as a bull, and
+a few years of confinement would not kill me. While
+some of our people may die by the hand of the hangman,
+my life would be spared. Did you ever stop to think of
+the time when the cells of Siberia and of Peter and Paul
+are thrown open and one says to the immured comrades,
+‘Out with you, brothers! You’re free! The nation is
+free!’ Come, another year or two and this will be realised.”</p>
+
+<p>“You had better save your sentimentalities for novices,”
+Pavel said. “And, by the way, your eloquence is certainly
+of more use than your dreaming in a dungeon would be.”</p>
+
+<p>He was arguing with a rock of stiff-necked will-power.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"><span class="pagenum">[76]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>MAKAR’S CANVASS.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">PARMET now gave most of his time to the secret movement,
+making himself useful in a variety of ways.
+His great unrealised ambition, however, was to work
+in an underground printing office&mdash;an offence which at
+the period was punished by a long term of penal servitude
+in Siberia. He had a feeling as though nothing one did for
+the movement could be regarded as a vital service to the
+cause of free speech as long as it fell short of typesetting
+in a secret printing establishment. He had applied for
+work of this kind several times, but his proverbial absent-mindedness
+stood in his way. Being in the habit of reading
+some book or newspaper as he walked through the
+streets, he would sometimes catch himself drinking in the
+contents of some “underground” publication in this manner.
+Once as he stood on a street corner intent upon
+a revolutionary leaflet, he heard an infuriated whisper:</p>
+
+<p>“Imbecile! Scoundrel!”</p>
+
+<p>When he raised his eyes he saw the ample back of a
+compactly built man dressed in citizen’s clothes except for
+a broad military cap with a red band. This was “the
+Janitor,” so nicknamed because he made it his business
+to go the rounds of “conspiracy houses” every morning
+and to pick a quarrel with those of their occupants who
+had neglected to furnish their windows with safety signals<a name="Page_77" id="Page_77"><span class="pagenum">[77]</span></a>
+or were guilty of some other manifestation of “Russian
+breadth.” The episode antedated the above conversation
+between Makar and Pavel by two months, and the medical
+student had not seen the Janitor since. He dreaded to
+meet him. At this minute, however, he was just the man
+he wanted to see, for it was he who had taken the initiative
+in getting the Dandy into the Third Section. Accordingly,
+Pavel had no sooner left him than he betook himself to a
+place at which he expected to find that revolutionist. The
+place was the lodging of a man who was known in the
+organisation as Purring Cat&mdash;a nickname based on his
+shaggy eyebrows and moustache. His face was almost entirely
+overgrown with hair. Short of stature, with a thick
+dark beard that reached down to his knees and with blue
+eyes that peered up from under his stern eyebrows, this
+formidable looking little man, the nearest approach to the
+wax-works version of a Russian Nihilist, was the gentlest
+soul on the Executive Committee. Besides Purring Cat
+and the Janitor, Makar found in the room Andrey, an extremely
+tall man with Tartarian features.</p>
+
+<p>The Janitor greeted Makar with a volley of oaths, stuttering
+as he spoke, as was usually the case when he was
+angry.</p>
+
+<p>“You have no business to be here,” he fulminated.
+“You are just the man to bring a spy in tow. I shouldn’t
+be a bit surprised if you had one at your heels now.”</p>
+
+<p>“Come, don’t fume,” Makar pleaded, confusedly. “I
+won’t be absent-minded any more. I have taken myself
+in hand. Besides, my absent-mindedness is not without
+its redeeming feature. You see, I am the last man to be
+suspected of being on my guard; so the spies would
+never bother me.”</p>
+
+<p>Andrey and Purring Cat smiled. The Janitor started<a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"><span class="pagenum">[78]</span></a>
+to do the same, but changed his mind. Instead, he
+broke into a more violent fit of temper and a more painful
+stutter than before. His compact figure was of
+medium height, his face very blond, with prominent
+eyes and well-trimmed red beard. His military cap
+matched the passport of a retired army officer under
+which he was registered at the police station. He was
+supposed to be employed at some civil tribunal, and
+every morning, on the stroke of eleven he would leave
+his lodgings, a portfolio under his arm, his military cap
+slightly cocked&mdash;the very personification of the part he
+acted. The name in his passport was Polivanoff. His
+real name was Michailoff, and under that name he was
+wanted by the gendarmes in prominent connection with
+several attempts on the life of the Czar. He had once
+escaped from under arrest and on another occasion he
+had managed to disappear from a railroad train while
+it was being searched for him. He was one of the
+ablest and bravest men in the party. His un-Russian
+punctuality and indefatigable attention to detail; his
+practical turn of mind and the way he had of nagging
+his friends for their lack of these qualities, were common
+topics of banter among the Terrorists. He had made a
+special study of every lane and court in the capital by
+which one might “trash” one’s trail. He not only shadowed
+his fellow revolutionists to see if they were aware of
+being shadowed or whether they dressed in accordance
+with the type implied by their false passports, but he also
+made a practice of spying over the spies of the Third
+Section. With this end in view, he had once rented a room
+across the street from that office&mdash;an institution that
+would have given millions for his head. Here he would
+sit for hours at his window, scrutinising every new person<a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"><span class="pagenum">[79]</span></a>
+who entered the building so as to be able to keep track of
+their movements afterward. Having thus discovered a
+boarding house in which lived an important officer of the
+secret service he had sent the Dandy to hire a room there.
+The desired appointment had then been obtained without
+difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>When Makar had laid the practical part of his scheme
+before the three men, the Janitor fixed his prominent
+eyes on him and said, without stammering:</p>
+
+<p>“And you are just the chap to do it, aren’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>“And why not? It certainly doesn’t need much adroitness
+and vigilance to get arrested.”</p>
+
+<p>“The devil it does not. A fellow like you would get ten
+men arrested before he fooled the measliest cub spy in the
+Third Section. Better keep your hands off.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, well, if the escape was really a sure thing, the matter
+might be arranged,” Purring Cat interposed, charitably,
+in a low, gentle voice. “Only this is scarcely the
+time for it.” Whereupon Makar, feeling encouraged,
+launched out to describe his far-reaching scheme in detail.
+The look of the Janitor’s prominent eyes, however, disturbed
+him, so that he expounded the plan in a rather
+nerveless way; when he had finished, the Janitor declared:</p>
+
+<p>“He’s certainly crazy.”</p>
+
+<p>Purring Cat’s blue eyes looked up under their bushy
+brows, as he said, gravely:</p>
+
+<p>“There may be something in it, though, theoretically at
+least. In reality, however, I am afraid that general state
+of chaos would rebound upon ourselves. The government
+may get its spies into our circles until one does not know
+who is who. It may become a double-edged weapon, this
+‘babel of distrust.’ As to that prison scheme it might be
+tried some day. Only don’t be in a hurry, Makar.”</p><p><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80"><span class="pagenum">[80]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“And what is your opinion?” Makar addressed himself
+to Andrey solicitously.</p>
+
+<p>Andrey who was a man of few words, and spoke with a
+slight lisp, said he had no definite opinion to offer, but,
+when Makar pressed him hard, he said:</p>
+
+<p>“Well, we have one man there” (meaning the Third
+Section), “so let us not make the mistake of the woman
+who cut her hen open in order to get at all her eggs at
+once. Still, if the scheme could be worked in some of the
+provinces, it might be worth while. It all depends on circumstances,
+of course.”</p>
+
+<p>Makar longed to see Sophia, the daughter of the former
+governor of St. Petersburg. She had taken an active part
+in one of the most daring rescues and was celebrated for
+the ingenuity and motherly devotion with which she gave
+herself to the “Red Cross” work of the party, supplying
+political prisoners with provisions and keeping them in
+secret communication with their relatives. It was the
+story of this young noblewoman’s life which afterwards
+inspired Turgeneff’s prose poem, <i>The Threshold</i>. Makar
+thought she might take an active interest in his scheme,
+but she was overwhelmed with other work and inaccessible.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"><span class="pagenum">[81]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>A DAY UNDERGROUND.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">ABOUT a week had elapsed, when Pavel read in his
+morning paper of the hanging of three revolutionists
+in Odessa: two Gentiles and a Jew. He had
+never met these men, but he knew that two of them had not
+been implicated in anything more violent than the diffusion
+of socialist ideas. Also that the parents of the one who belonged
+to the Jewish race were under arrest, condemned
+to be exiled to Siberia for no other crime than their having
+given birth to an enemy of the existing régime.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel moved about his room with a sob of helpless fury
+in his throat. He found feverish satisfaction in the
+thought that he had some chemicals in his overcoat which
+he was to carry to the dynamite shop of the Terrorists.
+The explosives to be made from it were intended for a new
+attempt upon the life of the Emperor. Not being directly
+connected with the contemplated attack, neither he nor the
+dynamite makers of the organisation had any clear idea
+about the plot, which was in the hands of a special sub-committee,
+Alexandre’s place having been taken by another
+man; but he did know that preparations were under way
+in the Winter Palace.</p>
+
+<p>The dynamite shop was kept by a woman with a deep-chested,
+almost masculine voice, and a man with a squeaky
+feminine one. They were registered as man and wife.<a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"><span class="pagenum">[82]</span></a>
+She was the daughter of a priest, but she looked like a
+woman of the people and dressed like one&mdash;a thick-set
+extremely blonde young woman with coarse yet pleasing
+features. Her revolutionary name was Baska. Her fictitious
+husband, who was one of the chemists of the party,
+was addressed by the revolutionists as Grisha. He had a
+scholarly face, yet the two had no difficulty in passing
+among the neighbours for a tradesman or shop clerk and his
+wife. For the greater reality of the impersonation and as
+a special precaution against curiosity they made friends
+with the porter of the house and his wife and with the
+police roundsman of the neighbourhood, often inviting them
+to a glass of vodka. The porter of St. Petersburg, like his
+brother of Paris under the empire, is a political detective
+“ex-officio.” The two spies and the police officer were
+thus turned into unconscious witnesses of the young
+couple’s political innocence, for in the first place they had
+many an opportunity to convince themselves that their
+dwelling was free from anything suspicious and, in the
+second, people who drank vodka and went, moreover, on
+sprees with the house porter, certainly did not look like
+Nihilists.</p>
+
+<p>“Good morning, Pavel,” Baska greeted him vivaciously,
+as she gave his hand a hearty squeeze, while her other hand
+held a smoking cigarette. “Just in time! I hate to eat
+my breakfast all alone. Grisha has another bad headache,
+poor fellow. But I see you, too, have a long face. Where
+did you get it?”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel smiled lugubriously as he handed her the package.
+He had not the heart to disturb her good spirits, and she
+went on chirping and laughing.</p>
+
+<p>Grisha came in, haggard, sickly and trying to smile.
+The skin of both his hands was off. This, like his frequent<a name="Page_83" id="Page_83"><span class="pagenum">[83]</span></a>
+headaches, was the effect of the work he did in these rooms&mdash;of
+inhaling nitroglycerine and kneading dynamite with
+his bare fists.</p>
+
+<p>Baska gayly told how the porter’s wife had offered her
+a salve for her “husband,” and how the night before, as
+Grisha was pouring nitroglycerine into some dynamite
+“dough,” there was an explosion and the house filled with
+smoke.</p>
+
+<p>“Our next door neighbour knew at once that our kerosene
+stove exploded and set fire to a rag,” Baska said with
+a deep-voiced titter. “She gave me quite a lecture on
+negligence.”</p>
+
+<p>“She only wondered why there should be such a strange
+smell to the smoke,” Grisha added, his hand to his head.</p>
+
+<p>As Pavel looked at Baska relishing her tea and her
+muffin and talking merrily between gulps, a desire took
+hold of him to spoil her vivacity. It jarred on him to see
+her enjoy herself while the image of the three new gallows
+was so vivid in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>“You people don’t seem to know what’s going on in
+the world,” he said testily. “They have hanged Malinka,
+Maidanski and Drobiazgin.”</p>
+
+<p>“Have they?” Baska asked paling. She had known two
+of them personally.</p>
+
+<p>While Pavel took out his newspaper and read the brief
+despatch, her head sank on the table. Her solid frame was
+convulsed with sobbing.</p>
+
+<p>“Be calm, be calm,” Grisha entreated, offering her
+a glass of water. In spite of her excellent physique she
+was subject to violent hysterical fits which were apt to
+occur at a time when the proffer of neighbourly sympathy
+was least desirable.</p>
+
+<p>She told all she remembered of the executed men, whom<a name="Page_84" id="Page_84"><span class="pagenum">[84]</span></a>
+she had met in the south. But that was not much; so
+Pavel went to see Purring Cat who, being a southerner,
+had detailed information to give him about the three
+Nihilists. Boulatoff could talk of nothing else that day.
+When he met Makar, in the afternoon, he said:</p>
+
+<p>“People are being strangled right and left and here you
+are bent on that <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">idée fixe</i> of yours.”</p>
+
+<p>“Fine logic, that,” Makar replied. “If my <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">idée fixe</i>
+had been realised a year ago these men would now be free.
+But this is not the time to talk about things of that kind.”
+Instead of mourning the loss of the three revolutionists
+he was in a solemn, religious sort of mood at the thought
+of the new human sacrifices offered on the altar of liberty.
+He was panting to speak about the Jew who had been
+executed. He was proud of the fact that two men of his
+race had given their lives for the cause within five months.
+The other Jewish revolutionist had been executed in Nicolayeff.
+A letter which he had addressed to the revolutionists
+a few days before his execution, exhorting them not to
+waste any of the forces of the movement on attempts to
+avenge his death, was enshrined in Makar’s heart as the
+most sacred document in the entire literature of the struggle.
+But race pride was contrary to the teachings of the
+movement; so he not only kept these sentiments to himself,
+but tried to suppress them in his own bosom.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>In the evening Pavel took two young cavalry officers of
+his acquaintance to the house of a retired major where
+a revolutionary meeting was to be held. They found
+the major’s drawing room sparkling with military uniforms.
+The gathering was made up of eight officers, two
+men in citizen’s clothes, and one woman, the dark long-necked
+hostess.</p><p><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85"><span class="pagenum">[85]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Two cheap lithographs, one of General Suvoroff and
+the other of the reigning monarch, occupied the centre of
+the best wall, in jarring disharmony with the refined and
+somewhat Bohemian character of the rest of the room.
+The two portraits had been put there recently, to bear
+witness to the political “reliability” of the house. The
+hostess presided over a pile of yellow aromatic tobacco,
+rolling cigarettes for her guests and smoking incessantly
+herself. An idiotic-looking man-servant and a peasant
+girl fresh from the country kept up a supply of tea, zwiebacks
+and preserves. Every time they appeared the hostess,
+whose seat commanded the door, would signal to the
+company. She did it rather perfunctorily, however, the
+revolutionary discussion proceeding undisturbed. The cultured,
+bookish Russian of the assemblage was Greek to the
+two servants. They talked of the three executions.</p>
+
+<p>Presently two other civilians were announced.</p>
+
+<p>“At last!” the hostess said, getting up from her pile
+of tobacco in a flutter.</p>
+
+<p>The two newcomers were both above medium height,
+of solid build and ruddy-faced; but here their similarity
+of appearance ceased. One of them looked the image of
+social refinement and elegance, while the clothes and general
+aspect of the other bespoke a citified, prosperous
+peasant. His rough top-boots, the red woolen belt round
+his coat and the rather coarse tint of his florid complexion,
+like his full Russian beard, proclaimed the son of the unenlightened
+classes. He was taller than his companion
+and remarkably well-built, with a shock of dark brown
+hair thrown back from a high prominent forehead and
+regular features. He was introduced to the gathering as
+Zachar. He and the stylish-looking man by his side
+whose revolutionary nickname was “My Lord,” conveyed<a name="Page_86" id="Page_86"><span class="pagenum">[86]</span></a>
+the effect of a bright, shrewd tradesman and a high-class
+lawyer bent on some legal business.</p>
+
+<p>“If we are late, blame this guide of mine, not me,”
+Zachar said to the hostess, in a deep, rather harsh baritone,
+pointing at his companion. “It turned out that he did
+not know the place very well himself. There is a pilot for
+you.” He accepted a glass of tea in a silver holder and
+during the ensuing small talk the room rang with his
+merriment. His jests were commonplace, but his Russian
+and all he said betrayed the man of education. The tradesman’s
+costume was his disguise, and if it became him so
+well it was because his parents were moujiks. Born in
+serfdom but brought up as a nobleman at the expense of
+his former master, this university-bred peasant&mdash;a case of
+extreme rarity&mdash;for whom the gendarmes were searching
+in connection with a bold attempt to blow up an imperial
+train, loomed in the minds of the revolutionists as the
+most conspicuous figure of their movement.</p>
+
+<p>“And how is my young philosopher?” he said to Pavel.
+“I was at your place this morning, but found you out,
+Pasha.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll see you later on,” Pavel said dryly. “Philosopher”
+referred to the nature of the studies which Pavel’s
+mother thought him to be pursuing. There was a touch
+of patronage in the way Zachar used the word, and Pavel
+resented it.</p>
+
+<p>As the gathering began to lapse into a graver mood the
+conversation was expectantly left to Zachar, who by degrees
+accepted the rôle of the principal speaker of the evening.
+That he relished this rôle and was fond of a well turned
+phrase became apparent at once, but the impression soon
+wore off. He compelled attention.</p>
+
+<p>“The practice of nations being inherited like furniture<a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"><span class="pagenum">[87]</span></a>
+or chickens has been out of date for centuries,” he said in
+the course of a ferocious attack on the existing adjustment
+of things. “But our party does not demand full justice at
+once. The Will of the People is not inconsiderate. We
+are willing to project ourselves into the position of an
+old chap with whom the love of power has been bred in
+the bone. All our party does demand, as a first step, is
+some regard for the rights of the individual; of those
+rights without which the word civilisation is of a piece
+with that puerile sort of hypocrisy as our late war with
+Turkey, when the ambitious old fellow in his unquenchable
+thirst for territory sent his subjects to die for the
+liberty of Bulgarians so that their own children at home
+might be plunged into more abject slavery than ever.</p>
+
+<p>“The government knows, of course, that its days are
+numbered and that it is only cowardice and incapacity
+for concerted action which make its brief respite possible.
+To retreat honourably, before it is too late, to yield to the
+stern voice of the revolution under some specious pretext&mdash;this
+is the step indicated by the political situation, but
+then this is not what the ambitious oldster is after. Is
+there any wonder he has lost his head? So much the
+better for the revolution. One or two decisive blows and
+the government will topple over. Thanks to the splendid
+army section of the Will of the People, on the one hand,
+and to our powerful Workingmen’s Section, on the other,
+one hundred resolute men will be enough to seize the Winter
+Palace, to cut off all egress, arrest the new Czar and,
+amid the general confusion following the death of the
+old tyrant, proclaim a provisional government. What a
+glorious opportunity to serve one’s country!”</p>
+
+<p>His speech lasted an hour and a half. Most of his
+hearers were recent converts, and these the matter-of-fact<a name="Page_88" id="Page_88"><span class="pagenum">[88]</span></a>
+tone of his utterances took by storm. The Third Section
+had heard of him as an irresistible agitator. So he was,
+and the chief secret of his success lay&mdash;despite an effect
+of conscious floridity and bravado&mdash;in a sincere depth of
+conviction manifested by a volcanic vehemence of delivery.
+His speeches took it for granted that Russia was at the
+threshold of a great historical change and that his organisation
+was going to play a leading part in that change.
+He gathered particular assurance from the fact that the
+“army section” that had been formed by his efforts included
+several officers of the court guard whose number he
+hoped to increase. These court officers it was whom his
+imagination pictured as “cutting off all egress” at the
+Winter Palace. The funds of his party included contributions
+from some high sources. Things seemed to be
+coming the “Will of the People’s” way. As he spoke
+his strong physique seemed to be aflame with contagious
+passion, sweeping along audience and speaker. The harshness
+of his mighty baritone was gone; his peasant face was
+beautiful. Words like “party,” “citizen,” “National
+Assembly,” are winged with the glamour of forbidden fruit
+in Russia, and when Zachar uttered these words, in accents
+implying that these things were as good as realised, his
+audience was enravished. To all of which, in the present
+instance, should be added the psychological effect of a
+group of dashing army officers, all members of the nobility,
+reverently listening to an address by a peasant. He struck
+one as a giant of energy and courage, of nervous vitality
+as well as of bodily strength. He had the stuff of a political
+leader in him. Under favourable conditions he would
+have left his mark as one of the strong men of the nineteenth
+century. He carried people along current-fashion
+rather than magnetised them.</p><p><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"><span class="pagenum">[89]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Pavel was the next speaker, but the outraged sense of
+justice which was the keynote of his impassioned plea,
+coming as it did upon the heels of Zachar’s peremptory
+and matter-of-course declarations, sounded out of date.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, it takes an idiot to talk after you, Zachar,” he
+said, breaking off in the middle of a sentence. “One feels
+like being up and doing things, not talking. I wonder
+why we don’t start for the Winter Palace, at once.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s the way I feel, too,” chimed in a very young
+cavalry officer, while two older men in brilliant uniforms,
+were grasping Zachar each by one hand. The long-necked
+hostess was brushing the tears from her eyes and calling
+herself “fool,” for joy.</p>
+
+<p>An artillery officer with bad teeth of whom Pavel could
+not think without thinking of the rheumatism of which
+that revolutionist had once complained to him, drew his
+sword fiercely, the polished steel flaming in the bright light
+of the room, as he said:</p>
+
+<p>“By Jove!”</p>
+
+<p>“Look at him! Look at him!” Zachar shouted.</p>
+
+<p>“Bridle your passions, old boy,” Pavel put in.</p>
+
+<p>A minute or two later he called the orator into the
+next room and handed him what looked like a package of
+tobacco.</p>
+
+<p>Zachar was in high feather over the success of his speech
+and loath to leave the atmosphere of adoration that surrounded
+him here; but an important engagement forced
+him to take his departure.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>A quarter of an hour’s ride in a tramcar and a short
+walk through the moonlit streets brought him to a deserted
+corner in the vicinity of the Winter Palace, where
+he was met by a man dressed like an artisan, as tall as<a name="Page_90" id="Page_90"><span class="pagenum">[90]</span></a>
+himself, but slimmer of girth, and the two went on trudging
+along the snow-encrusted sidewalk together. The
+other man had an expressive sickly face which the pallid
+glare of the moonlight gave a ghastly look.</p>
+
+<p>“How is your health?” Zachar asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Bad,” the sickly looking man answered, holding out
+his hand into which Zachar put the package of tobacco,
+saying:</p>
+
+<p>“See if it isn’t too heavy for a quarter of a pound.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is, rather, but it’ll pass,” the other replied, weighing
+the package in his hand and then putting it into his
+pocket. Buried in the tobacco was a small quantity of
+dynamite.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s too bad you are not feeling well.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, my nerves are playing the devil with me. The
+worst of it is that I have got to keep the stuff under my
+pillow when I sleep. That gives me headaches.”</p>
+
+<p>“I shouldn’t wonder. The evaporations of that stuff do
+that as a rule. But can’t you find another place for it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not for the night. They might go through my trunk
+then. They are apt to come in at any time. Oh, those
+surprise visits of theirs keep my wretched nerves on edge
+all the time.”</p>
+
+<p>While the gendarmerie and the police knew him to be
+a leader among the revolutionary workmen of the capital
+and were hunting for him all over the city, this man, whose
+name was Stepan Khaltourin, had for the past few months
+been making his home, under the name of Batushkoff, in
+the same building as the Czar, in the Winter Palace, where
+his work as a varnisher was highly valued. He was a self-taught
+mechanic, unusually well-read and clear-headed.
+Of retiring disposition and a man of few words, with an
+iron will under a bashful and extremely gentle manner,<a name="Page_91" id="Page_91"><span class="pagenum">[91]</span></a>
+he was one of the prominent figures of the Will of the
+People, having been driven to terrorism by the senseless
+persecutions which he had met at the hands of the authorities
+in his attempts to educate some of his fellow-workmen.
+He now lodged, together with other mechanics, in the
+basement of the Winter Palace, with only one room&mdash;the
+guard-room&mdash;between the ceiling over his head and the
+floor of the Imperial dining hall. Indeed, the frequent
+raids which a colonel at the head of a group of gendarmes
+had been making upon that basement since the seizure of
+“Alexandre’s” diagram were largely a matter of display
+and red tape. There was more jingling of spurs and
+flaunting of formidable looking moustaches than actual
+searching or watching. Nowhere was the incapacity of
+Russian officialdom illustrated more glaringly than it was
+in the very home of the Czar. The bold Terrorist for whom
+the police were looking high and low had found little difficulty
+in securing employment here, and one of the first
+things that had attracted his attention in the place was
+the prevailing state of anarchy and demoralisation he
+found in it. Priceless gems and relics were scattered about
+utterly unguarded; stealing was the common practice of
+the court servants, and orgies at which these regaled their
+friends from the outside world upon wines from the imperial
+cellars were a nightly occurrence. Since Alexandre’s
+arrest the vigilance of the court gendarmes had been greatly
+increased, so that no servant could enter the palace without
+being searched; yet Khaltourin contrived to smuggle in a
+small piece of dynamite every evening, thus gradually accumulating
+the supply that was needed for the terrible work
+of destruction he was preparing.</p>
+
+<p>As to his position within the palace, he played his rôle
+so well that he was the favourite of gendarmes and servants<a name="Page_92" id="Page_92"><span class="pagenum">[92]</span></a>
+alike, often hearing from them stories of the Nihilists and
+of the great plot to blow up the dining hall that was supposed
+to have been nipped in the bud.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, how is that old gendarme of yours?” Zachar
+inquired. “Still teaching you manners?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” Khaltourin answered with a smile. “I am getting
+sick of his attentions, though. But there is something
+back of them, it appears. What do you think he’s
+after? Why, he has a marriageable daughter, so he has
+taken it into his head to make a son-in-law of me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ho-ho-ho-ho!” Zachar exploded, restraining a guffaw.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"><span class="pagenum">[93]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CZAR’S ESCAPE.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">ON Tuesday, February 17th, at about six o’clock in
+the evening, Pavel and Makar were sauntering
+through the streets of the Vassili Island. Their
+conversation languished. While indoors they had had another
+discussion of Makar’s scheme, a heart-to-heart talk in
+which Pavel showed signs of yielding; and now that they
+were out in the snow-dappled night they were experiencing
+that feeling of embarrassment which is the aftermath of
+sentimental communion between two men. When they
+reached the Neva, Pavel cast a glance across, in the direction
+of the Winter Palace. The frozen river looked infinitely
+wider than it was. Dotted with lamps and crossed by
+streams of home-bound humanity, it lay vast, gorgeous,
+uncanny&mdash;a white plain animated with mysterious brightness
+and mysterious motion. The main part of the capital,
+on the Palace side of the Neva, was a world of gloom
+starred with myriads and myriads of lights, each so distinct
+that one almost felt tempted to count them; all this
+seemingly as far away as the gold-dotted sky overhead.
+Makar was huddling himself in his grey military cloak,
+his bare hands loosely thrust into its sleeves, looking at
+nothing. Pavel, his furred coat unbuttoned, gazed across
+the Neva.</p>
+
+<p>“Come on,” the medical student urged, knocking one<a name="Page_94" id="Page_94"><span class="pagenum">[94]</span></a>
+foot against the other. “It’s too cold to be tramping
+around like this.”</p>
+
+<p>“One moment,” Pavel responded, impatiently. He had
+been visiting this point at the same hour every day for the
+past week or two. Makar, who did not know of it, relapsed
+into his revery.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly there came a dull rolling crash. It burst
+from the other side, and as Pavel and Makar looked across
+the river they saw that the lights of the Winter Palace
+which had been burning a minute ago, were out, leaving
+a great patch of darkness. The human stream paused.
+Then came a rush of feet on all sides.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s in the Palace,” Boulatoff whispered; and seizing
+his companion’s hand at his side he pressed it with furious
+strength.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The next day the newspapers were allowed to state that
+the previous evening, as the Czar and a royal guest were
+about to enter the dining hall through one door and the
+other members of the imperial family through another, a
+terrific explosion had occurred, making a hole in the floor
+ten feet long and six wide; that eleven inmates of the
+guard room, which was directly under the dining hall, were
+killed and fifty-seven injured, the Czar’s narrow escape
+having been due to an accidental delay of the dinner. The
+explosion had shattered a number of windows and blown
+out the gas, leaving the palace in complete darkness.
+Traces of an improvised dynamite mine had been discovered
+in the basement. Three artisans employed in the
+palace were arrested, but their innocence was established,
+while a fourth man, a varnisher named Batushkoff, had
+disappeared. Now that Batushkoff was gone the Third
+Section learned that he was no other than Stepan Khaltourin,<a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"><span class="pagenum">[95]</span></a>
+one of the active revolutionists its agents were
+looking for.</p>
+
+<p>One week after the explosion the Czar signed a decree
+which practically placed the government in the hands of a
+Supreme Executive Commission&mdash;a body especially
+created to cope with the situation and whose head, Count
+Loris-Melikoff, was invested with all but the powers of a
+regent. Count Melikoff was neither a Slav nor of noble
+birth. He was the son of an Armenian merchant. He
+was a new figure in St. Petersburg, and when his carriage
+passed along the Neva Prospect his swarthy face with its
+striking Oriental features were pointed out with expressions
+of perplexity. Although one of the two principal
+heroes of the late war with Turkey and recently a governor-general
+of Kharkoff, he was looked upon as an upstart.
+The extraordinary powers so suddenly vested in him took
+the country by surprise.</p>
+
+<p>He was known for the conciliatory policy toward the
+Nihilists at which he had aimed while he was governor-general
+of Kharkoff. Accordingly, his promotion to what
+virtually amounted to dictatorship was universally interpreted
+as a sign of weakening on the part of <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Alexandre'">Alexander</ins>
+II. Indeed, Melikoff’s first pronunciamento from the
+lofty altitude of his new office struck a note of startling
+novelty. He spoke of the Czar as showing “increased
+confidence in his people” and of “public coöperation”
+as “the main force capable of assisting the government
+in its effort to restore a normal flow of official life”&mdash;utterances
+that were construed into a pledge of public
+participation in affairs of state, into an unequivocal hint
+at representative legislation.</p>
+
+<p>Loris-Melikoff was one of the ablest statesmen Russia
+had ever produced. He was certainly the only high official<a name="Page_96" id="Page_96"><span class="pagenum">[96]</span></a>
+of his time who did not try to prove his devotion
+to the throne by following in the trodden path
+of repression. He knew that Russia could not be kept
+from joining in the march of Western civilisation and
+he was not going to serve his personal interests by pretending
+that it could. Instead, he hoped to strengthen
+his position by winning the Czar over to his own moderate
+liberalism, by reconciling him to the logic of history.
+But the logic of history could best have been served
+by prompt and vigorous action, while the chief of the
+Supreme Executive Commission was rather slow to move.
+Nor, indeed, was he free from interference. The Czar
+was still susceptible to the influence of his unthinking
+relatives and of his own vindictive nature.</p>
+
+<p>Chaos marked the situation. Loris-Melikoff’s first week
+in office was signalised by the most cruel act in the
+entire history of the government’s struggle against Nihilism.
+A gymnasium boy, seventeen years old (a Jew), was
+hanged in Kieff for carrying a revolutionary proclamation.
+The dictator’s professions of liberalism were branded as
+hypocrisy.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"><span class="pagenum">[97]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<h3>A MYSTERIOUS ARREST.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">A YOUNG man had been seized with seditious publications.
+It was the first political arrest in Miroslav,
+and the report was spreading in a maze of shifting
+versions. This much seemed certain: the prisoner pretended
+to be a deaf-mute and so far the gendarmes and the
+procureur had failed to disclose his identity. The local
+newspaper dared not publish the remotest allusion to the
+matter.</p>
+
+<p>Countess Anna Nicolayevna Varova (Varoff) first heard
+the news from her brother-in-law, the governor, and
+although the two belonged to that exceptional minority
+which usually discussed topics of this character in their
+normal voices, yet it was in subdued tones that the satrap
+broached the subject. Anna Nicolayevna offered to send
+for Pavel, who had recently arrived from St. Petersburg,
+after an absence of three years, but the governor checked
+her.</p>
+
+<p>“Never mind, Annette,” he said, impatiently, “I’ve
+dropped in for a minute or two, in passing, don’t you
+know. He called on me yesterday, Pasha. Quite a man.
+Tell him he must look in again and let me see how clever
+he is. Quite a man. How time does fly!” Then sinking
+his voice, he asked: “Have you heard of the fellow<a name="Page_98" id="Page_98"><span class="pagenum">[98]</span></a>
+they’ve bagged? One of those youngsters who are scaring
+St. Petersburg out of its wits, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>He gave a laugh and fell to blinking gravely.</p>
+
+<p>“What do you mean, George? Did the gendarmes
+catch a Nihilist?” she asked, in dismay. “Did they?
+Bless me! That’s all that’s wanted. If there is one there
+must be a whole nest of them.” She made a gesture of
+horror&mdash;“But who is he, what is he?”</p>
+
+<p>“That I know no more than you do.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, it’s too bad, it’s really too bad. I thought
+Miroslav was immune from that plague at least.” And
+seeing his worried look she added: “I hope it’s nothing
+serious, George.”</p>
+
+<p>Governor Boulatoff shook his head. “I don’t think it
+is. Although you never can tell nowadays. You never
+can tell,” he repeated, blinking absently. “The Armenian
+doesn’t seem to be cleaning those fellows out quite so
+rapidly as one thought he would, does he? They are playing
+the devil with things, that’s what they are doing.”
+“One” and “they” referred to the Emperor and his
+advisers.</p>
+
+<p>“Pooh, they’ll weary of that parvenu, it’s only a matter
+of time,” she consoled him.</p>
+
+<p>The old man proceeded to quote from Loris-Melikoff’s
+recent declarations, which the countess had heard him
+satirise several times before. “‘In the coöperation of the
+public,’” he declaimed theatrically, “‘lies the main force
+capable of assisting the government in its effort to restore
+a normal flow of official life.’ Do you understand what
+all this jugglery means? That we are knuckling down to
+a lot of ragamuffins. It means an official confession that
+the ‘flow of official life’ has been checked by a gang of
+rascally college boys. ‘The public is the main force capable<a name="Page_99" id="Page_99"><span class="pagenum">[99]</span></a>
+of assisting the government!’ Charming, isn’t it?
+Might as well invite ‘the public’ to be so kind and elect
+representatives, deputies, or what you may call ’em, start a
+parliament and have it over with.”</p>
+
+<p>Anna Nicolayevna made another attempt to bring the
+conversation back to the political prisoner, but her visitor
+was evidently fighting shy of the topic.</p>
+
+<p>“Birch-rods, a good, smart flogging, that’s what the
+public needs,” he resumed, passionately gnashing his teeth,
+in response to his own thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, don’t say that, George. After all, one lives in the
+nineteenth century.”</p>
+
+<p>But this only spurred him on.</p>
+
+<p>The arrest having been ordered from St. Petersburg, the
+implication was that the presence of the revolutionist in
+town had escaped the attention of the local authorities.
+So Governor Boulatoff, who had had no experience in cases
+of this kind, wondered whether the affair was not likely to
+affect his own standing. Besides, the governor of Kharkoff
+had recently been killed, and Boulatoff was asking
+himself whether the arrest of the unknown man augured
+the end of his own peace of mind. This he kept to himself,
+however, and having found some relief in animadverting
+upon the policy of Loris-Melikoff he took leave.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The countess was left with a pang of sympathy for her
+brother-in-law. Not that she had any clear idea of the
+political situation at which he was forever scoffing and
+carping. She felt sure that his low spirits were traceable
+to loneliness, and her compassion for him revived heart-wringing
+memories of his dead wife, her sister.</p>
+
+<p>The young prince was out in the garden romping about
+with Kostia, his half-brother, now a ten-year-old cadet on<a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"><span class="pagenum">[100]</span></a>
+sick leave. Anna Nicolayevna went to take a look at them
+through the open window of a rear room. The garden
+was so jammed with fresh-tinted lilacs, so flooded with
+their scent, that it seemed like an explosion of color and
+fragrance. Two Germans were at work with picks and
+spades. From an invisible spot where a new summer house
+was being constructed came sounds of sawing and hammering,
+while the air near the window rang with a multitudinous
+twitter of sparrows. Pavel was trying to force
+Kostia into a wheelbarrow, the boy kicking and struggling
+silently, and a huge shaggy dog barking at Pavel ferociously.</p>
+
+<p>“Come in, Pasha. I want to speak to you,” said Anna
+Nicolayevna.</p>
+
+<p>The return indoors was a race, in which the gigantic
+dog took part. The convalescent little cadet was beaten.</p>
+
+<p>“Wait till I get well,” he said.</p>
+
+<p>“Wait nothing. Your excellency will be rolling along
+like a water-melon all the same. Good-bye, Monsieur le
+Water-melon!”</p>
+
+<p>Presently Pavel stood before his mother, mopping his
+flushed, laughing face.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you remember his ‘express trains’ in the garden?”
+he said. “Now it is beneath his dignity, to be sure.” He
+was always trying to prove to himself that the present
+Kostia and the five-year-old boy he used to fondle five
+years ago were one and the same person.</p>
+
+<p>“He’s right,” said the countess. “He’s a baby no
+longer. It’s you who are acting like one. Uncle has been
+here. He was in a hurry, so I didn’t send for you.” Her
+serious-minded, intellectual son inspired her with a certain
+feeling of timidity. She had not the courage to bring up
+the subject of the political arrest. Her mind was so vague<a name="Page_101" id="Page_101"><span class="pagenum">[101]</span></a>
+on matters of this kind, while Pavel was apparently so well
+informed and so profound, she was sure of making a poor
+showing. So she told herself that it was not a proper
+topic to discuss in a well-ordered family and kept her own
+counsel.</p>
+
+<p>“I didn’t know he was here,” he said.</p>
+
+<p>“Poor man! he seems to be feeling lonely.”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, don’t you think he does?”</p>
+
+<p>“What matters it whether I do or not,” he said, lightly.</p>
+
+<p>“You haven’t a bit of heart, Pasha.”</p>
+
+<p>He would not be drawn into conversation, treating
+everything she said with an inscrutable, somewhat patronising
+flippancy that nettled her. At last he said he was
+going out.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Looking up old chums’ again?” she asked. “And
+does it mean that you are going to dine out once more?”</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll try not to, mother,” he answered, with a fond
+smile in his bright, aggressive eyes.</p>
+
+<p>His small slender figure, beautifully erect, and his upward-tending,
+frank features haunted her long after he
+left. She felt like a jealous bride. Otherwise he kept
+her thoughts tinged with sunshine. A great attachment
+on quite new terms had sprung up between mother and son
+since his arrival. At the same time he seemed to belong
+to a world which she was at a loss to make out. Nor did
+he appear disinclined to talk of his life in St. Petersburg&mdash;a
+subject upon which she was continually plying him
+with questions. The trouble was that the questions that
+beset her mind could no more be formulated than a blind
+man can formulate his curiosity as to colour. Moreover, all
+these questions seemed to come crowding upon her when
+Pavel was away and to vanish the moment she set eyes on<a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"><span class="pagenum">[102]</span></a>
+him. She told herself that he belonged to a different
+generation from hers, that it was the everlasting case of
+“fathers and sons.” But this only quickened her jealousy
+of the “sons” and her despair at being classed with the
+discarded generation. And the keener her jealousy, the
+deeper was her interest in Pasha.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103"><span class="pagenum">[103]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<h3>A BEWILDERING ENCOUNTER.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">WHEN Pavel was in St. Petersburg Anna Nicolayevna
+had missed him only occasionally. Now
+that he was with her his absences were a continuous
+torture to her. On the present occasion she sought
+diversion in a visit to Princess Chertogoff where she expected
+to hear something about the mysterious prisoner.
+Princess Chertogoff was a lame, impoverished noblewoman
+whose daughter was married to the assistant-procureur.
+In higher circles she was looked down upon as a social outcast,
+so that Anna Nicolayevna’s visits to her had a surreptitious
+character and something of the charm of forbidden
+fruit. Pavel’s mother was fond of the stir her
+appearance produced in houses of this kind. The curious
+part of it was that the impecunious princess was one of the
+very few persons in the world whose presence irritated her.
+It seemed as though this irritation had a peculiar attraction
+for her.</p>
+
+<p>It was an early hour in the afternoon. She was received
+in the vestibule by Hélène, the assistant-procureur’s wife,
+with an outburst of kisses and caresses which had something
+to do with the young woman’s expecting to become a
+mother. Rising in the background was the hostess, Lydia
+Grigorievna Chertogova (Chertogoff) and her gorgeous
+crutches. She was large, dark, and in spite of her made-over<a name="Page_104" id="Page_104"><span class="pagenum">[104]</span></a>
+gowns, imposingly handsome. Aware of the fantastic
+majesty which these crutches gave her stalwart form, she
+paraded her defect as she did her beautiful dark eyes. At
+this moment it seemed as though the high-polished ebony
+crutches joined her in beaming at <ins title="Transcriber's Note: 'the' missing in original">the</ins> sight of the distinguished
+visitor. Hélène, a small woman of twenty-four,
+usually compact as a billiard ball, was beginning to resemble
+an over-ripe apple.</p>
+
+<p>When the three women found themselves in the drawing
+room Lydia Grigorievna lost no time in turning the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'cosversation'">conversation</ins>
+on the arrested Nihilist. Her son-in-law had
+carefully abstained from opening his mouth on the subject,
+yet she talked about it authoritatively, with an implication
+of reserved knowledge of still graver import, but Hélène
+gave her away.</p>
+
+<p>“Woldemar would not speak about it,” she complained,
+reverently. “‘An affair of state,’ he said. You can’t
+get a single word out of him.” She exulted in the part
+he was playing as an exterminator of the enemies of the
+Czar, and in the air-castles she was building as to the promotion
+to which the present case was to pave his way.</p>
+
+<p>“But what do they want, those scamps?” Lydia Grigorievna
+resumed, in soft, pampered accents. “Would they
+have us live without a Czar? I should have them cut to
+pieces, the rogues. Is it possible that the government
+should be powerless to get rid of them? To think of a
+handful of striplings keeping cabinet ministers in a perpetual
+state of terror.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, nobody is really afraid of them,” Hélène retorted,
+holding her face to the breeze which came in through an
+open window.</p>
+
+<p>“But your husband is not yet a cabinet minister, dear,”
+her mother said with a smile toward the countess.</p><p><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"><span class="pagenum">[105]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“Oh, you’re always suspecting me of something or
+other, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mamman</i>. I was not thinking of Woldemar at all.”</p>
+
+<p>The charm of her presence, the appealing charm of a
+pretty young woman about to become a mother, added
+itself to the tenderness and mystery of spring. Lydia
+Grigorievna addressed another smile to the countess, but
+Anna Nicolayevna dropped her glance. The princess went
+on raging at the revolutionists. In reality, however, that
+handful of striplings who “kept cabinet ministers in a
+perpetual state of terror” had stirred up a curiosity in
+her that sprang from anything but indignation or contempt.
+She was hankering for a specimen of their literature,
+of those publications the very handling of which was
+apt to bring death. Her thirst in this direction was all
+the keener because she felt sure that some of the Nihilist
+papers that had been confiscated at the arrest of the unknown
+man were upstairs in her son-in-law’s desk.</p>
+
+<p>“A constitution may be all very well in Germany or
+France,” she said. “This is Russia, not Germany or
+France or England, thank God. Yet those wretches will
+go around stirring up discontent. On my way home from
+Moscow last winter I heard a passenger say that if we
+had less bribery and more liberty and popular education
+we would be as good as any nation in Western Europe.
+I knew at once he was a Nihilist. You can tell one by
+the first word he utters. I confess I was afraid to sit near
+him. He had grey side-whiskers, but maybe they were just
+stuck on. Oh, I should show them no mercy.”</p>
+
+<p>She was all flushed and ill at ease. She received no
+encouragement. Her sugared enunciation and the false
+ring of what she said grated on her hearer’s nerves. Anna
+Nicolayevna listened in silence. The lame princess was a
+sincere woman coated with a layer of insincerity. But<a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"><span class="pagenum">[106]</span></a>
+the countess thought her the embodiment of affectation
+and hated her, bizarre beauty, enunciation, altered gowns,
+crutches and all.</p>
+
+<p>Lydia Grigorievna was interrupted by the appearance
+of the assistant-procureur himself. He was tall and frail
+with a long straight straw-coloured mane and pontifical gestures.
+His figure made one think of length in the abstract.
+As you looked at him he seemed to be continually growing
+in height. Hélène had fallen in love with him because he
+resembled the baron in a play she had seen in Moscow.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve just looked in to bid you good afternoon, countess,”
+he said. “I saw your carriage through the window. But
+unfortunately&mdash;<i>business before pleasure</i>.” It was one of
+two or three English phrases which he kept for occasions
+of this character and which he mispronounced with great
+self-confidence.</p>
+
+<p>When Anna Nicolayevna got into the street she felt as
+though she had emerged from the suffocating atmosphere
+of some criminal den. In the May breeze, however, and
+at sight of the river her spirits rose. She dismissed her
+carriage. When she reached the macadamised bank and
+caught the smell of the water it was borne in upon her
+afresh that it was spring. She had passed this very spot,
+in a sleigh only a short while ago, it seemed. Lawns and
+trees had been covered with snow then; all had been stiff
+with the stiffness of death; whereas now all was tenderly
+alive with verdure and bloom, and wild-flowers smiled
+upon her at every turn. Here it struck her as though
+spring had just been born; born in full attire overnight.
+Flushed and radiant, with her rusty chin in the air and
+her flat chest slightly thrown out, spinning her parasol,
+she was briskly marching along, a broad streak of water
+to the right of her, a row of orchards to the left. The<a name="Page_107" id="Page_107"><span class="pagenum">[107]</span></a>
+river beamed. From somewhere underneath she heard the
+clanking of chains of lumber-horses, accompanied by the
+yell of boys. The greased wooden screws of a receding
+cable-ferry were squirming in the air like two erect snakes
+of silver; the brass buttons of a soldier-passenger burned
+like a column of flames. All this and the lilac-laden breeze
+and Anna Nicolayevna’s soul were part of something vast,
+swelling with light and joy. But the breath of spring is
+not all joy. Nature’s season of love is a season of yearning.
+One feels like frisking and weeping at once. Spring
+was with us a year ago, but the interval seems many years.
+It is like revisiting one’s home after a long absence: the
+scenes of childhood are a source of delight and depression
+at once. It is like hearing a long forgotten song: the
+melody, however gay, has a dismal note in it. Anna Nicolayevna
+had not been out many minutes when she began
+to feel encompassed by an immense melancholy to which
+her heart readily responded. There was a vague longing
+in the clear blue sky, in the gleaming water, in the patches
+of grass on either side of the public promenade, in the
+distant outlines across the river, but above all in the overpowering
+freshness of the afternoon air. The travail of
+an unhappy soul seemed to be somewhere nearby. A look
+of loneliness came into her eyes. She was burning to see
+Pavel, to lay bare her soul to him.</p>
+
+<p>When a passing artisan in top-boots and with glass buttons
+in his waistcoat reverently took off his flat cap she
+returned the salute with motherly fervour and slackened
+her pace to a more dignified gait. “I’m respected and
+loved by the people,” she mentally boasted to Pavel.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at the bridge, she paused to hand a twenty-copeck
+piece to a blind beggar who sat on the ground by
+the tollman’s booth. He apparently recognised her by the<a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"><span class="pagenum">[108]</span></a>
+way her gloved hand put the coin in his hand. She had
+given him alms as long as she could remember, and usually
+he made no more impression on her than the lamp-posts
+she passed. This time, however, it came back to her how
+her mother used to send her out of their carriage with
+some money for him. She paused to look at him and to
+listen to his song. She recalled him as a man of thirty or
+forty with thick flaxen hair. Now he was gray and bald.
+“Great heavens! how time does fly!” she exclaimed in her
+heart, feeling herself an old woman. The blind man
+seemed to be absorbed in his song. All blind beggars look
+alike and they all seem to be singing the same doleful
+religious tune, yet this man, as he sat with his eyes sealed
+and his head leaned against the parapet, gave her a novel
+sensation. He was listening to his own tones, as if they
+came from an invisible world, like his own, but one located
+somewhere far away.</p>
+
+<p>Anna Nicolayevna gave him a ruble and passed on.
+Followed by the beggar’s benedictions, she made to turn
+into the street which formed the continuation of the
+bridge, when an approaching flour truck brought her to a
+halt. Besides several sacks of meal the waggon carried a
+cheap old trunk, and seated between the trunk and the
+driver was&mdash;Pavel; Pavel uncouthly dressed in the garb
+of an artisan. His rudimentary beard was covered with
+dust; his legs, encased in coarse grimy topboots, were
+dangling in the air. The visor of his flat cap was pushed
+down over his eyes, screening them from the red afternoon
+sun which sparkled and glowed in the glass buttons
+of his vest. It certainly was Pavel. Anna Nicolayevna
+was panic-stricken. She dared not utter his name.</p>
+
+<p>The toll paid, the truck moved on. The countess followed
+her son with her eyes, until a cab shut him out of<a name="Page_109" id="Page_109"><span class="pagenum">[109]</span></a>
+view, and then she remained standing for some time, staring
+at the cab. “What does it all mean?” she asked
+herself with sickening curiosity. Finally her eye went
+to the water below. She gazed at its rippling stretches
+of black and masses of shattered silver; at a woman slapping
+a heap of wash with a wash-beater, at a long raft
+slowly gliding toward the bridge. “Is he disguised?
+What does it all mean? Was it really Pasha?”</p>
+
+<p>Doubt dawned in her mind. In her eagerness to take
+another look at the man on the truck she raised her eyes.
+After waiting for some moments she saw the waggon with
+the two men as it appeared and forthwith disappeared at
+the other end of the bridge. The thought of the arrested
+man stunned her. Was Pavel a Nihilist? The image of
+her son had assumed a new, a forbidding expression.</p>
+
+<p>The revolutionists moved about on the verge of martyrdom,
+and as the mere acquaintance with one of their number
+meant destruction, the imagination painted them as
+something akin to living shadows, as beings whose very
+touch brought silence and darkness. People dared not
+utter the word “Nihilist” or “revolutionist” aloud.
+Anna Nicolayevna belonged to the privileged few, but at
+this moment she dreaded so much as to think of her son by
+these ghastly names. It now appeared to Anna Nicolayevna
+that all through her call at Lydia Grigorievna’s
+she had had a presentiment of an approaching calamity.
+She took the first cab that came along.</p>
+
+<p>“As fast as you can drive,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>The moment Anna Nicolayevna got home she inquired
+whether Pavel was in his room, and when the porter said
+that his Highness had not been back since he had left, in the
+morning, a fresh gust of terror smote her heart and brain.
+She stole into his room. On the table lay a German<a name="Page_110" id="Page_110"><span class="pagenum">[110]</span></a>
+pamphlet on Kant and a fresh number of the <i>Russian Messenger</i>,
+the ultra-conservative magazine published in Moscow.
+In several places the leaves were cut. A Nihilist
+was the last person in the world one would expect to read
+this organ of Panslavists. What Anna Nicolayevna did
+not know was that the cut pages of the conservative magazine,
+which Pavel had received from St. Petersburg the
+day before, contained a hidden revolutionary message.
+Here and there a phrase, word, or a single letter, was
+marked, by means of an inkstain, abrasion or what looked
+like the idle penciling of a reader, these forming half a
+dozen consecutive sentences.</p>
+
+<p>Anna Nicolayevna was perplexed and her perplexity gave
+her a new thrill of hope. She was in a quiver of impatience
+to see her son and have it all out.</p>
+
+<p>The dinner hour came round and Pavel was not there.
+She could not eat. Every little while she paused to listen
+for a ring of the door bell. She sent a servant to his room
+to see if he had not arrived unheard. He had not.</p>
+
+<p>The other people at table were Kostia, in huge red
+shoulder-straps which made his well-fitting uniform look
+too large for him; Kostia’s old tutor, a powerful looking
+German with a bashful florid face, and the countess’ own
+old governess, an aged Frenchwoman with a congealed
+smile on her bloodless lips. This restlessness of the
+countess when Pavel was slow in coming was no news to
+them, but this time she seemed to feel particularly uneasy.
+Silence hung over them. The Frenchwoman’s dried-up
+smile turned to a gleam of compassion. The German ate
+timidly. This man’s services had practically ceased when
+Kostia entered the cadet corps, but Anna Nicolayevna
+retained him in the house for his quiet piety. She had a
+feeling that so far as the intelligent classes were concerned<a name="Page_111" id="Page_111"><span class="pagenum">[111]</span></a>
+the simple forms of Protestantism were more compatible
+with religious sincerity than were the iron-bound formalities
+of her native church. So, with her heart thirsting
+for spiritual interest, she found intense pleasure in her
+theological conversations with this well-read, narrow-minded,
+honest Lutheran, whose religious convictions she
+envied.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112"><span class="pagenum">[112]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>A GENDARME’S SISTER.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">WHEN Pavel told his mother that he was going out
+he expected to meet Makar, who had been in
+Miroslav for the past four days. Once again he
+was going to plead with him to give up his scheme. The
+affair kept Pavel in bad humour, but that morning his mind
+was occupied by the thought that there was an interesting
+meeting in store for him. In the evening he was to make
+the acquaintance of Clara Yavner, the heroine of the Pievakin
+“demonstration.”</p>
+
+<p>On his way down the spacious corridor he was stopped
+by Onufri, his cheeks still hollower and his drooping moustache
+still longer and considerably greyer than of yore.
+Pavel had once tried to make a convert of him, but found
+him “too stupid for abstract reasoning.” Onufri was
+polishing the floor. As Pavel came past he faced half
+way about and gave him a stern look from under his bushy
+eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>“They’ve pinched a gentleman, the blood-guzzlers.”
+Saying which he fell to dancing on his foot-cushions again.</p>
+
+<p>“What do you mean?” Pavel asked, turning white as he
+paused.</p>
+
+<p>“You know what I mean, sir. You know you do,”
+answered Onufri, going on with his work.</p>
+
+<p>“Is it true? Who made the arrest? Gendarmes?”</p><p><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113"><span class="pagenum">[113]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“That’s it. I wouldn’t bother your Highness if the
+police’d nabbed a common crook, would I?”</p>
+
+<p>The servant bent on his young master a long look of
+sympathetic reproach, adding under his breath:</p>
+
+<p>“You had better give it all up, sir. Better let it go
+to the devil.”</p>
+
+<p>“Give up what? What on earth are you prating about,
+Onufri?”</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later, while Pavel was destroying some
+papers in his room, the door swung open and in came
+Onufri. The old man burst into tears and dropped to his
+knees.</p>
+
+<p>“Take pity, sir,” he wailed, kissing Pavel’s fingers.
+“You’ve played with fire long enough, sir. If they put
+you in prison, the murderers, and sent you away it would
+kill her Highness, your mother.”</p>
+
+<p>“Get up, Onufri. I have no patience with you just
+now, really I haven’t.”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s bad enough when your Highness takes chances in
+another town, but if you’re mixed up in this here thing,
+sir&mdash;&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m not mixed up ‘in this here thing.’ Don’t bother
+me. Come, get up. Up with you, now. There is a good
+fellow!”</p>
+
+<p>The old hussar obeyed distressedly.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of going to the place where he expected to see
+Makar, Pavel went to the house of Major Safonoff, the
+gendarme officer, an uncomfortable-looking frame building
+across the river. As he approached it, Masha, the major’s
+sister, who stood at a second story window at that moment,
+apparently waiting for somebody, burst out beckoning to
+him and stamping her feet. Her excited gesticulations
+drew the attention of a knife-grinder and two little girls.<a name="Page_114" id="Page_114"><span class="pagenum">[114]</span></a>
+Pavel dropped his eyes. “She is a perfect idiot,” he said
+to himself in a rage, “and I am another one. The idea
+of taking up with such a creature!”</p>
+
+<p>“Didn’t you torture me!” she greeted him on the staircase.
+“I thought my heart was going to snap. Don’t be
+uneasy. I have dismissed our servant. There is nobody
+around.” When they reached the low-ceiled parlor, she
+sank her voice and said solemnly, yet with a certain note
+of triumph: “He was arrested at four o’clock yesterday
+on the railway tracks. The gendarme office had information
+that he was in the habit of taking walks there. I
+happened to be away&mdash;think of it! At a time like that
+I was away. Else I should have let you know at once, of
+course. Anyhow, he’s there.”</p>
+
+<p>“You say it as if it was something to rejoice in,” Pavel
+remarked, disguising his rage. “It’s quite a serious matter,
+Maria Gavrilovna.”</p>
+
+<p>Mlle. Safonoff stared. “But we’ll get him out. Why,
+are you afraid we mayn’t? I see you’re depressed and
+that makes me miserable, too. Really it does.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do I look depressed? Well, I must confess I rather
+am. It’s no laughing matter, Maria Gavrilovna,” he said,
+flushing.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, well, if you are going to talk like that. That is
+I myself haven’t the slightest doubt about it. Only you
+frighten me so. If this thing is going to last another
+week it will drive me mad.” Her childish eyes shone with
+tears. “Why should you take such a gloomy view of it?
+I must say it’s cruel of you, Pavel <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Vassilyevitch'">Vassilyevich</ins>. Everything
+is just as I expected. He is as good as free, I assure
+you.”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel answered, by way of consoling himself as well as
+her: “Well, maybe I do take it too hard. Our chances<a name="Page_115" id="Page_115"><span class="pagenum">[115]</span></a>
+seem to be good, and&mdash;well, we must get him out. That’s
+all there is to it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course we must. Now I like you, Boulatoff. We
+must and we will, and when the story is published&mdash;oh,
+I do wish we could get out special proclamations!&mdash;anyhow,
+won’t it make a stir!” She paused and then resumed,
+in a new burst of frankness, “I know what makes
+you uneasy about me. The great trouble with me is my
+lack of tact, isn’t it? If I had that I would be all right.
+That’s what worries you about me in this affair, isn’t it,
+now? You’re afraid I may make a mess of the whole
+business. I know you are. Well, and I don’t blame you,
+either. The Safonoffs have never been distinguished for
+their heads. When it happens to be a matter of hearts,
+we hold our own, but brains, well&mdash;.” She gave a laugh.
+“I tell you what, Boulatoff, I’m afraid of you, and I don’t
+care to bear the brunt of this important affair. Anyhow,
+I want you to keep an eye on me. I’ll do all you want
+me to, but you must take the responsibility off my shoulders,
+else I’ll go crazy. What makes you smile? You
+think I’m crazy already, don’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>“I wasn’t smiling at all. So far you have managed
+things beautifully. I confess I’m getting impatient.
+Well, I do feel wretched, Maria Gavrilovna.”</p>
+
+<p>She grasped his hand, shook it silently and whispered:
+“Don’t be uneasy. We shall win.”</p>
+
+<p>When Safonoff came home at the lunch hour he told
+of the excitement at the gendarme office. His manner
+toward Boulatoff was a non-committal mixture which
+seemed to say: “You and I understand each other perfectly,
+don’t we? Still, if you think you can get me to
+call a spade a spade or to help you you are mistaken.”</p>
+
+<p>His compact, well-fed figure had the shape of a plum.<a name="Page_116" id="Page_116"><span class="pagenum">[116]</span></a>
+He was perpetually mimicking somebody or chuckling and
+his speech was full of gaps, many of his sentences being
+rendered in dumb show.</p>
+
+<p>“My chief may get in trouble for having ordered the
+arrest too soon,” he said. “We were to let the prisoner&mdash;”
+(he brandished his hand to represent a man going
+around at large) “for some time, so as to let him show
+us with whom he is acquainted. But my chief&mdash;” (he
+struck an attitude meant to caricature a decrepit, coughing,
+old fellow) “was all of a tremble for fear the canary-bird
+might take wing. You see he had never arrested a
+political before. You should have seen our men when
+we took that chap on the railroad track. They were more
+frightened than he, I assure you, prince. They thought
+he was going to&mdash;” (he aimed an imaginary dagger at
+Pavel and burst into laughter). “Monsieur Unknown is
+certainly no coward whatever else he may be. You should
+have seen the look of surprise and contempt he gave me!”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel beamed while Masha’s face wore a pained expression.
+“It’s time you had left this nasty business of yours,
+Andrusha,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>When Andrusha reached the assistant procureur’s part
+in the case he sketched off a pompous imbecile. There
+was no love lost between the public attorney and the
+gendarme officers, so Safonoff described, with many a gurgle
+of merriment, how, during the attempted examination
+of the prisoner, Zendorf, the assistant procureur (he burlesqued
+an obeisance as the epitome of snobbishness) had
+tried to impress his uniformed rivals with his intellectual
+and social superiority.</p>
+
+<p>“You see, my chief is a rough and ready sort of customer.
+Whatever else he may be, frills and fakes are not
+in his line. So he went right at it. ‘Speak up,’ he<a name="Page_117" id="Page_117"><span class="pagenum">[117]</span></a>
+squeaked at the prisoner, ‘speak up, or I’ll have your
+mouth opened for you.’ So Zendorf called him gently to
+order and fixed his dignified peepers at the prisoner. He
+expected to cast some sort of spell over him, I suppose, but
+it was no go. As to me, I was just choking. As bad luck
+would have it I took it into my head at that moment that
+the best way to make that fellow talk would be to have
+his armpits tickled till he roared. Well, I had to leave the
+room to have my giggle out.”</p>
+
+<p>Safonoff was indifferent to his sister’s revolutionary
+ventures because he never vividly realised the danger she
+incurred. His mind retained the most lifelike impressions,
+but its sensitiveness was of the photographic kind;
+it was confined to actual experiences. He had no imagination
+for the future. He was an easy-going man, incapable
+of fear. People often arrived at the conclusion
+that he was “a fool after all.” But then there are fools
+who are endowed with a keen perception and a lively sense
+of character.</p>
+
+<p>Speaking of the warden of the jail, Safonoff impersonated
+a cringing, hand-kissing, crafty time-server. He had
+never met a convert Jew or convert Pole who was not an
+adventurer and an all-round knave, he said, and Rodkevitch
+was the most typical convert Pole he had ever come
+across. The sight of money took his breath away, gave
+him the vertigo, made his eyes start from their sockets.
+Rustle a crisp paper ruble in his ear and he will faint away.</p>
+
+<p>“He’s a candidate for Siberia anyhow and he needs
+money to pull him out of some of the roguish schemes he
+is tangled up in. The contractors who furnish his prisoners
+sand for flour and garbage for potatoes are his partners
+in some of his outside swindles also. Do you understand,
+prince?” The question was put with special<a name="Page_118" id="Page_118"><span class="pagenum">[118]</span></a>
+emphasis, which Pavel interpreted as a direct hint at the
+possibility of bribing the warden.</p>
+
+<p>It occurred to Boulatoff that Makar’s luggage was quite
+likely to contain some incriminating papers or other things
+that might aggravate the case. To fear this in view of
+Makar’s notorious absent-mindedness was quite reasonable.
+But this was not all. He had been bent upon making his
+arrest as important in the eyes of the Third Section as
+possible, and Pavel was almost certain he had left something
+in his lodgings on purpose. “You never know what
+you are at with a crazy, obstinate bull-dog like that,” he
+thought in a qualm of anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>When Safonoff had gone Pavel wrote a note to his imprisoned
+friend asking for the address of his lodgings.</p>
+
+<p>“Can you get this to him, and an answer brought
+back?” he demanded of Mlle. Safonoff in a peremptory
+tone.</p>
+
+<p>“I think so. My aunt will probably get it through. I
+am almost sure of it, in fact.”</p>
+
+<p>“There you are. You’re <i>almost</i> sure. Was this enough
+to let a man put himself in the hands of the Third Section?”</p>
+
+<p>Mlle. Safonoff hurried out of the house in dumb dismay.
+After an interval of less than an hour, which to Pavel
+seemed a year, she burst into the parlour, accompanied by
+an older woman, whom she introduced as her aunt,
+Daria Stepanovna Shubeyko. Both were breathless with
+excitement. They had the desired address, the sum Makar
+owed his landlady and another note to the landlady.
+Pavel’s heart swelled with joy and gratitude, but he did
+not show it.</p>
+
+<p>“Very well,” he said, with a preoccupied scowl. “And
+now for that trunk of his.”</p><p><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119"><span class="pagenum">[119]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The two women went on to describe, continually interrupting
+each other, their plans for setting Makar free, but
+Pavel checked them.</p>
+
+<p>“We’ll discuss it all afterwards,” he said. “What we
+need at this minute is a coarse suit of clothes, something
+to make a fellow look like a workman or porter. We must
+clear his room before his landlady has notified the police
+of his disappearance.” The costume was brought by
+Masha. When Pavel emerged from the major’s bedroom
+transformed into a laborer, Masha’s aunt applauded so
+violently that he could not resist gnashing his teeth at her.</p>
+
+<p>“Excuse me, but I’ve never seen a real man of action
+before,” she pleaded. “Now I feel newly born, really I
+do. I tell you what, Boulatoff, I’ll go with you. In case
+of trouble I may be of some use, you know. We can’t
+afford to let an active man like you perish.”</p>
+
+<p>“But then if you perish,” Pavel answered gayly, “there
+won’t be anybody to arrange that escape.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s true,” she replied forlornly. She was a healthy,
+good-looking woman with a smile so exultantly silly that
+Pavel could not bear to look at it. Every time that smile
+of hers brightened her full-blooded face, he dropped his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>There was the risk of his being recognised by somebody
+in the street. Then, too, Makar’s lodgings might have
+been discovered by the police and made a trap of. The
+errand was full of risks, but this only stimulated a feeling
+in which Pavel’s passion for this sort of adventure was
+coupled with a desire to vindicate himself before his own
+conscience by sharing in Makar’s dangers.</p>
+
+<p>The trip was devoid of all adventure, however. Even
+his meeting with his mother was lost on him. He was<a name="Page_120" id="Page_120"><span class="pagenum">[120]</span></a>
+sincerely contemplating the blind beggar at that moment.</p>
+
+<p>Makar’s landlady was a garrulous Jewess. When she
+learned that her lodger had been taken ill at the house
+of a friend and that the workingman had been sent for
+his things and to pay the bill, she launched out into an
+effusion of bad Russian that taxed Pavel’s patience sorely.
+She exacted the address of Makar’s friend, so as to send the
+patient some of her marvellous preserves. The prince left
+with the trunk on his shoulder&mdash;an excellent contrivance
+for screening his face from view&mdash;but it proved too
+heavy, and when he came across a truckman who agreed
+to take him and his load part of the way to his destination
+he was glad to be relieved of the burden.</p>
+
+<p>While he was in the next room, shedding his disguise,
+Masha’s aunt bombarded him with impatient shouts and
+giggles. When he had opened the trunk at last she insisted
+upon helping him examine its contents, whereupon she
+handled each article she lifted out as she might a holy
+relic; and when the trunk proved to contain nothing of
+a compromising quality even Pavel felt disappointed.
+Mme. Shubeyko overwhelmed him with questions, one of
+which was:</p>
+
+<p>“Look here, Boulatoff, why shouldn’t the people rise
+and put an end to the rule of despotism at once? What
+on earth are we waiting for?”</p>
+
+<p>“If the people were all like you they would have done
+so long ago,” he answered, with a hearty laugh. He
+warmed to her in an amused way and felt like calling her
+auntie; only that smile of hers continued to annoy him.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121"><span class="pagenum">[121]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>UNDERGROUND MIROSLAV.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">PAVEL dined at the major’s house. He was in high
+spirits, but the hour of his expected meeting with
+the girl of the Pievakin demonstration was drawing
+near, and his impatience was getting keener every minute.
+He reached the place, a little house occupied by a government
+clerk named Orlovsky and his mother, ahead of time.</p>
+
+<p>“Your name is Boulatoff, is it not?” asked the host,
+his square Slavic nose curling up with the joy of his welcome.
+Then, crouching before the absurdest looking samovar
+Pavel had ever seen, he explained that his mother had
+gone to his sister’s for the night, as she did very often
+to avoid the noise of his gatherings. In the centre of a
+bare round table lay an enormous loaf of rye bread and
+a great wedge of sugar, near which stood an empty candy
+box, apparently used as a sugar bowl. Pavel divined that
+at least one-half of Orlovsky’s salary was spent on the tea,
+bread and butter on which his guests regaled themselves
+while they talked liberty.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m only a private of the revolution,” Orlovsky said,
+trying to blow two charcoals into flame until his face
+glowed like the coals and his eyes looked bleared. “But
+if there is anything I can do command me.” At his instance
+the two addressed each other in the familiar diminutives
+of their Christian names&mdash;“Pasha” and “Aliosha.”<a name="Page_122" id="Page_122"><span class="pagenum">[122]</span></a>
+While Aliosha was struggling with his smoking
+samovar, Pasha set to work cutting up the sugar.</p>
+
+<p>“Wait till you have seen our crowd,” said Aliosha,
+flicking the open side of an old top-boot at the samovar
+by way of bellows. “I tell you Miroslav is destined to
+play a prominent part in the liberation of Russia. We
+have some tip-top fellows and girls. Of course, we’re
+mere privates in the ranks of the revolution.”</p>
+
+<p>But Pavel’s mind was on the speaker’s sackcoat of
+checkered grey, which was so tight on him that his prominent
+thighs were bulging out and the garment seemed on
+the point of bursting. The sight of it annoyed Pavel in
+the same way as Mme. Shubeyko’s smile had done, and
+he asked Orlovsky why he should not unbutton himself,
+to which the other answered, half in jest, half in earnest,
+that he was getting so fat that he was beginning to look
+“like a veritable bourgeois, deuce take it.”</p>
+
+<p>“But it makes a fellow uncomfortable to look at you,”
+Pavel shouted, irascibly.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, but that’s a question of personal liberty, old
+man,” Orlovsky returned in all seriousness. “What right
+have you, for instance, to impose upon me rules as to how
+I am to wear my coat?”</p>
+
+<p>“That right which limits the liberty of one man by the
+liberty of other men. But this is all foolishness, Aliosha.
+Upon my word it is. The days of hair-splitting are dead
+and buried. There is plenty of work to do&mdash;living, practical
+work.”</p>
+
+<p>Orlovsky leaped up from his samovar, a fishy look in his
+eye, and grasping Pavel’s hand he pressed it hard and
+long. Pavel felt in the presence of the most provincial
+Nihilism he had ever come across.</p>
+
+<p>Other members of the Circle came. They all knew<a name="Page_123" id="Page_123"><span class="pagenum">[123]</span></a>
+the governor’s nephew by sight. Also that he was “a
+sympathiser,” yet his presence here was a stirring surprise
+to most of them, although they strove to conceal it. One
+man, Orlovsky’s immediate superior in office, shook Pavel’s
+hand with a grimace which seemed to say: “You’re
+Prince Boulatoff and I am only an ordinary government
+official, but then all titles and ranks will soon go to
+smash.” A Jewish gymnasium boy with two bubbling
+beads for eyes made Pavel’s acquaintance with a preoccupied
+air, as if in a hurry to get down to more important
+business. His small, deep-seated eyes spurted either merriment
+or gloom. Elkin had said there was not enough
+of them to make one decent-sized eye, and dubbed him
+“Cyclops,” which had since been the boy’s revolutionary
+nickname.</p>
+
+<p>Orlovsky’s superior had a vast snow-white forehead that
+gave his face a luminous, aureole-lit effect, but he was an
+incurable liar. He was one of the most devoted members
+of the Circle, however, and recently he had sold all his
+real estate, turning over the proceeds to the party. As he
+seated himself a telegraph operator in a dazzling uniform
+sat down by his side, saying, in a whisper:</p>
+
+<p>“That was an affected look of yours a moment ago.”</p>
+
+<p>“When? What are you talking about?” the man with
+the sainted forehead asked, colouring.</p>
+
+<p>“You know what. You made a face as if you were
+not glad to see Boulatoff. You know you were, weren’t
+you, now?”</p>
+
+<p>“I confess I was.”</p>
+
+<p>“Now I like you, old boy. All that is necessary is to
+take one’s self in hand. Nothing like self-chastisement.”</p>
+
+<p>“Cyclops” bent over to an army captain with a pair
+of grandiose side-whiskers and said something in order<a name="Page_124" id="Page_124"><span class="pagenum">[124]</span></a>
+to hear himself address a Gentile and an army officer in
+the familiar “thou.” Another young Jew, a red-headed
+gymnasium boy named Ginsburg, sat close to the lamp,
+reading a book with near-sighted eyes, the yellow light
+playing on his short-clipped red hair. His father was a
+notorious usurer and the chief go-between in the governor’s
+bribe-taking and money-lending transactions. Young
+Ginsburg robbed his father industriously, dedicating the
+spoils to the socialist movement.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The expectation that that hazy, featureless image which
+had resided in his mind for the past five years would soon
+stand forth in the flesh and with the mist lifted made
+Pavel restless. When a girl with short hair and very
+sparse teeth told him that Clara Yavner was sure to be
+around in less than fifteen minutes, his heart began to
+throb. The girl’s name was Olga Alexandrovna Andronova
+(Andronoff). She was accompanied by her fiancé,
+a local judge&mdash;a middle-aged man with a mass of fluffy
+hair. The judge was perceptibly near-sighted, like Ginsburg,
+only when he screwed up his eyes he looked angry,
+whereas the short-sightedness of the red-headed young
+man had a beseeching effect. The two girls were great
+friends, and Olga spoke of her chum in terms of persuasive
+enthusiasm. That Boulatoff had special reasons to be
+interested in Clara Yavner she was not aware.</p>
+
+<p>“What has become of her?” she said, looking at the door
+impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>“You are adding fuel to my curiosity, Olga Alexandrovna,”
+Pavel said. “I am beginning to feel somewhat
+as I once did in the opera, when I was waiting to see Patti
+for the first time.”</p>
+
+<p>“And when she came out you were not disappointed,<a name="Page_125" id="Page_125"><span class="pagenum">[125]</span></a>
+were you?” Olga asked, exposing her sparse teeth in a
+broad, honest smile.</p>
+
+<p>“No,” he laughed.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, neither will you be this time.”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel said to himself humorously: “I am so excited
+I am afraid I shall fall in love with that girl. But then
+predictions seldom come true.” Then he added: “And
+now that I predict it won’t, it will.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>When she came at last he said inwardly: “That’s what
+she looks like, then! She certainly does not seem to be a
+fool whatever else she may be.” That was what people
+usually said upon their first meeting with her: “She
+seems to be no fool.” She was a fair-complexioned Jewish
+girl of good height. To those unfamiliar with the
+many types of her race she might have looked Teutonic.
+To her own people her face was characteristically Jewish,
+of the blond, hazel-eyed variety. It was a rather small
+face, round and with a slightly flattened effect between
+eyes and mouth that aroused interest. Her good looks
+were due to a peculiar impression of intelligence and
+character to which this effect contributed and to the picturesqueness
+of her colouring&mdash;healthy white flesh, clear
+and firm, set off by an ample crown of fair hair and
+illuminated by the brown light of intense hazel eyes.
+She had with her a two-year-old little girl, her sister’s,
+and accompanying the two was Elkin, from whose manner
+as he entered the crowded room it was easy to see, first,
+that he had told Mlle. Yavner of the revolutionary “general”
+he was going to introduce her to; second, that he
+was the leader of the Circle and the connecting link between
+it and revolutionary generals.</p>
+
+<p>“I tried to steal away from her,” she said to Olga,<a name="Page_126" id="Page_126"><span class="pagenum">[126]</span></a>
+meaning the little girl, “but she ran after us and filled
+the streets with her cries.” She smiled&mdash;an embarrassed
+smile which made her intelligent face look still more intelligent.</p>
+
+<p>When Boulatoff was introduced to her, by Elkin, she
+blushed slightly. He watched her with keen curiosity.
+At the same time the judge’s fiancée was watching him, in
+the fond hope that he would indorse her opinion of her
+friend. When Clara averted her face, while speaking to
+somebody, her features became blurred in Pavel’s mind,
+and he sought another look at her. Whether Elkin had
+told her of the effect her “speech” during the Pievakin
+scene had had on him he had no knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the men in the gathering made a point of ignoring
+the little privileges of the sex, treating the girls
+“as human beings, not as dolls,” but Clara and Olga
+made a joke of it. When Orlovsky offered the judge’s
+fiancée a chair next to Clara’s she thanked him much as an
+“unemancipated” girl would have done; whereupon Mlle.
+Yavner shook her finger at her, saying merrily:</p>
+
+<p>“You’re getting conservative, Olga. You had better
+look out.”</p>
+
+<p>The Circle was a loose, informal organisation. There
+were no fixed rules or ceremonies for the admission of
+members nor anything like regularly elected officers. Nor,
+indeed, did the members practise formal communism
+among themselves, although the property of one was to a
+considerable extent the property of all.</p>
+
+<p>The gathering to-night was naturally larger than usual,
+owing to the great news of the day. No one except Pavel
+knew anything about the arrested man, each wondering
+whether the others did. To betray inquisitiveness, however,
+would have been unconspiratorlike, so as they sat<a name="Page_127" id="Page_127"><span class="pagenum">[127]</span></a>
+about, whispering, in twos or threes, they were at once
+trying to suppress their curiosity and to draw each other
+out.</p>
+
+<p>The telegraph operator and Orlovsky’s superior left
+early in the evening, but there soon came two other members,
+a sergeant of the captain’s command and a gawky
+seminarist with a trick of drawing in his neck and throwing
+out his Adam’s apple when he laughed.</p>
+
+<p>The sergeant took a seat beside his officer and the two
+fell into conversation about their regiment, while the
+theological student at once set to plying Pavel with questions.
+Elkin, in an embroidered Little-Russian shirt, sat
+smoking a pipe and smiling non-committally. Every little
+while he would remove the pipe from his mouth, take
+a grave look at the theologian and resume his pipe and
+his smile.</p>
+
+<p>The little girl sat on the captain’s lap, quietly playing
+with his sword until she fell asleep. When Clara beheld
+the officer struggling to keep his luxurious side-whiskers
+from waking the child, she took her niece in her arms and
+carried her, with noiseless kisses, toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll soon be back. It isn’t far,” she whispered to
+Orlovsky, declining his assistance.</p>
+
+<p>The men followed her out of the room with fond glances.
+More than half of them were in love with her.</p>
+
+<p>When she got back, somewhat short of breath, Boulatoff
+was describing the general feeling in the universities and
+among working people. His talk was vague. His rolling
+baritone rang dry. And now his grip on the subject was
+weakened still further by the reappearance of the girl in
+whom, during the first few minutes, he instinctively felt
+a rival centre of interest. No sooner, however, had the
+seminarist attacked the party press than the prince became<a name="Page_128" id="Page_128"><span class="pagenum">[128]</span></a>
+furious and made a favourable impression. Once or twice
+he fell into Zachar’s manner and even used several of his
+arguments. The seminarist urged his objections chiefly
+because he wanted to prove to himself and to the others
+that he was a man of convictions and not one to quail
+before a revolutionary “general.” But Pavel took him
+seriously. Once when the seminarist attempted to interrupt
+him, Clara said, forlornly:</p>
+
+<p>“He’s bound to be right. He’s just bound to be right.”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t cry,” said Cyclops. Several of the men laughed,
+and when Clara joined them their eyes betrayed her power
+over them. Nothing betrays your feelings toward another
+person more surely than the way you take his merriment.</p>
+
+<p>The most important topic of the evening was a circular
+letter from the Executive Committee of the Will of the
+People, as Pavel’s party was called, as to the “preparatory
+work” that was to pave the way to a final uprising. The
+discussion was left to the judge, Elkin and Pavel. The
+gawky seminarist was silent, with an angry air which implied
+that the arguments one was compelled to follow here
+were exasperatingly beneath one’s criticism. The others
+listened spellbound, though some of them scarcely felt
+convinced. Ingrained in the consciousness of these was
+the idea of an abstract elemental giant, tremendous and
+immutable as the northern winter, of which the blind
+forces of the army were only a personified detail. That
+this giant should some day, in the near future, cease to be
+did not clearly appeal to their imagination. The boldness,
+therefore, with which the judge and Pavel spoke of these
+things greatly enhanced the fascination of their speeches.</p>
+
+<p>Cyclops, a huge slice of rye bread in his hand, evidently
+had something to say, but did not know how. He was
+quoting history, blushing, sputtering, swallowing his own<a name="Page_129" id="Page_129"><span class="pagenum">[129]</span></a>
+tongue, and finally he lost himself in a jumble of words.
+Elkin was just the reverse. He was so calm, so glib and so
+lucid of phrase that as long as his speech lasted one was
+involuntarily nodding assent; yet when it was over one
+did not seem to know exactly what he had said or whether
+he had had anything to say at all. At one point he and
+the judge locked horns and fought long and hard without
+clearly understanding each other, until they proved to be
+arguing on the same side of the issue. Orlovsky, who took
+it for granted that the theoretical discussion was beyond
+his mental powers, looked on with stupid admiration.
+“Here is a bunch of cracks for you!” his beaming face
+seemed to say.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of a pause Clara whispered something to
+Olga.</p>
+
+<p>“Why don’t you ask it then?” the short-haired girl
+answered, aloud.</p>
+
+<p>Clara turned pale, as she began to speak. She went
+straight to the point, however, and presently cast off all
+restraint.</p>
+
+<p>“All this is very well,” she said, referring to a certain
+passage in the circular letter, “provided the local authorities
+really desert the throne. But suppose they don’t,
+suppose they prove to be hardened conservatives, devoted
+slaves of the crown? It seems to me as if we were inclined
+to take things for granted&mdash;counting without the
+host, as it were.”</p>
+
+<p>“Devoted to the crown!” said the gawky theologian.
+“The fact is that the high officials are a mere lot of self-seeking
+curs.”</p>
+
+<p>“Exactly,” Pavel thundered, bringing his hands together
+enthusiastically.</p>
+
+<p>Elkin removed the pipe from his mouth and bawled<a name="Page_130" id="Page_130"><span class="pagenum">[130]</span></a>
+out: “Rats rather than curs, I should say; rats that are
+sure to forsake the ship of state the moment it shows
+signs of danger.”</p>
+
+<p>The seminarist was annoyed at this attempt to steal the
+applause from him, but Boulatoff did not like Elkin’s manner
+and offered him no encouragement. This disarmed
+the seminarist’s opposition. From this moment on he
+listened to Pavel with friendly nods, as who should say:
+“Now you are hitting it; now you are talking sense!”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course,” Pavel resumed, “the pamphlet means we
+should keep agitating until we are sure of our ground.
+There is a large liberal-minded class that does not stir
+merely because it is made up of a lot of cowards. These
+fellows will rally around our banner the moment the government
+begins to totter. As to the bureaucracy, it is so
+decayed, so worm-eaten, that all it knows at present is how
+to bend double for an increase of salary or promotion in
+rank. A lot of back-boneless flunkeys, that’s what they
+are. You don’t actually think they serve the Czar from
+principle?” he asked, addressing himself to Mlle. Yavner.</p>
+
+<p>“The only principle they care for,” Elkin interposed,
+“is, ‘To the devil with all principles!’”</p>
+
+<p>“Exactly,” <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Paval'">Pavel</ins> assented, with some irritation.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” the seminarist chimed in, “and when they hear
+the tocsin of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“Liberty, Equality and Fiddlesticks!” Clara mimicked
+him, mildly, signing to him not to interrupt the speaker.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel went on. He spoke at length, looking mostly at
+her. He was making an effort to convince her that in the
+event of a revolution the high officials would turn cowards,
+and her face seemed to be saying: “He’s the nephew of a
+governor, so he ought to know.”</p>
+
+<p>When the yard windows were thrown open the bewhiskered<a name="Page_131" id="Page_131"><span class="pagenum">[131]</span></a>
+captain sat down to the piano and struck up an old
+national tune, to the accompaniment of two male voices.
+The others continued their talk under cover of the music.
+Pavel made up his mind that the judge and Clara were
+the most level-headed members of the Circle, and decided
+to seek their coöperation in the business which had brought
+him to Miroslav. Only the judge was the more reposeful
+of the two, as well as incomparably the better informed.
+As a rule he was absorbed in his own logic, while Mlle.
+Yavner was jarred by every false note in others, nervously
+sensitive to all that went on about her, so that when
+Cyclops, for example, got tangled in his own verbosity
+her eyes would cloud up with vexation and she would
+come to his rescue, summing up his argument in a few
+clear, unobtrusive sentences. There was a glow of enthusiasm
+in her look which she was apparently struggling to
+suppress. Indeed, she was struggling to suppress some
+feeling or other most of the time. Her outward calm
+seemed to cover an interior of restlessness.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel’s unbounded faith in the party instilled new faith
+into her. The great point was that he was a member of
+the aristocracy. If a man like him had his whole heart
+in the struggle, the movement was certainly not without
+foundation. Moreover, Boulatoff was close to the revolutionary
+centre, and he obviously spoke from personal
+knowledge. All sorts of questions worried her, many of
+which were answered at the present gathering, partly by
+herself, partly by others. The new era, when there would
+be neither poverty nor oppression, the enchanted era which
+had won her heart, loomed clearer than ever. At one
+moment as she sat listening, her blond hair gleaming
+golden in the lamplight, her face lit up by a look of keen
+intelligence, Pavel said to himself: “And this Jewish<a name="Page_132" id="Page_132"><span class="pagenum">[132]</span></a>
+girl is the one who had the feeling and the courage to make
+that rumpus over Pievakin! If I became a revolutionist
+it was the result of gradual development, through the help
+of conditions, books, people; whereas this girl acted like
+one, and in the teeth of grave danger, too, purely on the
+spur of the moment and long before she knew there was any
+such thing as a revolutionary movement; acted like one
+while I was still a blind, hard-hearted milksop of a drone.”
+In the capital he knew a number of girls who were continually
+taking their lives in their hands and several of
+whom were like so many saints to him, but then Mlle.
+Yavner belonged to the realm of his home and his boyhood.
+What he regarded as an act of heroism on her part was
+hallowed by that sense of special familiarity and comprehensibility
+which clings to things like the old well that
+witnessed our childish games.</p>
+
+<p>She made a very favourable impression on him. If he
+had been a formal candidate for her hand, come “bride-seeing,”
+he could not have studied her more closely than
+he did now. Indeed, so absorbed was he in her that once
+while she was speaking to him laughingly her words fell on
+a deaf ear because at that moment he was remarking to
+himself: “She laughs in a little rising scale, breaking
+off in a rocket.”</p>
+
+<p>“There must be something in her, then,” he thought
+“which was the source of that noble feeling and of that
+courage.” He took to scanning her afresh, as though
+looking for a reflection of that something in her face, and
+as he looked at her and thought of the Pievakin “demonstration”
+it gave him pleasure to exaggerate her instrumentality
+in his own political regeneration.</p>
+
+<p>Olga had relieved her fiancé at the piano, and later on
+when she, too, rose from the keyboard, Clara eagerly took<a name="Page_133" id="Page_133"><span class="pagenum">[133]</span></a>
+her place. There was no life in Mlle. Yavner’s tones, but
+the impassioned sway of her head and form as she played
+told of a soul touched with ecstasy; told of the music
+which her fingers failed to evoke from the instrument.
+And the eyes of half a dozen love-stricken men added their
+rapture to the sounds.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel listened to her melody and breathed the scented
+night air that came in from the little garden in the yard.
+He reflected that Clara might visit the warden’s house as
+a piano teacher. At this it came home to him that Makar
+was in prison, and that unless he escaped he was a lost
+man. He was seized with terror. The piano sang of a
+lonely ship, blue waves, and a starlit night, but to Pavel it
+spoke of his imprisoned friend and his own anguish. He
+joined in the chorus with ferocious ardour. His heart was
+crying for Makar’s liberation and for a thousand other
+things. When she left the piano stool he leaped up to her.</p>
+
+<p>“Allow me to grasp your hand, Clara Rodionovna,” he
+said, as though thanking her for the merit of her playing.
+And then, all unmindful of comment, he drew her into a
+secluded corner and said vehemently:</p>
+
+<p>“I wish also to tell you, Clara Rodionovna, that I have
+a special reason to be glad of knowing you; for if I have
+a right to be among good people it is you whom I have to
+thank for it.” A thick splash of crimson came into her
+face; but before she had time to put her surprise into
+words, he poured forth the story of his awakening and
+how he had all these five years been looking forward to a
+meeting with her. As he spoke his face bore an expression
+of ecstatic, almost amorous grimness. The girl was taken
+by storm. She was literally dazed. An overwhelming,
+unspoken intimacy established itself between them on the
+spot.</p><p><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134"><span class="pagenum">[134]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Olga’s face was a blend of beaming triumph and tense
+perplexity. The men were making an effort to treat
+Boulatoff’s sally with discretion, as if it were a bit of revolutionary
+conspiracy and they knew enough to mind their
+own business.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135"><span class="pagenum">[135]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<h3>A WARNING.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">IT was one o’clock when the assemblage broke up. They
+scattered over various sections of the town, Pavel going
+to his home in the Palace, while Clara, accompanied
+by Elkin and Orlovsky, set off in the direction of Paradise
+Town. But whatever the character of the district
+one was bound for, in their hearts there was the same
+feeling that they belonged to a higher life than did those
+who slept behind the closed shutters they were passing.
+This feeling made them think of their group as a world
+within a world. Their Circle was a magic one. Somewhere
+in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kieff, Odessa, Siberia, men and
+women were being slowly tortured, dying on the gallows;
+a group of brave people still at large&mdash;the mysterious
+Executive Committee&mdash;was doing things that thrilled
+the empire; and they, members of the Miroslav Circle, were
+the kin of those heroes. As they dispersed through the
+sleeping town each unconsciously remembered the organisation
+as so many superior beings dotting a population of
+human prose.</p>
+
+<p>“He must be quite close to the Centre,” Orlovsky said.</p>
+
+<p>The other two made no answer. It struck Clara as sacrilege
+to talk of Boulatoff, whose fervent face was vivid
+before her at this minute. Particularly unbearable was
+the allusion to the prince to her because it was Orlovsky<a name="Page_136" id="Page_136"><span class="pagenum">[136]</span></a>
+who made it. The stout government clerk was one of the
+men in love with her, while she often disliked him to abhorrence.
+She felt a sincere friendship for him, yet sometimes
+when he spoke she would be tempted to shut her
+ears and to gnash her teeth as people do when they hear
+a window pane scratched. This was one of her causeless
+hatreds with which she was perpetually struggling.</p>
+
+<p>Orlovsky construed their irresponsiveness as a rebuke
+for his speaking of the revolutionary “centre” in the
+street; so he started to tell them about his mother. With
+Clara by his side his tongue would not rest. Not so Elkin,
+who nursed his love in morose silence. When they
+heard the whistle of a distant policeman and the answer
+of a watchman’s rattle by way of showing that he had not
+fallen asleep on his post, Orlovsky raised his voice.</p>
+
+<p>“She is getting more pious every day,” he said, as
+though defying the invisible policeman to find anything
+seditious in his words.</p>
+
+<p>Clara’s mind was on Boulatoff. The strange avowal of
+the man whom she had never seen before save through the
+window of a princely carriage tingled through her veins
+in a medley of new-born exaltations. Boulatoff did seem
+to be close to the Executive Committee, and the sentiments
+of that wonderful body, voiced by this high-born
+young man, the nephew of the governor of Miroslav, had
+lit stirring images in her consciousness. Pavel stood out
+amid the other revolutionists of her acquaintance even as
+the whole Miroslav Circle did in the midst of the rest of
+her native town.</p>
+
+<p>The interchange of signals between policeman and
+watchman which now and then sounded through the stillness
+of the night reminded her of the unknown man the
+gendarmes had arrested, of the hard glint of chains,<a name="Page_137" id="Page_137"><span class="pagenum">[137]</span></a>
+of gallows. She wondered whether Elkin or Boulatoff
+knew anything about that man. She saw herself rapidly
+marching toward something at once terrible and divine.
+She was not the only one who followed this course&mdash;that
+was the great point. The kindest and best people in
+Miroslav, the best and the wisest in the land, and among
+them children of governors, of noblemen, were consecrated
+to that same something which was both terrible and luring.
+Her heart went out to her comrades known and unknown,
+and as she beheld a sleepy watchman curled up in
+the recess of his gateway, she exclaimed without words:
+“I’m going to die for you&mdash;for you and all the other
+poor and oppressed people in the world.”</p>
+
+<p>Here and there they passed an illuminated window or
+an open street door, through which they saw Jewish artisans
+at work. They saw the bent forms of Jewish tailors,
+they heard the hammer sounds of Jewish carpenters, tinsmiths,
+blacksmiths, silversmiths; yet all these made no
+impression upon her. There were about 50,000 Jews in
+Miroslav and as many as <ins class="punct" title="Transcriber's Note: added -">three-fourths</ins> of them were
+pinched, half-starved mechanics, working fourteen hours
+a day, and once or twice a week all night, to live on rye
+bread and oatmeal soup; yet they made no appeal to her
+sympathies, while the Gentiles who were huddled up in
+front of the gates she was passing did. The great Russian
+writers whose stories and songs had laid the foundation
+to her love of the masses dealt in Gentiles, not in
+Jews. Nekrasoff bewailed the misery of the Russian moujik,
+not of the common people of her own race. Turgeneff’s
+sketches breathe forth the poetry of suffering in a
+Great-Russian village, not the tragedy and spiritual beauty
+of life among the toiling men and women of her own
+blood. She had never been in Great Russia, in fact; she<a name="Page_138" id="Page_138"><span class="pagenum">[138]</span></a>
+had never seen those moujiks in the flesh. Those she had
+seen were the Little-Russian peasants, who came to Miroslav
+from the neighbouring villages. Her peasants, therefore,
+were so many literary images, each with the glamour
+which radiates from the pages of an adored author. This
+was the kind of “people” she had in mind when she
+thought of the <i>Will of the People</i>. The Jewish realities
+of which her own home was a part had nothing to do with
+this imaginary world of hers.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Clara’s home was on a small square which was partly
+used as a cart-stand and in one corner of which, a short
+distance from Cucumber Market, squatted a policeman’s
+hut. This was the district of a certain class of
+artisans and small tradesmen; of harness-makers, trunk-makers,
+wheelwrights; of dealers in tar, salt, herring, leaf
+tobacco, pipes, accordions, cheap finery. The air was pungent
+with a thousand strong odours. The peasants who
+brought their produce to market were here supplied with
+necessaries and trinkets. The name of the big market-place
+extended to the entire locality, and Paradise Town
+was just beyond the confines of that locality.</p>
+
+<p>The square for which Clara was bound was called Little
+Market. A gate in the centre of one of its four sides,
+flanked by goose-yards on one side and by a row of feed-shops
+and harness-shops on the other, led into a deep and
+narrow court, known as Boyko’s. At this moment the
+gate was closed, its wicket, held ajar by a chain, showing
+black amid the grey gloom of the square.</p>
+
+<p>As Clara and her two escorts came in sight of the spot
+they saw a man sitting on a low wooden bench near the
+gate.</p>
+
+<p>“Somebody is waiting for me,” she said gravely. She<a name="Page_139" id="Page_139"><span class="pagenum">[139]</span></a>
+thanked them and bade them good-bye and they went their
+several ways.</p>
+
+<p>The man on the bench rose and went to meet her. As
+he walked toward her he leaned heavily on his stout,
+knotty cane&mdash;a pose which she knew to be the result of
+embarrassment. He was a tall, athletic fellow in a long
+spring overcoat, a broad-brimmed felt hat sloping backward
+on his head. He bore striking resemblance to Clara;
+the same picturesque flatness in the middle part of the
+face, the same expression. Only his hair was dark, and
+his eyes and mouth were milder than hers. They looked
+like brother and sister and, indeed, had been brought up
+almost as such, but they were only cousins. His name
+was Vladimir Vigdoroff. His family was the better-to-do
+and the worldlier of the two. When he was a boy of four
+and he envied certain other two boys because each of them
+had a little sister, and he had not, he had made one of his
+cousin. It was his father who subsequently paid for
+Clara’s education.</p>
+
+<p>“You here?” Clara said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded, to say yes, with playful chivalry. They
+reached the bench in silence, and then he said in a decisive,
+business-like voice which she knew to be studied:</p>
+
+<p>“I expected to have a talk with you, Clara. That’s
+why I waited so long. But it’s too late. Can I see you
+to-morrow?”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly. Will you drop in in the afternoon?”</p>
+
+<p>He had evidently expected to be detained. He lingered
+in silence, and she had not the heart to say good-bye.
+From a neighbouring lane came the buzz-buzz of a candlestick-maker’s
+lathe. They were both agitated. She had
+been looking forward to this explanation for some time.
+They divined each other perfectly. As they now stood<a name="Page_140" id="Page_140"><span class="pagenum">[140]</span></a>
+awkwardly without being able either to speak or to part,
+their minds were in reality saying a good deal to each
+other.</p>
+
+<p>Until recently she had made her home in her uncle’s
+house more than she had in her father’s. Her piano stood
+there, her uncle’s gift, for which there was no room in
+the basement occupied by her parents. She had kept her
+books there, received her girl friends and often slept there.
+But since her initiation into the secret society she had
+gradually removed her headquarters to her parents’ house,
+and her visits at Vladimir’s home had become few and
+far between. Clara had once offered him an underground
+leaflet, whereupon he had nearly fainted with fright at
+sight of it. He had burned the paper in terror and indignation,
+and then, speaking partly like an older brother and
+partly like the master of the house which she was compromising,
+he had commanded her never again to go near
+people who handled literature of that sort. Accustomed
+to look up to him as her intellectual guide and authority,
+as the most brilliant man within her horizon, she had
+listened to his attack upon Nihilism and Nihilists with
+meek reserve, but the new influences she had fallen under
+had proven far stronger than his power over her. To
+relieve him from the hazards of her presence in the house
+she had little by little removed her books and practically
+discontinued her visits. In the event of her getting into
+trouble with the gendarmes her own family was too old-fashioned
+and uneducated, in a modern sense, to be suspected
+of complicity. As to Vladimir, he missed her
+keenly, as did everybody else in the house, but her estrangement
+had a special sting to it, too, one unconnected with
+their mutual attachment as cousins who had grown up
+together. Clara’s consideration for his safety, implying<a name="Page_141" id="Page_141"><span class="pagenum">[141]</span></a>
+as it did that he was too timid and too jealous for his personal
+security to work for the revolution, an inferior being
+uninitiated into the world of pluck and self-sacrifice to
+which she, until recently his pupil, belonged, galled him
+inordinately.</p>
+
+<p>At last he lost control over himself.</p>
+
+<p>“You are playing with fire, Clara,” he said, lingering
+by the bench.</p>
+
+<p>“I suppose that’s what you want to speak to me about,”
+she answered with calm earnestness, “but this is hardly
+the place for a discussion of this sort, Volodia.”<a name="Anchor-B" id="Anchor-B"></a><a title="Go to footnote B" href="#Footnote-B" class="fnanchor">[B]</a></p>
+
+<p>“If you want me to go home you had better say so in
+so many words. The high-minded interests you are cultivating
+are scarcely compatible with shyness or lack of
+frankness, Clara.”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t be foolish, Volodia. You know you will make
+fun of yourself for having spoken like that.”</p>
+
+<p>“I didn’t mean to say anything harsh, Clara. But this
+thing is scarcely ever out of my mind. It’s a terrible fate
+you have chosen.”</p>
+
+<p>“How do you know I have?” she asked in a meditative
+tone that implied assent.</p>
+
+<p>“How do I know? Can’t we have a frank, honest talk
+for once, Clara? Let us go somewhere.”</p>
+
+<p>“We can talk here. To be on the safe side of it, let us
+talk in Yiddish.”</p>
+
+<p>He made a grimace of repugnance, and seating himself
+on the bench he went on in nervous Russian.</p>
+
+<p>“You have fallen into company that will do you no
+good, Clara. If you are arrested it will break the heart of
+two families. Is there no soul left in you?”</p>
+
+<p>“What put it into your mind that I should be arrested?”<a name="Page_142" id="Page_142"><span class="pagenum">[142]</span></a>
+she returned, lugubriously. “And is that all
+one ought to be concerned about? All Russia is in prison.”</p>
+
+<p>“I expected something of that sort. Alluring phrases
+have made you deaf and blind. It is my duty to try to
+save you before it is too late.”</p>
+
+<p>He had come for friendly remonstrance, for an open-hearted
+explanation, but that mood had been shattered the
+moment he saw her approaching with two of her new
+friends. He persisted in using the didactic tone he had
+been in the habit of taking with her, and he could not
+help feeling how ridiculously out of place it had become.
+He chafed under a sense of his lost authority, and the impotent
+superiority of his own manner impelled him to bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>“Is that what you have come for&mdash;to rescue me from
+empty phrases and bad company?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, to rescue you from the intoxication of bombast
+and dangerous company, whether you are in a sarcastic
+mood or not.”</p>
+
+<p>“And how are you going to do it, pray?” she asked
+with rather good-natured gaiety.</p>
+
+<p>“Laugh away. Laugh away. Since you took up with
+those scamps&mdash;&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“Scamps! I can’t let you speak like that, Volodia. I
+don’t know what you mean by ‘taking’ up with them, but
+if by ‘scamps’ you mean people who are sacrificing themselves&mdash;&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“You misunderstand me&mdash;&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“If by scamps you mean people who will be tortured or
+hanged for opposing the tyranny that is crushing us all
+rather than feather their own nests, then it is useless for
+us to continue this talk.”</p>
+
+<p>“Be calm, Clara. You don’t wish to misjudge me, do<a name="Page_143" id="Page_143"><span class="pagenum">[143]</span></a>
+you? Of course, I needn’t tell you that what you say
+about sacrificing oneself and all that sort of business
+is no news to me. Some other time, when you are not
+excited, I may have something to say about these
+things&mdash;&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“That everlasting ‘something to say!’ People are being
+throttled, butchered and you&mdash;you have ‘something
+to say.’ We are speaking in two different languages, Volodia.”</p>
+
+<p>“Maybe we are. And I must say you have picked up
+that new language of yours rather quickly. I am not
+going to enter into a lengthy discussion with you to-night.
+All I will say now is this: You know that four Jewish
+revolutionists have been hanged within the last few
+months&mdash;in Odessa, Nicolayeff, Kieff and St. Petersburg.
+If you think that does the Jewish people any good
+I am very sorry.”</p>
+
+<p>“What else would you have Jews do? Roll on feather-beds
+and collect usury? Would that do ‘the Jewish people’ good?”</p>
+
+<p>“You talk like an anti-Semite, Clara.”</p>
+
+<p>“There is no accounting for tastes. You may call it
+anti-Semitism. You may be ashamed of four men who
+die bravely in a terrible struggle against despotism.”</p>
+
+<p>He cast an uneasy look in the direction of the police
+booth, but his courage failed him to urge her to lower her
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>“As for me,” she went on, “I certainly am proud of
+them. I hold their names sacred, yes, sacred, sacred,
+sacred, do you understand? And if you intend to continue
+calling such people scamps then there is nothing left for us
+to say to each other. And, by the way, since when have
+<i>you</i> been a champion of ‘the Jewish people’&mdash;you who<a name="Page_144" id="Page_144"><span class="pagenum">[144]</span></a>
+have taught me to keep away from everything Jewish; you
+who are shocked by the very sound of Yiddish, by the very
+sight of a wig or a pair of side-locks; you who are continually
+boasting of the Gentiles you are chumming with;
+you who would give all the Jews in the world for one
+handshake of a Christian?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I am prepared to take abuse, too, to-night. As
+to my hatred of Yiddish and side-locks, that does no harm
+to anybody. If all Jews dropped their antediluvian ways
+and became assimilated with the Russian population half
+of the unfortunate Jewish question would be solved.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, this kind of talk is really enough to drive one
+mad. The whole country is choking for breath, and here
+you are worrying over the Jewish question. But then&mdash;since
+when have <i>you</i> been interested in the Jews and their
+‘question?’”</p>
+
+<p>“Whether I have or not, I never helped to aggravate it
+as those ‘heroes’ of yours do. If there are some few
+rights which the Jew still enjoys, they, too, will be taken
+away from him on account of that new-fangled heroism
+which has turned your head.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nobody has any ‘rights.’ Everybody is trampled
+upon, everybody. That’s what those ‘scamps’ are struggling
+to do away with.”</p>
+
+<p>“Everybody has to die for that matter, yet who
+cares to die an unnatural death? If the Jews were oppressed
+like all others and no more, it would be another
+matter, but they are not. Theirs is an unnatural oppression.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, that’s what those ‘scamps’ are struggling for:
+to do away with every sort of oppression. Would you
+have the Jews keep out of that struggle? Would you have
+them take care of their own precious skins, and later on,<a name="Page_145" id="Page_145"><span class="pagenum">[145]</span></a>
+when life becomes possible in Russia, to come in for a
+share of the fruit of a terrible fight that they carefully
+stayed away from?”</p>
+
+<p>“Those are dreams, Clara. Dreams and phrases,
+phrases and dreams. That’s all you have learned of your
+new friends. Do you deny the existence of a Jewish question?”</p>
+
+<p>She scrutinised his face in the grey half-tones of the
+gathering dawn and said calmly:</p>
+
+<p>“Look here, Volodia, you know you are seizing at this
+‘Jewish question’ as a drowning man does at a straw.
+You know you have no more interest in it than I have.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am certainly not delighted to see it exist, if that’s
+what you mean.”</p>
+
+<p>“May I be frank with you, Volodia? All the Jews of
+the world might cease to exist, for all you care.”</p>
+
+<p>“It isn’t true. All I want is that they should become
+Russians, cultured Russians.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, as for me there is only one question&mdash;the
+question of plain common justice and plain elementary
+liberty. When this has been achieved there won’t be any
+such thing as a Jewish, Polish or Hottentot question.
+Yes, those ‘scamps’ are the only real friends the Jews
+have.”</p>
+
+<p>“But one cannot live on the golden mist of that glorious
+future of yours, Clara. It takes a saint to do that.
+Every-day mortals cannot help thinking of equal rights
+before the law in the sordid present.”</p>
+
+<p>“Think away! Much good will it do the Jews. The
+only kind of equal rights possible to-day is for Jew and
+Gentile to die on the same gallows for liberty. That’s
+the ‘scamps’’ view of <ins class="punct" title="Transcriber's Note: added &quot;">it.”</ins> At this the word struck her
+in conjunction with the images of Boulatoff, Olga, the<a name="Page_146" id="Page_146"><span class="pagenum">[146]</span></a>
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Judge'">judge</ins>, and the other members of the Circle, whereupon
+she burst out, with a stifled sob in her voice: “How
+dare you abuse those people?”</p>
+
+<p>Not only had she broken loose from his tutelage, but
+he had found himself on the defensive. They had changed
+rôles. The pugnacious tone of conviction, almost of inspiration,
+with which she parried his jibes nonplussed
+him. Usually a bright talker, he was now colourless and
+floundering. And the more he tried to work himself
+back to his old-time mastery the more helplessly at a
+disadvantage he appeared.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t recognise you, Clara,” he said. “They have
+mesmerised you, those phrase-makers.”</p>
+
+<p>She leaped to her feet. “I don’t intend to hear any
+more of this abuse,” she said. “And the idea of you
+finding fault with phrase-makers! you of all men, you to
+whom a well-turned phrase is dearer than all else in the
+world! If they make phrases they are willing to suffer
+for them at least.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh well, they have made a perfect savage of you,” he
+retorted under his breath. “Good night.”</p>
+
+<p>She was left with a sharp twinge of compunction, but
+she had barely dived under the wicket chain when her
+thoughts reverted to Boulatoff and what he had said to
+her.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147"><span class="pagenum">[147]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>CLARA AT HOME.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">AT Boyko’s Court the chilly dawn lit up a barricade
+of wheels, axles, and bodies of peasant waggons.
+Through wide cracks of a fence came the shifting
+light of a lantern and the sleepy cackling of geese. At the
+far end of the deep narrow court hung the pulley chains
+and bucket of a roofed well. Clara went through a spacious
+subterranean passage, dark as a pocket and filled
+with the odour of paint. It was crowded with stacks of
+trunks, finished and unfinished, but she steered clear of
+them without having to feel her way.</p>
+
+<p>A door swung open, revealing a dimly lighted low-ceiled
+interior. The odour of sleep mingled with the
+odours of paint and putty.</p>
+
+<p>“Is that you, Tamara?” asked a tall, erect, half-naked
+old woman in Yiddish, Tamara being the Jewish name
+which had been arbitrarily transformed, at Vladimir’s
+instance, into Clara.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, mamma darling,” Clara replied.</p>
+
+<p>“Master of the universe! You get no sleep at all.”</p>
+
+<p>The girl kissed her mother gayly. “You know what
+papa says,” she rejoined, “‘sleep is one sixtieth of death.’
+Life is better, mamma dear.”</p>
+
+<p>“I have not studied any of your Gentile books, yet
+I know enough to understand that to be alive is better<a name="Page_148" id="Page_148"><span class="pagenum">[148]</span></a>
+than to be dead,” the tall, erect old woman said without
+smiling. “But if you want to be alive you must sleep.
+Go to bed, go to bed.”</p>
+
+<p>There were between them relations of quizzical comradeship,
+implying that each treated the interests of the
+other with patronising levity, with the reservation of a
+common ground upon which they met on terms of equality
+and ardent friendship.</p>
+
+<p>“By the way,” the old woman added, yawning, “Volodia
+was here. He wants to see you.”</p>
+
+<p>“I know. I found him at the gate.”</p>
+
+<p>“Very well, then, go to bed, go to bed.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is father asleep?”</p>
+
+<p>At this a red-bearded little man in yellow drawers
+and a white shirt open at the neck and exposing a hairy
+breast, burst from an open side door.</p>
+
+<p>“How can one sleep when one is not allowed to?” he
+fired out. “May she sink into the earth, her ungodly
+books and all. I’ll break every unclean bone in you.
+Who ever heard of a girl roaming around as late as that?”</p>
+
+<p>“Hush,” his wife said with a faint smile, as she urged
+him back to their bed-room, much as she would a child.</p>
+
+<p>The family occupied one large basement room, the
+better part of which was used as a trunk-maker’s shop
+and a kitchen, two narrow strips of its space having been
+partitioned off for bed-rooms. It was Hannah, Clara’s
+mother, who conducted the trunk business. The bare
+wooden boxes came from a carpenter’s shop and she had
+them transformed into trunks at her house. Clara’s
+father spent his days and evenings in a synagogue, studying
+the Talmud “for its own sake.” There were other
+such scholars in Miroslav, the wife in each case supporting
+the family by engaging in earthly business, while<a name="Page_149" id="Page_149"><span class="pagenum">[149]</span></a>
+her husband was looking after their common spiritual
+welfare in the house of God. Clara’s mother was generally
+known as “Hannah the trunk-maker,” or “Hannah
+the Devil.” In her very humble way she was a
+shrewd business woman, tireless, scheming, and not over-scrupulous,
+but her nickname had originated long before
+she was old enough to be a devil on Cucumber Market. She
+was a little girl when there appeared in the neighbourhood
+what Anglo-Saxons would call “Jack the Window-Smasher.”
+Window-pane after window-pane was cracked
+without there being the remotest clue to the source of the
+mischief. The bewigged old women said it was an evil
+spirit, and engaged a “master of the name” to exorcise
+it from the community; but the number of broken windows
+continued to grow. The devil proved to be Hannah,
+and the most startling thing about the matter, according
+to the bewigged women of the neighbourhood, was this,
+that when caught in the act, she did not even cry, but
+just lowered her eyes and frowned saucily.</p>
+
+<p>Rabbi Rachmiel, as Clara’s father was addressed by
+strangers, was innocent of “things of the world” as an
+infant&mdash;a hot-tempered, simple-minded scholar, with the
+eyes and manner of a tiger and the heart of a dove.
+His wife tied his shirt-strings, helped him on with his
+socks and boots, and generally took care of him as she
+might of a baby. When he spoke of worldly things to
+her, she paid no heed to his talk. When he happened to
+drop a saying from the Talmud she would listen reverently
+for more, without understanding a word of what
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>Had Clara been a boy her father would have sooner
+allowed her to be burned alive than to be taught “Gentile
+wisdom.” But woman is out of the count in the Jewish<a name="Page_150" id="Page_150"><span class="pagenum">[150]</span></a>
+church, so he neither interfered nor tried to understand
+the effect that Gentile education was having on her.</p>
+
+<p>Father, mother and daughter represented three distinct
+worlds, Clara being as deeply engrossed in her
+“Gentile wisdom” as Rabbi Rachmiel was in his Talmud,
+or as her mother in her trunks. That the girl belonged
+to a society that was plotting against the Czar the old
+people had not the remotest idea, of course.</p>
+
+<p>Besides Clara and her married sister the old couple
+had two sons, one of them a rabbi in a small town and
+the other a merchant in the same place.</p>
+
+<p>Clara put out the smoky light of a crude chimneyless
+little lamp (with a piece of wire to work the wick up
+and down), which had been left burning for her. A
+few streaks of raw daylight crept in through the shutters,
+falling on a pair of big rusty shears fastened to the top
+of a wooden block, on a heap of sheet-iron, and on
+several rows of old Talmudic folios which lined the
+stretch of wall between Clara’s partition and one of the
+two windows.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151"><span class="pagenum">[151]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE COUNTESS’ DISCOVERY.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">AS Pavel mounted the majestic staircase of his
+mother’s residence he became aware that an abstract
+facial expression was all his memory retained
+of Mlle. Yavner’s likeness. He coveted another
+glance at her much as a man covets to hear again a new
+song that seems to be singing itself in his mind without
+his being able to reproduce it.</p>
+
+<p>He found his mother sitting up for him, on the verge
+of a nervous collapse. She took him to a large, secluded
+room, the best in the vast house for <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'tête-a-tête'"><i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">tête-à-tête</i></ins> purposes.
+It was filled with mementoes, the trophies of her father’s
+diplomatic career, with his proud collection of rare and
+costly inkstands, and with odds and ends of ancient furniture,
+each with a proud history as clear-cut as the pedigree
+of a high-born race-horse.</p>
+
+<p>Anna Nicolayevna had planned to lead up to the main
+question diplomatically, but she was scarcely seated on
+a huge, venerable couch (which made her look smaller than
+ever) than she turned pale and blurted out in a whisper:</p>
+
+<p>“Did you cross the bridge this afternoon?”</p>
+
+<p>“No. Why?” He said this with fatigued curiosity
+and looking her full in the face.</p>
+
+<p>She dropped her glance. “I thought I saw you there.”</p>
+
+<p>“You were mistaken, then, but what makes you look so<a name="Page_152" id="Page_152"><span class="pagenum">[152]</span></a>
+uneasy? I did not go in that direction at all, but suppose
+I did. Why, what has happened?”</p>
+
+<p>She cowed before the insistence of his interrogations and
+beat a retreat.</p>
+
+<p>“I am not uneasy at all. I must have been mistaken,
+then. It is about Kostia I have been wanting to speak
+to you. It is quite a serious matter. You see he is too
+delicate for the military schools. So I was thinking of
+putting him in the gymnasium, but then many of the boys
+there are children of undesirable people. One can’t be
+too careful these days.” She was now speaking according
+to her carefully considered program, and growing pale
+once more, she fixed him with a searching glance, as she
+asked: “You must have heard of the man the gendarmes
+caught, haven’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, you mean the fellow who would not open his
+mouth,” he said with a smile. “Quite a sensation for a
+town like this. In St. Petersburg or Moscow they catch
+them so often it has ceased to be news.”</p>
+
+<p>She went on to speak of the evil of Nihilism, Pavel
+listening with growing interest, like a man who had given
+the matter some consideration. Poor Anna Nicolayevna!
+She was no match for him.</p>
+
+<p>Finally he got up. “Well, I don’t really know,” he
+said. “It seems to me the trouble lies much deeper than
+that, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mamman</i>. Those fellows, the Nihilists, don’t amount
+to anything in themselves. If it were not for that everlasting
+Russian helplessness of ours they could do no more
+harm than a group of flies. Our factories and successful
+farms are all run by Germans; we simply can’t take care
+of the least thing.”</p>
+
+<p>“But what have factories and farms to do with the
+pranks of demoralised boys?”</p><p><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153"><span class="pagenum">[153]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>He smiled. “But if we were not a helpless, shiftless
+nation a handful of boys couldn’t frighten us, could they?”</p>
+
+<p>“Very well. Let us suppose you are a minister. What
+would you do?”</p>
+
+<p>“What would I do? I shouldn’t let things come to such
+a pass, to begin with.”</p>
+
+<p>He was tempted to cast circumspection to the winds and
+to thunder out his real impeachment of existing conditions.
+This, however, he could not afford; so he felt like a boat
+that is being rowed across stream with a strong current to
+tempt her downward. He was sailing in a diagonal direction.
+Every now and then he would let himself drift
+along, only presently to take up his oars and strike out
+for the bank again. He spoke in his loud rapid way.
+Every now and again he would break off, fall to pacing
+the floor silently and listening to the sound of his own
+voice which continued to ring in his ears, as though his
+words remained suspended in the air.</p>
+
+<p>Anna Nicolayevna&mdash;a curled-up little heap capped by
+an enormous pile of glossy auburn hair, in the corner of
+a huge couch&mdash;followed him intently. Once or twice she
+nodded approval to a severe attack upon the government,
+without realising that he was speaking against the Czar.
+She was at a loss to infer whether he was opposed to the
+new advisers of the Emperor in the same way in which
+her brother-in-law and the ultra-conservative Slavophiles
+were opposed to them or whether he was some kind of
+liberal. He certainly seemed to tend toward the Slavophiles
+in his apparent hatred of foreigners.</p>
+
+<p>“They’ll kill him, those murderous youngsters, they are
+sure to kill him,” he shouted at one point, speaking of
+the Czar. “And who is to blame? Is such a state of
+things possible anywhere in Western Europe?”</p><p><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154"><span class="pagenum">[154]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Anna Nicolayevna’s eyes grew red and then filled with
+tears, as she shrank deeper into the corner of the couch.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>She was left in a frame of mind that was a novel experience
+to her. Her pity was lingering about a stalwart
+military figure with the gloom and glint of martyrdom on
+his face&mdash;the face of Alexander II. Quite apart from
+this was the sense of having been initiated into a strange
+ecstasy of thought and feeling&mdash;of bold ideas and broad
+human sympathies. She was in an unwonted state of
+mental excitement. Pavel seemed to be a weightier personage
+than ever. The haze that enveloped him was thickening.
+Nevertheless his strictures upon Russia’s incapacity
+left her rankling with a desire to refute them. That
+national self-conceit which breeds in every child the conviction
+that his is the greatest country in the world and
+that its superiority is cheerfully conceded by all other nations,
+reasserted itself in the countess with resentful emphasis.
+To be sure, all the skill, ingenuity and taste of
+the refined world came from abroad, but this did not lessen
+her contempt for foreigners any more than did the fact
+that all acrobats and hair-dressers were Germans or Frenchmen.
+Her childhood had been spent in foreign countries
+and she knew their languages as well as she did her own;
+nevertheless her abstraction of a foreigner was a man who
+spoke broken Russian&mdash;a lisping, stammering, cringing
+imbecile. She revolted to think of Russia as being inferior
+to wretches of this sort, and when the bridge incident swept
+back upon her in all the clearness of fact, her blood ran
+chill again. “He is the man I saw in the waggon after
+all,” she said to herself, in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>She went to bed, but tossed about in an agony of restlessness.
+When the darkness of her room began to thin<a name="Page_155" id="Page_155"><span class="pagenum">[155]</span></a>
+and the brighter objects loomed into view, she slipped on
+a wrapper and seated herself at a window, courting composure
+in the blossom-scented air that came up from the
+garden; but all to no purpose. Ever and anon, after a
+respite of tranquillity she would be seized with a new rush
+of consternation. Pasha was the man she had seen on the
+bridge, disguised as an artisan; he was a Nihilist.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>While Anna Nicolayevna was thus harrowed with doubt,
+Pavel was pacing his room, his heart on the point of bursting
+with a desire to see his mother again and to make a
+clean breast of it. The notion of her being outwitted and
+made sport of touched him with pity. Come what might,
+his poor noble-hearted mother must be kept in the dark
+no longer. She would appreciate his feelings. He would
+plead with her, with tears in his eyes he would implore
+her to open her eyes to the appalling inhumanity of the
+prevailing adjustment of things. And as he visioned himself
+making this plea to her, his own sense of the barbarity
+of the existing regime set his blood simmering in him,
+and quickened his desire to lay it all before his mother.</p>
+
+<p>Presently somebody rapped on his door. It was Anna
+Nicolayevna.</p>
+
+<p>“I must speak to you, Pasha; I can’t get any sleep,”
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>They went into a newly-built summer house. The
+jumble of colour and redolence was invaded with light that
+asserted its presence like a great living spirit. The orchard
+seemed to be worlds away from itself.</p>
+
+<p>As a precaution, they spoke in French.</p>
+
+<p>“Pasha, you are the man I saw on the bridge,” she said.
+“You are a Nihilist.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sh-h, don’t be agitated, mother dear, I beg of you,”<a name="Page_156" id="Page_156"><span class="pagenum">[156]</span></a>
+he replied with tender emphasis. “I am going to tell you
+all. Only first compose yourself, mamma darling, and hear
+me out. Yes, I’m what you call a Nihilist, but I am not
+the man you saw.”</p>
+
+<p>“You a Nihilist, Pasha!” she whispered, staring at him,
+as though a great physical change had suddenly come over
+him. “Anyhow, you have nothing to do with the man they
+have arrested?”</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head and she felt relieved. His avowal of
+being a Nihilist was so startling a confession to make, that
+she believed all he said. He was a Nihilist, then&mdash;a Nihilist
+in the abstract; something shocking, no doubt, but
+remote, indefinite, vague. The concrete Nihilism contained
+in the picture of a man disguised as a laborer and
+having some thing to do with the fellow under arrest&mdash;that
+would have been quite another matter. He told her the
+story of his conversion in simple, heart-felt eloquence; he
+pictured the reign of police terror, the slow massacre of
+school-children in the political dungeons, the brutal fleecing
+and maltreatment of a starving peasantry.</p>
+
+<p>“I found myself in a new world, mother,” he said. “It
+was a world in which the children of refined, well-bred
+families fervently believed that he who did not work for
+the good of the common people was not a man of real
+honour. Indeed, of what use has the nobility been to the
+world? They are a lot of idlers, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mamman</i>, a lot of good-for-nothings.
+For centuries we have been living on the fat
+of the earth, luxuriating in the toil, misery and ignorance
+of the peasants. It is to their drudgery and squalor that
+we owe our material and mental well-being. We ought to
+feel ashamed for living at the expense of these degraded,
+literally starving creatures; yet we go on living off their
+wretchedness and even pride ourselves upon doing so. Let<a name="Page_157" id="Page_157"><span class="pagenum">[157]</span></a>
+us repay our debt to them by working for their real emancipation.
+We have grown fat on serfdom, so we must give
+our blood to undo it, to bring about the reign of liberty.
+This is the sum and substance of our creed, mother. This
+is the faith that has taken hold of me. It is my religion
+and will be as long as I live.”</p>
+
+<p>In his entire experience as a revolutionary speaker he
+had never felt as he did at the present moment.</p>
+
+<p>A host of sparrows burst into song and activity, all
+together, as though at the stroke of a conductor’s baton;
+and at this it seemed as if the flood of perfume had taken
+a spurt and the sunlight had begun to smile and speak.
+He went on in the same strain, and she listened as she
+would to a magic tale that had no bearing upon the personality
+of her son. His voice, sharp and irascible as it
+often sounded, was yet melodious in its undercurrent tone
+of filial devotion. The vital point, indeed, was that at last
+he was uncovering his soul to her. She was not shocked
+by what she heard. Rather, she was proud of his readiness
+to sacrifice himself for an ideal, and what is more, she felt
+that his world lured her heart also.</p>
+
+<p>“But the Emperor is a noble soul, Pasha,” she said.
+“He has emancipated the serfs. If there ever was a friend
+of the common people the present Czar is one.”</p>
+
+<p>Her objections found him ready. He had gone over
+these questions hundreds of times before, and he gave
+her the benefit of all his former discussions and reading.
+At times he would borrow a point or two from Zachar’s
+speeches. Touching upon the emancipation of the serfs, he
+contended that Alexander II. had been forced to the measure
+by the disastrous results of the Crimean War; and
+that the peasants, having been defrauded of their land,
+were now worse off than ever.</p><p><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158"><span class="pagenum">[158]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“Oh, mother,” he suddenly exclaimed, “whenever you
+think of the abolition of serfdom think also of the row
+of gallows he had erected about that very time for noble-minded
+Polish patriots. Do you remember Mme. Oginska,
+that unfortunate Polish woman we met at the health-resort?
+Gallows, gallows, nothing but gallows in his
+reign.”</p>
+
+<p>When she referred to the late war “in behalf of the
+oppressed Slavonic races of the Balkans,” Pavel asked her
+why the Czar had not first thought of his own oppressed
+Russians, and whether it was not hypocrisy to send one’s
+slaves to die for somebody else’s freedom. The Emperor
+had secured a constitution for Bulgaria, had he? Why,
+then, was he hanging those who were striving for one in
+his own land? A war of emancipation indeed! It was
+the old Romanoff greed for territory, for conquest, for
+bloodshed.</p>
+
+<p>He literally bore her down by a gush of arguments,
+facts, images. Now and again he would pause, sit looking
+at the grass in grim silence, and then, burst into another
+torrent of oratory. It was said of Zachar that a single
+speech of his was enough to make a convert of the most
+hopeless conservative. Pavel was far from possessing any
+such powers of pleading eloquence, when his audience was
+made up of strangers, but he certainly scored a similar victory
+by the appeal which he was now addressing to his
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>He went to order coffee. When he returned, reveille
+was sounding in the barracks.</p>
+
+<p>“There you have it!” he said. “Do you know what
+that sound means? It means that the youngest, the best
+forces of the country are turned into weapons of human
+butchery.”</p><p><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159"><span class="pagenum">[159]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The brass notes continued, somewhat cracked at times,
+but loud and vibrant with imperious solemnity.</p>
+
+<p>“It means, too, that people are forced to keep themselves
+in chains at the point of their own bayonets,” he added.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The next few days were spent by the countess in reading
+“underground” literature. She was devouring paper
+after paper and pamphlet after pamphlet with tremulous
+absorption. The little pile before her included scientific
+treatises, poetry and articles of a polemical nature, and she
+read it all; but she was chiefly interested in the hair-breadth
+escapes, pluck and martyrdom of the revolutionists.
+The effect this reading had on her was something
+like the thrilling experience she had gone through many
+years ago when she was engrossed in the Lives of Saints.</p>
+
+<p>“It makes one feel twenty years younger,” she said to
+Pavel, bashfully, as she laid down a revolutionary print and
+took the glasses off her tired eyes one forenoon.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160"><span class="pagenum">[160]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>PAVEL AT BOYKO’S COURT.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">CLARA was introduced to Mme. Shubeyko, the warden’s
+sister-in-law, and to her niece, the gendarme
+officer’s sister. At first communication with Makar
+was held by means of notes concealed in cigarettes and
+carried to and fro by one of the warders, who received half
+a ruble per errand; but Clara was soon installed in the
+warden’s house. Once or twice Pavel spoke with Makar directly,
+by means of handkerchief signals based on the same
+code as the telegraph language which political prisoners rap
+out to each other through their cell walls. These signals
+Pavel sent from the top of a hill across the river from Makar’s
+cell window. To allay suspicion he would wave his
+handkerchief toward Masha or Clara, who stood for the purpose
+on a neighbouring hill, giving the whole proceeding
+the appearance of a flirtation. As to Makar, his cell was in
+an isolated part of the prison, facing the outer wall. Still,
+this mode of communication was exasperatingly slow and
+attended by some risks after all, and Pavel had recourse
+to it only in case of extreme necessity, although to the
+prisoner it was a welcome diversion.</p>
+
+<p>One day, when Clara, Masha and Pavel were together,
+he said to the gendarme officer’s sister, with mystifying
+gaiety:</p>
+
+<p>“Well, have you discovered the heroine of the Pievakin<a name="Page_161" id="Page_161"><span class="pagenum">[161]</span></a>
+demonstration?” He regretted the question before it had
+left his lips. Clara was annoyed.</p>
+
+<p>“No, why?” Masha asked, looking from him to her.</p>
+
+<p>“I have the honour to introduce&mdash;” he said, colouring.
+For some reason Masha did not seem to be agreeably impressed
+by the announcement, and Clara did not fail to
+notice it.</p>
+
+<p>As it was rather inconvenient for the son of Countess
+Varoff to be seen at the house of a major of gendarmes,
+Clara was to report to him at the residence of her parents.
+In the depth of the markets and the Jewish quarter his
+identity was unlikely to be known. Clara had lived at
+the warden’s house about a fortnight when Pavel’s first visit
+at the trunk shop took place. She offered him a rude
+chair in the small space between the partition of her bed-room
+and the window by the wall that was lined with
+the worn folios of her father’s meagre library. The room
+was pervaded by odours of freshly planed wood, putty and
+rusty tin which the breath of spring seemed to intensify
+rather than to abate.</p>
+
+<p>Motl, Hannah’s sole employe, was hammering away at
+his bindings and courting attention by all sorts of vocal
+quirks and trills. During the Days of Awe, the solemn
+festivals of autumn, he sang in a synagogue choir; so he
+never ceased asserting his musical talents. As Clara’s
+visitor took no heed of his flourishes he proceeded to imitate
+domestic animals, church bells, a street organ
+playing a selection from Il Trovatore, and a portly captain
+drilling his men, but all to no purpose. As the noise
+he was making was a good cover for their talk, she did
+not stop him. At any rate, Motl scarcely understood any
+Russian.</p>
+
+<p>“I have only seen him at a distance,” Clara said,<a name="Page_162" id="Page_162"><span class="pagenum">[162]</span></a>
+meaning the prisoner. “But I know that he eats and
+sleeps well, and looks comfortable.”</p>
+
+<p>“He would look comfortable if you tied him up in a
+sack. Is he still ‘dumb’?”</p>
+
+<p>She portrayed the warden’s bed-ridden and voiceless wife
+who suffered from a disease of the spinal and vocal
+chords, and the disorder at his house and in the prison.
+She had always wondered at the frequent cases of political
+gaol-breaking, but if every gaol were conducted as this one
+was the number would be much larger, she thought. That
+vodka was quite openly sold and bought in every common
+gaol in the empire was no news to her, but this was a trifle
+compared to what she had heard of Rodkevich’s administration.
+One of his gaolers had told her of imprisoned thieves
+whom he would give leave of absence in order that he
+might confiscate part of their booty when they came back.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I think he is a man who would go into any kind
+of scheme that offered money, or&mdash;excitement,” she said,
+gravely; and she added with a smile: “He might even become
+a man of principle if there were money in it.”</p>
+
+<p>“He won’t give ‘a political’ ‘leave of absence,’ though,
+will he?” Pavel joked. “Still, upon the whole, it looks
+rather encouraging.”</p>
+
+<p>“I think it does.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you?” And his eyes implored her for a more
+enthusiastic prediction of success.</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed I do,” she answered soberly. “But whether
+I do or not, we must go to work and get him out.”</p>
+
+<p>“This damsel is certainly not without backbone,” he
+said to himself.</p>
+
+<p>He had familiarised himself with the details in the case
+of almost every revolutionist who had escaped or attempted
+to escape from prison. Some of these had made their<a name="Page_163" id="Page_163"><span class="pagenum">[163]</span></a>
+way through an underground passage; others had passed
+the gateman in the disguise of a soldier or policeman; still
+others had been wrenched from their convoy, while being
+taken to the gendarme office or a photograph gallery.
+Prince Kropotkin had simply made a desperate break for
+liberty while the gates of the prison hospital in which he
+was confined stood open, a cab outside bearing him off to
+a place of safety. Another political prisoner regained his
+freedom by knocking down a sentinel with brass knuckles,
+while still another, who was awaiting death in Odessa,
+would have made his escape by means of planks laid from
+his cell window to the top of the prison fence, had not these
+planks proved to be too flimsy. In one place an imprisoned
+army <ins class="punct" title="Transcriber's Note: removed ,">officer</ins> slipped away under cover of a flirtation
+in which a girl prisoner had engaged the warden. A revolutionist
+named Myshkin had tried to liberate Chernishevsky,
+the celebrated critic, by appearing at the place of his
+banishment, in far-away Siberia, in the guise of a gendarme
+officer with an order for the distinguished exile,
+and a similar scheme had been tried on the warden of a
+prison in European Russia. Both these attempts had failed,
+but then in the case in hand there was the hope of Rodkevich,
+the warden, acting as a willing victim. Pavel
+said he would impersonate one of the gendarmes.</p>
+
+<p>“Some of the gaolers may know you,” Mlle. Yavner objected.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s quite unlikely, I was away so long. Besides,
+the thing would have to be done in the evening anyhow.
+I must be on hand. It will be necessary.”</p>
+
+<p>“You might be recognised after all,” she insisted, shyly.</p>
+
+<p>Another project was to have a rope thrown over the
+prison fence, in a secluded corner of the yard. This was
+to be done at a signal from within, while Makar was out<a name="Page_164" id="Page_164"><span class="pagenum">[164]</span></a>
+for exercise, in the charge of a bribed guard. The guard
+was to raise an alarm when it was too late, telling how his
+prisoner knocked him down and was hoisted out of sight.
+Or Makar might be smuggled out in a barrel on some provision
+waggon, the prescribed examination of the vehicle
+being performed by a friendly gaoler. Whatever plan they
+took up, Pavel insisted on playing the leading part in it.
+He was for taking Makar away in a closed carriage, if need
+be under cover of pistol shots. Clara urged that in the
+event the equipage had to wait for some time, its presence
+about the prison was sure to arouse dangerous curiosity.
+Altogether she was in favour of a quiet and simple proceeding.
+Safonoff’s house was within easy distance from the
+prison, so if Masha could undertake to keep her brother
+away from home, Clara would prefer to have Makar walk
+quietly to that place, as a first resort, thence to be taken,
+thoroughly disguised, to the “conspiracy house” of the
+Circle. But Pavel picked the proposition to pieces.</p>
+
+<p>Since her initiation into the warden’s house Clara had
+been in a peculiarly elevated state of mind, her whole attention
+being absorbed in her mission in which she took
+great pride. This uplifted mood of hers she strove to suppress,
+and the clear-headed, matter-of-fact way in which
+she faced the grave dangers of her task animated Pavel
+with a feeling of intimate comradeship as well as admiration.</p>
+
+<p>As they now sat in the cleanest and brightest corner of
+the trunk shop he was vaguely sensible of a change in her
+appearance. Then he noticed that instead of the dark
+woolen dress she had worn at the time of their previous
+meetings she had on a fresh blouse of a light-coloured
+fabric. To be seen in a new colour is in itself becoming
+to a woman, but this blouse of Clara’s was evidently a<a name="Page_165" id="Page_165"><span class="pagenum">[165]</span></a>
+tribute to spring. Her face seemed to be suffused with
+the freshness of the month.</p>
+
+<p>While they sat talking, her mother came in, an elderly
+Jewess, tall and stately, with a shrewd, careworn look, her
+hair carefully hidden beneath a strip of black satin.</p>
+
+<p>“Is that you, Tamara?” she asked without taking
+notice of the stranger. She said something to Motl, made
+for the door, but suddenly returned, addressing herself to
+her daughter again. She wanted to know something about
+the law of chattel-mortgages, but neither Clara nor her visitor
+could furnish her the desired information.</p>
+
+<p>“Always at those books of theirs, yet when it comes to
+the point they don’t know anything,” she said, with a smile,
+as she bustled out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>“Are these Talmud books?” Pavel asked, pointing at
+Rabbi Rachmiel’s library.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” Clara nodded with an implied smile in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>“Can you read them?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, no,” she answered, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>He told her that Makar was a deep Talmudic scholar
+and talked of the Jewish religion, but she offered him no
+encouragement. She was brimful of questions herself.
+Her inquiries were concerned with the future destinies of
+the human race. With all her practical common sense,
+she had a notion that the era of undimmed equality and
+universal love would dawn almost immediately after the
+overthrow of Russian tyranny. This, as she had been
+taught by revolutionary publications, was to come as the
+logical continuation of Russia’s village communes, once
+the development of this survival of prehistoric communism
+received free scope. What she wanted was a clear and
+detailed account of life in Future Society.</p>
+
+<p>Her questions and his answers had the character of a<a name="Page_166" id="Page_166"><span class="pagenum">[166]</span></a>
+theoretical discussion. Gradually, however, he mounted
+to a more animated tone, portraying the future with quiet
+fervour. She listened gravely, her eyes full upon his, and
+this absorbed look spurred him on. But presently her
+mother came in again, this time with a peasant customer,
+and they went out to continue their talk in the open air.
+There were plenty of deserted lanes and bits of open country
+a short distance off. There was a vague gentle understanding
+between them that it was the golden idealism
+of their talk which had set them yearning for the unhidden
+sky and the aromatic breezes of spring. This upheld their
+lofty mood while they silently trudged through the outskirts
+of the market place. They could not as yet continue
+their interrupted conversation, and to speak of something
+else would have seemed profanation. At last they emerged
+on a lonely square, formed by an orchard, some houses
+and barns and the ruin of an old barrack. The air was
+excellent and there was nobody to overhear them. Nevertheless
+when Pavel was about to resume he felt that he
+was not in the mood for it. Nor did she urge him on with
+any further questions.</p>
+
+<p>From the old barracks they passed into a dusty side
+lane and thence into a country road which led to a suburb
+and ran parallel to the railway tracks.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was burning by fits and starts, as it were.
+In those spots where masses of lilacs and fruit blossoms
+gave way to a broader outlook, the road was so flooded
+with light that Clara had to shield her eyes with her hand.
+Now and again a clump of trees in the distance would fall
+apart to show the snow-crested top of a distant hill and the
+blueish haze of the horizon-line.</p>
+
+<p>Their immediate <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'surrounding'">surroundings</ins> were a scrawny, frowzy
+landscape. The lawns in front of the huts they passed,<a name="Page_167" id="Page_167"><span class="pagenum">[167]</span></a>
+the homes of washerwomen, were overspread with drying
+linen.</p>
+
+<p>“Delightful, isn’t it?” Pavel said, inhaling a long
+draught of the rich, animating air and glancing down a
+ravine choked with nettle. The remark was merely a
+spoken sigh of joy. She made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>They were both hungry, and presently they began to
+feel tired as well. Yet neither of them was disposed to
+halt or to break silence except by an occasional word or
+two that meant nothing.</p>
+
+<p>At last he said:</p>
+
+<p>“You must be quite fatigued. It’s cruel of me.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am, but it isn’t cruel of you,” she answered, stopping
+short, and drawing a deep, smiling breath.</p>
+
+<p>He ran into a washerwoman’s hovel, startling a brood
+of ducklings on his way, and soon came back with the
+information that milk was to be had in a trackman’s
+hut beyond a sparse grove to the right.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later they sat at a rude table in a
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'minature'">miniature</ins> garden between the shining steel rails of the
+track and a red-painted cabin. It was the fourth track-house
+from the Miroslav railroad station and was generally
+known as the Fourth Hut. Besides milk and eggs and
+coarse rye bread they found sour soup. They ate heartily,
+but an echo of their exalted dream was still on them. To
+Pavel this feeling was embodied in an atmosphere of femininity
+that pervaded his consciousness at this moment.
+He was sensible of sitting in front of a pretty, healthy
+girl full of modest courage and undemonstrative inspiration.
+The lingering solemnity of his mood seemed to have
+something to do with the shimmering little hairs which
+the breeze was stirring on Clara’s neck, as she bent over
+her earthen bowl, with the warm colouring of her ear,<a name="Page_168" id="Page_168"><span class="pagenum">[168]</span></a>
+with the elastic firmness of her cheek, with the airiness
+of her blouse.</p>
+
+<p>A desire stirred in him to speak once more of the part
+she had unconsciously played in his conversion, and at this
+he felt that if he told her the story he would find a peculiar
+pleasure in exaggerating the importance of the effect
+which her “speech” had produced on his mind. But it
+came over him that Makar was still behind the prison
+gate and that this was not the time to enjoy oneself.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169"><span class="pagenum">[169]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>STRAWBERRIES.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">THAT walk to the trackman’s hut had kindled a new
+light in Pavel’s soul. He often found himself craving
+for a repetition of the experience&mdash;not merely
+for Clara’s companionship, but for another occasion to walk
+through the fields with her, to sit by her side in the breeze,
+and, above all, for the intimacy of seeing her fatigued and
+eating heartily. She dwelt in his mind as a girl comrade,
+self-possessed and plucky, gifted with grit, tact and spirit;
+at the same time she lingered in his consciousness as a
+responsive pupil, glowing with restrained enthusiasm over
+his talk, eagerly following him through an ecstasy of
+lofty dreams. These two aspects of her were merged in
+the sight and odour of healthy, magnificently complexioned
+girlhood between the glint of steel rails and the dusty
+geranium in a trackman’s window.</p>
+
+<p>They had another appointment. When he called at the
+trunkmaker’s shop Clara greeted him with a hearty handshake.
+He blushed. His love seemed to be gaining on
+him by leaps and bounds.</p>
+
+<p>“How are things?” he asked.</p>
+
+<p>“First rate, Pavel Vassilyevich. The vegetable man will
+do it. He’s a trump, I tell you.” She went into details.
+She was in unusually good spirits. They talked business
+and of the adjustment of things under socialism. Pavel,<a name="Page_170" id="Page_170"><span class="pagenum">[170]</span></a>
+too, was in good humour, yet floating in his mind was the
+same old question: And what if all fails and Makar is
+removed to St. Petersburg?</p>
+
+<p>They met again and again. One day, after they had
+arrived at certain conclusions regarding Makar, Pavel said:</p>
+
+<p>“Shall we take a walk?”</p>
+
+<p>She nodded assent.</p>
+
+<p>“I am again full of questions.”</p>
+
+<p>“Again worrying about the future fate of humanity?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I seem to have no end of questions about it. I
+wonder whether I shall remember all those that have occurred
+to me since I last saw you. I ought to have jotted
+them down.”</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t want to pump me dry in one day, do you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, if the truth must be told, I rather do. You will
+soon be leaving us, I suppose, so I am anxious to strike the
+iron while it is hot.”</p>
+
+<p>The personal question as to the length of his stay
+sent a little wave of warmth through his blood. They
+set out in the direction of the trackman’s hut as a matter
+of course. Instead of following their former route, however,
+they chose, upon a motion from Clara, who was
+more familiar with these suburbs than Pavel, a meandering,
+hilly course that offered them a far better view as well
+as greater privacy. A stretch of rising ground took them
+to the Beak, a promontory so called for the shape of a
+cliff growing out of its breast. The common people had
+some pretty stories to tell of a gigantic bird of which
+the rocky beak was a part and whose petrified body was
+now asleep in the bosom of the hill that had once been
+its nest.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel and Clara sat down to rest on the freshly carpeted
+slope. The town clustered before them in a huddle of red,<a name="Page_171" id="Page_171"><span class="pagenum">[171]</span></a>
+white, green and grey, shot with the glitter of a golden-domed
+cathedral, the river flashing at one end like the
+fragment of an immense sabre. It was warm and quiet.
+There was not a human soul for a considerable distance
+around. Now and again the breeze would gently stir the
+weeds and the wild-flowers, lingering just long enough to
+scent the hillside with pine odours and then withdrawing,
+on tiptoe, as it were, like a thoughtful friend taking care
+that the two young people were kept supplied with the
+bracing aroma without being disturbed more than was
+necessary. Once or twice Clara held out her chin, sniffing
+the enchanted air.</p>
+
+<p>“Isn’t it delightful!” she said.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s a specimen of what life under Society of the
+Future will feel like,” Pavel jested, with a wistful smile.</p>
+
+<p>At one point when she addressed him as Pavel Vassilyevich,
+as she usually did, he was tempted to ask her to
+dispense with his patronymic. In the light of the hearty
+simplicity of manners which prevailed in the revolutionary
+movement they were well enough acquainted to address
+each other by their first names only. Yet when he was
+about to propose the change the courage failed him to do
+so. Whereupon he said to himself, with a deep inward
+blushing, that the cause of this hesitancy and confusion of
+his was no secret to him.</p>
+
+<p>“Hello there! A strawberry!” she called out, with a
+childish glee which he had not yet seen in her. And
+flinging herself forward she reached out her white girlish
+hand toward a spot of vivid red. The berry, of that tiny
+oblong delicious variety one saucerful of which would
+be enough to fill a fair-sized room with fragrance, lay
+ensconced in a bed of sun-lit leaves&mdash;a pearl of succulent,
+flaming colour in a setting of green gold.</p><p><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172"><span class="pagenum">[172]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I haven’t the heart to pick it,” she said, staying
+her hand and cooing to the strawberry as she would to a
+baby: “Won’t touch you, berry darling. Won’t touch
+you, sweetie.”</p>
+
+<p>“Spare its life then,” he answered, “I’ll see if I can’t
+find others.”</p>
+
+<p>And sure enough, after some seeking and peeping and
+climbing, Pavel came upon a spot that was fairly jewelled
+with strawberries.</p>
+
+<p>“Quite a haul,” he shouted down.</p>
+
+<p>She joined him and they went on picking together, each
+with a thistle leaf for a saucer.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, it’s literally teeming with them,” she said, in
+a preoccupied voice, deeply absorbed in her work. “One,
+two, three, and four, and&mdash;seven; why, bless me,&mdash;and
+eight and nine. What a pity we have nothing with us.
+We could get enough to treat the crowd at Orlovsky’s.”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel made no reply. Whenever he came across a berry
+that looked particularly tempting he would offer it to her
+silently and resume his work. He was oppressively aware
+of his embarrassment in her presence and the consciousness
+of it made him feel all the more so. He was distinctly
+conscious of a sensation of unrest, both stimulating and
+numbing, which had settled in him since he made her
+acquaintance. It was at once torture and joy, yet when
+he asked himself which of the two it was, it seemed to be
+neither the one nor the other. Her absence was darkness;
+her presence was light, but pain and pleasure mingled
+in both. It made him feel like a wounded bird, like a
+mutely suffering child. At this moment it blent with
+the flavour and ruddiness of the berries they were both picking,
+with the pine-breeze that was waiting on them, with
+the subdued lyrics of spring.</p><p><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173"><span class="pagenum">[173]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>And he knew that he was in love.</p>
+
+<p>He had never been touched by more than a first
+timid whisper of that feeling before. It was Sophia, the
+daughter of the former governor of St. Petersburg, whose
+image had formerly&mdash;quite recently, in fact&mdash;invaded
+his soul. He had learned immediately that she belonged
+to Zachar and his dawning love had been frightened away.
+Otherwise his life during these five years had been one
+continuous infatuation of quite another kind&mdash;the infatuation
+of moral awakening, of a political religion, of the
+battlefield.</p>
+
+<p>From the Beak they proceeded by the railroad track,
+now walking over the cross-ties, now balancing along the
+polished top of one rail. She was mostly ahead of him,
+he following her with melting heart. By the time they
+reached the trackman’s place, the shadows had grown long
+and solemn. Pavel had no appetite. He ate because Clara
+did. “Here I am watching her eat again,” he thought.
+But the spectacle was devoid of the interest he had expected
+to find in it.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless the next morning, upon waking, it burst
+upon him once more that seated within him was something
+which had not been there about a month ago. When he
+reflected that he had no appointment with Clara for these
+two days, that disquieting force which was both delicious
+and tantalising, the force which enlivened and palsied
+at once, swelled in his throat like a malady. But no, far
+from having such a bodily quality, it had spiritualised his
+whole being. He seemed unreal to himself, while the outside
+world appeared to him strangely remote, agonisingly
+beautiful, and agonisingly sad&mdash;a heart-rending elegy on
+an unknown theme. The disquieting feeling clamoured for
+the girl’s presence&mdash;for a visit to the scene of their<a name="Page_174" id="Page_174"><span class="pagenum">[174]</span></a>
+yesterday’s berry-picking, at least. He struggled, but he
+had to submit.</p>
+
+<p>To the Beak, then, he betook himself, and for an hour
+he lay on the grass, brooding. Everything around him
+was in a subdued agitation of longing. The welter of
+gold-cups and clover; the breeze, the fragrance and the
+droning of a nearby grasshopper; the sky overhead and
+the town at his feet&mdash;all was dreaming of Clara, yearning
+for Clara, sighing for Clara. Seen in profile the grass
+and the wild-flowers acquired a new charm. When he
+lay at full length gazing up, the sky seemed perfectly flat,
+like a vast blue ceiling, and the light thin wisps of pearl
+looked like painted cloudlets upon that ceiling. There
+were moments in this reverie of his when the Will of the
+People was an echo from a dim past, when the world’s
+whole struggle, whether for good or for evil, was an odd,
+incomprehensible performance. But then there were
+others when everything was listening for the sound of a
+heavenly bugle-call; when all nature was thirsting for noble
+deeds and the very stridulation of the grasshopper was part
+of a vast ecstasy.</p>
+
+<p>“That won’t do,” he said in his heart. “I am making
+a perfect fool of myself, and it may cost us Makar’s freedom.”
+As he pictured the Janitor, Zachar and his other
+comrades, and what they would say, if they knew of his
+present frame of mind, he sprang to his feet in a fury of
+determination. “I must get that idiot out of the confounded
+hole he put himself into and get back to work
+in St. Petersburg. This girl is not going to stand in my
+way any longer.” He felt like smashing palaces and fortresses.
+But whatever he was going to do in his freedom
+from Clara, Clara was invariably a looker-on. When he
+staked his life to liberate Makar she was going to be present;<a name="Page_175" id="Page_175"><span class="pagenum">[175]</span></a>
+after the final blow had been struck at despotism, she
+would read in the newspapers of his prominent part in the
+fight.</p>
+
+<p>The next time he saw her he felt completely in her
+power.</p>
+
+<p>Clara was in a hurry, but an hour after they had parted
+he found an honest excuse for seeing her again that very
+day. The appointment was made through Mme. Shubeyko,
+and in the afternoon he called at the trunk shop once
+more.</p>
+
+<p>“We have been ignoring a very important point, Clara
+Rodionovna,” he said solicitously. “Since the explosion at
+the Winter Palace the spies have been turning St. Petersburg
+upside down. They literally don’t leave a stone
+unturned. Now, Makar went away before the examinations
+at the Medical Academy and he disappeared from
+his lodgings without filing notice of removal at the police
+station.”</p>
+
+<p>“And if they become curious about his whereabouts the
+name of the Miroslav Province in his papers may put the
+authorities in mind of their Miroslav prisoner,” Clara put
+in, with quick intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded gloomily and both grew thoughtful.</p>
+
+<p>“They would first send word to Zorki, his native town,
+though,” Pavel then said, “to have his people questioned,
+and I shouldn’t be surprised if they brought his father over
+here to be confronted with him.”</p>
+
+<p>“That would be the end of it,” Clara remarked, in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>The next day Pavel telegraphed it all over to Makar,
+by means of his handkerchief, from the hill which commanded
+the prisoner’s window.</p>
+
+<p>“I have a scheme,” Makar’s handkerchief flashed back.</p><p><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176"><span class="pagenum">[176]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“For God’s sake don’t run away with yourself,” Pavel
+returned. “It’s a serious matter. Consider it maturely.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you know anybody in Paris or any other foreign
+city you could write to at once?”</p>
+
+<p>“I do. Why?” Pavel replied.</p>
+
+<p>“Get me some foreign paper. I shall write two letters,
+one to my father and one to my wife, both dated at that
+place. If these letters were sent there and that man then
+sent them to my people at Zorki, it would mean I am in
+Paris. Understand?”</p>
+
+<p>“I do. You are crazy.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why? Father will let bygones be bygones. I should
+tell him the whole truth. He is all right.”</p>
+
+<p>“He won’t fool the gendarmes.”</p>
+
+<p>“He will!” the white speck behind the iron bars flicked
+out vehemently. “He’ll do it. Provided he is prepared
+for it.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are impossible. If an order came from St.
+Petersburg your Zorki gendarmes would not dare think
+for themselves. They would just hustle him off to Miroslav.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then get father away from there.”</p>
+
+<p>“They would take your wife, anybody who could identify
+you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Father is better after all. He would look me in the
+face and say he does not know me. He could do it.”</p>
+
+<p>“And later go to Siberia for it?”</p>
+
+<p>“You are right. But I don’t think the order will be to
+take him here at once. They’ll first examine him there.
+He’ll have a chance to fool them.”</p>
+
+<p>Clara offered to go to Zorki at once, but Makar was for
+a postponement of her “conspiracy trip.” Saturday of<a name="Page_177" id="Page_177"><span class="pagenum">[177]</span></a>
+Comfort was near at hand, and then the little Jewish town
+would be crowded with strangers, so that Mlle. Yavner
+might come and go without attracting attention even in the
+event the local gendarmes had already been put on the case.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178"><span class="pagenum">[178]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+<h3>A “CONSPIRACY TRIP.”</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">ZORKI was in a state of joyous excitement. The
+“Good Jew” of Gornovo, accompanied by a retinue
+of beadles, secretaries, “reciters,” attendants, scribes
+and hangers on, was pleased to grace the little community
+with his annual visit; so the Pietists had left their workshops
+and places of business to drink in religious ecstasy
+and to scramble for advice, miracles and the blessed leavings
+from the holy man’s table. The population of the little
+town was rapidly increasing by an influx of Pietists from
+neighbouring hamlets.</p>
+
+<p>Clara, with a kerchief round her head, which gave her
+the appearance of an uneducated “daughter of Israel,”
+was watching a group of men and boys who stood chattering
+and joking in front of one of the best houses in town,
+at the edge of the market place. It was in this house
+where the Good Jew made his headquarters every time he
+came to Zorki and where he was now resting from his
+journey. The sun stood high. A peasant woman was
+nursing her baby in a waggon, patiently waiting for her
+husband. Two elderly peasants in coarse, broad-brimmed
+straw-hats, one of them with an interminable drooping
+moustache, were leaning against the weight-house, smoking
+silently. For the rest, the market place, enclosed by four
+broken rows of shops, dwellings and two or three government<a name="Page_179" id="Page_179"><span class="pagenum">[179]</span></a>
+offices&mdash;squatting one-story frame structures&mdash;was
+almost deserted; but one of the two streets bounding it, the
+one on which we find Clara at this minute, was quite alive
+with people. An opening at one side of the square showed
+a sloping stretch of road and a rectangular section of the
+river, the same as that which gleamed in Miroslav. The
+knot of men which Clara was watching all wore broad
+flat-topped caps, and, most of them, long-skirted coats. A
+man of fifty-five, short and stocky, with massive head and
+swarthy face, the image of Makar, was the centre of the
+crowd.</p>
+
+<p>“If you were a Pietist and a decent man,” he said,
+in subdued accents, to a red-bearded “oppositionist” with
+gloomy features, “you would not wear that long face of
+yours. Come, cheer up and don’t be a kill-joy!” And he
+slapped him on the back with all his might.</p>
+
+<p>“Stop!” the Oppositionist said, reddening from the
+blow. “What’s got into you? What reason have you to
+be so jolly anyhow?” And addressing himself to the
+bystanders: “He has not had a drop of vodka, yet he will
+make believe he’s in his cups.”</p>
+
+<p>“What’s that?” the swarthy man protested in a soft,
+mellow basso, “Can’t a fellow be jolly without filling himself
+full of vodka? If you were a respectable man and a
+Pietist and not a confounded seek-sorrow of an Oppositionist
+you would not think so. Drink! Why, open the
+Pentateuch, and wherever your eye falls there is drink to
+make you happy. ‘In the beginning God created heaven
+and earth!’ Isn’t that reason enough for a fellow to be
+jolly?”</p>
+
+<p>The bystanders smiled, some in partisan approbation,
+others with amused superiority, still others with diplomatic
+ambiguity.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180"><span class="pagenum">[180]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The heavy-set, swarthy man was Makar’s father, Yossl
+Parmet. He bore striking resemblance to his son. Clara
+stood aghast. If he were confronted with the Miroslav
+prisoner, the identity of the Nihilist would be betrayed,
+whether the old man admitted the relationship or not. The
+only way out of it was to avoid such a confrontation by getting
+Yossl away for a few months. But then, once the
+Miroslav gendarmerie learned that a man named Parmet
+whose home was at Zorki was missing, the secret could not
+last for any length of time. In compliance with Makar’s
+wish, Clara decided to take him into her secret. Accordingly,
+she mingled with the men, took part in the joking,
+and by the time the crowd dispersed she and Yossl were
+talking on terms of partial familiarity. Finding an opportune
+moment, she said to him, with intentional mysteriousness:</p>
+
+<p>“There is something I want to speak to you about, Reb
+Yossl. I have seen your son.”</p>
+
+<p>The old man gave her a startled, scrutinising glance.
+Then, his face hardening into a preoccupied business-like
+expression, he said aloud:</p>
+
+<p>“Where are you stopping?”</p>
+
+<p>She named her inn, and the two started thither together.
+There were so many strangers in town, each in quest of an
+audience with the “Good Jew,” and Yossl was so close to
+the holy man, or to those near him, that their conversation
+attracted scarcely any notice.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s a very serious matter, Reb Yossl,” she said, as
+they crossed the market place. “Nobody is to know anything
+about it, or it may be bad for your son.”</p>
+
+<p>“Go ahead,” he snarled, turning pale. “Never mind
+spending time on a woman’s prefaces. What is up?”</p>
+
+<p>“You know how the educated young people of these days<a name="Page_181" id="Page_181"><span class="pagenum">[181]</span></a>
+are. There is nothing, in fact, the matter. It’ll soon be
+over. But for the present it would do him good if the
+gendarmes knew he was in Paris.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, isn’t he in Paris?” Yossl asked morosely. “I
+received a letter from him from there.”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course he is. Only, the gendarmes, in case they
+look for him, and they may do so sooner or later, you know,
+the gendarmes may not believe he is there. So it would be
+a good thing if you could convince them of it. Your son
+would be benefited by it very much.”</p>
+
+<p>Yossl took fire.</p>
+
+<p>“On my part let him go to all the black ghosts!” he
+burst out. “‘The educated people of these days,’ indeed!
+First he will play with fire and then he wants me to fight
+his battles! Would he have his old father go to prison on
+account of him? He is not in Paris, then? I am as
+clever as you, young woman. I, too, understand a thing
+or two, though I am not of ‘the educated people of these
+days!’ It is not enough that he has got in trouble himself;
+he wants to drag me in, too. Is that the kind of
+‘education’ he has got? Is that what he has broken with
+his wife and father for? The ghost take him!”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t be excited, Reb Yossl,” Clara pleaded, earnestly.
+“It’s a treasure of a son you have and you know it. As
+to the education he has acquired, it is the kind that
+teaches one to struggle against injustice and oppression,
+things which I know you hate as deeply as your son
+does.” A tremour came into her voice, and a slight
+blush into her cheeks, as she added: “Your son is one
+of those remarkable men who are willing to die for the
+suffering people.”</p>
+
+<p>“But who are you?” he asked with a frown, “How did
+you get here? If you, too, are one of those people you had<a name="Page_182" id="Page_182"><span class="pagenum">[182]</span></a>
+better leave this town at once. I don’t want to get in
+trouble on account of you.”</p>
+
+<p>They reached the inn, and he paused in front of it,
+leaning against a waggon.</p>
+
+<p>“Never mind who I am,” she returned.</p>
+
+<p>“But where is he? Has he been arrested? Good God,
+what has he been doing to himself? What does he want
+of my old bones? Is he sorry his father is still alive?”</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t want your son to perish, do you?” she said
+rather pugnaciously. “If you don’t, you had better get
+the gendarmes off his track.”</p>
+
+<p>She went on arguing with renewed ardour. As he listened,
+a questioning look came into his face. Instead of
+following her plea he scrutinised her suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>“But why should you pray for him so fervently,” he
+asked significantly. “Why should you run risks for his
+sake? What do you get out of it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Must one get something ‘out of it’ to do what is
+right?”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, may the ghost take the whole lot of you!” Yossl
+said, with a wave of his hand, and walked away. He felt
+sure that this young woman and his son were in love, and
+he was shocked for the sake of Miriam, Makar’s divorced
+wife, as well as for his own.</p>
+
+<p>He made for a slushy narrow lane, but turned back,
+retracing his steps in the direction of the house which was
+the Good Jew’s headquarters, as also the home of Miriam.
+It was the house of her uncle, Arye Weinstein, the richest
+Pietist in Zorki.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The Good Jew occupied two expensively furnished rooms
+which were always kept sacred to his use. They were
+known as “the rabbi’s chambers” and although the<a name="Page_183" id="Page_183"><span class="pagenum">[183]</span></a>
+Righteous Man visited Zorki only once a year, nobody was
+ever allowed so much as to sit down in his easy chair.
+One day, when Weinstein caught his little girl playing in
+the “rabbi’s bed room” with a skull-cap which the holy
+man had left there, he flew into one of the savage fits of
+temper for which he was dreaded, and slapped the child’s
+face till it bled. The rabbi’s chambers were never swept
+or dusted until a day or two before his arrival, and then
+half a dozen people worked day and night to make things
+worthy of the exalted guest. The “rabbi’s parlour” opened
+into a vast room, by far the largest in the house, which
+on Saturdays was usually turned into a synagogue, and was
+known in town as “Weinstein’s salon.”</p>
+
+<p>Miriam was a very bright, quick-witted little woman,
+but she was not pretty&mdash;a pale, sickly, defenceless-looking
+creature of the kind who have no enemies even among their
+own sex. Her separation from Makar was only a nominal
+affair, in fact, the divorce having been brought about
+against the will of the young couple by her iron-willed
+uncle, who had succeeded in embroiling Yossl with his son
+as well as with himself soon after the true character of
+Makar’s visits to Pani Oginska’s house had been discovered;
+but Makar and Miriam had become reconciled,
+through a letter from him, and they had been in secret
+correspondence ever since. Yossl never lost hope of seeing
+them remarried, and, in order to keep the memory of his
+son fresh in Miriam’s mind, he had obeyed the Good Jew
+and made peace with the wealthy Pietist.</p>
+
+<p>Yossl was in charge of the town’s weight-house and was
+commonly known as “Yossl the weight-house man.”
+When Feivish (Makar’s real first name) was old enough
+to be started on the Talmud, he left the weight-house to
+his wife, devoting himself to the spiritual education of the<a name="Page_184" id="Page_184"><span class="pagenum">[184]</span></a>
+boy. Every time they sat down to the huge book he would
+pin the edge of Feivish’s shirt to his collar, leaving the
+child’s back bare to the strap in his hand. Whenever his
+wife protested he would bring her to terms by threatening
+to tell the Good Jew that she would have her son brought
+up as a dunce. He was going to make a “fattened
+scholar” of him. He was going to fatten him on
+divine Law by main force, even as his wife fattened her
+geese for Passover. He was going to show those fish-blooded,
+sneering Oppositionists that they had no monopoly
+of the Talmud. Often during his lesson a distracted look
+would come into Feivish’s dark little eyes, and Yossl’s
+words fell on deaf ears. Then it was that the thong would
+descend on the bare back. Feivish never cried. As the
+blow fell, he would curl himself up with a startled look,
+that haunted Yossl for hours after. Feivish turned out
+to be a most ardent Pietist. Once, for example, in a very
+cold wintry night, after the Good Jew had crossed a snow-covered
+lawn, Feivish, in a burst of devotion, took off his
+boots and “followed in the foot-steps of the man of
+righteousness” barefoot.</p>
+
+<p>For four years the young couple lived happily, their
+only woe being the death of both children that had been
+born to them. But the Good Jew said “God will have
+mercy,” and Feivish “served his Lord with gladness.”
+But this did not last. Feivish was initiated into the world
+of free thought, and gradually the fervent Pietist was
+transformed into a fervent atheist. It was during that
+period that he first met Pavel and that his wife’s despotic
+uncle extorted a divorce from him.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>While Yossl was twitting the red-headed Oppositionist
+in front of Weinstein’s house, Bathsheba, a daughter-in-law<a name="Page_185" id="Page_185"><span class="pagenum">[185]</span></a>
+of the man of substance, a plump, black-eyed beauty
+of the kind one’s mind associates with a Turkish harem,
+beckoned Miriam aside, in one of the rooms within, offering
+her a piece of cake.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s from a chunk the Good Jew has tasted,” she said,
+triumphantly. “Eat it, and your heart will be lighter.”</p>
+
+<p>“It will help me as much as blood-letting helps a dead
+man,” Miriam answered with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>“Eat it, I say. You’ll get letters more often if you
+do.” For a woman to exchange love letters with the man
+from whom she has been divorced is quite a grave sin for
+a daughter of Israel to commit. The remedy Bathsheba
+recommended was therefore something like the prayer of
+a thief that the Lord may bless his business. But then
+Miriam questioned the power of the rabbi’s “leavings” to
+bring a blessing upon any business. She smiled.</p>
+
+<p>“How do you know it is nonsense? Maybe it isn’t,
+after all,” Bathsheba urged.</p>
+
+<p>“You’re a foolish little dear.”</p>
+
+<p>“If I were you I should eat it. What can you lose by
+it?”</p>
+
+<p>Maria, a Gentile servant who had been longer in the
+house than Bathsheba, came in. She spoke Yiddish excellently
+and was almost like a member of the family.</p>
+
+<p>“Take a bite and you will be blessed, Maria,” Miriam
+joked, holding out the cake to her. “It’s from a piece the
+Good Jew has tasted.”</p>
+
+<p>“If I was a Jewess I would,” Maria retorted reproachfully.
+“It’s a sin to make mock of a Good Jew.”</p>
+
+<p>The other two burst into a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Left alone, Miriam was about to throw the cake away,
+but had not the heart to do so. She sat eyeing it for some
+minutes and then, making fun of herself, she bit off a<a name="Page_186" id="Page_186"><span class="pagenum">[186]</span></a>
+morsel. She acted like the Jewess of the anecdote, who,
+to be on the safe side, would kiss the cross and the Hebrew
+prayer book at once.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>An hour later Yossl was flaunting his son’s Paris letter
+and cursing him to a new crowd in front of the Good
+Jew’s headquarters.</p>
+
+<p>“The ghost take him!” he said. “Indeed, the ghost is
+a well-travelled <ins class="punct" title="Transcriber's Note: added .">fellow.</ins> He can get to Paris just as readily
+as he does to Zorki.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187"><span class="pagenum">[187]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+
+<h3>MAKAR’S FATHER.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">ON Saturday morning Weinstein’s salon was crowded
+with worshippers, all married men in their praying
+shawls and skull-caps. A Good Jew is exempt
+from praying with the congregation, his transports of religious
+fervour being too sacred a proceeding for common
+mortals to intrude upon. Accordingly, the Man of Righteousness
+was making his devotions in the seclusion of the
+adjoining parlour.</p>
+
+<p>To a stranger unfamiliar with Pietist prayer meetings
+the crowd here gathered would have looked for all the
+world like the inmates of the violent ward in an insane
+asylum. Most of the worshippers were snapping their
+fingers; the others were clapping their hands, clenching
+their fists with all their might or otherwise gesticulating
+savagely. They were running or jumping about, shrieking,
+sighing or intoning merrily, while here and there a
+man seemed to be straining every bit of his strength to
+shut his eyes as tightly as possible or to distort his face
+into some painful or grotesque expression. The Gentiles
+of the province called the Pietists Jumping Jacks.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the worshippers gesticulated merely because
+it was “correct form”; others did so from force of habit,
+or by way of fighting off the intrusion of worldly thoughts;
+still others for the same reason for which one yawns when<a name="Page_188" id="Page_188"><span class="pagenum">[188]</span></a>
+others do. But all these formed a small minority. The
+bulk of the Pietists present, including several people of
+questionable honesty in business matters, were honestly
+convulsed with a contagion of religious rapture. The invisible
+proximity of the Man of Righteousness, the sight
+of the door that concealed his holy presence, keyed them
+up to the highest pitch of exaltation. Their ears followed
+the “master of prayers” at the Stand, but their minds
+beheld the Good Jew of Gornovo. All hearts converged
+at the mysterious spot behind that door. That which
+sounded and looked like a pandemonium of voices and
+gestures was in reality a chorus of uplifted souls with the
+soul of the concealed man of God for a “master of prayers.”</p>
+
+<p>Weinstein was slapping the wall with both hands. His
+large figure was enveloped in the costliest praying-shawl
+in the room. All that was seen of him were two wrists
+overgrown with red hair. Now and then he would face
+about and fall to striding up and down meditatively. He
+was a well-fed, ruddy-necked Jew of fifty with a sharp
+hooked nose sandwiched in between two plump florid
+cheeks, and a small red beard. His unbuttoned coat of a
+rich broadcloth reached down to his heels; his trousers
+were tucked into the tops of well-polished boots. Once
+or twice an unkempt, underfed little man in a tattered
+shawl and with a figure and gait which left no doubt that
+he was a tailor by trade, barred Weinstein’s way, snapping
+his fingers at him; then the two took to pacing the room
+together, shouting and chuckling in rapturous duet as
+they moved along, as is written: “Serve the Lord with
+gladness, come before His presence with singing,” or “Because
+thou servedst not thy God with joyfulness and with
+gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; therefore<a name="Page_189" id="Page_189"><span class="pagenum">[189]</span></a>
+shalt thou serve thine enemies.” That the little
+tailor did not enjoy an “abundance of all things” was
+evident from his pinched face and broken shoes. He did
+not rank high enough in his trade to have even Weinstein’s
+clerk for a customer, yet at the Pietist gatherings he
+addressed Weinstein himself by the familiar diminutive
+of his first name and sometimes helped to spank him or
+to pelt him with burrs out of his “gladness of heart.”</p>
+
+<p>Yossl Parmet&mdash;Makar’s father&mdash;was tiptoeing about
+the crowded room, smiling and whispering fondly, as
+though confiding glad news to himself, but his heart was
+not in his prayer. He was thinking of his son and the
+young woman who had come to plead for him. Indeed,
+Yossl’s piety had deserted him long since. He clung to
+the Pietists for the sake of the emotional atmosphere that
+enveloped it and from his sincere admiration of the Good
+Jew’s personality rather than from faith. He was fond
+of Miriam and his heart was now torn between jealousy
+in her behalf and anxiety about his son.</p>
+
+<p>The services over, silence fell upon the congregation.
+The Pietists were folding up their shawls, or eyeing the
+floor expectantly. The minutes were passing slowly. The
+stillness seemed to be growing in intensity. Presently a
+song broke from somebody in a corner. It was a song
+without words, a new tune especially composed for the
+occasion. Like most “Gornovo melodies” it was meant
+to be gay, and like all of them it was pervaded by the
+mixed sadness of the Exiled People and the brooding,
+far-away plaint of their Slavic neighbours. There is a
+mingling of fire and tears in the Pietist “hop.” It isn’t
+without reason that the most rabid Oppositionist of Lithuania
+will sing them on the Rejoicing of the Law.</p>
+
+<p>The others in the room had never heard the song before,<a name="Page_190" id="Page_190"><span class="pagenum">[190]</span></a>
+yet several of them fell to at once, seizing the tune by
+intuition. The rest joined in gradually, until the whole
+assemblage was united in chorus. The import of this kind
+of singing while the Good Jew is in the privacy of his
+room is a plea that he may issue forth and grace the crowd
+with his presence and “some law.” They went through
+the tune again and again, gathering zest as they mastered
+its few simple bars. The melody seemed to be climbing
+up and down, or diving in and out; expostulating with
+somebody as it did so, bewailing somebody or something,
+appealing in the name of some dear event in the past or
+future. Unable to tell definitely what their tune was saying
+or doing, the singers craved to see the speechless song,
+to make out the words it seemed to be uttering, and because
+that was impossible their hearts were agitated with objectless
+sympathy and longing, and the rabbi was forgotten
+for awhile. They pitied the unknown man who seemed
+to be climbing or diving all the more because it was in
+their own voices that his incomprehensible words were
+concealed.</p>
+
+<p>Little by little, however, as the novelty of the air wore
+off, the consciousness that they were beseeching the Man
+of Righteousness to come out to them blent with their
+yearning sympathy for their melody. They ardently believed
+that the Good Jew’s soul had ascended on the wings
+of his ecstasy to the Divine Presence. All eyes were on
+his door. An indescribable ring of solemnity, of awe, of
+love and of prayer came into their voices. Their faces
+were transfixed with it. The melody was pouring out its
+very heart to the holy man.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly it all died away. The door flew open and,
+preceded by a stout “supervisor,” appeared an elderly man
+with a flabby-lipped mouth and a hooked little nose. He<a name="Page_191" id="Page_191"><span class="pagenum">[191]</span></a>
+wore a long-skirted coat of black silk with a belt of the
+same material wound several times round his waist, and
+a round cap of sable and velvet. The crowd fell apart in
+breathless excitement. As he advanced through the lane
+thus formed he was flushed and trying to conceal his embarrassment
+in a look of grief. He seated himself at a
+long table and shut his eyes. Now and then he heaved a
+sigh, swaying his head silently, with absorbed mien. He
+was supposed to be in a trance of lofty meditation, abandoned
+to thoughts and feelings which were to bear his
+soul to heaven.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd was literally spellbound. Yossl Parmet was
+pale with unuttered sobs. He was perhaps the only man
+in the room who perceived that the holy man was ill at
+ease, and this gave him a sense of the Good Jew’s childlike
+purity which threw him into a veritable frenzy of reverence.
+More than thirty years the master of multitudes
+and still blushing! When Yossl was a young man he had
+changed his Good Jews several times. He had adored
+them all, but he had not liked them. His soul had found
+no rest until he moved to Zorki and met this Good Jew of
+Gornovo. Then he felt himself in the presence of absolute
+sincerity, of unsophisticated warmth of heart. This
+Good Jew was a naïve man, timid and unassertive. He
+had an unfeigned sense of his own supernatural powers,
+and was somewhat in awe of them. He felt as though
+there was another, a holier being within him and he feared
+that being in the same way as one possessed fears the
+unholy tenant of his soul.</p>
+
+<p>Finally the Good Jew opened his eyes and began to
+speak. It was a simple sermon on a text taken at random
+from the Bible before him, but his listeners sought a hidden
+meaning, a mystical allusion, in the plainest of his<a name="Page_192" id="Page_192"><span class="pagenum">[192]</span></a>
+words or gestures. Yossl could have instructed him in
+every branch of holy lore, yet he seized upon the exposition
+thirstily. In the first place, he had seen Good Jews who
+were even less at home in the Law than the Good Jew of
+Gornovo was, so that he felt grateful to him for not being
+a downright ignoramus. In the second place, he knew
+that he actually believed his own words to be inspired.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes after the sermon the Good Jew beckoned
+Yossl to a seat by his side. Makar’s father accepted the
+invitation in a quiver of obsequious gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>“How are you, Yossl? Any news of Feivish?”</p>
+
+<p>“He’s in Paris now,” Yossl answered with a gesture of
+disrelish and speaking aloud, so that the entire crowd
+might hear him. He hated to tell the holy man a lie, yet
+he did so readily, the occasion being his best opportunity
+for giving the story wide circulation.</p>
+
+<p>“In Paris!”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, he has been there since the beginning of summer.
+I have letters from him.”</p>
+
+<p>“Letters from Feivish!”</p>
+
+<p>“He wanted to show off I suppose. Wanted his father
+to see he’s in Paris. On my part he may go to perdition.”</p>
+
+<p>“What is he doing there? Studying medicine in
+French?”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s what he says in his letter. Yes, he has quite
+broken with Judaism, rabbi, quite a Gentile. All that is
+required to make the transformation complete is that he
+should extort bribes from Jews for allowing them to
+breathe. One Jew he prevents from breathing already”&mdash;pointing
+at himself.</p>
+
+<p>The rabbi swayed his head sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p>“What a misfortune! What a misfortune! Men like
+him could not be had for the picking.”</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193"><span class="pagenum">[193]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“He has left a wound in my heart and it will not heal,
+rabbi. If this is the kind of doctor he is going to be, he
+won’t make much headway. ‘I had a vineyard,’ rabbi,”
+he went on in a lugubrious sing-song, quoting from Isaiah,
+“‘I fenced it and gathered out the stones thereof and
+planted it with the choicest vine. What could have been
+done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it?
+Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth
+grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?’”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t grieve, my son, I forbid you, do you hear?” the
+Good Jew said, limply. He was deeply touched. “Better
+give us a song, boys!”</p>
+
+<p>The song burst forth and was taken up by the glad
+crowd on the lawn, some Gentiles, standing at a respectful
+distance, listening reverently.</p>
+
+<p>Yossl had uncovered to the rabbi only part of his heart’s
+wound. Since his son’s compulsory divorce Weinstein had
+personified the cruelties and injustices of the whole world
+to him. When a couple applies for a writ of divorcement
+it is the duty of the rabbi to persuade them from the step.
+God wants no severance of the marriage bond. “When a
+man divorces his first wife, the altar weeps,” says the Talmud.
+Yet Weinstein, who had so brutally extorted such
+a divorce from Feivish, continued to be looked upon as a
+pillar of the faith. All this had stirred a novel feeling,
+a novel trend of thought in Yossl.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning Weinstein’s salon was jammed with
+people begging for admission to the Good Jew, who was in
+the next room.</p>
+
+<p>The scribes were busy writing applications, praying the
+rabbi to “awaken the great mercy of the Master of
+Mercies.”</p>
+
+<p>“My wife is ill, her name is Sarah, daughter of Tevye,”<a name="Page_194" id="Page_194"><span class="pagenum">[194]</span></a>
+one man besought. “Do be so kind. If I don’t get in at
+once it may be too late.”</p>
+
+<p>Another applicant, with a crippled boy in his arms,
+sought a blessing for the child and himself. One father,
+whose son had been declared a blockhead by his teachers,
+wanted the Good Jew to pray that the boy might get “a
+good head.” A white-haired man was picking a quarrel
+with two other Pietists who were trying to get in front
+of him. The old man’s married daughter was childless
+and her husband did not care for her, so he wanted the
+rabbi to “give her children and grace in the eyes of her
+spouse.” Several others wanted dowries for their marriageable
+daughters. That the Master of Mercies would
+grant the Good Jew’s prayer in their daughters’ behalf was
+all the more probable because in cases of this sort either
+the Good Jew himself or some of his well-to-do followers
+usually came to the poor man’s assistance.</p>
+
+<p>Yossl sat at the corner of the table watching the scene
+pensively when Clara entered the room. The blood rushed
+to his face as he recognised her, and he hastened to take
+her out into the road.</p>
+
+<p>“What are you doing in this town so long?” he then
+asked, in a rage. “I thought you had left long since.
+What do you want of us all? Do you want to get everybody
+in trouble?”</p>
+
+<p>“How will I get you in trouble? Am I the only Jewish
+woman who has come to Zorki these few days? Have
+I no right to be here like everybody else? Besides, it’s to
+bid you good-bye that I want to see you now. I am going
+away.”</p>
+
+<p>Her few words, uttered with simple earnestness, had a
+softening effect on him.</p>
+
+<p>“You look like a good girl,” he said, frowning at her<a name="Page_195" id="Page_195"><span class="pagenum">[195]</span></a>
+amicably. “Tell me frankly: are you and my son having
+a love affair?”</p>
+
+<p>Clara coloured literally to the roots of her brown hair.
+She paused to regain her self-possession and then said,
+with a smile at once shamefaced and amused:</p>
+
+<p>“It is not true, Reb Yossl. What is more, your son and
+I are not even acquainted.”</p>
+
+<p>“Can that be possible!”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s the absolute truth I am telling you, Reb Yossl.”</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulder and proceeded to question her
+on his son’s case, on his mode of life before he was arrested,
+on the meaning of the struggle to which he had dedicated
+himself.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196"><span class="pagenum">[196]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+
+<h3>FROM CELLAR TO PALACE.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">MEANWHILE Pavel, Mme. Shubeyko, Masha, Mlle.
+Andronoff and her fiancé, the near-sighted judge
+with the fluffy hair, went on with their plot. A
+considerable sum was needed to bribe the warden, the head
+keeper (a bustling little man who was known in the conspiracy
+as the Sparrow), and others. The plotters had five
+thousand rubles, and in order to obtain the rest without delay
+Pavel went so far as to take his mother into the secret.
+The countess received his story with a thrill of gratitude
+and of a sense of adventure. After a visit to the bank, she
+handed him ten thousand rubles in crisp rainbow-coloured
+one hundred ruble notes. She was pale with emotion as
+she did so. Her heart was deeper in his movement than
+he supposed. It was as if every barrier standing between
+her and her son had been removed. She was a comrade of
+his now.</p>
+
+<p>“The only thing that worries me,” she said for something
+to say, “is uncle’s visits. He has not been here for
+some time, but if he comes, I shan’t be able to look him
+in the face. He is a very good man at heart, Pasha.”</p>
+
+<p>“Still, you had better make no haste about trying to
+convert him,” Pavel answered, with a smile, struggling
+with the pile of notes.</p>
+
+<p>The bulk of the sum&mdash;eight thousand rubles&mdash;was to<a name="Page_197" id="Page_197"><span class="pagenum">[197]</span></a>
+be paid by Mme. Shubeyko to the warden, half of it in advance
+and the other half upon the carrying out of the
+project. Rodkevich pretended to receive the four thousand
+rubles as a loan. He barred all frank discussion of the
+scheme, hinting that he was scarcely a master in his own
+prison and that all he could do was to “overlook things
+under pressure of business at times.” As a matter of fact,
+he scarcely incurred any risks.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel missed Clara keenly. A feverish yearning feeling
+had settled in him, often moving him to tears, but he
+fought it bravely. Once or twice he went to the Beak
+and indulged in a feast of self-torture, but otherwise he
+worked literally day and night, seeing people, deliberating,
+scheming. The only manifestation of his nervousness was
+an exaggerated air of composure, and as this was lost on
+his fellow plotters, nothing was farther from their thoughts
+than that he experienced a sensation as though his heart
+were withering within his breast and that the cause of it
+was Clara Yavner.</p>
+
+<p>When he received word of her return he said to himself,
+in a turmoil of joy, terror and impatience, that he could
+not bear it any longer and that he would tell her all the
+next time they were alone.</p>
+
+<p>He saw her the very next day, at the trunk shop. Both
+blushed violently. The first minutes of their conversation
+were punctuated with nervous pauses, like the first talk
+of people who have been reconciled after a long estrangement.
+He said to himself: “Now is the time,” and
+vaguely felt confident of success, yet he was still in awe
+of her and all he managed to do was to turn the conversation
+upon his mother.</p>
+
+<p>“I should like you to meet her,” he said. “She has
+heard of you.”</p><p><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198"><span class="pagenum">[198]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“Your mother?” she asked in shamefaced astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>“She is a very good woman,” Pavel observed, gravely.
+“She is in sympathy with the movement, you know,
+although it was only the other day I brought her the first
+few things to read. If it isn’t asking too much I should
+like to introduce you to her, Clara Rodionovna. She would
+be delighted.”</p>
+
+<p>He paused, but she maintained her air of respectful
+curiosity, so he went on. “She is very enthusiastic. She
+would like to know some of the Miroslav radicals, and I
+took the liberty of telling her about you. I need not tell
+you that I spoke in a very, very general way about you.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>One afternoon the Palace, which the trunk-dealer’s
+daughter had known all her life as a mysterious, awe-inspiring
+world whose threshold people of her class could
+never dream of crossing, the Palace threw open its imposing
+doors to her, and she was escorted by Pavel up the
+immense staircase and into the favorite room of Countess
+Anna Nicolayevna Varoff. As it was an unheard-of thing
+for a Jewish girl to visit the Palace, it was agreed, as a
+safeguard against the inquisitiveness of the servants, that
+she should be known to them by such a typically Russian
+name as Daria Ivanovna Morosoff (Morosova).</p>
+
+<p>Barring the two great statues and an ancient cabinet
+inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, the room was rather
+below her undefined anticipations. Her preconceived notion
+of the place soon wore off, however, under a growing
+sense of venerable solidity, of a quiet magnificence that
+was a revelation to her.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m awfully glad to know you, Clara Rodionovna,
+awfully,” the countess said when the first formalities of<a name="Page_199" id="Page_199"><span class="pagenum">[199]</span></a>
+greeting were over, and they were all seated. This Jewish
+girl was the first Nihilist she had ever met (indeed, Pavel
+was only “Pasha” after all), and she identified her in
+her mind with every revolutionary assassination and plot
+she had read about. She was flushed with excitement and
+so put out that she was playing with Pavel’s fingers as she
+spoke, as a mother will do with those of her little boy.
+As to Clara, she had an oppressive feeling as though the
+pair of big musty statues, graceful, silent, imposing, were
+haughtily frowning on her presence under this roof.
+Pavel seemed to be a different young man. She scarcely
+seemed to be acquainted with him. Only the sight of
+Anna Nicolayevna fondling his fingers warmed her heart
+to both. On the other hand, her own smile won the
+hostess.</p>
+
+<p>The countess released Pavel’s hand, moved over to the
+other end of the sofa and huddled herself into the corner,
+thrusting out her graceful elbows and great pile of auburn
+hair. The presence of Pavel kept her ill at ease. Finally
+she said: “I think you had better leave us two women to
+ourselves, Pasha. We shall understand each other much
+better then, won’t we, Clara Rodionovna?”</p>
+
+<p>“I hope so,” Clara answered, awkwardly.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel withdrew. In his absence their embarrassment
+only increased.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The next time Clara and Pavel met, in the trunk-shop,
+he asked her when she would call on his mother again.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I don’t know. The point is I don’t know what
+to do with my hands there,” she said, with a laugh. “I
+can’t seem to shake off the feeling that I am in the house
+of&mdash;in ‘the Palace,’ don’t you know.”</p>
+
+<p>It was a hot day, but the air in the basement was quite<a name="Page_200" id="Page_200"><span class="pagenum">[200]</span></a>
+cool. Motl was silently painting a trunk, and Pavel was
+conscious of the oppressive smell of the paint and of the
+impact of the brush against the wood as he answered, with
+pained stress in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>“But my mother does not feel like a countess. She is
+above and beyond all such things.”</p>
+
+<p>“I know she is. Only I somehow don’t manage to feel
+at home there.”</p>
+
+<p>“But it’s only a matter of habit I am sure. You’ll get
+over it. You won’t feel that way next time. You must
+promise me to call to-morrow.” It was as if Clara’s was a
+superior position in life and as if that superiority lay in
+this, that her home was a squalid trunk-shop, while his was
+a palace.</p>
+
+<p>“If I do, my mind will be in a whirl again,” she
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, it isn’t as bad as all that. You must promise me
+to call on her.”</p>
+
+<p>“Can’t we put it off&mdash;indefinitely?”</p>
+
+<p>“Clara Rodionovna!”</p>
+
+<p>His imploring voice threatened to draw from him the
+great yearning plea that was waiting to be heard, but this
+same entreating voice of his thrilled her so that she hastened
+to yield.</p>
+
+<p>“Very well,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>“Will you come? Oh, it’s so kind of you. I am ever
+so much obliged to you&mdash;but I declare I am raving like a
+maniac,” he interrupted himself with a queer smile that
+forthwith lapsed into an expression of rage. “What I
+really want to say is that I love you.”</p>
+
+<p>The lines of her face hardened. Her rich complexion
+burst into flame. She looked gravely at nothing, as he
+proceeded:</p><p><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201"><span class="pagenum">[201]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“It seems to me as though I had felt that way ever
+since that Pievakin episode, Clara Rodionovna. I owe so
+much to you. If it had not been for you I might still be
+leading the life of a knave and an idiot. What you did
+on that occasion served to open my eyes and showed me the
+difference between light and darkness. And now it seems
+to me that if you were mine, it would infuse great energy
+and courage into me. I have got so used to seeing you, I
+hate to think of being apart from you for a single moment.
+Oh, you are so dear to me, I am so happy to sit by your
+side, to be allowed to say all this to you.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are dear to me, too,” she said in great embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>He grasped her hand in silence, his face a burning
+amorous red.</p>
+
+<p>On their way to the Beak, after another outburst from
+him, she spoke in measured accents, firm and sad, like the
+voice of fate.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know where this will lead us, for either of us
+or both may be arrested at any time, and then this happiness
+would add so much poison to the horrors of prison
+life. Besides, even if we are not arrested, as long as present
+conditions prevail our love would have to remain hidden
+underground, like our dear movement&mdash;&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“My mother will know it. I want her to know it; and
+if it is possible to tell your parents, too&mdash;&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, it would kill them. Theirs is an entirely different
+world.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then, for the present, let them be none the wiser for
+it. As to my mother, she likes you very, very much
+already and when she hears of it she will love you to distraction,
+Clara Rodionovna. My friends of the party will
+know it, too, of course, and what do we care for the rest<a name="Page_202" id="Page_202"><span class="pagenum">[202]</span></a>
+of this wretched world? But oh, I do wish you could tell
+your mother, or could I speak to her?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, that’s absolutely impossible,” she said in a voice
+vibrant with a suggestion of tears and the music of love
+at once. “Your mother may understand me. We can
+speak in the same language at least, but my poor parents&mdash;one
+might as well tell them I am dead. Well, when
+the Will of the People has scored its great victory and
+Russia is free, then, if we are alive, we shall announce it
+to my poor parents.”</p>
+
+<p>He picked up a stone and flung it with all his might.
+He was in a fidget of suppressed exultation. Now that
+his suspense was over, they changed parts, as it were.
+The gnawing gloom which had tantalised him during the
+past few weeks had suddenly burst forth in torrents of
+sunshine; whereas in her case the quiet light-hearted happiness
+which had been the colour of her love had given
+way to an infatuated heart filled with anguish.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>He told his mother the news the very next morning.
+The explanation took place in the immense ball-room. It
+was a windy morning outside, and they were marching up
+and down the parquette of polished light oak, arm in arm.
+Presently they paused at one of the windows facing the
+garden. They could faintly hear the soughing of the
+wind in the trees. They stood gazing at the fluttering
+leaves, when he said, musingly:</p>
+
+<p>“I have something to tell you, mother. I told Mlle.
+Yavner I loved her and I want you to congratulate me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mlle. Yavner?” she asked, with a look of consternation.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, Mamma dear, I love her and she loves me and
+she is the dearest woman in the world and you are not
+going to look upon it in a manner unworthy of yourself,<a name="Page_203" id="Page_203"><span class="pagenum">[203]</span></a>
+are you, dear little mamma mine?” He seized her fingers
+and fell to kissing them and murmuring: “My dear little
+mamma, my dear little mamma.” His endearments were
+too much for her.</p>
+
+<p>“Pasha, Pasha! What are you doing with yourself,”
+she sobbed bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>“Mamma darling! Mamma darling!” he shouted
+fiercely. “You are not going to give way to idiotic, brutal,
+Asiatic notions that are not really yours. Another year
+or two, perhaps less, and all Russia will be free from them
+and from all her chains, and then one won’t have to be
+shocked to hear that a man and a woman who love each
+other and belong to each other are going to marry.
+Mamma dear, my darling little mamma! You are the
+noblest woman to be found. You are not going to go back
+on your son because he is trying to live like a real human
+being and not like a hypocrite and a brute.”</p>
+
+<p>She dared not cry any more.</p>
+
+<p>When Clara came, the countess, turning pale, clasped
+her vehemently, as though pleading for mercy. Clara felt
+bewildered and terror-stricken, and after some perfunctory
+kisses she loosened her arms, but the Gentile
+woman detained her in an impetuous embrace, as she said:
+“Be good to me, both of you. He is all I have in the
+world.” As she saw an embarrassed smile on Clara’s
+beautifully coloured face, she bent forward with a sudden
+impulse and drew her to her bosom again, as though
+she had just made the discovery that the Jewish girl was
+not unlike other girls after all, that there was nothing
+preternatural about her person or speech. Whereupon
+Clara kissed her passionately and burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>The countess caressed her, poured out the innermost
+secrets of her heart to her. This Jewish girl whom she<a name="Page_204" id="Page_204"><span class="pagenum">[204]</span></a>
+had only seen once before heard from her the story of
+her past life, of her childhood, of her two unhappy marriages,
+of her thirst for comradeship with her son, of her
+conversion. The two women became intimate friends,
+although Clara spoke comparatively little.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, that night Anna Nicolayevna vainly
+courted sleep. Her heart was in her mouth. She wished
+she could implore her son to break the engagement, to
+sever connection with the movement, to abandon all his
+perilous and unconventional pursuits. But she knew that
+she would never have the courage to do so.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205"><span class="pagenum">[205]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>AN UNFORESEEN SUGGESTION.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">PAVEL’S prediction concerning Yossl came true, but
+the identity of the province to which the missing
+medical student belonged and the one in which the
+unknown Nihilist had been arrested escaped the notice of
+the secret service, and the Zorki gendarme officer contented
+himself with appropriating the Paris letter. Chance, however,
+soon solved the riddle for the authorities: a prisoner
+from Zorki, a drunkard charged with petty larceny, recognised
+Makar in the prison yard.</p>
+
+<p>It was Masha who brought the news to Pavel and Clara.</p>
+
+<p>“The general of gendarmes was there, the assistant procureur,
+my brother and the warden,” she said, describing
+the scene when Parmet was first addressed by his name in
+prison. “It was in the office. When he was brought in,
+my brother says his heart&mdash;my brother’s heart, I mean&mdash;began
+to beat fast. The assistant procureur offered him a
+chair.” She paused, with an appealing smile, her hand
+to her bosom. “My heart, too, is beating fearfully at this
+minute, as I picture the scene. I am too imaginative, I
+am afraid. Well, he pulled up a chair, the assistant procureur
+and said: ‘Be seated, Monsieur Parmet.’ The
+prisoner started a little, just a little, don’t you know, and
+then he smiled and began to rub his eyes, as if he had
+just been awakened. The general got angry and said now<a name="Page_206" id="Page_206"><span class="pagenum">[206]</span></a>
+there was no use for him to make believe and to keep his
+mouth shut and the assistant procureur said very politely
+he might as well tell them a little more about himself and
+the people he knew in Miroslav, as they were well known
+to the gendarmes anyhow. They coaxed him and coaxed
+him and coaxed him until he shouted: ‘As to myself I have
+the honour of being a member of the Party of the Will of
+the People. As to those I know in Miroslav, I assure you
+I don’t know anybody here.’ But didn’t he tease them!
+'I hoped to form some connections here,’ he said, 'but
+then you were foolish enough to arrest me without giving
+me a chance. The St. Petersburg gendarmes will laugh
+at you when they hear of the kind of job you have made
+of it.’”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel roared. He thought Makar’s taunting answer
+would induce the local gendarme office to detain him in
+the hope of discovering his prospective “connections.”</p>
+
+<p>“Only why should he have said he was a member of the
+Party of the Will of the People? That will aggravate his
+case,” Clara said.</p>
+
+<p>“That was the dream of his life&mdash;to say that, and to
+say it triumphantly, to some gendarme officers. At any
+rate, we have no time to lose.”</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon Pavel had a talk with Makar from the
+top of the hill overlooking the prison yard.</p>
+
+<p>“Hurrah!” Makar’s handkerchief flashed back in answer
+to his first “hello.” “They know my name. I had
+some fun with them.”</p>
+
+<p>“It was all right, only for the sake of everything that
+is noble, don’t aggravate your case. Otherwise everything
+looks bright. Answer no more of their questions.”</p>
+
+<p>“Crazy to wag my tongue. Have not spoken so long.
+I am trying to make a convert of my guard. Pastime.”</p><p><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207"><span class="pagenum">[207]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“Don’t, for God’s sake don’t, or you’ll ruin it all.
+Promise to keep silent. Do you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t get angry. I can see your handkerchief gnashing
+its teeth. Only one thing more. May I?”</p>
+
+<p>“Hurry up.”</p>
+
+<p>“Here, in prison I am openly a citizen of the Social
+Republic, and the Czar is powerless to subdue me. I am
+in a cell. What more can he do with me? But here, in
+this cell, where his power is most complete, I openly defy
+him, all his gendarmes and army notwithstanding.”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel went away, cursing and laughing.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Every scheme of the conspirators turned out to be beset
+with insurmountable difficulties. Clara did not tell Pavel
+all she knew and made light of those obstacles with which
+he was acquainted, but in her own heart she was extremely
+uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>One evening Pavel sat on a bench in front of a public
+house, smoking a cheap pipe. He had a loaded pistol in
+his pocket and a dagger under his vest. The prison was
+a short distance round the third corner. When one of the
+customers of the public house seated himself by his side
+Pavel engaged him in conversation, talking garrulously in
+the manner of a humble, careworn government clerk.</p>
+
+<p>At last a way had been found for the provision man to
+take Makar out of the prison yard. This was what kept
+Pavel in this out-of-the-way spot. In the near vicinity
+of the inn stood a droshky. The appearance of the provision
+waggon, full of empty sacks and some barrels, at a
+corner diagonally across the street was to serve as a signal
+for Pavel to walk up to a deserted ditch-bridge, where the
+runaway was expected to emerge from under the sacks and
+to put on a military cap. Then Makar and Boulatoff<a name="Page_208" id="Page_208"><span class="pagenum">[208]</span></a>
+would gain the droshky, mount it, and be driven to the
+Palace&mdash;the best hiding place one could find in all Miroslav.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel was calm, determined, ready to shoot and to be
+shot at. By degrees he grew fidgety. Presently Clara
+passed along. He rose to his feet and went off in the
+opposite direction, the two meeting in the next street.</p>
+
+<p>“It was a fizzle to-day, but it’ll be all right, Pasha,”
+she said in a cheery, matter-of-fact voice. “As ill luck
+would have it, there were some people about.”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel’s brows contracted. “He’ll try again, of course.”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly. He will be there in four days.”</p>
+
+<p>“Four days! Couldn’t he make it sooner?”</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll let you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“Wait, dearest. Are you sure the people in the prison
+are not getting suspicious about you?” He had asked
+the question and she had answered it more than once
+before.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t think they are. Mme. Shubeyko and the
+Sparrow are the only ones who know all about it. As to
+Rodkevitch, he understands it all, of course, but he pretends
+not to. The Sparrow has his ‘bosom friend’ among
+the keepers, but that man does not know anything about
+me. I am quite sure of it.”</p>
+
+<p>“The fewer who know what you are doing there the
+better, of course. Don’t be foolhardy, my charming one.
+Oh, I do wish it was all over. Mother wants you to go to
+the country with her, and I should join you two for some
+time.”</p>
+
+<p>With a passionate handshake they parted, Clara directing
+her steps to the prison building. The tremulous solicitude
+of his warning, his tender concern for her safety left
+a glow of happiness and devotion in her. She visioned<a name="Page_209" id="Page_209"><span class="pagenum">[209]</span></a>
+him with his pistol and dagger and her heart was crushed
+with anxiety. With his hot-blooded temerity he was apt
+to act rashly, to use violence and stake his own life and
+Makar’s before it was necessary. Pavel’s mode of taking
+away the prisoner had never appealed to her strongly, and
+now the idea was growing on her of stealing a march on
+Pavel, of bringing about Makar’s liberation when her
+lover was not on hand. And the more she thought of thus
+repaying his loving care for herself the keener became her
+joy in the plan.</p>
+
+<p>Still, the general situation looked so discouraging, that
+with all her thrills of amorous delight, she was in a state
+of black despair. The truth of the matter was that the
+provision man, who was eager to earn a few hundred rubles
+and to be plucky, had proved to be a most unreliable,
+boastful coward. Clara was cudgelling her brain for some
+new scheme, for some new line of action, when an important
+suggestion came from an unforeseen quarter. Mme.
+Shubeyko arrived at the prison, all in a flutter with a discovery:
+Father Michail, the prison priest, bore considerable
+resemblance to Makar.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s so, but what of it?” Clara said between irritation
+and agreeable surprise.</p>
+
+<p>“What of it! Why,&mdash;I have thought it all out, you
+may be sure of that. It all occurred to me only an hour
+ago. Even less,” she said with that silly smile of hers
+which usually so annoyed Pavel and which at this moment
+exasperated Clara even more than it would her quick-tempered
+lover.</p>
+
+<p>“What did occur to you?” Clara asked, with the least
+bit of venom on the “did.”</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Shubeyko started to explain, but her listener
+divined the rest herself: Makar might pass out in the disguise<a name="Page_210" id="Page_210"><span class="pagenum">[210]</span></a>
+of a priest, while Father Michail was with the
+prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s an excellent idea!” she murmured gravely. She
+could scarcely bring herself to believe that the plan had
+emanated from an absurd brain like that of the woman
+before her.</p>
+
+<p>“Someone could detain Father Michail until it was all
+safely over,” Mme. Shubeyko went on. “He’s awfully
+fond of card-playing, and if a pretty young lady like yourself
+was his partner he would never have the heart to get
+up from the table, I know he wouldn’t.”</p>
+
+<p>The Sparrow, however, overruled the whole plan.
+Father Michail had been connected with the prison for
+twenty years and the two gatemen knew him as they did
+their own wives. What was more, the day gateman and
+the priest were particularly fond of each other and often
+exchanged jokes.</p>
+
+<p>Clara’s hands dropped to her sides. Then she clenched
+a fist and said: “Oh, nonsense. He’ll never know. If
+Father Michail did not speak to him he wouldn’t think it
+strange, would he?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, but the gateman might speak to him. Besides,
+you’ll have to get up early to fool him, lady.” Every
+officer in the prison building had his nickname, and this
+vigilant gateman who was a very fat man was known as
+Double Chin. He seemed to be dozing half the time;
+but the Sparrow assured Clara that when his little eyes
+were shut they saw even better than when they were open.</p>
+
+<p>“Nonsense. Your imagination carries you too far.
+Anyhow, nothing venture, nothing have. We must get
+that man out.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ready to serve you, young lady, only if I may say so,
+I don’t like the plan at all, young lady.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211"><span class="pagenum">[211]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>VLADIMIR FINDS HIS CAUSE.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">THE next morning, as Clara walked along Kasimir
+Street, she saw Volodia Vigdoroff, her cousin, talking
+and laughing exuberantly to two elderly men in
+front of the flashy window of a drug store. One of his listeners
+wore a military uniform. It was Dr. Lipnitzky (Jewish
+physicians had not yet been proscribed from the Russian
+army)&mdash;a grey-haired, smooth-shaven, pudgy little man
+with three medals across his breast. It was at the Turkish
+war that he had won these decorations. Clara could
+never look at him without feeling a taste of sickness in
+her mouth like the one she had felt one day shortly after
+the war, when she was sick in bed and the little doctor,
+bending over, shouted to her to open her mouth wider.
+The best physician in town, he was the terror of his uneducated
+co-religionists. When a Jewish housewife paid
+him his fee in copper instead of silver, or neglected to wrap
+it up in paper, he would make an ugly scene, asking the
+poor woman at the top of his voice when she and others
+like her would learn to live like human beings. Sometimes,
+when a family failed to pay him altogether, pleading
+poverty, he would call them a lot of prevaricating
+knaves with a snug little hoard in the old woman’s stocking,
+and carry off a copper pan or brass candlestick. In every
+case of this sort, however, the pan or the brass candlestick<a name="Page_212" id="Page_212"><span class="pagenum">[212]</span></a>
+was sure to come back, sometimes with a ruble or two into
+the bargain.</p>
+
+<p>The other man to whom Vigdoroff was speaking was
+Paul Zundel, the musical autocrat of the province. He
+was as small of stature and as irascible as Dr. Lipnitzky&mdash;a
+grey-haired dandy with a Mexican complexion and a pair
+of long black side whiskers tipped with white. He was a
+graduate of a German conservatory and spoke several languages
+with illiterate fluency.</p>
+
+<p>They were both bachelors and both were frequent visitors
+at the governor’s house, where they were liked as much
+for the money they usually lost in cards (although in other
+houses they were known as sharp players) as for their
+professional services. They spent large sums on the education
+of Jewish children and were particularly interested
+in the spread of modern culture among their people. In
+other words, they advocated and worked for the assimilation
+of their people with the “deep-rooted” population.
+When a Talmud boy was ambitious to give up his divine
+studies for “Gentile books” and his old-fashioned garb
+for a gymnasium uniform, the two eccentric bachelors were
+his two stars of hope.</p>
+
+<p>Vigdoroff overtook Clara as she turned the next corner.
+They had not met since the night when they quarrelled in
+front of Boyko’s court.</p>
+
+<p>“I didn’t see you until I happened to turn round,” he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>“He is trying to prove that he is not afraid of being
+seen in my company,” she thought to herself, as she said
+aloud: “I saw you talking to Dr. Lipnitzky and Zundel.”</p>
+
+<p>They walked in silence a few steps. Then he uttered
+with a smile:</p>
+
+<p>“Have you taken a vow to give us a wide berth?”</p><p><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213"><span class="pagenum">[213]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“Not at all.”</p>
+
+<p>“Father and mother are always at me for it. They
+think I am to blame for your sudden estrangement.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nobody is to blame, and there is no estrangement.
+Why use such words?”</p>
+
+<p>“Is it only a matter of words? They are accustomed
+to look upon you and me as brother and sister. Do you
+deny that our roads have parted?”</p>
+
+<p>“If they have, then, what need is there of writing at
+the bottom of the picture: ‘This is a lion?’” she asked
+testily. “If it’s a lion it’s a lion.”</p>
+
+<p>“Would it be better to shut one’s eyes to the truth?
+As for me, common ordinary mortal that I am, I try to
+call a spade a spade.”</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with venom, but it was all perfunctory and
+they were both aware of it. Then he described, with
+exaggerated ardour, the successes achieved by the Pupils’
+Aid Society in which he was now actively interested.</p>
+
+<p>Since their talk on the bench in front of Boyko’s Court
+he had been longing for some humanitarian cause, for one
+unassociated with the hazards of the revolutionary movement.
+He would prove to Clara that he was no inferior
+creature. Her taunt that he had seized upon the Jewish
+question, in the course of their debate, merely as a drowning
+man seizes at a straw, and the implication that no
+phase of the problem of human suffering made the slightest
+appeal to him had left a cruel sting in his heart. Since
+then his thoughts had often turned upon the Jewish question,
+until he found his “cause” in the dissemination
+of Russian culture among his people. Formerly he had
+been contented with being “assimilated” himself. Now
+he was going to dedicate his best energies to the work
+of lessening that distance between Jew and Gentile, which<a name="Page_214" id="Page_214"><span class="pagenum">[214]</span></a>
+was, so he argued, the source of all the woes of his race.
+As good luck would have it, there was such a thing as difference
+of opinion. “It is not anxiety about my ‘precious
+skin,’” he would picture himself saying to Clara, “that
+keeps me from reading underground prints. Did I believe
+in them I should do as you do. But if you think
+I live for myself only you don’t know me. I have another
+cause, one to which my convictions call me and to which I
+am going to give all that is in me.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you?” he asked. “Still planting a paradise on
+earth?”</p>
+
+<p>She smiled.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, as for me, I content myself with working on
+such a humble beginning as a little bridge across the gap
+between Jew and Gentile.”</p>
+
+<p>He consciously led the way past a Gentile of enormous
+bulk, who stood in the doorway of a furrier’s shop. It
+was Rasgadayeff, the landlord of the Vigdoroffs’ residence,
+he himself occupying the inner building on the same courtyard.
+He was a wealthy merchant with the figure of a
+barrel and arms that looked as though they had been
+hung up to dry, an impetuous Great-Russian, illiterate
+and good-hearted, shrewd in making money, but with no
+sense of its value when it came to spending it. Every
+other week he went off on a hideous spree, and then, besides
+smashing costly mirrors, which is the classical sport
+of the drunken Great-Russian merchant, he would indulge
+in such pastimes as offering a prize to every ten-year-old
+boy who would drain a tumbler of vodka, setting fire
+to live horses or wrecking the furniture in his own
+house. On such days his wife often sought shelter
+with the Vigdoroffs for fear of being beaten to death.
+Until a few years ago he had stood at the head of the fur<a name="Page_215" id="Page_215"><span class="pagenum">[215]</span></a>
+trade. Since then a Jewish dealer, who went off on no
+sprees, had been a formidable competitor to him. Rasgadayeff
+now hated Jews in general as he had never done
+before. The Vigdoroffs were an exception. He was sincerely
+fond of the whole family, and entrusted the old man
+with some of his most important business secrets.</p>
+
+<p>“Our humblest regards to Clara Rodionovna!” he said,
+with gay suavity, taking off his hat. “As also to Vladimir
+Alexandrovich!”</p>
+
+<p>They returned the salute, and were about to pass on,
+but he checked them.</p>
+
+<p>“A rose of a girl, I tell you that,” he went on, addressing
+himself to Vladimir, while he looked at the girl with
+rather offensive admiration. “Young men are fools nowadays.
+If I were one of them I should take no chances
+with a lassie like that. A plum, a bouquet, a song-bird of
+a mademoiselle. I should propose and get her and waste
+no time, or&mdash;one, two, three, and the lovey-dovey may
+be snapped up by some other fellow.”</p>
+
+<p>Clara, who was accustomed to this sort of pleasantry
+from him, scarcely heard what he said. She was smilingly
+making ready to bow herself away, when her cousin asked
+of the Great-Russian:</p>
+
+<p>“And how is her Illustriousness? Have you seen her
+lately?”</p>
+
+<p>“She was here yesterday. Quite stuck on you, Vladimir
+Alexandrovich. Sends humblest regards. ‘When is
+your learned young friend going to call,’ she says. <ins class="punct" title="Transcriber's Note: deleted &quot;">You</ins>
+have a sage of a cousin, Clara Rodionovna, an eagle of a
+fellow, a cabinet minister!”</p>
+
+<p>“All right,” Vladimir returned, with an amused smile,
+yet reddening with satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>Clara remarked to herself that her cousin was flaunting<a name="Page_216" id="Page_216"><span class="pagenum">[216]</span></a>
+his successes with Gentiles before her. When they resumed
+their walk she inquired reluctantly:</p>
+
+<p>“Who is ‘her Illustriousness’?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, that’s that lame tramp of a woman, Princess
+Chertogoff,” he rejoined, with gestures of contempt and
+amusement, yet inwardly tingling with vanity at his acquaintance
+with her impecunious “Illustriousness.” The
+wealthy Great-Russian was a large holder of Princess
+Chertogoff’s promissory notes, and it was at his house
+where Vladimir had met her on several occasions. The
+lame noblewoman knew that Rasgadayeff was fond of the
+Vigdoroffs. When she saw the young man last she had,
+by way of currying favour with her creditor, asked the
+educated son of his “favourite Jew” to call on her whenever
+he was in the mood for it, and to “let her hear what
+was going on among wise men and authors.”</p>
+
+<p>Vladimir and Clara passed on. He spoke of Rasgadayeff’s
+latest escapades and Clara listened with little
+bursts of merriment, but their voices did not ring true.
+Presently they exchanged greetings with Ginsburg, the notorious
+money-lender of Miroslav, a small, red-headed man
+with crumpled cheeks and big bulging eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“Here is another treat for you!” Vladimir said, in
+high spirits. “Another specimen of moral perfection.
+Some gigantic hand must have grabbed him by the head,
+squeezing it like a paper ball till the eyes started from
+their sockets, and then thrown him into a waste basket.
+That’s the way he looks.” She smiled awkwardly.</p>
+
+<p>He then called her attention to two bewigged old women,
+both of them apparently deaf, who were talking
+into each other’s ear, and then to the picturesque figure
+of a dumpy little shoemaker with a new, carefully-shined
+pair of topboots in his hand. Clara had never been interested<a name="Page_217" id="Page_217"><span class="pagenum">[217]</span></a>
+in things of this sort, but this time, in her eagerness
+to get away, added to a growing sense of awkwardness,
+his observations literally grated on her nerves. At
+last, when they reached a crossing, she stopped, putting
+out her hand.</p>
+
+<p>“Somebody is waiting for me,” she said. “Remember
+me to uncle and aunt, will you?”</p>
+
+<p>“I will. Won’t you look in at all?” As she turned
+to take the side street, he added: “Our roads do part,
+then.”</p>
+
+<p>Her appointment was with Orlovsky. She had not attended
+the gatherings of the Circle at his house for a considerable
+time. He conjectured that she was engaged in
+some revolutionary undertaking of importance. He had
+missed her so abjectly that he had finally decided to avow
+his love. This was what he had made the appointment
+for. When she came, however, he cowed before her rich
+complexion and intelligent eyes and talked of the affairs
+of the Circle. A similar attempt at a love declaration
+was made that evening by Elkin, with similar results. By
+way of opening the conversation he indulged in a series
+of virulent taunts upon her long absence and the great
+revolutionary secrets that he said were written on her
+face, after which his efforts to turn the conversation into
+romantic channels proved futile. He came away agonised
+with jealousy. He was jealous of the girl and he was
+jealous of the mysterious conspiracy in which she seemed
+to be engaged and into which he, her revolutionary sponsor,
+had not been initiated.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>As to Vigdoroff, he was seized with a desire to avail
+himself of Princess Chertogoff’s invitation, not merely to
+gratify his personal ambition, but also, so he assured himself,<a name="Page_218" id="Page_218"><span class="pagenum">[218]</span></a>
+as part of his “cause.” On his way thither he paused
+once or twice in front of shop windows to ascertain whether
+his face was not strikingly Semitic. “Not offensively so,
+anyhow,” he concluded before a mirror at the entrance to a
+furniture store. The mirror reflected a well-made, athletic-looking
+young man one could have told for a college
+man through a veil. The picturesque irregularity of his
+features, somewhat flat in the middle of the face, drew an
+image of culture, of intellectual interest. He felt on his
+mettle. He would make a favourable impression, and that
+impression was to be another step across the distance not
+only between Gentile society and himself, but between all
+Jews and all Gentiles. His visit to the noblewoman was
+a mission. He was in an exalted mood.</p>
+
+<p>At the house of Princess Chertogoff he found a cavalry
+officer and an officer of the imperial guards. He was received
+with patronising urbanity. The hostess introduced
+the two young officers as her sons, come from St. Petersburg
+to take a glimpse at their old mother, and Vigdoroff
+as “one of the brilliant young intellects of our town.”
+This was her excuse before her sons for having invited a
+Jew to the house and Vigdoroff was not unaware of it. The
+cavalryman’s face was round and stern, while his brother’s
+was oblong and smiling. When they were drunk, which
+happened quite often, their faces would swap expressions.
+It was chiefly owing to their expensive escapades that
+their mother’s fortune had passed into the coffers of usurers.
+The two uniformed men left almost immediately,
+pleading a pressing engagement.</p>
+
+<p>The welcome Vladimir found at this house was one extended
+by a patroness of the fine arts to a devotee of letters.
+It was not long before Vigdoroff found himself
+fully launched on a favourite subject. Russia’s supremacy<a name="Page_219" id="Page_219"><span class="pagenum">[219]</span></a>
+in modern literature and her false modesty became clearer
+to him with every new work of fiction that came from the
+foreign masters. The best models of the German, French
+or English novel were tainted with artificiality. Russia
+alone produced stories that were absolutely free from
+powder and rouge. He dwelt on Zola’s <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'L'Assomoir'"><i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">L’Assommoir</i></ins> and
+Daudet’s <i>Nabob</i>, both of which had appeared a short time
+before, and each of which was looked upon as its author’s
+masterpiece. He saw that his hostess neither understood
+nor cared for these things; that he was making a fool of
+himself; yet, being too ill at ease to stop, he went sliding
+down hill. He spoke by heart as it were, the sound of his
+own voice increasing his embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>The princess was listening with an air of pompous
+assent, barely following the general drift of his talk. Her
+majestic crutches terrified him.</p>
+
+<p>A man servant brought in a silver samovar and a tray
+of Little-Russian cookies. As Vigdoroff took up his glass
+of tea the princess said:</p>
+
+<p>“I did not know you were so much of a Russian patriot.
+Quite an unusual thing in an educated young man these
+days. I certainly agree with you that Turgeneff is a good
+writer. He is perfectly charming.”</p>
+
+<p>Later on she asked, with lazy curiosity and in her pampered
+enunciation:</p>
+
+<p>“Do you really think our novelists greater than the
+great writers of France?”</p>
+
+<p>“I certainly do.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s interesting,” she said, preparing to get rid of
+him.</p>
+
+<p>“You see, the average Russian represents a remarkable
+duality. He is simple-hearted and frank, like a child, yet
+he is possessed of an intuitive sense of human nature that<a name="Page_220" id="Page_220"><span class="pagenum">[220]</span></a>
+would be considered marvellous in a sage. In addition,
+he is the most soulful fellow in the world, and to turn his
+soul inside out, to himself as well as to others, is one of
+his ruling passions. That accounts for the inimitable
+naturalness and the ardent human interest of our literature.
+Whether Russia knows how to construct machinery or
+not, she certainly knows how to write.”</p>
+
+<p>“You do love Russia, and literature, too”&mdash;yawning
+demonstratively. “I had an idea Hebrews were only interested
+in money matters.” She smiled, an embarrassed
+smile in which there was as much malice as apology, and
+dismissed him quite unceremoniously.</p>
+
+<p>He got into the street with his face on fire. It was
+as if he had been subjected to some brutal physical indignities.
+“‘I didn’t know you were so much of a Russian
+patriot,’” he recalled in his agony. “Of course, I’m only
+a Jew, not a Russian. It makes no difference how many
+centuries my people have lived and suffered here. And I,
+idiot that I am, make a display of my love for Gogol, Turgeneff,
+Dostoyevski, as if I, ‘a mere Jew,’ had a right to
+them! She must have thought it was all affectation, Jewish
+cunning. As if a Jew could care for anything but
+‘money matters.’ The idea of one of my race caring for
+books, and for Gentile books, too!”</p>
+
+<p>He was as innocent of the world of money as was Clara’s
+father. As to the great Russian writers, they were not
+merely favourite authors with him. They were saints, apostles,
+of a religion of which he was a fervent devotee. This,
+in fact, was the real “cause” which he had mutely served
+for the past six or seven years. Their images, the swing
+and rhythm of their sentences, the flavour of their style,
+the odour of the pages as he had first read them&mdash;all this
+was a sanctuary to him. Yet he had always felt as if he<a name="Page_221" id="Page_221"><span class="pagenum">[221]</span></a>
+had no right to this devotion, as if he were an intruder.
+This was the unspoken tragedy of his life.</p>
+
+<p>Since a boy of ten, when he entered the gymnasium, he
+had been crying out to Russia, his country, to recognise
+a child in him&mdash;not a step-child merely. And just because
+he was looked upon as a step-child he loved his native
+land even more passionately than did his fellow-countrymen
+of Slavic blood.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Alexander, or Sender, Vigdoroff, Vladimir’s father, was
+known among his co-religionists as Sender the Arbitrator.
+His chief source of income was petition-writing and sundry
+legal business, but the Jews of Miroslav often submitted
+their differences to him. These he settled by the
+force of an imperturbable and magnetic disposition rather
+than through any special gift of judgment and insight.
+He was full of anecdotes and inaggressive humour. It was
+said of him that people who came to his house obdurate
+and bitter “melted like wax” in his sunny presence. As
+a rule, indeed, it was the contending parties themselves
+who then found a way to an amicable solution of the point
+at issue, but the credit for it was invariably given to
+Sender the Arbitrator, and his reputation for wisdom
+brought him some Gentile patrons in addition to his Jewish
+clientele. His iron safe always contained large sums
+in cash or valuables entrusted to him by others. When a
+young couple were engaged to be married the girl’s marriage-portion
+was usually deposited with Sender the
+Arbitrator. When security was agreed upon in connection
+with some contract the sum was placed in the hands
+of Sender the Arbitrator.</p>
+
+<p>His stalwart figure, blond, curling locks and toothless
+smile; his frilled shirt-front, everlasting brown frock-coat<a name="Page_222" id="Page_222"><span class="pagenum">[222]</span></a>
+and huge meerschaum cigar-holder&mdash;all this was as familiar
+to the Jews of Miroslav as the public buildings of
+their town. The business of petition-writing was gradually
+passing into the hands of younger and better educated
+men, graduated lawyers regularly admitted to the
+bar, and his income was dwindling. “I could arbitrate
+any misunderstanding under the sun except the one between
+Luck and myself,” he used to say, smiling toothlessly.
+Still, he made a comfortable income, and money
+was spent freely not only on his household but on all sorts
+of hangers-on. Vladimir’s education cost him more than
+his means warranted. Besides keeping him at the
+gymnasium and then at the university he had hired
+him private teachers of French, German and music.
+“There are a thousand Gentiles to every Jew,” was one
+of his sayings. “That’s why every Jew should possess
+as much intelligence as a thousand Gentiles. Else we
+shall be crushed.” He was something like a connecting
+link between the old world and the new. He had a large
+library, mostly made up of German and Hebrew books.
+His house was the haunt of “men of wisdom,” that is,
+people who wrote or thought upon modern topics in the
+language of Isaiah and Jeremiah, free-thinkers whose
+source of inspiration were atheistic ideas expounded in
+the Holy Tongue; yet on Saturday nights his neighbours
+would gather in his drawing room to discuss foreign politics
+and to chant psalms in the dark. He had the head of
+an agnostic and the heart of an orthodox Jew.</p>
+
+<p>It was late in the afternoon when Vladimir reached
+home. His father was in the library, which was also his
+office, conversing with his copyist&mdash;a dapper little man
+whom his employer described as “an artistic penman and
+an artistic fool.” The windows were open. The room<a name="Page_223" id="Page_223"><span class="pagenum">[223]</span></a>
+was filled with twilight and with warm air that seemed to
+be growing softer and more genial every minute.</p>
+
+<p>“Is that you, Volodia?” the old man asked.</p>
+
+<p>Volodia only nodded. It was easy to see that he was
+dejected. His father became interested and dismissed the
+clerk.</p>
+
+<p>“Anything the matter, Volodia?” he asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing is the matter.” An answer of this sort usually
+indicated that the young man was burning to unbosom
+himself of something or other and that he needed some
+coaxing to do so. Intellectually the mutual relations of
+father and son were of a rather peculiar nature. Each
+looked up to the other and courted his approbation without
+the other being aware of it. Their discussions often had
+the character of an epigram-match.</p>
+
+<p>When Volodia had told his father of his experience at
+the house of the lame princess, the old man said:</p>
+
+<p>“I see you are quite excited over it. As for me, that
+penniless spendthrift reminds me of the pig that mistook
+the nobleman’s backyard for the interior of his mansion.
+The backyard was all the pig had seen of the place, and
+money-lenders are the only kind of Jews that lame drone
+has ever had an occasion to know. That she should mistake
+a handful of usurers for the whole Jewish people is
+the most natural thing in the world.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, but they are all like that, father. Unfortunately
+the Jewish people are just the opposite of women in this
+respect. Women have a knack of flaunting all that is prepossessing
+and of concealing that which is unattractive
+in them. If the Gentiles see none but the worst Jews there
+are we have ourselves to blame.”</p>
+
+<p>“But they don’t care to see any other Jews. As a rule,
+the good Jew has no money to lend. They have no use<a name="Page_224" id="Page_224"><span class="pagenum">[224]</span></a>
+for him. More than half of our people are hard-working
+mechanics on the verge of starvation. Do you expect an
+ornament like your Princess Chertogoff and her precious
+sons to make <i>their</i> acquaintance? Of the rest the great
+majority are starving tradesmen, teachers, Talmudists,
+dreamers. Would you have a Gentile reprobate go to these
+for a loan?”</p>
+
+<p>Vladimir sat silent awhile, gazing through the open window
+at the thickening dusk. Then he said, listlessly at
+first, but gathering ardour from the relish he took in his
+own point:</p>
+
+<p>“You are as unjust to the good Gentiles as they are
+to the good Jews. What is needed is more understanding
+between the two. If the dreamers and scholars you refer
+to could speak Russian and looked less antediluvian than
+they do the prejudice that every Jew is a money-lender
+would gradually disappear. As it is, Jew and Gentile
+are like two apples that come in mutual contact at a point
+where they are both rotten.”</p>
+
+<p>“The Jewish apple was originally sound, Volodia. It’s
+through association with their Gentile neighbours that they
+have been demoralised&mdash;at the point of contact; our faults
+are theirs; our virtues are our own.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, this is a very one-sided view to take of it, father,”
+Volodia rejoined, resentfully. What he coveted was consolation,
+not an attack on everything that he held dear,
+that was the soul of his best years and ambitions. His
+father’s light-hearted derision of the entire Russian people
+irritated him. “If some Jews become demoralised through
+contact with Gentile knaves, other Jews are uplifted, ennobled,
+sanctified by coming under the influence of the
+great Russian thinkers, poets, friends of the people,” he
+went on, emphasising his words with something like a<a name="Page_225" id="Page_225"><span class="pagenum">[225]</span></a>
+feeling of spite. “Yours is an extremely one-sided view
+to take, father.”</p>
+
+<p>The elder Vigdoroff was cowed. He felt himself convicted
+of narrow-mindedness, of retrogression, of fogyism,
+and by way of disproving the charge he put up a defence
+that was disguised in the form of an attack. Vladimir
+replied bitterly, venting his misery on his father. The
+two found themselves on the verge of one of those feuds
+which sometimes divided them for days without either
+having the courage to take the first step toward a reconciliation,
+but their discussion was broken by the appearance
+of a servant carrying a lamp. She was followed by Vladimir’s
+mother, a mountain of shapeless, trembling flesh with
+a torpid, wide-eyed look. In the yellow light the family
+likeness between father and son came pleasingly into view.
+Only the face of the one had a touch of oriental quaintness
+in it, while the other’s was at once mellowed and intensified
+by the tinge of modern culture. Clara’s mother was
+a sister of the elder Vigdoroff, but she resembled him
+only slightly. The girl’s features suggested her uncle far
+more than they did her mother.</p>
+
+<p>“Never mind the lamp,” the Arbitrator said somewhat
+irately.</p>
+
+<p>“Never mind the lamp!” his wife said, fixing her
+torpid eyes on him. “Are you crazy? Don’t mind
+him”&mdash;to the servant girl. The servant girl set the
+lamp down on the table and withdrew, her big fleshy mistress
+taking a seat by her son’s side.</p>
+
+<p>“Go about your business,” her husband said, good-naturedly.
+“You are disturbing our discussion. I was
+just getting started when you came in and spoiled the job.
+Go. There may be some beggar-woman waiting for you in
+the kitchen.”</p><p><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226"><span class="pagenum">[226]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>She made a mocking gesture without stirring, and her
+husband resumed his argument.</p>
+
+<p>She was one of a very small number of Jewish women
+who attended divine service on week-days. She was the
+game of every woman pedlar and beggar in town, with
+whom she usually communed when her husband was out.
+When not thus occupied, buying useless bargains or listening
+to some poor woman’s tale of woe, she would spend
+much of her time in her big easy chair, dozing over a
+portly psalter. Her husband was perpetually quizzing her
+on her piety and her surreptitious bargains. On Fridays,
+when beggars came in troops for their pennies, the Arbitrator
+would sometimes divert himself by encouraging
+some of them to fall into line more than once.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227"><span class="pagenum">[227]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXV.</h2>
+
+<h3>CLARA BECOMES “ILLEGAL.”</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">LATE the next afternoon Mme. Shubeyko called at the
+warden’s house with a blue silk handkerchief round
+her face, apparently suffering from a swollen cheek
+or toothache.</p>
+
+<p>An hour or more later, while she and Rodkevich were
+absorbed in a game of cards in the parlour and a solitary
+star shone out of the semi-obscurity of a colorless sky,
+Makar, clean-shaven and clad as a woman, with a blue handkerchief
+round his face, advanced toward the gate. Clara
+stood in the doorway of the warden’s office, watching the
+scene. “Double Chin,” the gateman, was still on duty,
+and as the disguised prisoner approached him the impersonation
+struck her as absurdly defective. Another second
+and all would be lost with a crash. Her heart stood still.
+She shut her eyes with a sick feeling, but the next instant
+she sprang forward, bonnetless, addressing Makar by Mme.
+Shubeyko’s name.</p>
+
+<p>“You must not forget to let us know, dear,” she said
+aloud, placing herself between him and the gateman and
+shutting the disguised man from view. “A swollen gum
+is a dangerous thing to neglect, you know. Yes, figs and
+milk. I’ll see you down the road, dear.”</p>
+
+<p>The heavy key groaned in the lock, the ponderous gate
+swung open and Makar and Clara walked out into the twilight<a name="Page_228" id="Page_228"><span class="pagenum">[228]</span></a>
+of the street&mdash;he with a rush of joy, she in a turmoil
+of triumph and despair. It seemed as if he had
+never vividly hoped to see liberty, and now, suddenly, he
+had found himself breathing the very breath of it; while
+she who, a minute ago, could have walked freely through
+the streets, was now the quarry of that terrible force called
+government.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as they reached the ditch, a short distance from
+the prison building, Makar pulled off his feminine attire,
+threw it under the little foot-bridge, and put on a government
+official’s cap. Masha, the gendarme officer’s sister,
+was to await him round the corner; her house was within
+easy reach from here, and Makar was to be taken there
+to change his disguise and then to be driven to the Palace;
+but it had all come about much sooner than they had
+expected, and she had not yet arrived.</p>
+
+<p>“Never mind. Hire a cab to Cucumber Market,” Clara
+said. “There you can cross some streets in the opposite
+direction and then take another cab direct for Theatre
+Square. A very short walk will bring you to the Palace.
+Don’t forget the names: First Cucumber Market and
+then Theatre Square,” she repeated, coolly.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded with a reassuring smile, shook her hand
+warmly, and they parted.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Double Chin was soon to be relieved. Had he left his
+post before the guards missed Makar, the connection existing
+between Mme. Shubeyko’s toothache and Makar’s escape
+would never have been discovered, and Clara would
+have come out uncompromised. But Clara was too slow
+in returning, and the fat gateman was an impressionable,
+suspicious man, so he presently made inquiry. He found
+that Mme. Shubeyko was still in the warden’s parlour,<a name="Page_229" id="Page_229"><span class="pagenum">[229]</span></a>
+nursing her cheek with one hand and holding her cards
+with the other.</p>
+
+<p>In the commotion that followed the discovery Rodkevich
+wept hysterically and beat the gateman, while Mme.
+Shubeyko went about invoking imprecations upon the sly
+prisoner for stealing her new spring cloak, bonnet and
+parasol.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Clara stood at a point of vantage, watching
+developments. Had Double Chin left the building at the
+usual hour, without the prison betraying any signs of disquiet,
+she would have returned to her room in the warden’s
+house at once, and thus saved her legal existence. Otherwise
+she would have been forced to escape and join the
+army of the “ne-legalny” (illegal), of political outlaws
+like the majority of Pavel’s intimate friends in St. Petersburg.
+About twenty minutes had elapsed from the time
+she had parted from Makar, when she saw human figures
+burst from the prison-gate, accompanied by the violent
+trill of a police whistle. Her heart sank at the sound.
+From this minute on Miroslav would be forbidden ground
+to her. A <i>ne-legalny</i> is something neither dead nor alive,
+the everlasting prey of gendarmes, policemen, spies&mdash;of
+the Czar himself, it seemed; a “cut-off slice;” an outcast
+without the right of being either an outcast or a member
+of the community, a creature without name, home or identity.
+She was appallingly forbidding to herself. But
+then in the underground world <i>ne-legalny</i> is a title of
+indescribable distinction, and at this moment Clara seemed
+to feel in her own person the sanctity which she had been
+wont to associate with the word.</p>
+
+<p>By ridding herself of her starched collar and ribbon and
+hastily rearranging her hair into a coarse, dishevelled knot
+she was sufficiently transformed to look like a young woman<a name="Page_230" id="Page_230"><span class="pagenum">[230]</span></a>
+of the masses to strangers. She could not go to the
+Palace without a hat, however, and buying one at this
+hour would have attracted undesirable attention. So she
+first went to the house of Beile, her uneducated sister.
+Her father’s address or full name being unknown at the
+prison, it would be some time before the police came to
+look for her at her sister’s.</p>
+
+<p>Beile was a little woman of thirty with glowing dark
+eyes and a great capacity for tears and nagging. She
+resembled her parents neither in looks nor in character,
+and her mother often wondered “whence she came into
+the family.” Her husband, a man learned in the Talmud,
+was absorbed day and night in an effort to build up a small
+business in hides. As a consequence, the space under
+Beile’s bed was usually occupied with raw skins and the
+two-room apartment which they shared with a tailor was
+never free from odours of putrefaction.</p>
+
+<p>Clara entered the room with a smile. The first thing
+she did was to kiss and slap Ruchele, her sister’s little girl,
+and to tickle her baby brother under the chin.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, where is your hat?” Beile screamed in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>Her own hat was a matronly bonnet which she never
+wore except on Saturdays, when she would put it on over
+her wig, tying its two long, broad ribbons under her chin.</p>
+
+<p>“It blew off into the river as I was crossing the bridge,”
+Clara replied. “That’s what brings me here. I want
+you to get me a hat, Beile, but you must do it quickly.”</p>
+
+<p>“Are you crazy? Whatever is the matter with you,
+Clara? Whoever heard of a girl taking so little care of her
+hat that it should drop into the water? You don’t think
+you are a daughter of Rothschild, do you? Did you
+ever!”</p><p><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231"><span class="pagenum">[231]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“That’s all right, Beile. We’ll talk it all over some
+other time. Every minute is of great value to me.”</p>
+
+<p>Beile thought her sister was in a hurry to attend a lesson,
+so she started. As she reached the door, with the
+baby in her arms, she couldn’t help facing about again.</p>
+
+<p>“Didn’t you go down the bank to look for it?” she
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>“But I am telling you I have not a moment’s time
+now.”</p>
+
+<p>The more irritation she betrayed, the more the other
+was tempted to nag her.</p>
+
+<p>“But somebody must have picked it up. It cost you
+five rubles and you’ve not worn it ten times.”</p>
+
+<p>“Beile! Beile!” Clara groaned.</p>
+
+<p>“Tell me where it is. I’ll go and look for it myself.
+Maybe it is not yet too late. Lord of the World, five
+rubles!”</p>
+
+<p>Clara was left with Ruchele, but she changed her mind.</p>
+
+<p>“I think I’ll wait at Motl’s house,” she said, overtaking
+her sister, with the child by her side. “It’s nearer to
+my lesson.”</p>
+
+<p>Motl, the trunk-finisher employed by their mother,
+lived a considerable distance from here. Beile gave her
+a look full of amazement and dawning intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>“At Motl’s!” she whispered, sizing up Clara’s dishevelled
+appearance. “Where is your collar? A rend into
+my heart! What have you been doing to yourself? Anyhow,
+go to Motl’s. Or, no, go to Feige’s. That’s much
+better. I’ll bring you a hat in ten minutes.” Feige was
+a poor old relative of Beile’s by marriage.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>When Clara, in a large shepherdess hat and genteel
+looking, bade her sister a hurried <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'bood-bye'">good-bye</ins> and made for<a name="Page_232" id="Page_232"><span class="pagenum">[232]</span></a>
+the open gate, Ruchele ran after her, yelling so that her
+mother had to catch her in her arms and carry her gagged
+indoors. That was the only adventure Clara encountered
+on her way to the Palace.</p>
+
+<p>Makar was not there.</p>
+
+<p>She told Pavel of the rescue in general outline, explaining
+that an unexpected opportunity had presented itself
+and that there had been no time for sending word to him.
+He flew into a rage. So far from being the central figure
+in the affair for which he had been priming himself these
+many weeks he had been left out of it altogether, left out
+like a ninny caught napping. But this was no time for
+wounded pride. Clara had unexpectedly become a <i>ne-legalny</i>
+and&mdash;what was of more immediate concern&mdash;what
+had become of Makar?</p>
+
+<p>“I hope he was not taken in the street,” he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>“Masha might know. Could you send Onufri?”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel disliked to use the old hussar for errands of this
+nature, but in the present juncture there seemed to be no
+way out of it.</p>
+
+<p>Onufri brought back a note in which the words were all
+but leaping with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>“No! No! No!” Masha wrote. “He has not been
+caught. My brother has not yet been home. Everybody
+is nearly crazy! But I can almost see my brother chuckling&mdash;in
+his heart of course! Hurrah! Hurrah! Long
+live the revolution!”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank God!” said Clara, shutting her eyes, in a daze
+of relief.</p>
+
+<p>“He’s a trump, after all. If they haven’t caught him
+so far I don’t see why he should be caught now. He may
+come in at any moment. But where can he be?”</p>
+
+<p>The next morning, at about ten o’clock, when the countess<a name="Page_233" id="Page_233"><span class="pagenum">[233]</span></a>
+heard the doorbell she declared, with intense agitation,
+that something told her it was the governor, and so it was.
+Clara went into her room.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t leave me for a moment, Pasha,” Anna Nicolayevna
+entreated her son. “I am afraid to face him alone.
+I should be sure to put my foot in it, if I did.”</p>
+
+<p>“Just leave uncle to me,” said Pavel.</p>
+
+<p>The old man looked wan and haggard, and was blinking
+harder than ever. He began by joking Pasha on the rarity
+of his visits at the gubernatorial mansion, but the young
+man cut him short.</p>
+
+<p>“By the way, uncle, is it true that that fellow, the Nihilist,
+has escaped?” he asked.</p>
+
+<p>“How did it reach you so soon?” the governor asked.
+“The town must be full of it.”</p>
+
+<p>“I heard it from a cab-driver last night. It’s awful.
+But how did he get out? Say what you will, they are a
+clever set, those Nihilists.”</p>
+
+<p>“Clever nothing! Our gendarmes are the most stupid
+lot on God’s earth. That’s where the trouble comes in.
+There was a governess at the warden’s house. It was she
+who seems to have managed the whole affair. Of course,
+the warden is a scoundrel, but what does he know of these
+things? It’s for the gendarme office to scent a bird of
+that variety, but then the gendarme office is made up of
+rogues and blockheads. To clip one’s wings, that’s all
+they are good for. Wherever one turns, he bumps his head
+against the ‘independent power’ of the gendarmerie. It’s
+a government within a government, that’s what it is.
+Else one would be able to show St. Petersburg that Miroslav
+was not the kind of place for Nihilists and all sorts
+of ragamuffins to play the mischief with. Those swaggering
+gendarmes go around poking their noses everywhere, smelling<a name="Page_234" id="Page_234"><span class="pagenum">[234]</span></a>
+nothing but their own grand epaulets, and yet they are
+beyond the control of civil authorities. The consequence
+is that when something happens somebody else is held responsible,
+because the prisons, forsooth, are under the Department
+of the Interior! To set an example of idleness
+and stupidity is all they seem to be needed for, the gendarmes;
+that’s all, that’s all.”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel agreed with him.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Another week passed. The police and the gendarmes
+were still searching for Makar and the governess, as much
+in the dark as ever.</p>
+
+<p>Yossl Parmet, Makar’s father, was brought to Miroslav
+a prisoner, but he was soon discharged. He was proud
+of his son. He now fully realised that his Feivish belonged
+to a secret society made up of educated people who
+preached economic equality and universal brotherhood as
+well as political liberty, and that they were ready to go to
+prison for their ideas. This made a strong appeal
+to his imagination and sympathies, and the fact that his
+Feivish had outwitted the authorities and escaped from
+prison inclined him to shouts of triumphant laughter. He
+searched the Talmud for similar sentiments, and he found
+no stint of passages which lent themselves to favourable
+interpretation. A new vista of thought and feeling had
+opened itself to Yossl.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235"><span class="pagenum">[235]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>ON SACRED GROUND.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">IN 1648, when Chmyelnicki’s Cossacks slaughtered 40,000
+Jews, Miroslav was among the cities that fell into their
+blood-dripping hands. It was a small town then;
+the Jewish population did not exceed eight hundred, but
+these unanimously decided to be slain rather than abandon
+their faith. Not a man, woman or child was spared. The
+scene of the slaughter, a small square in the vicinity of
+Cucumber Market, is sacred ground to the Jews of Miroslav.
+The Bloody Spot they call it reverently. A synagogue
+stands there and ten recluses find shelter under its
+roof, so that the Word of God may be heard with unbroken
+continuity within its walls. If this house of prayer and
+divine study were to fall silent for a single minute, say the
+children of the town, the blood of the slain Jews would
+burst into a roar of sobbing that could be heard for seven
+miles.</p>
+
+<p>But the ten recluses were not the only Talmudists in
+the place. The Old Synagogue, as it was generally called,
+was the favourite haunt of scholars. It was here where
+Rabbi Rachmiel, Clara’s father, spent every day and evening
+in the week except Saturdays and holidays.</p>
+
+<p>It was about eight o’clock of a warm evening, several
+days after the disappearance of the political prisoner.
+The Old Synagogue was filled with people. The evening<a name="Page_236" id="Page_236"><span class="pagenum">[236]</span></a>
+service was over. Candles flickered on gaunt, tallow-stained
+reading-desks and blazing oil-lamps dangled from
+the ceiling. The recluses were freely gossiping or snoozing;
+there were so many others to do the holy work&mdash;a
+medley of voices and melodies&mdash;from the enthusiastic soprano
+of the schoolboy to the dignified drone of the
+elderly merchant; from the conscious, over-elaborate intonation
+of the newly-married young man to the absorbed
+murmur of the tattered old scholar. As to the Talmudists
+themselves, they found stimulating harmony in this chaos.
+To them it was as if the synagogue itself were singing in
+a hundred voices, an inspired choir that quickened one’s
+intellectual passions and poured fire into one’s gesticulations.</p>
+
+<p>One of the younger men in the crowd was Makar.
+Seated in a snug corner, with his reading-desk tilted
+against his breast, he was sincerely absorbed in a passage
+on the slaying of cattle. The treatise is one of the most
+intricate in the Talmud, and he had taken it up as he
+might a game of chess. The lower part of his face was
+buried in the sloping surface of a huge long book, the
+handle of a tin candlestick hooked to the top of the folio.
+The flame of a guttering candle threw a stream of light
+upon his dusky high forehead and heavy black eyebrows.
+Slightly rocking the desk, he intoned the Chaldaic text
+and the Yiddish interpretations, listening to his own sing-song
+as one listens, at some distance, to a familiar voice.</p>
+
+<p>Rabbi Rachmiel, Clara’s father, was studying quietly in
+a corner, in peaceful ignorance of the mad hunt that was
+going on for his daughter at this moment. That this red-bearded
+little man was the father of the Nihilist girl who
+had brought about his escape Makar had not the least idea.</p>
+
+<p>After bidding Clara good-bye on the evening of his rescue,<a name="Page_237" id="Page_237"><span class="pagenum">[237]</span></a>
+he had taken the first cab he came across, getting off
+at Cucumber Market, as directed. After zig-zagging about
+for five minutes, he was going to hail another cab, but
+checked himself because the man proved to be the same
+who had brought him to Cucumber Market. A boy stopped
+to look at him, whereupon he made up his mind that the
+official cap which he wore (and which had been expected
+to give him the appearance of a teacher in a government
+school for Jews) scarcely went well with his face, and
+that it must be this cap of his which had attracted the
+boy’s attention. He therefore went to a capmaker’s shop
+and bought an ordinary cap, such as is worn by the average
+old-fashioned Jew, explaining to the artisan that it
+was for his father, who had his size. This part of the
+town he knew well, for it was in the centre of the Jewish
+quarter, not many minutes’ walk from his former lodgings.
+The Old Synagogue was in the same neighbourhood, and
+it flashed upon him to seek temporary refuge in the celebrated
+house of worship and learning. Living in such a
+place was like hiding in the depths of the Fourth Century&mdash;the
+age of the Talmud, which was still the soul of
+the Ghetto, still the fountain-head of the spiritual and intellectual
+life of the orthodox Jew. He would be in his
+native element there, at any rate, and would certainly feel
+more comfortable than amid the imposing interiors of a
+noblewoman’s mansion. On his way to the synagogue he
+twisted the hair at his temples till he looked as he used
+to, before he left Zorki. As to his shave, he prepared an
+explanation: he was subject to a species of skin disease
+that made shaving unavoidable.</p>
+
+<p>The assistant beadle at the Old Synagogue was a man
+with a luxurious white beard. He was not learned in the
+Talmud himself, but he had served in the great “house<a name="Page_238" id="Page_238"><span class="pagenum">[238]</span></a>
+of study” so long that he was familiar with the titles of
+the various volumes and sections in the same way as an
+old servant at a medical college is familiar with anatomical
+nomenclature. He danced attendance on every diligent
+scholar, and was the terror of every boy who romped or
+talked “words of daily life” over his holy book. He
+was in charge of the synagogue library and the candle
+supply. His salary was no larger than that of a street
+labourer, yet he had the appearance of a stern, prosperous
+merchant.</p>
+
+<p>When Makar first applied for a book and a candle the
+assistant beadle cast a knowing look at his smooth-shaven
+face, and then, handing him the volume, said:</p>
+
+<p>“You are in the army, aren’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>“How do you know, by my shaved face?” Makar asked,
+sadly.</p>
+
+<p>The assistant beadle smiled assent. The skin-disease
+story proved unnecessary.</p>
+
+<p>“There is many a Talmudist among soldiers nowadays,”
+the old man said. “To think of a Child of Law having
+to live in military bondage, to wear a uniform, to shave
+and to handle a gun!” He regarded Makar as a martyr.
+When he saw him reading his book in a pleasing, absorbed
+sing-song, he paused and watched him with a look of paternal
+admiration.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you belong here?” he asked later.</p>
+
+<p>“No.” He named the first town that came to his
+tongue.</p>
+
+<p>“Have you relatives here?”</p>
+
+<p>“No. But I have obtained a furlough and am going
+home. I am waiting for a letter and some money. I have
+left my uniform with a friend.”</p>
+
+<p>The assistant beadle asked Makar for news&mdash;whether<a name="Page_239" id="Page_239"><span class="pagenum">[239]</span></a>
+there were any rumours of some new war, or of some fresh
+legislation affecting the condition of Jews. The query
+was made on the supposition that Makar, as a member of
+the Czar’s army and one who saw so many officers, could
+not be unfamiliar with what was going on “up above”;
+and Makar appeased the old man’s curiosity with some
+suitable bits of information. The assistant beadle was
+particularly interested in the story of a certain colonel,
+a bitter anti-Semite, who used to beat the Jews in his regiment
+because a Jewish money-lender had him under his
+thumb. Now this “Jews’ enemy” lay in bed, stricken
+with paralysis&mdash;a clear case of divine reckoning. Did
+Makar know him? Makar said he did.</p>
+
+<p>The discussion was interrupted by the appearance of a
+bewigged woman with a pound of candles, in commemoration
+of the anniversary of a death. She wanted to make
+sure that they were going to be used for diligent study
+and not to be thrown away on loafers, and the assistant
+beadle told her that it would be all right and that she had
+better go home and put the children to bed. Another
+woman, whose boy was studying in a corner, was watching
+his gesticulations with beaming reverence. She had an
+apple for him and a copper coin for the assistant beadle,
+and when she saw Makar looking at her son, she said, nodding
+her head blissfully:</p>
+
+<p>“Praised be the Master of the World. It is not in
+vain that I am toiling. The boy will be an adornment to
+my old age.”</p>
+
+<p>Later in the evening a woman burst into the synagogue,
+lamenting and wringing her hands. She besought the
+recluses to pray for her newly-married daughter, who was
+on her death-bed. Makar was deeply touched. He felt
+like a foreigner amid these scenes that had once been his<a name="Page_240" id="Page_240"><span class="pagenum">[240]</span></a>
+own world, and the consciousness of it filled him with melancholy.</p>
+
+<p>He slept at the synagogue. After the service next morning
+he sent out a boy for some bread, butter and pot cheese,
+and at two o’clock a devout widow brought him, at the assistant
+beadle’s recommendation, a pot of soup and boiled
+meat. He ate his dinner with Talmudistic bashfulness,
+the woman looking on piously, and mutely praying to
+heaven that her dinner might agree with the holy man
+and give him strength for the study of God’s laws.</p>
+
+<p>Toward evening he ventured out on a stroll through the
+spacious courtyard which lay between the Old Synagogue
+and several other houses of worship. In this yard was a
+great octagonal basin, celebrated for its excellent tea
+water, with moss-grown spouts and chained wooden dippers.
+He watched the water-bearers with their pails and
+the girls with their jugs&mdash;a scene that seemed to have
+sprung to life from certain passages in the Talmud&mdash;until
+he came within a hair’s breadth of being recognised
+by his former landlady.</p>
+
+<p>Rabbi Rachmiel was absent from the synagogue that
+day. When Makar returned to the house of study he noticed
+signs of excitement. The recluses and other students
+were absorbed in whispered, panic-stricken conversation.
+They dared not discuss the news in groups, some
+even pretending to be engrossed in their books, as much
+as to say: “In case it comes to the knowledge of the
+police that you people are talking about it, I want you to
+remember that I took no part in your gossip.” The meaning
+of Clara’s disappearance was not quite clear to
+them. They knew in a very dim way that there were
+people, for the most part educated people, who wanted to
+do away with czars in general, and now it appeared that<a name="Page_241" id="Page_241"><span class="pagenum">[241]</span></a>
+Rabbi Rachmiel’s daughter was one of those mysterious
+persons. Those of the Talmudists who knew Clara were
+trying to imagine her as something weird, preternatural,
+and when her familiar face came back to them they uttered
+subdued exclamations of amazement.</p>
+
+<p>When the news reached Makar he wondered whether it
+would not be advisable for him to decamp at once. But
+he was so snugly established in his present berth that he
+was loath to abandon it.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the worshippers who dropped in to read a page
+or two of an evening would gather in groups, bandying
+gossip or talking foreign politics, of which, indeed, they
+had the most grotesque conceptions. Here Makar picked
+up many a side-splitting story illustrative of the corruption,
+intemperance and childlike ineptitude of government
+officials. His attention seized with special eagerness
+upon a description of the demoralised state of things in
+the printing shop connected with the governor’s office.
+There is not an article of merchandise over which the Russian
+authorities maintain a more rigorous control than
+they do over type, every pound, almost every letter of it,
+used in the empire being registered and supposedly kept
+track of; yet the foreman of that shop often offered some
+of the Czar’s own supply for sale, and in default of buyers
+(the licensed private printers of the town being too timid
+to handle this most dangerous species of stolen goods) he
+had once molten a large quantity of new type and sold it
+for scrap lead. Makar could not help picturing the revolutionists
+in regular communication with this man. Nor
+did his fancy stop there. Gradually all the typesetters
+under that foreman would be supplanted by revolutionists,
+and the Czar’s printing office would print the <i>Will of the
+People</i>!</p><p><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242"><span class="pagenum">[242]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Two days elapsed before Rabbi Rachmiel returned.
+When he did he scarcely spoke to anybody. Naturally a
+man of few words, he now spent every minute reading his
+book with ferocious absorption.</p>
+
+<p>The next day was Friday. In the evening the turmoil of
+Talmudic accents gave way to an ancient chant, at once
+light-hearted and solemn&mdash;the song of welcome to Sabbath
+the Bride. The brass chandeliers, brightly burnished,
+were filled with blazing candles. About half of the seats
+were occupied by worshippers, freshly bathed and most of
+them in their Sabbath clothes. Rabbi Rachmiel wore a
+beaming face, “in honour of the Sabbath,” that was plainly
+the result of effort. As Maker watched him chant his Sabbath-eve
+psalms, the heart of the escaped Nihilist was contracted
+with sympathy and something like a sense of guilt.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Meanwhile Count <ins class="punct" title="Transcriber's Note: added -">Loris-Melikoff</ins> had abolished the Third
+Section, transferring the secret service to the Interior Department,
+and while the change had not displaced the
+Dandy from office, yet it materially impaired his usefulness
+to his party.</p>
+
+<p>When Makar returned to St. Petersburg Pavel met him
+with kisses and hugs and punches. The Janitor, whom he
+saw the next day, shook his hand heartily.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s all right,” he said, looking Makar over with an
+amused air.</p>
+
+<p>“What are you smiling at?” Parmet demanded, colouring.</p>
+
+<p>“At you. I can’t get myself to believe it was really
+you who made such a neat job of it.”</p>
+
+<p>“I!” Makar protested, exultingly. “Any idiot would
+know how to be arrested. It’s Clara that carried the
+scheme through.”</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243"><span class="pagenum">[243]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“Still, there is better stuff in you than I gave you credit
+for.”</p>
+
+<p>Makar was quivering to know something of the use that
+had been made of his arrest, but conspirators ask no questions.
+Indeed, to try to know as little as possible, to avoid
+information upon anything except that in which one was
+personally participating was (or was supposed to be) an
+iron law of the movement; and now Makar was more
+jealous of his reputation as a conspirator than ever.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, it’s all right,” the Janitor said, reading his
+thoughts. “Something has been done and it’s all right;
+only under the new system it’s rather slow work.”</p>
+
+<p>Makar did not understand. The abolition of the Third
+Section had taken place while he was in prison. When
+he heard of the change he said in dismay: “Will that
+affect my scheme?”</p>
+
+<p>“Your scheme? I don’t think it will,” the Janitor
+answered mysteriously. “Of course, we’ll first have to
+see how the new system works. We must do some sounding
+and watching and studying before we know how to go
+about things. Can’t you wait a month or two?”</p>
+
+<p>Makar was silent, then his face broke into a roguish
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>“I will if you get me into an underground printing
+office for the interval,” he returned.</p>
+
+<p>The Janitor took fire. “What has that got to do with
+your cursed scheme?” he said with a slight stutter. “As
+if I had printing jobs to give away!”</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244"><span class="pagenum">[244]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>A POSTPONED WEDDING.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">IN June of that year, shortly before Makar escaped
+from prison, the unhappy Empress of Russia died after
+a long illness that was generally ascribed to her many
+years of jealousy and anguish. The Czar signified his intention
+to enter into morganatic wedlock with Princess Dolgoruki
+at once. His sons and brothers remonstrated with him,
+pleading for a postponement of the marriage until the end
+of a year’s mourning; but he was passionately devoted to
+the princess, with whom he had been on terms of intimacy
+for the past few years; he was determined to have these
+relations legitimatised, and, in view of the unrelenting
+campaign of the Terrorists, he felt that he could not do so
+too soon. Several members of the imperial family then
+went on a foreign tour, and the wedding was quietly solemnised
+on July 31 in Livadia, Crimea, where the Czar
+and his bride remained for a long honeymoon.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel’s and Clara’s wedding was to take place in the
+early part of October. The relations of the sexes among the
+Nihilists were based upon the highest ideals of purity, and
+the marriage bond was sacred in the best sense of the word,
+but they were not given to celebrating their weddings.
+When a couple became man and wife the fact was recognised
+as tacitly as it was made known, the adoption by the
+bride of her husband’s name being out of the question in<a name="Page_245" id="Page_245"><span class="pagenum">[245]</span></a>
+a world in which passports and names were apt to be
+changed every day. Still, there were exceptions, and Pavel
+insisted upon being one of these. In his overflowing bliss
+he often cast the spartanism of the movement to the winds,
+and now he was bent upon indulging himself in the “romanticism”
+of having his wedding proclaimed at a gathering
+of his most intimate friends. This was to be done at
+the close of an important revolutionary meeting, at the
+same lodgings where we once saw Pavel, Zachar and My
+Lord at a gathering of military officers. A high government
+official who occupied the first floor of the same building
+was giving an elaborate reception which kept the house
+porters busy and the street in front crowded with carriages
+and idlers; so the central organisation of the Party of the
+Will of the People took advantage of the occasion and held
+one of its general meetings under cover of the excitement.
+The assemblage, which was made up of about sixty or seventy
+persons of both sexes, comprised nearly every member
+of the Executive Committee in town, and some candidates
+for admission to the Executive who were allowed to participate
+in its deliberations without a vote. Most of the
+revolutionists present had taken part in attempts on the
+life of the Czar, as also in some of the recent assassinations.
+One man, a southerner, was the hero of the most
+sensational rescue during the past few years, having
+snatched from the Kieff prison, in which he had contrived
+to obtain the position of head keeper, three leaders of an
+extensive revolutionary plot. This man, the Janitor and
+Purring Cat now constituted the Governing Board (a sub-committee
+clothed with dictatorial powers) of the Terrorists’ Executive.</p>
+
+<p>The police were hunting for the people here gathered
+throughout the empire. Had the present meeting been<a name="Page_246" id="Page_246"><span class="pagenum">[246]</span></a>
+discovered by spies the whole movement would have been
+seriously crippled for a considerable time. Indeed, the
+complex conspiracies of the Will of the People were an
+element of fatal weakness as well as a manifestation of
+fascinating strength. The Terror absorbed the best resources
+of the party, necessitating highly centralised organisation,
+with the threads of a scattered national propaganda
+in the hands of a few “illegals” who were liable to
+be seized at any moment.</p>
+
+<p>The street was full of police, but these had all they
+could do to salute the distinguished guests of the first
+floor and to take care of the carriages and the crowd of
+curiosity seekers.</p>
+
+<p>Partly through Pavel’s influence and partly because she
+was an “illegal” and had produced a very favourable impression,
+Clara had made the acquaintance of many of the
+revolutionary leaders and been admitted as a probationary
+member of the Executive Committee. The present gathering
+was the first general meeting of the central body she
+had attended.</p>
+
+<p>“So this is the Executive Committee!” she was saying
+to herself. This, then, was the mysterious force that people
+were talking about in timid whispers; that the Czar
+dreaded; that was going to make everybody free and good
+and happy. This was it, and she was attending its meeting.
+She could scarcely believe her senses that she
+actually was there. She knew many of the members, but
+she had never seen several of them together. The present
+meeting almost benumbed her with a feeling of reverence,
+awe, and gratitude. Even those she had met often since
+her arrival in St. Petersburg seemed different beings now,
+as though spiritualised into that mysterious force that
+seemed mightier than the Czar and holier than divinity.<a name="Page_247" id="Page_247"><span class="pagenum">[247]</span></a>
+An overpowering state of exaltation, of something akin
+to the ecstasy of a woman upon taking the veil, came over
+her. Pavel was dearer than ever to her, but in her present
+mood their love impressed her as a jarring note. Self-sacrifice,
+not personal happiness, was what appealed to
+her, and by degrees she keyed herself up to a frame of
+mind in which her prospective married life seemed a gross
+profanation of the sanctuary to which she had been admitted.</p>
+
+<p>“Let us postpone it, Pasha dear,” she whispered to
+him, with a thrilling sense of sacrificing her happiness to
+the cause.</p>
+
+<p>“Why?” he demanded in perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>They went into the adjoining room. “What is the
+trouble? What’s the trouble?” he demanded, light-heartedly.</p>
+
+<p>“No trouble at all, dearest,” she answered affectionately.
+“You are dearer than ever to me, but pray let us postpone it.”</p>
+
+<p>“But there must be some reason for it,” he said with
+irritation.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t be vexed, Pashenka. There is really no special
+reason. I simply don’t feel like being married&mdash;yet.
+I want to give my life to the movement, Pasha. I am
+enjoying too much happiness as it is.” She uttered it in
+grave, measured, matter-of-fact accents, but her hazel
+eyes reflected the uplifted state of her soul.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh!” he exclaimed with a mixed sense of relief and
+adoration. “If that’s what you mean, all I can say is
+that I am not worthy of you, Clara; but of course, the
+question of giving our lives to the cause has nothing to
+do with the question of our belonging to each other. Or,
+rather, it’s one and the same thing.”</p><p><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248"><span class="pagenum">[248]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>She made no reply. The very discussion of the subject
+jarred on her.</p>
+
+<p>“You are in a peculiar mood now, and you are an
+angel, anyhow, but to-morrow you’ll see the matter in a
+different light.”</p>
+
+<p>“At any rate, let us postpone it, Pashenka.” And she
+led the way back to the meeting room.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the company knew of the expected announcement,
+and when they heard that it was not to take place
+they felt sorely disappointed. When the business of the
+meeting had been disposed of, a Terrorist named Sablin
+waggishly drank the health of Mlle. Yavner and the social
+revolution, to the accompaniment of the rapturous band
+of the first floor, and then he began to improvise burlesque
+verses on her as a newcomer, with allusions to her
+power over Pavel. This revolutionist was one of the
+“twin poets” of the party, his muse, which had a weakness
+for satire, being the gayer of the two. The “grave
+bard,” whose name was Morosoff, was in Switzerland now.
+The two were great chums. As always, Sablin was the
+great convivial spirit of the company. When he was
+not versifying, he was making jokes, telling anecdotes or
+trying to speak <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Littlie'">Little</ins>-Russian to Purring Cat, who, being
+from <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Littlie'">Little</ins> Russia, answered his questions with smiling
+passivity. Some of his rhymes related to Purring Cat’s
+interminable side-whiskers, Zachar’s habit of throwing
+out his chest as he walked, the reticence of the tall man
+with the Tartarian face, and, above all, the Janitor’s
+explosions of wrath when one “was not continually leering
+around for spies.”</p>
+
+<p>The Janitor cursed him good-humouredly, without stuttering,
+and resumed his discussion with a man who looked
+like the conventional image of Christ, and with Urie, the<a name="Page_249" id="Page_249"><span class="pagenum">[249]</span></a>
+tall blond man with typical Great-Russian features who
+had introduced Pavel to the Nihilist world and whom he
+still called “Godfather.” The gay poet then took to
+versifying on the “three blond beards” of this trio.</p>
+
+<p>Zachar made the most noise, dancing cossack hops till
+the floor shook under his feet, singing at the top of his
+lungs, filling the large room with deafening guffaws.
+Baska, the light complexioned “housewife” of the dynamite
+shop, who looked like a peasant woman, was the
+greatest giggler of all the women present. Grisha, her
+passport husband at that shop, and her real husband&mdash;a
+thin man with Teutonic features, known among the
+revolutionists as “the German”&mdash;were also there.</p>
+
+<p>Sophia, the daughter of the former governor of St.
+Petersburg, sat by Clara’s side, smiling her hearty good
+wishes upon her. She looked like a happy little girl,
+Sophia, her prominent cheeks aglow, and her clear blue
+self-possessed eyes full of affection and sweet-spirited penetration.
+She was engaged to Zachar, and Pavel’s courtship
+had enlisted her tender interest. There were several
+other women at the gathering, two or three of them decidedly
+good-looking.</p>
+
+<p>There was an unpublished poem, “Virgin Soil,” <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'by the the'">by the</ins>
+“gay bard,” which Clara had heard him recite and
+which portrayed, among other things, a Nihilist woman
+becoming a mother in her isolated cell. Her child is
+wrested from her arms to perish, and she goes insane.
+The episode, which is part of a bitter satire on a certain
+official, is based on fact. As Clara now thought of it and
+beheld the demented woman nursing a rag, a shudder
+passed through her frame.</p>
+
+<p>“Cheer up, Clara! Cheer up!” Zachar thundered.
+“We don’t want any long faces to-night.”</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250"><span class="pagenum">[250]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Clara smiled, a sorry smile, and Zachar went on hopping
+and laughing. But when Sophia stroked her hand,
+smilingly, Clara buried her face in her bosom and gave
+way to a quick sob.</p>
+
+<p>“What does it mean?” Pavel asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing,” Clara answered, gleaming through her tears.</p>
+
+<p>There were four or five Jews in the assemblage, but
+Makar was not among them. His cherished dream had
+been realised at last. He was working in a secret printing
+office. Establishments of this sort were guarded with
+special solicitude, so in view of his absent-mindedness,
+Makar never left the place for fear of bringing back some
+spy. The other revolutionists who worked in the same
+printing shop and who were registered at the police station
+as residents of the house had each his or her day
+off. Makar alone was not registered. The porters of
+the house had never seen him, and the composing room
+was his prison.</p>
+
+<p>The only other Jewess in the room was a dark insignificant
+looking woman named Hessia Helfman. She was
+touchingly bashful, so that at one time Clara had offered
+to befriend her. She had soon discovered, however, that
+the dark little Jewess was in charge of a most important
+conspiracy station. On closer acquaintance Hessia had
+proved to be quite talkative and of an extremely affectionate
+nature. Clara’s attachment to her had become
+greater still when she had learned that Purring Cat was
+her husband. The great thing was that he was a Gentile
+and a nobleman, although not a prince. Clara had told
+herself that the equality of Jew and Gentile and their
+intermarriage among socialists was a matter of course
+and that the circumstance attracted no special attention
+on her part, but she knew that it did.</p><p><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251"><span class="pagenum">[251]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>As she now looked at Hessia and her husband, she said
+to herself, with a great sense of relief: “She is as good
+as I, anyhow. If she could marry the man she loves I
+can.”</p>
+
+<p>But her joy in this absolution from her self-imposed
+injunction soon faded away. To sacrifice her happiness
+seemed to her the highest happiness this evening. She
+would surpass Hessia. If there was a world in which
+platonic relations were called for theirs was that world.
+The image of a demented woman fondling a rag in her
+prison cell came back to her.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252"><span class="pagenum">[252]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>A SECOND COURTSHIP.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">THE Czar was still in <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Lavadia'">Livadia</ins> with his bride, abandoning
+himself to his second youth with a passion that
+was tinged with the pathos of imminent tragedy,
+when Count Loris-Melikoff telegraphed to him a plea for the
+lives of two revolutionists who had been sentenced to death,
+one of these being Alexandre, the man in whose lodgings the
+gendarmes had found a diagram of the Imperial dining
+hall. The distinguished Armenian was contemplating reforms
+which he expected to leave no room for terrorism,
+and it was for the sake of these measures as well as of
+the Emperor himself, that he was averse to having the
+bitterness of the revolutionists quickened by new executions.
+If they only let the Czar live until those projects
+had been carried out, he thought, their conspiracies would
+lose all reason of existence; at any rate, the surreptitious
+support which they received from men of high
+social position would be withdrawn.</p>
+
+<p>But his despatch was followed by one from the Czarowitz,
+who, echoing the views of the anti-Melikoff party
+at court, urged his father not to show signs of weakness,
+and the sentence was allowed to stand.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>At about nine o’clock in the morning of a cold autumn
+day, a fortnight after the meeting of the Executive Committee<a name="Page_253" id="Page_253"><span class="pagenum">[253]</span></a>
+which Clara attended, Pavel stood on a chair
+nailing a clothes rack to the wall. The room was Clara’s.
+It was on the fifth floor of a house near a corner, with
+windows commanding the two intersecting streets, where
+her window signals could be seen at a considerable distance.
+She rented it furnished, with samovar service, but
+the curtains and some bits of bric-à-brac had been bought
+by Pavel who took more interest in these things and was
+handier about the house than she. He himself lived in
+the house of a distant relative, an elderly widow, who took
+great pride in him and had no doubt that he led the life
+of the average young man of his class, that is to say,
+he spent his nights and his mamma’s rubles on an endless
+crop of wild oats. To Clara’s landlady he was known
+as a brother of hers. On the present occasion he had
+found his fiancée out, but a mark on the door had told
+him that she would soon be back. Presently she came in.
+She wore a tall fur cap and her cheeks gleamed, exhaling
+the freshness of girlish health and of the cold weather
+of the street, but she looked grave. Pavel threw away his
+hammer and pounced down upon her with open arms.
+She repulsed him gently.</p>
+
+<p>“Stop,” she whispered, drearily, unbuttoning her cloak
+and drawing a newspaper from its inner pocket. “There
+is terrible news this morning.”</p>
+
+<p>The execution of Alexandre and the other revolutionist
+had taken place the day before, and the newspapers were
+allowed to print a very brief account of it&mdash;how they
+bade each other good-bye on the scaffold and how, when
+Alexandre saw the death-shroud on his friend, his eyes
+filled with tears. The two condemned men had been great
+chums for several years, Alexandre having once wrested
+the other from a convoy. Now they died together.</p><p><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254"><span class="pagenum">[254]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>As Pavel read the account of the double execution,
+standing by the window, a flush of overpowering despair
+shot into his chest and diffused itself through his legs.</p>
+
+<p>“They have choked them after all,” he gasped out.</p>
+
+<p>Clara, who sat at a table watching him, dropped her
+head on her folded arms, in a paroxysm of quick, bitter
+sobbing.</p>
+
+<p>The few details in the newspaper report gave vividness
+to the grewsome scene. The two executed men had been
+among Pavel’s most intimate friends. The image of Alexandre,
+his arms pinioned, looking on with tears while a
+white shroud was being slipped over his fellow-prisoner,
+was tearing at his heart with cruel <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'insistance'">insistence</ins>.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, it’s terrible, Clarochka!” he moaned, dropping
+by her side, nestling to her, and bursting into tears in
+her bosom. Then, getting up, he took to walking back
+and forth, vehemently. “They have choked them, the
+blood-drinkers,” he muttered. “They have done it after
+all.” He fell silent, pacing the floor in despair, and then
+burst out once again: “They have choked them, the vampires.”</p>
+
+<p>“But war is war,” she said, for something to say to
+him, her own face distorted with her struggle against a
+flow of tears.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I don’t know. All I do know is that they have
+been murdered, that they are no more.” A minute or
+two later he turned upon her with a look full of ghastly
+malice. “War did you say? The government can’t have
+enough of it, can it? Well, it shall have all the war it
+wants. The party has only shown it the blossoms; the
+berries are still to come.”</p>
+
+<p>The world seemed to be divided into those who had
+known the two executed men personally and those who<a name="Page_255" id="Page_255"><span class="pagenum">[255]</span></a>
+had not. For the moment there seemed to be little in
+common between him and Clara. She strained him to
+a seat by her side on the sofa again, clasping one of his
+hands in both of hers, and kissed him on the cheek, wetting
+his temple with her tears.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you know, dearest, I really had a lurking hope
+they would be spared,” he said. “I was ashamed to say
+so, but I did. But no! they choked them. They choked
+them. Idiots that they are. They imagine they can hang
+every honest man in the country.”</p>
+
+<p>“Loris-Melikoff is even worse than the Czar. His liberalism
+is nothing but hypocrisy. There can no longer
+be any question about it.”</p>
+
+<p>“He is a rogue of the deepest dye. He is a bungling
+hypocrite, an abominable liar and a mangy coward, that’s
+what he is. But to the devil with him! This is not the
+point. Oh, nothing is the point. Nothing except that
+they have been murdered.”</p>
+
+<p>He went to see some of the revolutionists with whom
+he had shared the intimacy of the dead men.</p>
+
+<p>Left alone, Clara began to pace the floor slowly. Not
+having known either Alexandre or the man who had died
+with him, she was exempt from that acute agony of grief
+which was her lover’s; but there was the image of two men
+in death-shrouds, a stirring image of martyrdom, before
+her vision. Pity, the hunger of revenge and a loftier
+feeling&mdash;the thirst of self-sacrifice to the cause of liberty&mdash;swelled
+her heart. Back and forth she walked,
+slowly, solemnly, her hands gently clasped behind her,
+her soul in a state of excitement that was coupled with
+a peculiar state of physical tranquillity, her mind apparently
+seeing things with a perspicacity the like of which
+it had never enjoyed before. Her future, her duties, her<a name="Page_256" id="Page_256"><span class="pagenum">[256]</span></a>
+relation to the rest of the world, her whole life&mdash;all was
+wonderfully clear to her, and in spite of her anguish
+over the death of the two men she felt singularly happy.
+It seemed to be a matter of course that her party would
+now undertake some new plot, one exceeding in boldness
+and magnitude all its predecessors. Many lives would
+have to be staked. She would offer hers. Matrimony was
+out of the question at a time like this. She conjured that
+image of the insane woman clasping a rag to her bosom
+in support of her position. She longed to be near Pavel
+again. In her mind she embraced him tenderly, argued
+with him, opened her soul to him. It was all so clear.
+Her mind was so firmly made up. She fondly hoped she
+would make Pavel see it all in the same light.</p>
+
+<p>The explanation took place the next time he called on
+her, a few days later.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, we shall all have to offer our lives,” he replied.
+“But for God’s sake love me, Clanya. It will drive me
+crazy if you don’t.”</p>
+
+<p>“But I do, I do. I love you with every fibre of my
+being, Pasha. What has put it in your head to doubt it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I don’t know. All I do know is that as long as
+my life is mine I cannot exist without you. I am frightfully
+lonely and that stands in the way of my work.
+Dash it, I feel just as I did last summer before I took
+courage to tell you that I was insanely in love with you.”</p>
+
+<p>She drew him to her, with a smile at once of happiness
+and amusement.</p>
+
+<p>“Poor boy! It’s enough to break one’s heart. Poor
+little dear!” she joked affectionately.</p>
+
+<p>“I knew you would be making fun of me,” he said,
+yearning upon her. “Love me, Clanya, do love me, with
+all your heart. I cannot live apart from you, I cannot,<a name="Page_257" id="Page_257"><span class="pagenum">[257]</span></a>
+upon my word I cannot,” he concluded piteously, like
+a child.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you imagine it’s easy for me to be away from
+you?” she retorted earnestly. “I can’t be a single hour
+without you without missing you, without feverishly waiting
+to see you again. As if you did not know it! But
+what can we do? Is this the only sacrifice we are ready
+to make?”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>A fortnight had passed. Unknown to her lover, Clara
+had spoken to the Janitor, intimating her readiness to
+offer her life, and asking for one of the most dangerous
+assignments the Governing Board could give her. She
+was waiting for an answer, when the startling news spread
+among the revolutionists that the Janitor was in the
+hands of the enemy and that the capture of that maniac of
+caution had been the result of a most insane piece of
+recklessness.</p>
+
+<p>His arrest was one of the heaviest losses the party had
+yet sustained. At the same time the government found
+a new source of uneasiness in it. A large quantity of
+dynamite and some other things confiscated at his lodgings
+pointed to a vigorous renewal of terroristic activity.
+Another plot on the life of the Emperor seemed to be
+hatching in the capital, yet all efforts of the police and
+the gendarmes in this connection were futile. Indeed, the
+circumstances of the Janitor’s arrest only furnished new
+proof of the ineptitude and shiftlessness of those whose
+business it was to ferret out Nihilism.</p>
+
+<p>A few days before the Janitor was taken the police
+received word about two portraits which had been left
+for reproduction at a well-known photograph gallery and
+in which the photographer had recognised the two Nihilists<a name="Page_258" id="Page_258"><span class="pagenum">[258]</span></a>
+who had recently been hanged. Instead of a detective
+being detailed, however, to lie in wait for the unknown
+man, the proprietor of the gallery was simply ordered
+to notify the police when he came for his pictures. The
+unknown man was the Janitor. When he called for
+the photographs, an awkward attempt was made to detain
+him which aroused his suspicion. He pleaded haste and
+made for the door. When a porter barred his way he
+scared him off by thrusting his hand into an empty
+pistol-pocket. A similar order for photographs of the
+two executed Terrorists had been given by him to another
+well-known photographer next door to the former place,
+and it was when he called there, a day or two after his
+narrow escape at the adjoining gallery, that he was seized
+by detectives.</p>
+
+<p>When his landlady heard that her “star” lodger, the
+punctilious government official and retired army officer,
+was neither an official nor a retired officer, but a leading
+Nihilist, she fainted. The gendarmes had been hunting
+for him since he broke away from his captors on his
+way to prison one evening more than two years before.
+They had heard that it was he who subsequently organised
+the railroad plot near Moscow; also that he had been
+connected with the assassination of the chief of gendarmes
+and with the shooting at the Czar in front of the
+Winter Palace. Yet he had freely moved about the streets
+of St. Petersburg these two years, the busiest agitator and
+conspirator in the city, until, in a moment of morbid
+foolhardiness, he practically surrendered himself to the
+police.</p>
+
+<p>When Clara heard of his arrest, she clapped her hands
+together, Yiddish fashion. “If the Janitor has been
+arrested as a result of carelessness,” she exclaimed, “then<a name="Page_259" id="Page_259"><span class="pagenum">[259]</span></a>
+everyone of us ought to hold himself in readiness to be
+taken at any moment.”</p>
+
+<p>She repeated the remark the next time she saw Pavel,
+adding:</p>
+
+<p>“The idea of being a married woman under such conditions!”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, that’s an <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">idée fixe</i> of yours,” he said, testily.</p>
+
+<p>She gave him a look and dropped her eyes, resentfully.</p>
+
+<p>The peace-offering came from him.</p>
+
+<p>“Whew, what a cloud!” he said, pointing at her glum
+face. “Won’t there be a single rift in it? Not a wee bit
+of a one for a single ray to come through?”</p>
+
+<p>She smiled, heartily.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260"><span class="pagenum">[260]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>A HUNTED MONARCH.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">THE ministers were reporting to the Czar who had recently
+returned from Livadia. They were admitted
+one at a time. As they sat chatting under breath in
+the blue waiting room, with the white reflection of the snow
+that was falling outside, upon their faces, these elderly
+men, whose names were associated in millions of minds
+with the notion of infinite dignity and power, looked like
+a group of anxious petitioners in the vestibule of some
+official.</p>
+
+<p>An exception was made for Count Loris-Melikoff, who
+was with the Czar during the audiences of all his colleagues.
+The Supreme Executive Commission over which
+he had presided had been abolished some four months
+before. Nominally he was now simply in charge of the
+Department of the Interior, but in reality he continued
+to play the part of premier, a position he partly owed to
+Princess Dolgoruki, the Czar’s young wife, who set great
+store by his liberal policy. She was said to be a woman
+of a rather progressive turn of mind, but whether she was
+or not, her fate hung on the life of her imperial husband
+and every measure that was calculated to pacify the Nihilists
+found a ready advocate in her. Indeed, she and the
+Count were united by a community of personal interests;
+for he had as many enemies at court as she, and his position<a name="Page_261" id="Page_261"><span class="pagenum">[261]</span></a>
+depended upon the life of Alexander II. as much as
+hers.</p>
+
+<p>The Czar was receiving the ministers in a chamber of
+moderate size, finished in sombre colours, with engaged
+columns of malachite, book-cases of ebony and silver, with
+carvings representing scenes from Russian history, and a
+large writing table to match. Statues of bronze and ivory
+stood between the book-cases and a striking life-size watercolour
+of Nicholas I. hung on the wall to the right of the
+Czar’s chair. The falling snow outside was like a great
+impenetrable veil without beginning or end, descending
+from some unknown source and disappearing into some
+equally mysterious region. The room, whose high walls,
+dismally imposing, were supposed to hold the destinies
+of a hundred millions of human beings, was filled with
+lustreless wintry light. The Emperor, tall, erect, broad-shouldered,
+the image of easy dignity, but pale and with
+a touch of weariness in his large oval face, wore the undress
+uniform of a general of infantry. He was sixty-two
+and he was beginning to look it. He listened to the
+ministers with constrained attention. He showed exaggerated
+interest in the affairs of their respective departments,
+but they could see that his heart was not in their
+talk, and with unuttered maledictions for the upstart vice-Emperor,
+they made short work of their errands. They
+knew that the Interior Department was the only one that
+commanded the Czar’s interest in those days.</p>
+
+<p>At last the Emperor and his chief adviser were left
+alone. Both were silent. Loris-Melikoff was as strikingly
+oriental of feature as Alexander II. was European. Notwithstanding
+his splendid military career and uniform
+he had the appearance of a sharp-witted scientist rather
+than of a warrior. His swarthy complexion, shrewd oriental<a name="Page_262" id="Page_262"><span class="pagenum">[262]</span></a>
+eyes and huge energetic oriental nose, flanked by
+greyer and longer side-whiskers than the Czar’s, made
+him look like a representative of some foreign power.</p>
+
+<p>There was pathos in both. Alexander II. had that
+passion for life which comes to an old man upon marrying
+a pretty young woman. Yet foreigners who saw
+him during this period said that he looked like a hunted
+man. As to Count Melikoff, his advance had been so
+rapid, he was surrounded by so many enemies at court,
+and the changes by which he was trying to save the Czar’s
+life and his own power, were beset by so many obstacles,
+that he could not help feeling like the peasant of the story
+who was made king for one day.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally talkative and genially expansive, the Czar’s
+manner toward people who were admitted to his intimacy
+was one of amiable informality. The chief pathos of his
+fate sprang from the discrepancy between the Czar and
+the man in him, between a vindictive ruthlessness born of
+a blind sense of his autocratic honour and an affectionate,
+emotional nature with less grit than pride. Had he been
+a common mortal he would have made far more friends
+than enemies.</p>
+
+<p>Count Loris-Melikoff had become accustomed to feel at
+home in his presence. At this minute, however, as the
+Czar was watching the snow flakes, with an air of idle
+curiosity, the Armenian had an overbearing sense of the
+distance between them. He knew that the Czar was
+anxious to talk about the revolutionists and that he hated
+to do so. His heart contracted with common human pity,
+yet in the silence that divided them it came over him that
+the man in front of him was the Czar, and a feeling of
+awe seized him like the one he used to experience at sight
+of the Emperor long before he was raised to his present<a name="Page_263" id="Page_263"><span class="pagenum">[263]</span></a>
+position. This feeling passed, however, the moment the
+Czar began to speak.</p>
+
+<p>“Well?” he said, with sudden directness. “Anything
+new about that Michailoff fellow?” Alexandre Michailoff
+was the real name of the Janitor.</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing new so far, your Majesty,” Loris-Melikoff
+answered obsequiously, yet with something like triumph,
+as if the powerlessness of the police were only too natural
+and substantiated his views on the general state of things.
+“He is one of their chief ringleaders.”</p>
+
+<p>“And this has been known all along,” the Emperor
+remarked with sad irony. “Such a thing would be inconceivable
+in any other capital in Europe.”</p>
+
+<p>“Quite so. But I feel that in other countries, the
+capture of miscreants like ours would be due less to the
+efficiency of the police than to the cordial coöperation of
+the public. The trouble is that our police is thrown on
+its own resources, Sire. It is practically fighting those
+wretches single-handed.”</p>
+
+<p>The Czar had a fit of coughing, the result of asthma.
+When it had subsided, he said with an air of suffering:</p>
+
+<p>“Well, that’s your theory. But then their public is
+not ours. The average Russian is not wide-awake enough
+to coöperate with the authorities.” He had in mind his
+own address at Moscow in which he had appealed to the
+community at large for this very assistance in ferreting
+out sedition. The Will of the People had come into
+existence since then.</p>
+
+<p>“Still, if our public were drawn into active coöperation
+with the Government, if it became habituated to a sense
+of the monarch’s confidence in itself, it seems reasonable to
+suppose that the indolence of the community would then
+disappear. No people is capable of greater loyalty to the<a name="Page_264" id="Page_264"><span class="pagenum">[264]</span></a>
+throne than your Majesty’s. All that is needed is to lend
+to this devotion tangibility. This and this alone would
+enable your Majesty to cure the evil. What the body
+politic needs is judicious internal treatment. Surgical
+operations have proven futile. These are my sincerest
+convictions, your Majesty.”</p>
+
+<p>“I know they are,” the Czar answered musingly.</p>
+
+<p>“And the great point is, that with the intelligent
+classes actively interested in the preservation of law and
+order, criminal societies of any sort would find themselves
+without any ground to stand upon.”</p>
+
+<p>The Czar had another cough, and then he said, flushing:</p>
+
+<p>“There is a simpler way to leave them without ground
+to stand upon, surgical operations or no surgical operations.
+Call it what you will. There is no sense in pampering
+them, Melikoff. Why, in western Europe they
+execute common murderers. As to a gang of assassins
+like that, death would be regarded a mild punishment.”
+He lighted a cigarette, but forthwith extinguished it and
+went on with emphasis: “We handle them with kid gloves,
+Melikoff. That’s why they take chances.”</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with subdued anger, citing the republican uprising
+led by aristocratic army officers in 1825, which his
+father (the man whose portrait was on the right wall)
+quelled by means of field guns. Loris-Melikoff demurred
+to the comparison, tactfully hinting that there would be
+no betrayal of weakness in inviting the public to participate
+in the extermination of crime by showing it signs of
+increased imperial confidence, and the Czar softened again.
+He felt that the Armenian knew how to save him and he
+willingly submitted to his and Princess Dolgoruki’s influence.
+But Fate was bent on tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander II. lacked anything but courage. Still, this<a name="Page_265" id="Page_265"><span class="pagenum">[265]</span></a>
+continuous living under fire had gradually unnerved him.
+The soldier on the battlefield finds moral support in the
+presence of thousands of comrades, all facing the same
+fate as he; whereas he was like a lone man on top of a
+dynamite pile. And if his perils were shared by those
+about him, this only added the agonising consciousness
+that his person carried the shadow of destruction with it,
+endangering the life of every living being that came near
+him. He knew, for example, that when he was at the
+theatre candles were kept ready, in case the lights were
+blown out by an explosion; that many people stayed away
+from the playhouse on such occasions for fear of being
+destroyed along with their sovereign. His pride would not
+let him feel low-spirited. He very often forced himself
+to disdain caution, to act with reckless courage. Nevertheless
+he had a dreary, jaded look. The notion that he,
+the most powerful of men, the image of grandeur and
+human omnipotence, should tremble at every sound,
+wounded his common human pride acutely. The consequence
+was that this mightiest monarch in the world,
+the gigantic man of sixty-two, every bit of him an Emperor,
+was at heart a terror-stricken infant mutely imploring
+for help. He continued to appear in the streets
+of the capital, accompanied by his usual escort and to
+return the salutes of passers-by with his usual air of
+majestic ease. Now and then he went to the theatre, and
+occasionally even beyond the scenes for a flirtation with
+the actresses. But the public knew that besides his large
+uniformed escort, his carriage was watched by hordes of
+detectives in citizen’s clothes, and that every inch of the
+ground which he was to traverse was all but turned inside
+out for possible signs of danger. And those who were
+admitted to his presence knew that underneath his grand,<a name="Page_266" id="Page_266"><span class="pagenum">[266]</span></a>
+free-and-easy bearing was a sick heart and a crushed spirit.
+That the enemy was an unknown quantity was one of the
+sources of his growing disquiet. The organised movement
+might be very large and it might be ridiculously
+small, but with a latent half-Nihilist in the heart of every
+subject. He was beginning to realise at last that he knew
+his people scarcely better than he did the French or the
+English. He was anxious to make peace with that invisible
+enemy of his, provided it did not look as if he did.</p>
+
+<p>He was willing to be deceived, and Loris-Melikoff was
+about to help him deceive himself. But destiny was
+against them both. He was an honest man, Loris-Melikoff,
+serious-minded, public-spirited, one of the few able statesmen
+Russia ever had; but his path was strewn with thorns.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267"><span class="pagenum">[267]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MYSTERY OF A SHOP.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">A TALL man with a reddish beard called at one of the
+police stations of the capital about a cheese store
+which he was going to open on Little Garden Street.
+He gave his name as Koboseff. When he had gone the Captain
+of the station said to one of his roundsmen:</p>
+
+<p>“That fellow doesn’t talk like a tradesman. I asked
+him a few questions, and his answers were rather too
+polished for a cheese dealer.” And taking up his pen, he
+added, with a preoccupied air, “Keep an eye on him,
+will you?”</p>
+
+<p>Little Garden Street was part of a route which the
+Emperor often took on his way to or from his niece’s
+residence, the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Michail'">Michaïl</ins> Palace, and received the special
+attention of the police.</p>
+
+<p>The roundsman spoke to the agent of the house where
+Koboseff had rented a basement for his projected shop
+and dwelling room; whereupon the agent recalled that
+cheesemonger’s handwriting had struck him as being too
+good for a man of his class. Inquiry at the town at which
+Koboseff’s passport was dated brought the information
+that a document corresponding in every detail to the one
+in question had actually been issued by the local authorities.
+Koboseff was thus no invented name, and as the
+description in the passport agreed with the appearance of<a name="Page_268" id="Page_268"><span class="pagenum">[268]</span></a>
+the man who had rented the basement, the St. Petersburg
+police saw no ground for further suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>The cheese shop was opened in the early part of January,
+Koboseff having moved in with a fair-complexioned
+woman whom he introduced as his wife. Some three or
+four weeks later the head porter of the house notified the
+police that Koboseff had boasted of the flourishing state
+of his business, whereas in reality his shop attracted but
+very scant custom. At the same time it was pointed out
+that there was a well-established and prosperous cheese
+store close by, that the basement occupied by the Koboseffs
+was scarcely the place one would naturally select for the
+purpose, and that the rent was strikingly too high for the
+amount of business Koboseff could expect to do there. To
+cap the climax, there was some lively gossip among the
+neighbours about Mme. Koboseff, who had been seen smoking
+cigarettes&mdash;a habit quite unusual for a woman of the
+lower classes&mdash;and who often stayed out all night.</p>
+
+<p>“Koboseff” was Uric Bogdanovich, Pavel’s “Godfather,”
+and “Mme. Koboseff” was Baska, formerly
+“housewife” of the dynamite shop and a year previous to
+that in charge of a house in the south near which Zachar
+and others attempted to blow up an imperial train.</p>
+
+<p>The cheese shop was often visited by Zachar, Purring
+Cat, the reticent stalwart man with the Tartarian features,
+Pavel and other revolutionists. The police kept close
+watch on the place, but, according to all reports, no suspicious
+persons were ever seen to enter it. Upon the whole
+the Koboseffs seemed to be real tradesmen, and as the
+information concerning their passport was satisfactory,
+they were not disturbed. A slim little man named Kurilloff
+who had played the part of errand boy at the cheese
+shop had been arrested, but his detention had nothing to<a name="Page_269" id="Page_269"><span class="pagenum">[269]</span></a>
+do with the Koboseffs, and the police of Little Garden
+Street had no idea of the arrest, while the officers who
+had made it were unaware of the prisoner’s connection
+with a suspicious shop.</p>
+
+<p>“If I were you I’d make missus behave,” the head porter
+of the house once said to Koboseff, speaking of his “wife.”</p>
+
+<p>“Right you are,” the cheesemonger replied. “Only my
+old woman is a tough customer to handle, you know. I
+do tell her she had better mind the house and ought to be
+ashamed of herself to smoke cigarettes, but she doesn’t
+care a rap, not she.”</p>
+
+<p>“I would teach her if she was <i>my</i> wife.”</p>
+
+<p>The cheesemonger made a gesture of despair, and the
+porter said to himself that there was nothing suspicious
+about him; that he was simply a fellow without backbone
+and a fool, qualities which seemed to account for Koboseff’s
+incompetence as a business man.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>“Well, Clanya,” Pavel said to Mlle. Yavner, lazily addressing
+her in the diminutive of his own coining. “I am
+afraid I shall have to exile you for some time.”</p>
+
+<p>“Exile me?” she asked absently without lifting her
+eyes from a heap of type she was sorting and putting up
+in packages. She sat across the table from the sofa upon
+which he was cuddling himself drowsily as a cat does
+before a fireside.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, that’s what I’ll have to do&mdash;pack you off, put you
+in a box, nail you up tight, stick a label on it and ship
+you somewhere. ‘To places not so very distant,’” he
+added, mocking the official phrase used in transporting
+people to eastern Siberia.</p>
+
+<p>She raised her eyes from her work, her fingers stiff and
+black with lead dust. “What are you driving at, Pasha?<a name="Page_270" id="Page_270"><span class="pagenum">[270]</span></a>
+Anything up? Or is it merely one of those jokes under
+which one must write in big letters: ‘This is a joke?’”</p>
+
+<p>“Is <i>that</i> a joke?” he asked, and burst into laughter.</p>
+
+<p>She resumed her work. The type she was sorting was
+intended for a revolutionary printing office, having been
+sent to St. Petersburg by Masha Safonoff, who had bought
+it of the foreman of the government’s printing office in
+Miroslav.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, to all the diabolical devils with that type of
+yours, Clanya. Can’t you sit down by a fellow’s side for
+a minute or two?”</p>
+
+<p>She got up, washed her hands and complied with his
+wish. As she played with his hand she noticed the trace
+of blisters on his palm. Her face darkened; but she
+asked no questions. After a little she demanded: “What
+did you mean by ‘exiling’ me?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh dash it all, Clanya. It’s something serious. I’ll
+tell it to you some other time. I’m too lazy to be serious.”
+He would have preferred to be sprawling like this with
+her hands in his; luxuriating in the gleam of her intelligent
+blue eyes and in the feminine atmosphere of her
+person; but his excuse that it was “too serious” only
+sharpened her determination to know what it was without
+delay.</p>
+
+<p>“What is it, Pasha?”</p>
+
+<p>“There you are,” he said peevishly. “One can’t have
+a minute’s rest from business, not a minute’s rest.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why did you hasten to speak of ‘exiling’ me, then?”
+she retorted tartly. “Why didn’t you keep it to yourself
+until you were again in a mood for ‘business’?”</p>
+
+<p>He had not kept it to himself simply because it was not
+easy for him to keep anything from her. He was more
+apt to fly into a temper with her than she with him, but<a name="Page_271" id="Page_271"><span class="pagenum">[271]</span></a>
+in their mutual relations she was the stronger vessel of
+the two and, in an imperceptible, unformulated way, he
+was considerably under her thumb. When he heard or
+saw something new, received some new impression, his
+first impulse was to share it with her. If an opinion was
+formed in his mind he wondered, sometimes timidly,
+whether she would concur with it. Timidly, because in
+many instances, when he came bubbling over with enthusiasm
+over some scheme of his own, she had cruelly dampened
+his fervour by merely extricating the vital point of
+his argument from a surrounding tangle of roseate phraseology.
+His great intellectual feast was to be in her room,
+discussing theories, books, people with her. These discussions,
+which sometimes lasted for hours, often called
+forth a snappish, bitter tone on both sides, but they were
+at once an expression and a fostering agency of that
+spiritual unity which was one of the chief sources of their
+happiness in one another.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, there is very little to tell about,” he said at
+last. “Something is under way, and it has been decided
+to notify all illegals not in it to vacate St. Petersburg
+until it’s all over.”</p>
+
+<p>The lines of her fresh-tinted face hardened into an
+expression of extreme gravity and her fingers grew limp
+in his grasp. She withdrew them.</p>
+
+<p>“Look at her!” he squeaked in a burst of merriment.</p>
+
+<p>“There is nothing to look at. I am not going.” She
+dropped her glance. She divined that his blisters had
+something to do with the digging of a mine in which he
+took part.</p>
+
+<p>“Is it all settled?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, Pasha! Your jesting is so out of place,” she
+returned sullenly. “I am not going.”</p><p><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272"><span class="pagenum">[272]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“But the air is getting hot in St. Petersburg. Whew!
+The police are suspicious, of course; they won’t leave a
+stone unturned.”</p>
+
+<p>He took hold of her tender girlish hand, but she withdrew
+it again, with a gesture of impatience.</p>
+
+<p>“There will be something to do for you too later on,”
+he comforted her, guiltily. “It’s going to be a big thing,
+the biggest of all. You’ll come back in a month or so.”</p>
+
+<p>She made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>The two intersecting streets outside reeked and creaked
+and glittered with the crispness of a typical St. Petersburg
+frost. It was about ten in the morning, in the early part
+of January. The little parlour was delightfully warm,
+with a dim consciousness of sleigh-furs, hack drivers in
+absurd winter caps, pedestrians huddling themselves and
+wriggling and grunting for an effeminating background to
+one’s sense of shelter. The even heat of the white glazed
+oven seemed to be gleaming and stirring over the surface
+of the tiles like something animate, giving them an effect
+of creamy mellowness that went to one’s heart together
+with the delicious warmth they radiated. Ever and anon
+a sleigh bell would tinkle past and sink into Pavel’s mood.
+There was a rhythm to the warm stillness of the room.
+But Clara’s silence tormented him.</p>
+
+<p>“We’ll discuss it later on, Clanya. I’m too tired
+now. My brain won’t work. Let us play school,” he
+pleaded fawningly, in burlesque Russian, mimicking the
+accent of the Czech who taught Latin at the Miroslav
+gymnasium.</p>
+
+<p>“Stop that, pray.”</p>
+
+<p>He made a sorry effort to obey her, and finally she
+yielded, with a smile and a Jewish shrug. He played a
+gymnasium teacher and she a pupil. He made her conjugate<a name="Page_273" id="Page_273"><span class="pagenum">[273]</span></a>
+his name as she would a verb; made puns on
+Clanya, which is an unfinished Russian word meaning to
+bow, to greet, to convey one’s regards; mocked and
+laughed at her enunciation till his eyes watered. Gradually
+he drifted into an impersonation of old Pievakin
+and flew into a passion because her hearty laughter marred
+the illusion of the performance.</p>
+
+<p>“You do need rest, poor thing,” she said, looking at
+his haggard, worn face.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, another few weeks and we shall be able to get
+all the rest we want, if not in a cell, or in a quieter place
+still, in some foreign resort, perhaps. I really feel confident
+we are going to win this time.”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s about time the party did.”</p>
+
+<p>“It will this time, you may be sure of it. And then&mdash;by
+George, the very sky will feel hot. Everything seems
+ready for a general uprising. All that is needed is the
+signal. I can see the barricades going up in the streets.”
+He gnashed his teeth and shook her by the shoulders
+exultantly. “Yes, ma’am. And then, Clanya, why, then
+we won’t have to go abroad for our vacation. One will
+be able to breathe in Russia then. Won’t we give ourselves
+a spree, eh? But whether here or abroad, I must
+take you for a rest somewhere. Will you marry your love-lorn
+Pashka then? I dare you to say no.”</p>
+
+<p>“But I don’t want to say no,” she answered radiantly.</p>
+
+<p>They went to dinner together and then they parted.
+As they shook hands he peered into her face with a rush
+of tenderness, as though trying to inhale as deep an impression
+of her as possible in case either of them was
+arrested before they met again. And, indeed, there was
+quite an eventful day in store for her.</p>
+
+<p>One of the persons she was to see later in the afternoon<a name="Page_274" id="Page_274"><span class="pagenum">[274]</span></a>
+was a man with a Greek name. As she approached the
+house in which he had his lodgings, she recognised in the
+gas-lit distance the high forehead and the boyish face of
+Sophia, the ex-Governor’s daughter. Sophia, or Sonia,
+as she was fondly called, was bearing down upon her at a
+brisk, preoccupied walk. As she swept past Clara, without
+greeting her, she whispered:</p>
+
+<p>“A trap.”</p>
+
+<p>The lodging of the man with the queer name had been
+raided, then, and was now held by officers in the hope of
+ensnaring some of his friends. Clara had been at the
+place several times and she was afraid that the porter of
+the house, in case he stood at his post in the gateway at
+this minute, might recognise her.</p>
+
+<p>The dim opening of the gate loomed as a sickly quadrangular
+hole exhaling nightmare and ruin. Turning
+sharply back, however, might have attracted notice; so
+Clara entered the first gate on her way, four or five houses
+this side of her destination, and when she reappeared a
+minute or two later, she took the opposite direction. As
+she turned the next corner she found herself abreast of a
+man she had noticed in the streets before. He was fixed
+in her mind by his height and carriage. Extremely tall
+and narrow-shouldered, he walked like a man with a sore
+neck, swinging one of his long arms to and fro as he moved
+stiffly along. The look he gave her made a very unpleasant
+impression on her. He let her gain on him a little
+and then she heard his soft rubber-shod footsteps behind
+her.</p>
+
+<p>It is a terrible experience, this sense of being dogged
+as you walk along. It is tantalising enough when your
+desire to take a look at the man at your heels is only a
+matter of curiosity which for some reason or other you<a name="Page_275" id="Page_275"><span class="pagenum">[275]</span></a>
+cannot gratify. Imagine, then, the mental condition of
+an “illegal” shadowed by a spy or by a man he suspects
+of being one. He tingles with a desire to quicken pace,
+yet he must walk on with the same even, calm step; every
+minute or two he is seized with an impulse to turn on the
+fellow behind him, yet he must not show the least sign
+of consciousness as to his existence. It is the highest
+form of torture, yet it was the daily experience of every
+active man or woman of the secret organisation; for if the
+political detectives were spying upon pedestrians right and
+left, the revolutionists, on their part, were apt to be suspicious
+with equal promiscuity. Small wonder that some
+of them, upon being arrested, hailed their prison cell as a
+welcome place of rest, as a relief from the enervating
+strain of liberty under the harrowing conditions of underground
+life. As a matter of fact this wholesale shadowing
+seldom results in the arrest of a revolutionist. Thousands
+of innocent people were snuffed to one Nihilist,
+and the Nihilists profited by the triviality of suspicion.
+Most arrests were the result of accident.</p>
+
+<p>At the corner of the next large thoroughfare she paused
+and looked up the street for a tram-car. While doing so
+Clara glanced around her. The tall man had disappeared.
+A tram-car came along shortly and she was about to board
+it when she heard Sonia’s voice once more.</p>
+
+<p>“You’re being shadowed. Follow me.”</p>
+
+<p>Sonia entered a crowded sausage shop, and led the way
+to the far end of it in the rear of an impatient throng.
+Pending her turn to be waited on, she took off her broad-brimmed
+hat, asking Clara to hold it for her, while she
+adjusted her hair.</p>
+
+<p>“Put it on, and let me have your fur <ins class="punct" title="Transcriber's Note: added ,">cap,”</ins> she gestured.</p>
+
+<p>The homely broad-brimmed hat transformed Clara’s<a name="Page_276" id="Page_276"><span class="pagenum">[276]</span></a>
+appearance considerably. It made her look shorter and
+her face seemed larger and older.</p>
+
+<p>“I saw a tall fellow turn you over to one with a ruddy
+mug. The red man is waiting for you outside now, but
+I don’t think he had a good look at your face. There is
+a back door over there.”</p>
+
+<p>Clara regained the street through the yard, and sure
+enough, a man with a florid face was leisurely smoking a
+cigarette at the gate post. He only gave her a superficial
+glance and went on watching the street door of the shop.
+She took a public sleigh, ordered the driver to take her to
+the Liteyny Bridge, changed her destination in the middle
+of the journey, and soon after she got off she took another
+sleigh for quite another section of the city. In short, she
+was “circling,” and when she thought her trail completely
+“swept away,” she went home on foot.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277"><span class="pagenum">[277]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXI.</h2>
+
+<h3>A REASSURING SEARCH.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">THE capture of the man with the Greek name proved
+disastrous to the Executive Committee. It was the
+first link in a chain of most important arrests. The
+trap set at his house caught the very tall man with the Tartarian
+features; this led to the arrest of Purring Cat, and
+the residence of Purring Cat, in its turn, ensnared a pretentiously
+dressed man, in whom the superior gendarme
+officers were amazed to find their own trusted secretary,
+the man whom Makar knew as “the Dandy.” Makar’s
+arrest at Miroslav had tended to strengthen the Dandy’s
+position somewhat, but now that he was in the hands of
+the enemy himself, it seemed as if the medical student’s
+sweeping system of “counter-espionage” had burst like a
+bubble. Makar was in despair. He spoke of new plans,
+of new sacrifices, until Zachar silenced him.</p>
+
+<p>“All in due time, my dear romanticist,” he said to him.
+“A month or two later I shall be delighted to be entertained
+with the fruit of your rich fancy; not now, my boy.”</p>
+
+<p>The four arrests were a severe blow to the undertaking
+of which Zachar had been placed in charge. He was overworked,
+dejected, yet thrilling with nervous activity. But
+his own days were numbered. An air of impending doom
+hung over the Czar and his “internal enemies” alike.</p>
+
+<p>Good fortune seemed to attend the state police. While<a name="Page_278" id="Page_278"><span class="pagenum">[278]</span></a>
+the gendarmes of the capital were celebrating their unexpected
+haul an intellectual looking man was locked up
+in a frontier town as a “vagrant,” that is, as a man without
+a passport, who subsequently proved to be one of the active
+Terrorists the detectives had long been looking for. He
+was the “grave bard,” one of the twin poets of the party.
+Shortly after his arrest the Russian government received
+word from the police of the German capital that a prominent
+Russian Nihilist known among his friends as “My
+Lord,” a sobriquet due to his elegance of personal appearance
+and address, had spent some time in Berlin and was
+now on his way to St. Petersburg. A German detective
+followed the man to the frontier and then, shadowed by
+Russian spies, he was tracked to a house on the Neva
+Prospect, the leading street of St. Petersburg. There it
+was decided to arrest him Friday, March 23.</p>
+
+<p>A little after 4 o’clock of that day Zachar and the ex-Governor’s
+daughter left their home, where they were registered
+as brother and sister, and took a sleigh, alighting in
+front of the Public Library, in the very heart of the city.
+Instead of entering the library, however, which the sleigh-driver
+thought to be their destination, they parted, continuing
+their several journeys on foot.</p>
+
+<p>It was an extremely cold afternoon. The beards of
+pedestrians and sleigh-drivers and the manes of horses
+were glued with frost; their breath came in short painful
+puffs. It was getting dark. The sky was a spotless, almost
+a warm blue. To look at it you would have wondered
+where this sharp, all-benumbing cold came from.
+There was an air of insincerity about the crimson clearness
+of the afternoon light.</p>
+
+<p>Zachar wore a tall cap of Persian lamb, flattened at the
+top, and a tight-fitting fur coat. He walked briskly, his<a name="Page_279" id="Page_279"><span class="pagenum">[279]</span></a>
+chest thrown out, his full pointed beard hoary with frost,
+his cheeks red with the biting cold.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he found himself shadowed by a man in civilian
+clothes whom he knew to be a gendarme in disguise.
+It was evident, however, that the spy was following him
+merely as a suspicious person without having any idea
+what sort of man his quarry was, and Zachar, with whom a
+hunt of this kind was a daily occurrence, had no difficulty
+in “thrashing his trail.” He was bound for the cheese
+shop on Little Garden Street. This was within a short
+walk from the Public Library, yet on this occasion it took
+him an hour’s “circling” to reach the place.</p>
+
+<p>About ten minutes after Zachar entered the cheesemonger’s
+basement, the head porter of the house met two
+police officers round the corner. One of them was the
+captain of the precinct and the other, one of his roundsmen.
+The Czar was expected to pass through this street
+in two days, so one could not be too watchful over a suspicious
+place like this.</p>
+
+<p>“There is somebody down there now,” the head porter
+said to the captain, with servile eagerness. “A big fellow
+with a long pointed beard. I have seen him go down several
+times before. He looks like a business man, but
+before he started to go down he stopped to look round.”</p>
+
+<p>This stopping to look round was, according to a printed
+police circular, one of the symptoms of Nihilism, so the
+roundsman was ordered to watch until the suspicious man
+should re-emerge from the cheese shop.</p>
+
+<p>When the captain had gone the roundsman brushed out
+his icicled moustache with his finger nails, and said with
+an air of authority:</p>
+
+<p>“Well, you take your post at the gate and I’ll just go
+and change my uniform for citizen’s clothes in case it’s<a name="Page_280" id="Page_280"><span class="pagenum">[280]</span></a>
+necessary to see where that fellow is going. Keep a sharp
+lookout on that cursed basement until I get back, will
+you?”</p>
+
+<p>When he returned, in citizen’s clothes, he found that
+the suspicious man had left the store and that the head
+porter had set out after him, leaving his assistant in his
+place.</p>
+
+<p>“There is another man down there now,” the assistant
+porter whispered. Presently the new visitor came out of
+the basement. As he mounted the few steps and then
+crossed over, through the snow, to a sleigh standing near
+by, he kept mopping his face with a handkerchief, thus preventing
+the two spies from getting a look at his features.
+Seeing that he boarded a hackney-sleigh, the roundsman
+did the same, ordering the driver to follow along as
+closely as possible, but at this he lost time in persuading
+the hackman that he was a policeman in disguise. The
+two sleighs were flying through the snow as fast as their
+horses could run. The policeman was far in the rear.
+For some ten minutes his eyes were riveted to the suspicious
+man. Presently, however, the vehicle he was shadowing
+turned a corner, and by the time he reached that
+point it was gone. All sorts of sleighs, their bells jingling,
+were gliding along in every direction, but the one he
+wanted was not among them.</p>
+
+<p>The head porter, who had started after the first man,
+in the absence of the roundsman, had met with a similar
+defeat. After awhile the hackman who had driven the
+second suspicious man returned to his stand. In answer
+to inquiry he told how his fare had twice changed his
+destination, finally alighted on a street corner, and turned
+into a narrow alley.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Zachar had called on My Lord. It was about<a name="Page_281" id="Page_281"><span class="pagenum">[281]</span></a>
+seven o’clock. The two revolutionists sat chatting in a
+cheerful gas-lit room, when the host was called out into
+the corridor. As he was long in coming back, Zachar went
+to the door, prepared for the worst. He found the corridor
+full of gendarmes and police. It was evident that
+they had fought shy of raiding My Lord’s apartments for
+fear of violence, and had been patiently waiting until his
+visitor should come out of his own accord. Several of the
+gendarmes made a dash at Zachar, seizing him by both
+arms. One of these was the spy from whom he had “circled”
+away near the Public Library, soon after he had
+taken leave from the ex-Governor’s daughter three hours
+ago. Zachar’s presence here was a surprise to this gendarme,
+but the full importance of the man was still unknown
+to him. The officer in command, however, knew
+who his prisoner was.</p>
+
+<p>“What is your name?” he addressed himself to Zachar,
+with the exaltation of a man come upon a precious find.
+He knew but too well how anxious the government was to
+capture him, but he had come here to arrest My Lord
+without the remotest idea of finding this revolutionary
+giant in the place.</p>
+
+<p>“Krasnoff,” Zachar answered with dignity, in his deep-chested
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>“I beg your pardon,” the officer returned, with a twinkle
+in his eye. “I once had the pleasure of arresting
+you. Your name is Andrey Ivanovitch Jeliaboff.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, in that case I am pleased to meet you,” the prisoner
+said with playful chivalry.</p>
+
+<p>Jeliaboff’s arrest made a joyous stir not only in the
+gendarmerie, but also at court. Apart from the attempt
+to blow up an imperial train in the south, in which he had
+played the leading part, he had been described to the<a name="Page_282" id="Page_282"><span class="pagenum">[282]</span></a>
+authorities as the most gifted and effective agitator in the
+movement.</p>
+
+<p>The police at Little Garden Street were unaware of all
+this, but the conduct of the two men who had visited the
+cheese shop that afternoon seemed decidedly suspicious
+and lent a glare of colour to the irrelevancies that seemed
+to enfold the place.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning Pavel called on the Koboseffs. As
+he entered the cheese store he saw that the adjoining
+room was crowded with police officers. In his first shock
+he was only conscious of the gleam of uniforms, of Urie’s
+and somebody else’s voice and of his own sick despair.
+But the sick feeling ebbed away, leaving him in a state
+of desperate, pugnacious tranquillity, his mind on the
+revolver in his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>“Hello there!” he shouted, with the self-satisfied disrespect
+of a man of the better classes addressing one of
+the lower, and at this he surveyed the store with an air
+of contempt, as much as to say: “What a den I did
+strike!”</p>
+
+<p>“Wife,” he heard Urie’s voice, “there is a gentleman
+in the shop.”</p>
+
+<p>Baska, who had been calmly emptying a barrel of
+cheese into some boxes, wiped her hands upon her apron
+and stepped behind the counter.</p>
+
+<p>“Is your Holland cheese any good?” Pavel asked,
+sniffing. “Are you sure you can give me a pound of
+decent stuff?”</p>
+
+<p>She waited on him, simply, and after some more sniffing,
+at the wrapping paper as well as the cheese, he let
+her make up the package. As he walked toward the door
+his heart stood still for an instant.</p>
+
+<p>He was allowed to go. Whether he was followed by<a name="Page_283" id="Page_283"><span class="pagenum">[283]</span></a>
+spies he did not know. At all events, when he approached
+his “legal” residence at the house of his high-born relative,
+after an hour’s “circling,” he felt perfectly free
+from shadowing. He was greatly perplexed to think of
+the way Urie and Baska had been allowed to continue in
+their rôle of a cheesemonger couple; but, at all events,
+even if the true character of their shop had not yet been
+discovered by the police officers he had seen there, it
+seemed to be a matter of minutes when it would be.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>In the morning of that day, a few hours before Pavel
+called on the Koboseffs, the police captain of the Little
+Garden <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'street'">Street</ins> precinct had asked the prefect of St. Petersburg
+to have the cheese shop examined under the guise
+of a sanitary inspection. He was still uninformed of the
+arrest of the big fellow with the pointed beard, much less
+of the fact that he had proved to be one of the chieftains
+of the revolutionary organisation, but the story of the
+two suspicious-looking visitors at the cheese shop and
+their “circling” had made him uneasy. The Czar was
+expected to pass through Little Garden Street on Sunday,
+which was the next day, and one could not ascertain the
+real character of the Koboseffs and their business too soon.
+Nevertheless the prefect was slow to appreciate the situation.
+Indeed, it is quite characteristic of the despotic
+chaos of a regime like Russia’s that on the one hand people
+are thrown into jail to perish there on the merest
+whim of some gendarme, and, on the other, action is often
+prevented by an excess of red tape and indolence in cases
+where there is ground for the gravest suspicion. While
+hundreds of schoolboys and schoolgirls were wasting
+away in damp, solitary cells because they had been suspected
+of reading some revolutionary leaflet, the occupants<a name="Page_284" id="Page_284"><span class="pagenum">[284]</span></a>
+of this basement, in whose case suspicion was associated
+with the idea of a plot on the life of the Czar, had not
+even been subjected to the summary search and questioning
+to which every resident in Russia is ever liable.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, after considerable pleading on the part of the
+police captain, General Mrovinsky, a civil engineer of the
+Health Department, an elderly man with a kindly, genial
+face, was assigned to make the feigned inspection.</p>
+
+<p>“Your Excellency will please see if they are not digging
+a mine there,” the police captain said to him, respectfully.
+“The Emperor often passes that shop when he goes to the
+Riding Schools or to the Michaïl Palace, and that cheese
+dealer and his wife are quite a suspicious-looking couple.
+His Majesty is expected to pass the place to-morrow.”</p>
+
+<p>The general entered the cheese shop accompanied by
+the police captain, the captain’s lieutenant and the head
+porter of the house. Koboseff came out of the inner
+rooms to meet them. He turned pale, but this seemed
+natural.</p>
+
+<p>“His Excellency represents the Health Department,”
+said the captain. “There is dampness in the next house,
+and His Excellency wishes to see if your place is all
+right.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am sorry to trouble you,” said General Mrovinsky,
+kindly. “But dampness is a bad thing to have in one’s
+house, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“There is none here that I know of, sir,” Koboseff
+replied deferentially, “but, of course, a fellow must not
+be too sure, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>Baska stood in a corner of the shop, bending over a
+barrel. While the officers talked to Urie she threw a
+glance at the visitors over her shoulder and resumed her
+work.</p><p><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285"><span class="pagenum">[285]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The uniformed civil engineer made a close examination
+of the walls. The one facing the street was covered with
+planking, and Koboseff explained that he had had it done
+as a safeguard against dampness, but that there was
+none.</p>
+
+<p>“But then cheese crumbs are apt to get into the
+cracks,” urged General Mrovinsky, taking hold of one of
+the shelves along that wall. “They would decay there,
+don’t you know, and that would be almost as bad as dampness,
+wouldn’t it?” He then inspected the two living
+rooms. In the second of these he found a pile of hay.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s from our cheese barrels,” Koboseff explained;
+and pointing at another pile he added: “And that’s
+coke, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>General Mrovinsky picked up a coal, examined it, threw
+it back and wiped his fingers with some of the hay.</p>
+
+<p>“Everything is all right,” he said to the police officers,
+with a look of intelligence. He led the way back to the
+store and then back again to the middle room. Here he
+took a firm hold of the planking that lined the wall under
+the street window. He tried to wrench it off, but it would
+not yield, and he let it go.</p>
+
+<p>“Everything is all right,” he said to the captain, seating
+himself on a sofa. A trunk and some pieces of furniture
+were moved from their places and then put back. The
+general knew a merchant by the name of Koboseff, so he
+asked the cheese dealer if he was a relative of his. Urie
+said no, and after some conversation about the cheese
+business in general the officials went away.</p>
+
+<p>“There is no mine in that place. You can make yourself
+perfectly easy about it,” Mrovinsky said to the captain,
+as they made their way to the adjoining basement.</p>
+
+<p>It was while they were conversing leisurely, the old general<a name="Page_286" id="Page_286"><span class="pagenum">[286]</span></a>
+seated on the lounge, that Pavel came in. He was
+watched narrowly, but he played his part well, and as the
+engineer had already intimated to the police officers that
+there was nothing suspicious about the premises he was not
+even shadowed.</p>
+
+<p>Thus reassured, the police of the locality set to work
+preparing Little Garden <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'street'">Street</ins> for the Czar’s drive to the
+Riding School. This included an investigation as to the
+character of the occupants of all the other shops and residences
+facing the street, as well as getting the pavement
+in good repair.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287"><span class="pagenum">[287]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE RED TERROR.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">MEANWHILE a reform measure which subsequently
+became known as “the constitution of Loris-Melikoff”
+had been framed and submitted to the Czar
+by the Minister of the Interior. The project called for the
+convocation of a semi-representative assembly to be clothed
+with consultative powers. It was framed in guarded language,
+great pains having been taken to keep out anything
+like an allusion to parliamentary government.</p>
+
+<p>“But it looks like the States-General,” the Czar said
+to Loris-Melikoff. The resemblance which the measure
+bore to the opening chapter in the history of the French
+revolution, where representatives of the three estates are
+convened in consultative parliament, made a disagreeable
+impression on him. Still, the project was ingeniously
+worded as a measure tending to “enhance the confidence
+of the monarch in his loyal subjects”; so, upon a closer
+reading, the Czar warmed to it, and returned the draft to
+Loris-Melikoff with his hearty approval. This took place
+at 12 o’clock on Sunday, March 13, 1881, one day after
+the search at the cheese store. It was decided to have the
+document read before the cabinet on Wednesday, after
+which it was to be published over the imperial signature
+in the <i>Official Messenger</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The Czar was dressed in the uniform of the Sappers of<a name="Page_288" id="Page_288"><span class="pagenum">[288]</span></a>
+the Guards, whose review he was about to attend at the
+Michaïl Riding Schools.</p>
+
+<p>“I pray your Majesty to forego the trip,” Loris-Melikoff
+said, solicitously.</p>
+
+<p>The Czar smiled. Princess Dolgoruki had made a similar
+request, and by accentuating his danger they both
+only succeeded in challenging his courage. He felt as if
+in the light of their appeal staying at home would mean
+hiding. Instead of pleading with him for caution Loris-Melikoff
+should have made an effort to secure a suspension
+of hostilities in the enemy’s camp. Had the revolutionists
+been aware of what was coming a truce on their part
+would have been assured. And then, little as the project
+to be divulged resembled a constitution in the western
+sense of the word, it was yet the first approach to representative
+legislation in the history of modern Russia.
+The Nihilists were pledged to abandon their Terror the
+moment free speech had been granted, and although no
+reference to questions of this character was made in the
+“constitution,” certain liberties in that direction might
+have followed as a matter of course, as an offspring of
+the new spirit which the measure was expected to inaugurate.
+A <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'distinquished'">distinguished</ins> revolutionary writer has pointed out
+how easy it would have been for Loris-Melikoff to bring
+his expectations to the knowledge of the Executive Committee
+of the Nihilists by setting a rumour on foot among
+the professional and intellectual classes, many of whose
+representatives, as the Vice-Emperor knew but too well,
+were in touch with the central organization of the Will
+of the People. Perhaps this method of communicating
+with the revolutionists had not occurred to Loris-Melikoff;
+perhaps the iron-clad secrecy that enclosed his project
+was a necessary protection against the enemies of reform<a name="Page_289" id="Page_289"><span class="pagenum">[289]</span></a>
+at court. However it may have been, neither the revolutionists
+nor their liberal allies had any inkling as to the
+document about to be published in the <i>Official Messenger</i>.
+Instead, they saw the police and the gendarmerie continuing
+their riot of administrative violence; instead, they
+heard of an order by virtue of which a number of revolutionists
+who had served their term within prison walls at
+Kara, Siberia, and been admitted to partial freedom in the
+penal colony outside, had suddenly been put in irons and
+thrown back into their cells; whereupon some of them had
+committed suicide rather than return to the tortures of
+their former life. All of which had added gall to the
+bitterness of the revolutionists at large and whetted their
+distrust of the “crafty Armenian,” as they called Loris-Melikoff.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The Czar’s favourite coachman, a stalwart, handsome
+fellow, with a thick blond beard and clear blue eyes, sat
+on the box of the closed imperial carriage, waiting in the
+vast courtyard of the Winter Palace. An escort of six
+lusty Cossacks, two gendarme officers and one of the several
+chiefs of police of the capital held themselves in
+readiness near by, the Cossacks on their mounts, the other
+three in their open sleighs. Presently a great door flew
+open and the Emperor appeared, accompanied by an adjutant
+and a sergeant of the page corps. He wore a military
+cape-cloak and a helmet. While the page held the
+carriage door open, the Czar said to the coachman:</p>
+
+<p>“By Songsters’ Bridge!”</p>
+
+<p>This was not his habitual route to the Riding Schools.
+Not that he was aware of the suspicions which the cheese
+shop on Little Garden <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'street'">Street</ins> had aroused. He had not
+the least idea of the existence of such a shop. He had<a name="Page_290" id="Page_290"><span class="pagenum">[290]</span></a>
+decided on the new route merely as a matter of general
+precaution, in case there was a mine somewhere. As to
+pistol shots he was sufficiently screened by the walls of
+his carriage as well as by the bodies of his cossacks and
+their horses.</p>
+
+<p>That calm feeling of reverent affection with which the
+average Englishman hails his sovereign is unknown in Russia.
+But whether with reverence or mute imprecations,
+the coach of a Czar disseminates thrills of fright as it proceeds.
+The cavalcade of horsemen and sleighs, with the
+great lacquered carriage in the centre, was sailing and galloping
+along like a grim alien force, diffusing an atmosphere
+of terror. To those who saw it approaching the fiery
+cossacks on their fiery horses looked like a ferocious
+band of invaders, their every fibre spoiling for violence,
+rushing onward on an errand of conquest and bloody
+reckoning.</p>
+
+<p>It was a cloudy day. The streets were covered with
+discoloured, brownish snow; the snow on the roofs, window-sills,
+cornices, gate-posts, was of immaculate whiteness,
+apparently devoid of weight, smooth and neat, as though
+trimmed by some instrument. There were few people
+along the route followed by the little procession and most
+of these were in their Sunday clothes. Now a civilian
+snatched off his cap spasmodically, now a soldier drew
+himself up with all his might, as though trying to lift
+himself off his feet. Here and there a drunken citizen was
+staggering along. Every person the carriage passed was
+scrutinised by every member of the escort, by the cossacks
+as well as by the chief of police and the gendarme
+officers. The Riding Schools were soon reached.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor left the building less than an hour later.
+He was accompanied by Grand Duke Michaïl, his brother,<a name="Page_291" id="Page_291"><span class="pagenum">[291]</span></a>
+the two going to the Michaïl Palace, where they were to
+have lunch with the Czar’s niece.</p>
+
+<p>Sophia, the ex-governor’s daughter, was watching the
+imperial carriage from a point of vantage. Presently she
+turned into a neighbouring street, and passing a fair-complexioned
+young man in a dark overcoat, who held a white
+package in his hand, she raised her handkerchief to her
+nose. The young man then hurried away toward Catharine
+Canal. Three other men, one of them a gigantic
+looking fellow, stood at so many different points, and
+at sight of Sophia with her handkerchief to her nose,
+they all started in the same direction as the first man,
+while the young woman walked over to the Neva Prospect
+from which she crossed a bridge to the opposite
+side of Catharine Canal.</p>
+
+<p>It was half past two when the imperial carriage,
+surrounded by the six cossacks and followed by the gendarme
+officers and the chief of police, set out on their
+homebound journey. The handsome coachman let out
+his horses. The group was scudding along at top speed.
+The chief of police stood up in his sleigh, one of his
+gloved hands on the shoulder of his driver, as he strained
+his eyes now to the right now to the left, after the manner
+of the human figure on the face of a certain kind of
+clocks. The carriage turned to the right, passing a detachment
+of marines who saluted the Czar by presenting
+arms. The carriage was now on one of the banks of
+the Catharine Canal, an iron railing to the right, a row
+of buildings to the left. An employe of a horse-car
+company, who was levelling off a ridge of caked snow
+at this moment, hastily rested his crowbar against the
+iron railing and bared his head. Some distance in front
+of him a young man in a dark overcoat, and with a white<a name="Page_292" id="Page_292"><span class="pagenum">[292]</span></a>
+package in his hand, was trudging along the canal side of
+the street. He was passed and left in the rear by a
+man in the uniform of a hospital nurse of the guards.
+On the sidewalk to the left of the Czar, another man,
+also in military uniform, was moving rapidly along, while
+from the opposite direction, in the middle of the snow-covered
+street, came a boy pulling a little sled with a
+basket of meat on it. Sophia was looking on from the
+other side of the canal.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Dvorzhitzky (the chief of police) was scanning
+the sidewalk to the left, when a terrific crash went
+up from under the Czar’s carriage. It was as if a mass
+of deafening sound had lain dormant there, in the form
+of a vast closed fan, and the fan had suddenly flown
+open. The colonel’s horses reared violently, hurling him
+over the shoulder of his coachman. While he was surveying
+the left side of the street, the employe of the
+tramway company and several military people, coming
+up alongside the railing, had seen the young man in the
+dark overcoat lift his white package and throw it under
+the Czar’s carriage. The carriage came to a sudden halt
+amid a cloud of smoke and snow dust. A second or
+two passed before any of them could realise what it all
+meant. The young man turned about and broke into a
+run.</p>
+
+<p>“Catch him! Hold him!” the pedestrians shrieked
+frantically, dashing after the running man.</p>
+
+<p>He had reached a point some thirty feet back of the
+imperial carriage when he was hemmed in. One of the
+cossacks and the boy lay in the snow shrieking. One
+of the rear corners of the carriage was badly shattered.
+The rest of it was uninjured, but during the first minute
+or two its doors remained closed, so that the bystanders<a name="Page_293" id="Page_293"><span class="pagenum">[293]</span></a>
+could not tell whether the Czar was hurt or not. Then
+the chief of police rushed up to the vehicle and flung
+the right door open. The Czar was unhurt, but ghastly
+pale. He sat bending slightly forward, his feet on the
+bearskin covering the floor, a gilt ash receiver on a shelf
+in front of him.</p>
+
+<p>“The guilty man has been caught, your Imperial
+Majesty!” Colonel Dvorzhitzky burst out.</p>
+
+<p>“Has he?” the Emperor asked, in intense agitation.</p>
+
+<p>“He has, your Imperial Majesty. They are holding
+him. May I offer you to finish the journey in my
+sleigh?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, but I first want to see the prisoner.”</p>
+
+<p>Pervaded by the conviction that another plot on
+his life had failed, the Czar stepped out of the carriage,
+and accompanied by a group of officers, some from his
+escort and others from among the passers-by, he crossed
+over to the sidewalk that ran along the canal railing,
+erect and majestic as usual, but extremely pale with excitement,
+and then turning to the right he walked toward
+where a group of uniformed men were holding a fair-complexioned
+beardless young fellow against the railing.
+People, mostly in military uniforms, came running from
+every direction.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody asked: “How is the Emperor?”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank God,” answered the Czar, “I have escaped,
+but&mdash;&mdash;” and he pointed at the wounded cossack and boy.</p>
+
+<p>“It may be too soon to thank God,” said the prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>“Is this the man who did it?” the Czar asked, advancing
+toward him. “Who are you?”</p>
+
+<p>“My name is Glazoff.”</p>
+
+<p>The Czar turned back. He had made a few steps, when
+a man who stood no more than three feet from him raised<a name="Page_294" id="Page_294"><span class="pagenum">[294]</span></a>
+a white object high over his head and dashed it to the
+ground, between the Emperor and himself.</p>
+
+<p>There was another explosion, still more violent and
+deafening than the first. The air was a turmoil of smoke,
+snow-dust and shreds of uniforms, concealing everything
+else from view. Sophia hurried away.</p>
+
+<p>More than half a minute later, when the chaos had
+partly cleared away, the Czar was seen in a sitting posture
+on the snow-covered sidewalk, leaning against the railing,
+his large oval head bare, his cape-cloak gone. He was
+breathing hard. His face was in blood, the flesh of
+his bared legs lacerated, the blood gushing from them
+over the snow. A heap of singed, smoking tatters nearby
+was all that had been left of his cloak.</p>
+
+<p>With cries of horror and of overpowering pity the bystanders
+rushed forward. Among them was a man with
+a bomb under his coat like the two which had just
+exploded. He was one of the four men who had shifted
+their posts when they saw Sophia raising her handkerchief
+to her nose. Had the second bomb failed to do its
+bloody work, this Terrorist would have thrown his missile
+when the imperial carriage came by his corner. As he
+beheld the Czar on the ground and bleeding, however, he
+instinctively flung himself forward to offer help to the
+suffering man.</p>
+
+<p>At sight of the prostrated Czar the men who held the
+author of the first explosion, began to shower blows on
+him.</p>
+
+<p>“<ins class="punct" title="Transcriber's Note: added ,">Don’t,</ins>” he begged them, shielding his head and face.
+“I meant the good of the people.”</p>
+
+<p>Two yards from the Czar lay bleeding the unconscious
+figure of a civilian. Further away were several other
+prostrated men, in all sorts of uniforms.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295"><span class="pagenum">[295]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“Help!” the Czar uttered in a faint voice.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody handed him a handkerchief, which he put
+to his face, muttering “Cold, cold.” Several of the marines
+who had saluted him a few minutes ago and two
+guardsmen placed him on Colonel Dvorzhitzky’s sleigh.</p>
+
+<p>When Grand Duke Michaïl appeared on the scene he
+found his brother rapidly sinking.</p>
+
+<p>“Sasha,<a name="Anchor-C" id="Anchor-C"></a><a title="Go to footnote C" href="#Footnote-C" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> do you hear me?” he asked him, with tears
+in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The bystanders, who had never before heard their Czar
+addressed in the form of affectionate familiarity, were
+thrilled with a feeling of heart-tearing pity and of the
+most fervent devotion. Most of them had sobs in their
+throats.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” the Czar answered faintly.</p>
+
+<p>“How do you feel, Sasha?”</p>
+
+<p>“To the Palace&mdash;quick,” the Czar whispered. And
+upon hearing somebody’s suggestion that he be taken to
+the nearest house for immediate relief, he uttered:</p>
+
+<p>“Bear me to the palace&mdash;there&mdash;die&mdash;&mdash;.”</p>
+
+<p>He reclined between two cossacks, with a gendarme
+officer facing him and supporting his legs. This is the
+way he returned home. Pedestrians met him with gestures
+of horrified perplexity and acute commiseration now.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd at one corner of Catharine Canal was a
+babel of excitement and violence. In their mad rush
+for the man who threw the second bomb, the bystanders
+were accusing each other, grabbing at each other, quarrelling,
+fighting. As Nihilists were for the most part people
+of education, every man who looked college-bred was
+in danger of his life. Among those who were beaten to
+a pulp in this wild mêlée were two political spies who had<a name="Page_296" id="Page_296"><span class="pagenum">[296]</span></a>
+the appearance of university students. A shout went up
+that the thrower of the fatal bomb had vaulted over the
+fence of the Michaïl gardens nearby, and then the mob
+broke down part of that fence, and ruined the gardens
+in a wild but vain search for the Terrorist. People were
+seized and hustled off to the station houses by the hundred.</p>
+
+<p>The heir apparent, a fair-complexioned Hercules, was
+on his way to the Winter Palace surrounded by a strong
+escort of mounted men. It was the first time he had
+appeared in the streets so accompanied. The cluster of
+horsemen and sleighs that had left the palace three hours
+before never returned; this one was coming in its place;
+but the effect of grim detachment, of fierce challenge
+was the same.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>An hour had elapsed. The flag over the Winter Palace
+which denotes Imperial presence was put at half-mast.
+Church bells were tolling the death of Alexander II. and
+the accession of Alexander III.</p>
+
+<p>The new Czar was by his father’s bedside. He was
+even more powerfully built than he, but he lacked his
+grace and the light of his intelligent eyes&mdash;a physical
+giant with a look of obtuse honesty on a fair, bearded
+round face. An English diplomatist who understood him
+well has said that “he had a mind not only commonplace,
+but incapable of receiving new ideas.” When he saw his
+father breathe his last, he exclaimed: “This is what we
+have come to!”&mdash;a celebrated ejaculation which an archbishop
+uttered at the funeral of Peter the Great in 1725.
+This was his first utterance as Emperor of Russia. Its
+puerile lack of originality was characteristic of the man.</p>
+
+<p>Princess Dolgoruki fainted, and she had no sooner been<a name="Page_297" id="Page_297"><span class="pagenum">[297]</span></a>
+brought to than the packing of her trunks was ordered
+by the sons of her dead husband.</p>
+
+<p>The palace was surrounded by a strong cordon of
+cossacks. Palace Square was thronged, the neighbouring
+streets were tremulous with subdued excitement. Some
+people were sincerely overcome with grief and horror;
+others were struggling to conceal their exultation. There
+were such as wept and cursed the Nihilists by way of
+displaying their own loyalty, and there were such as burst
+into tears from the sheer solemnity and nervousness of the
+moment. But the great predominating feeling that pervaded
+these crowds, eclipsing every other sentiment or
+thought, was curiosity. “What is going to happen next?”&mdash;this
+was the question that was uppermost in the
+minds of these people in their present fever of excitement.
+Had a republic been proclaimed with the Executive
+Committee of the Nihilists as a provisional government,
+they would have sworn their allegiance to the bomb-throwers
+as readily as they did, on the morrow, to the son
+of the assassinated Emperor. Had the Terrorists succeeded,
+the same bearded bishops who blessed and sounded
+the praises of the new Czar would have blessed and sounded
+the praises of those who had killed his father.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Pavel was in a suburb of the capital, when he first
+heard the melancholy tolling of the church bells.</p>
+
+<p>“What’s the matter?” he asked an elderly man who
+was walking with a sleigh-load of bricks, the reins in
+his hands.</p>
+
+<p>“They say our little father, the Czar, has been killed,”
+the other answered, making the sign of the cross with
+his free hand. “People say the Czarowitz is going to
+cut down the term of military service. Is it true, sir?”</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298"><span class="pagenum">[298]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“What is true?” Pavel asked. He was literally dazed
+with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>“A son of mine is in the army, sir,” the other explained
+reverently. “So I wonder if the new Czar will be easier
+on the soldiers, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel hailed the first hackman he came across. He
+was burning to know the details of the assassination and
+to tell Clara that the first man he accosted on the great
+news of the hour had shown indifference to the death of the
+monarch.</p>
+
+<p>When his sleigh reached the Neva Prospect, he saw
+the new Czar, surrounded by a cohort of officers in dazzling
+uniform, passing along the thoroughfare. The
+crowds were greeting him with wild cheers. They cheered
+their own emotions at sight of the man whose father had
+come to so tragic a death, and they cheered their own
+servility to the master of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>These shouts filled Pavel with a mixed sense of defeat
+and triumph. The gloomier feeling predominated. The
+world looked as usual. It did not look as if this cheering,
+servile, stolid mob would ever rise against anything.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>That evening placards bearing the name of the Executive
+Committee appeared on the walls of public buildings.
+They announced the death of Alexander II. and admonished
+his successor to adopt a liberal policy.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299"><span class="pagenum">[299]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE REVELATION.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">EVERY resident in the capital was being scanned and
+spied after, and every house-porter was kept peeking
+and seeking and reporting at the police station
+of his precinct. The railway stations were teeming with
+spies and a system was introduced by which every hack-driver
+was expected to spy on his fare. The effect of it all
+was that the great majority of St. Petersburg’s population
+was in a state of unspeakable terror. Curiosity, pity and
+everything else had given way to a nervous feeling of self-preservation.
+People walked through the streets hastily.
+The sight of a policeman was enough to send a twinge of
+fright into the heart of the most loyal government clerk;
+everybody was afraid of everybody else. One avoided to
+utter such words as “Czar,” “police,” “government.” As
+to the Nihilists, one literally dreaded to think of them.
+People who had never had a liberal thought in their brain
+were tremulous with distrust of their own souls.</p>
+
+<p>And through all this all-pervading panic Clara was busy
+posting revolutionary proclamations in the streets, distributing
+tracts among students and working-people, keeping
+“business” appointments with her “illegal” friends.
+Pavel, in his turn, had all he could do to attend to the
+needs of some of the out-of-town “circles.” The revolutionists
+throughout the country were clamouring for information,<a name="Page_300" id="Page_300"><span class="pagenum">[300]</span></a>
+for proclamations, for speakers; so that the
+seventy or eighty men and women who formed the innermost
+organisation were as feverishly busy in their way as
+the police and the gendarmes were in theirs.</p>
+
+<p>The authorities were ransacking the capital for Nihilists
+in general and for the cheesemonger couple in particular,
+but during the first few hours following the two explosions
+their eagerness was centered on the man who had
+thrown the fatal bomb. The search for that man soon
+proved superfluous, however.</p>
+
+<p>The civilian who was picked up unconscious near where
+the Czar was stricken down had been taken to a hospital.
+Late in the evening he had a brief interval of
+consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>“Who are you?” an officer then asked him.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know,” he answered. He had a relapse from
+which he never awoke. The front of his body, particularly
+the inner side of one arm, was covered with ghastly
+wounds, from which experts inferred that at the time of
+the explosion he could not have stood more than three
+feet from the Czar. This, according to some eye-witnesses
+of the catastrophe, was the distance between the deceased
+monarch and the man who threw the second bomb. After
+two days of searching and sniffing the police discovered
+the unknown man’s lodging, where they found some revolutionary
+literature and other evidence that pointed to him
+as the author of the fatal explosion. He had stood so
+close to the Czar that it was impossible for him to make
+a target of his victim without making one of himself.
+His real name still remained unknown.</p>
+
+<p>As to the first bomb-thrower, he proved to be a college
+student named Rysakoff. In the hands of the gendarme
+officers and the procureur he broke down and told all he<a name="Page_301" id="Page_301"><span class="pagenum">[301]</span></a>
+knew; but it appeared that he knew very little. He had
+been one of a number of volunteers who offered to attack
+the Emperor under the command of Zachar. When Zachar’s
+arrest became known to the Executive Committee
+things had begun to be rushed. Sophia Perovskaya, the
+ex-governor’s daughter, had taken his place, and it was
+decided to make the assault without delay. Zachar had
+been arrested on Friday evening. As it was known to
+Sophia that the Czar would visit the Riding Schools on
+the next Sunday, the attempt was fixed for that occasion.
+The Terrorists immediately connected with the plot held
+their gatherings at a “conspiracy lodgings” kept by a
+man and woman Rysakoff did not know. There the volunteers
+met Sophia and one of the inventors of the self-igniting
+shell (the man with the priestly face whom we
+saw at the meeting of the Executive Committee at which
+Clara’s wedding was to be celebrated). On Sunday morning
+(the day of the assassination) the volunteers&mdash;three
+college men and an artisan&mdash;called at the same gathering
+place. They found two finished bombs there and soon
+Sophia arrived with two more. Where the bomb factory
+was Rysakoff did not know. Sophia explained that it
+took a whole night to make the four portable machines
+and that more than four volunteers could not be accommodated.
+She then drew a rough map of the Czar’s expected
+route, with four dots for the posts of the four bomb-throwers.
+There were two sets of dots on the diagram.
+In case the Czar failed to include Little Garden Street in
+his route, the Terrorists were to shift their positions to
+Catharine Canal and two neighbouring streets.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon, as Rysakoff stood on his post near Little
+Garden Street, Sophia passed by him, her handkerchief
+to her nose (the same sort of signal which the same young<a name="Page_302" id="Page_302"><span class="pagenum">[302]</span></a>
+woman had given a year and a half before to the man
+who fired the mine which blew up the imperial train near
+Moscow). That meant that the Czar was not passing
+through Little Garden Street. Accordingly, Rysakoff hastened
+over to Catherine Canal. There, after he had thrown
+the bomb and while the Czar was speaking to him, he saw
+the three other volunteers each on his post.</p>
+
+<p>The second bomb-thrower was known to Rysakoff under
+the name of “the Kitten.” His real name he did not
+know.</p>
+
+<p>He also gave the police the address of the “conspiracy
+lodgings,” which were located on the sixth floor of
+a house on Waggon Street, and an hour or two later, at
+midnight, two days after the killing of the Czar, the procureur,
+accompanied by gendarmes and police, knocked at
+one of the doors of that apartment.</p>
+
+<p>“Who is there?” a masculine voice asked from within.</p>
+
+<p>“Police and the procureur.”</p>
+
+<p>“What do you want?”</p>
+
+<p>“Open the door at once or we’ll break it down.”</p>
+
+<p>While they were raining blows on the door, a succession
+of pistol shots was heard within. Another door flew
+open, at the end of the corridor, and a woman made her
+appearance.</p>
+
+<p>“We surrender,” she said. “Pray send for a doctor.
+Look out, don’t pass through this door. There are explosives
+there.”</p>
+
+<p>Inside they found the fresh corpse of a man lying in a
+pool of blood. It was the gay poet; and the woman was
+Hessia Helfman, the dark little Jewess with the frizzled
+hair who was married to Purring Cat. It was she and the
+man now lying dead from his own pistol shots who had
+been in charge of this “conspiracy lodgings.” Among<a name="Page_303" id="Page_303"><span class="pagenum">[303]</span></a>
+the things found in the apartment were the two bombs
+which had been brought back from the scene of the assassination;
+the rough map made by Sophia on the morning
+before the attack and a large quantity of revolutionary
+literature.</p>
+
+<p>The former “conspiracy lodgings” were now a police
+trap, and on the very next morning it caught a big burly
+man whom Rysakoff identified as Timothy Michailoff, the
+one mechanic among the four men who had been armed
+with bombs on the fatal morning. Michailoff’s memorandum
+book furnished the police some important addresses,
+but the great surprise of that eventful week did not come
+until the following day, March 17th, and when it did it
+was anything but a source of self-congratulation to the
+authorities.</p>
+
+<p>About ten o’clock in the morning of that day the porters
+of the house on Little Garden Street where the Koboseffs
+kept their shop reported to the roundsman that the cheese
+dealer and his wife had not been home since the previous
+evening, and that their shop was still closed. The roundsman,
+who, like every member of the St. Petersburg police
+during those days, was overworked and badly in need of
+rest, made no reply. An hour later the porter accosted
+him again:</p>
+
+<p>“The shop is still closed. Customers have been around
+and there is nobody in.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I have no time to bother about it.”</p>
+
+<p>“But I think I saw something in that store, some strange
+looking tools,” pleaded the porter.</p>
+
+<p>“The devil you did,” the roundsman said, as much with
+irritation as with amazement.</p>
+
+<p>The statement was reported to the captain, who communicated
+it to his superiors, until finally an order was<a name="Page_304" id="Page_304"><span class="pagenum">[304]</span></a>
+obtained to raid the shop. A search was made, more
+thorough than the first, and with quite different results.
+The lounge in the living room upon which General Mrovinsky
+had sat while speaking to Koboseff was found to
+contain a heap of earth, and when the planks under the
+window of the middle room were removed&mdash;the very ones
+which General Mrovinsky had made a feeble attempt to
+detach in the presence of Koboseff and the police&mdash;a
+large yawning hole presented itself to view. When this
+part of the wall had been torn down, the aperture proved
+to be the mouth of a subterranean passage enclosed in
+wood. Seven feet from the shop began a charge of a
+hundred pounds of dynamite with an electric battery near
+by and wires running along the gallery back to the middle
+room. Everything was in complete readiness. All that
+was necessary to explode the mine was to connect the wires.</p>
+
+<p>As was learned subsequently, this mine had been the
+leading feature of the plot, the bombs having been added
+in case the Czar left Little Garden Street out of his route
+or the mine failed of its deadly purpose for some other
+reason. Of the existence of such a mine Rysakoff had
+not the remotest idea until he heard of it at the trial.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>On the Friday afternoon immediately preceding the
+arrest of Jeliaboff (Zachar) the porter of the house where
+he and Sophia were registered as brother and sister met
+them at the gate as they were leaving the house together;
+and later, at 9 o’clock in the evening, he saw Sophia return
+alone. The next morning, after Jeliaboff had spent his
+first night in prison, the police, in their effort to discover
+his residence, ordered every porter in the city to ascertain
+who of his tenants had been absent from home that night.
+When the porter rang Sophia’s bell that morning there<a name="Page_305" id="Page_305"><span class="pagenum">[305]</span></a>
+was no response. He reported it at the police station
+where he was told to try again. At 2 o’clock he saw
+Sophia.</p>
+
+<p>“I have received some blanks from the police,” he said.
+“Every tenant must state his occupation and place of business.”</p>
+
+<p>“My brother is working now,” Sophia answered. “When
+he comes home I’ll tell him about it.”</p>
+
+<p>Two hours later she went out again, and in order to
+avoid passing the porter at the gate, she gained the street
+through a little dry goods shop that had a rear door into
+that yard, buying something for a pretext. She came
+back, by way of the same dry goods shop, at 9 o’clock in
+the evening and that was the last that was ever seen of
+her in that neighbourhood. The next morning the porter
+reported the disappearance of the couple.</p>
+
+<p>When the police searched the deserted apartment they
+found a number of revolutionary publications, several tin
+boxes like those which formed the shells of the two exploding
+machines seized at the “conspiracy house” kept
+by Hessia and the “gay poet,” and several cheeses bearing
+the same trade-mark as those in Koboseff’s shop.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Jeliaboff had heard the solemn tolling of the
+bells in his prison cell. In the excitement of the hour a
+gendarme on duty in the prison <ins class="punct" title="Transcriber's Note: removed ,">corridor</ins> answered his
+questions through the peep-hole, in violation of regulations.
+Jeliaboff at once sent word to the procureur, assuming
+responsibility for the entire plot, as an agent of
+the Executive Committee.</p>
+
+<p>Sophia knew through a certain high official all that
+transpired between Jeliaboff and the procureur. She
+knew that the authorities were turning the capital inside
+out in their search for the woman who had lived with<a name="Page_306" id="Page_306"><span class="pagenum">[306]</span></a>
+Jeliaboff as his sister and for the Koboseff couple, yet in
+spite of all the pressure the Nihilists brought to bear on
+her, persuading her to seek temporary retirement, she, like
+Urie and Baska, remained in the heart of St. Petersburg, in
+the very thick of her party’s activity. Clara saw her at a
+meeting during that week.</p>
+
+<p>“You need rest, Sonia. You look tired.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do I?” Sophia answered with a smile. “So do you.
+Everybody does these days.”</p>
+
+<p>Her smile was on her lips only. Her blue eyes were
+inscrutably grave, but Clara saw a blend of lofty exaltation
+and corroding anguish in them. She knew how dear
+Jeliaboff was to her. She had been craving to speak to
+her of him, of Hessia and of the “gay poet,” who had
+committed suicide at the time of Hessia’s arrest; but at
+this moment it was Sophia herself who filled her mind.</p>
+
+<p>“Sonia!” Clara said, huskily.</p>
+
+<p>“What is it, child?” the other asked, kindly.</p>
+
+<p>For an answer Clara looked her in the face, smiling
+shame-facedly. She did feel like an infant in her presence,
+although Sophia, with her small stature and fresh
+boyish face, looked the younger of the two. She did not
+know herself what she wanted to say. She was burning
+to cover her with kisses and to break into sobs on her
+breast, but Sophia was graver and more taciturn than usual
+to-day, so she held herself in check. Her passion for tears
+was subdued. She sat by Sophia’s side absorbed in her
+presence without looking her in the face, tingling with
+something like the feeling of people in a graveyard, in
+a moment of solemn ecstasy.</p>
+
+<p>Clara came away burdened with unvoiced emotion. She
+said to herself that when she saw Pavel she would find
+relief in telling him how she adored Sophia and how<a name="Page_307" id="Page_307"><span class="pagenum">[307]</span></a>
+thirsty her heart was because she had not unbosomed herself
+of these feelings to her; but when she and Pavel
+were alone she said nothing.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The porters of the house from which Sophia had vanished
+were asked at the police station whether they would
+be able to single her out in a street crowd. They had to
+admit that they were not sure whether they would. She
+had lived under their eye for eight months, but she had
+always managed to pass through the gate, where they were
+usually on duty, so as to leave no clear impression of her
+features on their minds. Finally, on the sixth day, it
+was discovered that the proprietress of the little dry goods
+store had a clear recollection of her face. This woman,
+accompanied by a police officer, then spent hours driving
+about through the busiest streets, until, with a shout of
+mixed joy and fright, she pointed out Sophia in a public
+sleigh.</p>
+
+<p>It was not many days before Kibalchich, the man with
+the Christlike face, who was one of the inventors and
+makers of the four bombs, and another revolutionist were
+arrested in a café, through an address found in Timothy
+Michailoff’s note-book.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The trial of the six regicides so far captured, Jeliaboff,
+Sophia, Kibalchich, Hessia, Rysakoff, and Timothy Michailoff,
+was begun by a special Court of the Governing
+Senate for Political Cases, on April 8. That Purring
+Cat and the man with the Tartarian face, both of whom
+were in prison now, had taken part in the digging of the
+Koboseff mine, was still unknown to the police. Nor
+had the authorities as yet been informed of the fact that
+another “political” in their hands&mdash;the undersized man<a name="Page_308" id="Page_308"><span class="pagenum">[308]</span></a>
+who had played the part of shop-boy to the cheese-dealer&mdash;had
+had something to do with the same conspiracy.</p>
+
+<p>Complete reports of the trial appeared in the newspapers,
+and the testimony and speeches of the accused
+were read and read again.</p>
+
+<p>Jeliaboff (“Zachar”) declined a lawyer, taking his defence
+in his own hands. His legal battles with the presiding
+judge, his resource, his tact and his eloquence, made
+him the central figure of the proceedings. He began by
+challenging the court’s jurisdiction in the case. “This
+court represents the crown, one of the two parties concerned,”
+he said, “and I submit that in a contention between
+the government and the revolutionary party there
+could be only one judge&mdash;the people; the people either by
+means of a popular vote, or through its rightful representatives
+in parliament assembled, or, at least, a jury representing
+public conscience.” Declarations of this kind,
+Kibalchich’s narrative as to how the blind brutality of the
+government had transformed peaceful social workers into
+Terrorists, and the effect of simple, dignified sincerity which
+marked the conduct of all the prisoners produced such a
+profound impression, that at the time of the next important
+political trial scarcely any reports were allowed to be
+published.</p>
+
+<p>The six regicides were sentenced to death, the execution
+of Hessia Helfman, who was about to become a mother,
+being postponed and later commuted. When the parents
+of Kolotkevich (Purring Cat) asked to be allowed to
+bring up their son’s child, the request was refused on the
+ground that it was the child of two regicides and should
+be brought up under special care. The result of this
+special care was that the child, like its pardoned mother,
+soon died.</p><p><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309"><span class="pagenum">[309]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Sophia and the four condemned men died on the gallows,
+on a public square. They were taken to their death on
+two “shame waggons,” dressed in convict clothes, each
+with a board inscribed with the words “criminal of state”
+across his or her breast. The procession was accompanied
+by a force of military large enough to conquer a country
+like Belgium. Sophia was the first woman executed on
+Russian soil since 1719.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310"><span class="pagenum">[310]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CZAR TAKES COURAGE.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">ALEXANDER III. and his court moved to the long-deserted
+imperial palace at Gatchina, a village 28
+English miles from St. Petersburg. The young
+Czar and his entourage were in a state of nervous tension.
+Economically, the country was in the throes of hard times.
+Districts rich in the potentialities of industry and prosperity
+were in the grip of famine. Driven by bad crops
+and extortionate taxes, thousands of village families were
+abandoning their homes to go begging. Cities were
+crowded with such mendicants from surrounding villages,
+and the industrial centres were full of workmen out of employment.
+Politically, a demoralising feeling of suspense
+hung over the empire. The masses had seen one Czar&mdash;the
+ward of a vigilant guardian angel&mdash;prostrated. The
+crown’s prestige was shaken, and the Czar’s seeking refuge
+in a secluded village did anything but retrieve it. The
+number of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">lèse majesté</i> cases had suddenly grown so large
+that by a special imperial ukase these offences were transferred
+from the publicity of the courts to the obscure
+depths of “justice by administrative order.” From several
+places came reports of riots against the police, while the
+universities manifested their hostility to the throne quite
+openly. Subscription lists for a monument to the assassinated
+Czar were torn to pieces and those who circulated<a name="Page_311" id="Page_311"><span class="pagenum">[311]</span></a>
+them were publicly hissed and insulted. The portents of
+turbulence were in the air.</p>
+
+<p>Loris-Melikoff submitted to the new Czar the “constitution”
+of which Alexander II. had approved an hour
+before his violent death. Alexander III. read it and
+wrote on the margin of the paper: “Very well conceived”;
+and two days later, after the project had been
+carried at a cabinet meeting by a vote of eight against
+five, the Czar, while conversing with his brother, Grand
+Duke Vladimir, on the measure to be introduced, said,
+joyfully:</p>
+
+<p>“I feel as though a mountain had rolled off my shoulders.”</p>
+
+<p>But the conservative party at court had the support of
+a new power behind the throne. M. Pobiedonostzeff, formerly
+tutor of the present Czar and now his favourite adviser,
+was a man of much stronger purpose than Loris-Melikoff.
+He fought against the innovation tooth and nail, and
+the publication of it in the <i>Official Messenger</i> was postponed
+from day to day. The leader of the Panslavists was
+invited from Moscow; every conservative influence was
+brought to bear upon a Czar who was absolutely incapable
+of forming his own opinion. All this was done in the
+strictest secrecy from Loris-Melikoff.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Meanwhile, during Easter week, seven days after the
+approval of the “constitution” by a majority of the ministers
+and twelve days subsequent to the execution of the
+regicides, a furious anti-Jewish riot broke out in Elisavetgrad,
+a prosperous city in the south. A frenzied drink-crazed
+mob had possession of the town during two days,
+demolishing and pillaging hundreds of houses and shops,
+covering whole streets with debris and reducing thousands<a name="Page_312" id="Page_312"><span class="pagenum">[312]</span></a>
+of people to beggary. And neighbouring towns and villages
+followed the example of the larger city.</p>
+
+<p>The Czar took alarm. It looked like the prelude to a
+popular upheaval.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s only an anti-Semitic disturbance, your Imperial
+Majesty,” Pobiedonostzeff reassured him. “There was one
+like that ten years ago, in Odessa.”</p>
+
+<p>The Elisavetgrad outbreak was, indeed, a purely local
+affair, but it happened at a time that was highly favourable
+to occurrences of that nature. Originally organised
+by some high-born profligates, victims of a gang of Jewish
+usurers, it had nothing to do with the general situation
+save in so far as there was in the hungry masses a blind
+disposition to attack somebody; a disposition coupled with
+a feeling that the usual ties of law and order had been
+loosened. When, in addition, the target of assault happened
+to be the stepchild in Russia’s family of peoples, the
+one forever kicked and cuffed by the government itself,
+the rioters’ sense of security was complete. Moreover,
+among the victims of Jewish usurers were hundreds of
+army officers and civil officials who lived beyond their
+means, and from these came a direct hint at impunity.
+The attack had been carefully planned, but the imbruted
+mob acted on its own logic, with the result that thousands
+of artisans, labourers, poor tradesmen, teachers, rabbis,
+dreamers, were plundered and ill-treated while the handful
+of usurers escaped.</p>
+
+<p>The promise of impunity was fulfilled. Neighbouring
+towns and villages followed the example of Elisavetgrad,
+and ten days later, May 8-9, similar atrocities, but with a
+far greater display of fury and bestiality, occurred in Kieff,
+where a dozen murders and an enormous list of wounded
+and of outraged women was added to the work of devastation<a name="Page_313" id="Page_313"><span class="pagenum">[313]</span></a>
+and plunder. The Kieff authorities encouraged
+all this in a thousand ways, while individual officers and
+men took part in the pandemonium of havoc and rape.</p>
+
+<p>“Easy, boys,” said the governor of the province, with
+an amused smile, as he drove past the busy rioters at the
+head of a procession of fashionable spectators.</p>
+
+<p>Loris-Melikoff was scarcely to be held responsible for
+these occurrences. He had his own cares to worry him.
+The reins were fast slipping out of his hands. Indeed,
+the attitude of governors, chiefs of police, military officers,
+toward the spreading campaign against the Jews was
+a matter of instinct. The “spirit of the moment,” as it
+had become customary to denote the epidemic of anti-Jewish
+feeling in official circles, gleamed forth clear and
+unequivocal, and local authorities acted upon it on their
+own hook. The real meaning of this “spirit of the moment”
+lay in the idea that if there was a state of general
+unrest threatening the safety of the throne, it was spending
+itself on anti-Semitic ferocity; that if a storm-cloud
+was gathering over the crown, an electric rod had been
+found in the Chosen People.</p>
+
+<p>The Czar took courage.</p>
+
+<p>Two days after the Kieff riot he promulgated a manifesto,
+framed by Pobiedonostzeff, and proclaiming the
+continuance of unqualified iron-handed absolutism. The
+“constitution” went into the archives. Loris-Melikoff’s
+public career had come to a close. General Ignatyeff, a
+corrupt time-server, was appointed Minister of the Interior
+and a policy of restriction and repression was adopted
+that brought back the days of Nicholas I.</p>
+
+<p>Ignatyeff encouraged the “spirit of the moment” with
+all the means at his command. One of the very first
+things he did was to order the expulsion of thousands of<a name="Page_314" id="Page_314"><span class="pagenum">[314]</span></a>
+Jews from Kieff. At the trial of some of the rioters
+the state attorney unceremoniously acted as advocate for
+the defendants.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of all this upon the public mind was a foregone
+conclusion. The general inference was that anti-Jewish
+riots met with the government’s approval. The
+outrages passed from Kieff to neighbouring cities; from
+there to Odessa; from Odessa to other sections of the
+south. They were spreading throughout the region in
+which Miroslav is located with the continuity of a regular
+crusade and with a uniformity of detail that was eloquent
+of a common guiding force.</p>
+
+<p>It was a new phase of White Terrorism.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>To Pavel the crusade against Clara’s race was a source
+of mixed encouragement and anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>“Hurrah, old fellow,” he said to Godfather one morning.
+“It does look as though the Russian people could
+kick, doesn’t it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, if they can attack Jewish usurers, I don’t see why
+they could not turn upon the government some day.”</p>
+
+<p>“And, while they are at it, upon the land-plundering
+nobility, upon fellows like you and me, eh?” He poked
+Urie in the ribs gleefully.</p>
+
+<p>In his conversations with Clara, however, the subject
+was never broached, and this gave him a sense of guilt and
+uneasiness. He could not help being aware that instead of
+usurers the chief target of attack in every riot, without a
+single exception, were Jewish artisans, labourers, teachers
+and the poorest tradesmen. And this, so far as Clara was
+concerned, meant that the common people of Pavel’s race,
+for whose sake she was facing the solitary cell and the
+gallows, that these Christian people were brutally assaulting<a name="Page_315" id="Page_315"><span class="pagenum">[315]</span></a>
+and pillaging, reducing to beggary and murdering poor
+honest, innocent people of her own blood, Jews like her
+father, mother, sister, like herself.</p>
+
+<p>But this bare fact did not fit in with Nihilist theory.
+That golden halo which had been painted about the common
+Christian people by the ecstasies of the anti-serfdom
+movement of twenty years ago had not yet faded. The
+Gentile masses were still deified by the Nihilists. Whatever
+the peasant or workman of Slavic blood did was still
+sacred,&mdash;an instinctive step in the direction of liberty and
+universal happiness. The Russian masses were rioting;
+could there be a better indication of a revolutionary
+awakening? And if the victims of these riots happened
+to be Jews, then the Jews were evidently enemies of the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>That the crusade was part and parcel of the “white
+terror” of the throne had not yet dawned upon the revolutionists.</p>
+
+<p>As to Clara, she was so completely abandoned to her
+grief over the death of Sophia and the four men that
+so far the riots (no unheard-of thing in the history of the
+Jews by any means) had made but a feeble appeal to her
+imagination. Centuries seemed to divide her from her
+race and her past. The outbreaks seemed to be taking
+place in some strange, distant country.</p>
+
+<p>The execution of the five regicides had been described
+quite fully in the <i>Official Messenger</i> and the account had
+been copied in all other newspapers. Clara kept the issue
+of the <i>Voice</i> containing the report in a book, and although
+she knew its salient passages by heart, she often consulted
+the paper, now for this paragraph, now for that. There
+was a sacred mystery in the letters in which the description
+was printed.</p><p><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316"><span class="pagenum">[316]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“The five prisoners approached the priests almost at
+the same moment and kissed the cross; after which they
+were taken by the hangmen each to his or her rope.”
+Clara beheld the ropes dangling and Sophia placed under
+one of them, but her aching heart coveted more vividness.
+Her imagination was making desperate efforts to reproduce
+the scene with the tangibility of life. Each time she read
+how the hangman, dressed in a red shirt, slipped the noose
+about Sophia’s neck amid the roll of drums, and how he
+wrenched the stool from under her feet, so that she
+plunged with a jerk, and how the next instant her body
+hung motionless in the air, each time Clara read this she
+was smitten with an overpowering pang of pity and of
+helpless, aimless, heart-tearing affection. Sometimes she
+would fancy Sophia and her four comrades rescued from
+the hangman’s hands a second before their execution, and
+carried triumphantly through the streets by an army of
+victorious revolutionists, but the next moment it would
+come back to her that this had not been the case, and then
+the re-awakening to reality was even more painful than
+the original shock. If a rescuing force were now ready
+to attack the hangman and the thousand-bayoneted guard
+around him, it would be too late. Sophia was dead, irretrievably
+dead; there was nobody to rescue. And Clara’s
+heart sank in despair. At such moments she would seek
+relief in those passages of the report where the calmness
+of the condemned revolutionists was depicted. “Jeliaboff
+whispered to his priest, fervently kissed the cross, shook his
+hair and smiled. Fortitude did not forsake Jeliaboff,
+Sophia and particularly Kibalchich (the man with the
+face of Christ) to the very moment of donning the white-hooded
+death-gown”&mdash;these passages gave Clara thrills of
+religious bliss.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317"><span class="pagenum">[317]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Pavel often talked to her about the execution, raved,
+cursed the government; but Clara usually remained gloomily
+taciturn. The wound in her soul was something too
+sacred to be talked about. Words seemed to her like sacrilege.
+Their hearts understood each other well enough,
+why, then, allow language to intrude upon their speechless
+communion? Some of his effusions and outbursts jarred
+on her. On the other hand, her silences made him restless.</p>
+
+<p>“You’ll go insane if you keep this up,” he once said,
+irascibly.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t care if I do,” she answered. “Don’t nag me,
+Pashenka, pray.”</p>
+
+<p>“But the thing is becoming an <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">idée fixe</i> in your mind,
+upon my word it is. Can’t you try and get back to your
+senses? What is death after all? Absolute freedom
+from suffering, that’s all. There is nothing to go crazy
+over anyhow. There is nothing but a dear, a glorious,
+a beautiful memory of them, and that will live as long as
+there is such a thing as history in the world.”</p>
+
+<p>She made no reply. She tried to picture Sophia free
+from suffering, but this only sharpened her pain. Sophia
+not existing? The formula was even more terrible than
+death. In reality, however, her atheism was powerless
+to obliterate her visions. Sophia existed somewhere, only
+she was solemnly remote, as though estranged from her.
+Clara could have almost cried to her, imploring for recognition.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>But this mood of hers could not last forever. Sooner
+or later she would awaken to the full extent of the riots
+and to the fact that they were raging in the vicinity of Miroslav,
+threatening the safety of her nearest relatives. How<a name="Page_318" id="Page_318"><span class="pagenum">[318]</span></a>
+would she take it then? The question intruded upon
+Pavel’s peace of mind again and again.</p>
+
+<p>For the present, however, she was taken up with her
+thoughts of Sophia, Zachar or Hessia. Poor Hessia!
+They had robbed her of her baby, the thugs, even as they
+had that woman of the “gay bard’s” poem. “To lead a
+married life under conditions such as ours <i>is</i> pure madness,”
+she said to herself.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, as she and her lover sat on the lounge,
+embracing and kissing deliriously, she suddenly sprang to
+her feet, her cheeks burning, kissed Pavel on his forehead
+and crossed over to the window.</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders resentfully.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319"><span class="pagenum">[319]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXV.</h2>
+
+<h3>A HUNTED PEOPLE.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">IT was Friday night at the Old Synagogue, but the cheery
+voices of Sabbath Eve were not there. The air of
+having cast one’s cares aside was missing. Instead
+of a light-hearted turmoil of melody there was a hushed
+murmur that betrayed suspense and timidity. Ever and
+anon some worshipper would break off his hymn and strain
+his ears for a fancied sound outside. The half hour spent
+away from home seemed many hours. Very few people
+were present and none of these wore their Sabbath clothes.
+Most of the other synagogues were closed altogether. Rabbi
+Rachmiel, Clara’s father, and several others were abandoned
+to an ecstasy of devotion, but their subdued tones
+had in them the fervent plea of Atonement Day, the tearful
+plea for an enrolment in the Book of Life rather than
+the joyous solemnity that proclaims the advent of the
+Higher Soul. The illumination in honour of Sabbath the
+Bride was a sorry spectacle. The jumble of brass chandeliers
+hung unburnished and most of them were empty.
+The synagogue had a troubled, a cowed look. It dared
+not shine brightly, nor burst into song merrily lest it
+should irritate the Gentiles. Here and there a man sat
+at his prayer book weeping quietly.</p>
+
+<p>Members of the congregation who had not been on speaking
+terms for years had made peace, as a matter of course.<a name="Page_320" id="Page_320"><span class="pagenum">[320]</span></a>
+The spreading frenzy of the Gentile population impressed
+them as an impersonal, elemental force. They were clinging
+to each other with the taciturnity of ship-passengers
+when the vessel shudders in the grip of danger. And not
+only did they nestle to each other, but the entire present
+generation felt drawn to all the former generations of
+their hunted race. The terrors of the Inquisition, the
+massacres, the exiles, the humiliations, of which one usually
+thought as something belonging to the province of
+books exclusively, had suddenly become realities. The
+Bloody Spot, the site of the present synagogue, where 800
+Jews had been slain more than two centuries ago, gleamed
+redder than ever in every mind. It was both terrifying
+and a spiritual relief to beseech the souls of those eight
+hundred martyrs to pray for their panic-stricken descendants.
+The Russian Jews of 1881 felt themselves a living
+continuation of the entire tearful history of their people.</p>
+
+<p>When the service was over, at last, the usual “Good Sabbath!
+Good Sabbath!” always so full of festivity, was
+uttered in lugubrious whispers, which really meant: “May
+God take pity upon us.” Nor was there a rush for the
+door. Quick, noisy movements were carefully avoided in
+these days.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the worshippers had slowly filed out, when there
+was a stir, and the crowd scrambled back with terrified
+faces.</p>
+
+<p>“Two Gentiles are coming, an army officer and a man
+in civilian clothes,” said some of those who came running
+back.</p>
+
+<p>The look of terror gave way to one of eager curiosity.
+The appearance of two refined Gentiles was not the way
+an anti-Jewish riot was usually ushered in.</p>
+
+<p>The “two Gentiles” turned out to be Dr. Lipnitzky<a name="Page_321" id="Page_321"><span class="pagenum">[321]</span></a>
+and Vladimir Vigdoroff, the one in his military uniform,
+and the other in a summer suit of rough duck. When
+they were recognised they were greeted with looks of affection
+and expectancy. The pious old-fashioned people who
+had hitherto regarded Dr. Lipnitzky despairingly as more
+Gentile than Jew, now thought of him tenderly as an
+advocate of Israel in the enemy’s camp.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t be so scared,” the little doctor said with friendly
+acerbity, as he paused in the centre of the synagogue.
+“We are Jews like yourselves&mdash;the same kind of Jews all
+of us. We were passing by, so we thought we would look
+in. We saw the synagogue was almost dark, though it is
+still so early. The lights could not yet have gone out.
+It’s enough to break one’s heart.” He was choking with
+embarrassment and emotion and his words produced a
+profound effect. People of his class were not in the habit
+of attending divine service. The doctor’s military uniform,
+in fact, had never been seen in a synagogue before.
+But the great point was that instead of Russian or Germanised
+Yiddish which he habitually affected with uneducated
+Jews he was now speaking in the plain, unembellished
+vernacular of the Ghetto. His listeners knew
+that he was the son of a poor illiterate brick-maker, a plain
+“Yiddish Jew” like themselves, yet they could scarcely
+trust their ears. They eyed his shoulder-straps and sword-hilt,
+and it seemed incredible that the man who wore
+these things was the man who was speaking this fluent,
+robust Yiddish. His halo of inaccessible superiority had
+suddenly faded away. Everybody warmed to him.</p>
+
+<p>“We’ll be here to-morrow, we’ll attend the service. And
+next Saturday, too. Every Saturday. We’re Jews.” He
+could not go on. Some of his listeners had tears in their
+eyes. Vladimir was biting his lips nervously.</p><p><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322"><span class="pagenum">[322]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“Still, it is not to see you cry that we have come to
+you,” the doctor resumed: but he was interrupted by
+Clara’s father, who, advancing toward him with glaring
+eyes, said, in a voice shrill with rage:</p>
+
+<p>“Now that Jewish blood is flowing in rivers you people
+come to do penance! It is too late. It is the sins of men
+like yourselves that have brought this punishment upon us.
+A Gentile Jew is even worse than a born Gentile.” He
+put up his fists to his temples and gasped: “Better become
+Christians! Better become Christians!”</p>
+
+<p>The crowd had listened with bated breath, but at last
+somebody said: “Oh shut up!” and similar shouts burst
+from forty or fifty other men.</p>
+
+<p>“We are all Jews, all brethren.”</p>
+
+<p>“We’ll settle old scores some other time.”</p>
+
+<p>“A good heart is as good as piety.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, but why don’t you give the doctor a chance to
+speak?” Vladimir stepped up to his uncle and pleaded with
+him.</p>
+
+<p>“Who is he?” said Dr. Lipnitzky with a smile. “Is
+he crazy?” And flying into a passion, he was about to
+address Rabbi Rachmiel, but held himself in check. A
+feeble old man of eighty with a very white beard was
+arguing from the Talmud with Clara’s father.</p>
+
+<p>“‘The sinner who returns to God may stand upon
+ground upon which the righteous are not allowed to
+stand,’” he quoted. “Again, ‘Through penance even
+one’s sins are turned to good deeds.’”</p>
+
+<p>When Rabbi Rachmiel tried to reply, he was shouted
+down by the crowd. They were yelling and gesticulating
+at him, when somebody mounted a bench and fell to swishing
+his arms violently. “Hush!” he said in a ferocious
+whisper. “Do you want to attract a mob?” His words<a name="Page_323" id="Page_323"><span class="pagenum">[323]</span></a>
+had an immediate effect, and then Rabbi Rachmiel said to
+his nephew, in much milder but deeply grieved accents:</p>
+
+<p>“Do you know what the Talmud says? ‘As long as
+you shall do the will of God no strange people shall
+domineer over you, but if you don’t do the will of God,
+God will hand you over to a low people, and not merely
+to a low people, but to the beasts of a low people.’”</p>
+
+<p>“All right, rabbi. This is not the time for argument,”
+the doctor said, kindly. “I have some important information
+for you all, for all of us. There won’t be any
+rioting in this town. You may be sure of it. That’s
+what my young friend and I have dropped in to tell you.
+I have seen the governor”&mdash;his listeners pressed eagerly
+forward&mdash;“there will be plenty of protection. The main
+point is that you should not tempt the Gentiles to start a
+riot by showing them that you dread one. Don’t hide,
+nor keep your shops closed, as that would only whet one’s
+appetite for mischief. Do you understand what I say to
+you? This is the governor’s opinion and mine too. Everybody’s.”</p>
+
+<p>His auditors nodded vigorous and beaming assent.</p>
+
+<p>“He particularly warns the Jews not to undertake anything
+in the way of self-defence. That would only arouse
+ill-feeling. Besides, it’s against the law. It could not be
+tolerated. Do you understand what I am saying or do
+you not? Every precaution has been taken and there is
+really no danger. Do you understand? There is no
+danger, and if you go about your business and make no
+fuss it will be all right. I have spoken to several officers
+of my regiment, too. Of course, you wouldn’t have to
+look hard to find a Jew-hater among them, but they spoke
+in a friendly way and some of them are really good-natured
+fellows. They assured me that if the troops were<a name="Page_324" id="Page_324"><span class="pagenum">[324]</span></a>
+called out they would protect our people with all their
+hearts.”</p>
+
+<p>Every man in the group looked like a prisoner when the
+jury announces an acquittal. Some, in a flutter of joy,
+hastened to carry the news to their wives and children.
+The majority hung about the uniformed man, as if ready
+to stay all night in his salutary presence, while one man
+even ventured to say quite familiarly: “May you live long
+for this, doctor. Why, you have put new souls into us.”
+Whereupon he was told by another man, through clenched
+teeth, that it was just like him to push himself forward.</p>
+
+<p>Each man had his own tale of woe to tell, his own questions
+to ask. One man, whose appearance and manner
+indicated that he was a tin-smith, had a son at the gymnasium
+and a Gentile neighbour whose wife became green
+with envy as often as she saw the Jewish boy in his handsome
+uniform. She was much better off than the tin-smith
+yet her children were receiving no education.</p>
+
+<p>“But why should you pay any attention to her?” Dr.
+Lipnitzky asked.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t, but my wife does. You know how women
+are, doctor. They take everything hard. Last week the
+Gentile woman said aloud that it was impudent on the
+part of Jews to dress their boys up in gymnasium uniforms,
+as if they were noblemen, and that it was time
+Miroslav did like all God-fearing towns and started a riot
+against the Jews. So my wife is afraid to let the boy
+wear the uniform, and I think she is right, too. Let the
+eyes of that Gentile woman creep out of their sockets
+without looking at the child’s uniform. It is vacation
+time anyhow. But the boy, he cried all day and made a
+rumpus and said the school authorities would punish him
+if he was seen in the street without his uniform. Is it<a name="Page_325" id="Page_325"><span class="pagenum">[325]</span></a>
+true, doctor? I am only an ignorant workman. What do
+I know?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, it is true, and tell your wife not to mind that
+woman,” answered Dr. Lipnitzky, exchanging a woebegone
+look with Vladimir.</p>
+
+<p>“I have some goods lying at the railroad station for
+me,” said a little man with a puckered forehead. “It
+has been there about a month. ‘Shall I take it to the
+shop so that the rioters may have some more goods to
+pillage?’ I thought to myself. Would you really advise
+me to receive it, doctor?”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Lipnitzky took fire. “Do you want me to sign a
+guarantee for it?” he said. “Do you want me to be
+responsible for the goods? You people are an awful lot.”</p>
+
+<p>“I was merely asking your advice, doctor,” the man
+with the puckered forehead answered, wretchedly. “You
+can’t do much business these days, anyhow. The best
+Gentiles won’t pay. One has nothing but a book full of
+debts. Besides, when the door flies open one’s soul sinks.
+And when a Gentile customer comes in you pray God that
+he may leave your shop as soon as possible. For who
+knows but his visit may be a put-up job and that all he
+wants is to pick a quarrel as a signal for a lot of other
+rowdies to break in?”</p>
+
+<p>“And the Gentile sees your cowardice,” the doctor cut
+in with an effect of continuing the man’s story, “and becomes
+arrogant, and this is the way a riot is hatched.” By
+degrees he resumed his superior manner and his Germanised
+Yiddish, but his tone remained warm.</p>
+
+<p>“Arrogant!” said a tall, stooped, neatly-dressed jeweller.
+“You have told us of some honest officers, doctor. Well,
+the other day an army officer came into my place with a
+lady. He selected a ring for her, and when I said it was<a name="Page_326" id="Page_326"><span class="pagenum">[326]</span></a>
+forty rubles, he made no answer, but sent the lady away
+with the ring, and then&mdash;you should have seen him break
+out at me. I had put him to shame before a lady, he said.
+He was good for forty times forty dollars, and all the
+Jews were a lot of cut-throats and blood-suckers; that all
+we were good for was to ask officers to protect us against
+rioters, and that my shop was made up of ill-gotten wealth
+anyhow. I had never seen the man before and I insisted
+upon being paid; but he made such a noise, I was afraid
+a crowd might gather. So I let him go, but I sent out
+my salesman after him and he found out his name. Then
+I went before his colonel” (the jeweller named the regiment),
+“but what do you think the colonel said: ‘He’s a
+nice fellow. I shall never believe it of him. And if he
+owes you some money, he’ll pay you. At a time like this
+you Jews oughtn’t to press your claims too hard.’ That’s
+what the colonel said.”</p>
+
+<p>When a shabby cap-maker with thick bloodless lips told
+how he had let a rough-looking Gentile leave his shop in
+a new cap without paying for it, the doctor flew into a
+passion.</p>
+
+<p>“Why did you? Why did you?” he growled, stamping
+his feet, just as he would when the relatives of a patient
+neglected to comply with his orders. “It is just like you
+people. I would have you flayed for this.”</p>
+
+<p>This only encouraged the cap-maker to go into the
+humour of the episode.</p>
+
+<p>“I was poking around the market place, with a high
+pile of caps on either hand,” he said, “when I saw a
+Gentile with a face like a carrot covered full of warts.
+‘Aren’t you ashamed to wear such a <ins class="punct" title="Transcriber's Note: changed &quot; to '">cap?’</ins> says I.
+‘Aren't you ashamed to spoil a handsome face like yours
+by that rusty, horrid old thing on your head?’”</p><p><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327"><span class="pagenum">[327]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I would have you spanked,” the little doctor
+snarled smilingly. Whereupon several of the bystanders
+also smiled.</p>
+
+<p>“Hold on, doctor. I spanked myself. Well, the Gentile
+was not hard to persuade, though when we got at my
+place he was rather hard to please. He kept me plucking
+caps from the ceiling until the very pole in my hand got
+tired of the job. At last he was suited. I thought he
+would ask how much. He didn’t. He did say something,
+but that was about anti-Jewish riots. ‘This cap will do,’
+he then said, ‘Good-bye old man,’ and made for the door.
+And when I rushed after him and asked for the money
+he turned on me and stuck the biggest fig<a name="Anchor-D" id="Anchor-D"></a><a title="Go to footnote D" href="#Footnote-D" class="fnanchor">[D]</a> you ever saw
+into my face. Since then when I see the good looks of a
+Gentile spoiled by a horrid old cap I try not to take it to
+heart.”</p>
+
+<p>The doctor laughed. “And you let him go without paying?”
+he asked.</p>
+
+<p>“I should say I did. I was glad he didn’t ask for
+the change.”</p>
+
+<p>Another man confessed to having had an experience of
+this kind, a customer having exacted from him change
+from a ruble which he had never paid him.</p>
+
+<p>“He was a tough looking customer, and he made a
+rumpus, so I thought to myself, ‘Is this the first time I
+have been out of some cash? Let him go hang himself.’
+And the scoundrel, he gave me a laugh, called me accursed
+Jew into the bargain and went his way.”</p>
+
+<p>“Did you ask him to call again?” the cap-maker demanded,
+and noticing Clara’s father by his side, he added:
+“This is not the way Rabbi Rachmiel’s wife does business,<a name="Page_328" id="Page_328"><span class="pagenum">[328]</span></a>
+is it? She would make him pay her the dollar and the
+change, too.”</p>
+
+<p>The doctor burst into laughter, the others echoing it
+noisily. Only Vladimir’s face wore a look of restless
+gravity. It was the restlessness of a man who is trying to
+nerve himself up to a first public speech. His heart was
+full of something which he was aching to say to these
+people, to unburden himself of, but his courage failed
+him to take the word. Presently a man too timid to seek
+information in the centre of the assembly addressed a
+whispered inquiry to Vladimir and Vladimir’s answer
+attracted the attention of two or three bystanders. Gradually
+a little colony branched off from the main body.
+He was telling them what he knew from the newspapers
+about the latest anti-Jewish outbreaks in various towns;
+and speaking in a very low voice and in the simplest
+conversational accents, he gradually passed to what weighed
+on his heart. He knew Yiddish very well indeed, yet he
+had considerable difficulty in speaking it, his chief impediment
+lying in his inability to render the cultured language
+in which he thought into primitive speech. His Yiddish
+was full of Russian and German therefore, but some of
+his listeners understood it all, while the rest missed but
+an occasional phrase.</p>
+
+<p>“People like myself&mdash;those who have studied at the
+gymnasia and universities”&mdash;he went on in a brooding,
+plaintive undertone, “feel the misery of it all the more
+keenly because we have been foolish enough to imagine
+ourselves Russians, and to keep aloof from our own people.
+Many of us feel like apologising to every poor suffering
+Jew in Russia, to beg his forgiveness, to implore him to
+take us back. We were ashamed to speak Yiddish. We
+thought we were Russians. We speak the language of<a name="Page_329" id="Page_329"><span class="pagenum">[329]</span></a>
+the Gentiles, and we love it so dearly; we have adopted
+their ways and customs; we love their literature; everything
+Russian is so dear to us; why should it not be? Is
+not this our birthplace? But the more we love it, the
+more we try to be like Russians, the more they hate us.
+My uncle, Rabbi Rachmiel, says it is too late to do penance.
+Well, I do feel like a man who comes to confess his sins
+and to do penance. It is the blood and the tears of our
+brothers and sisters that are calling to us to return to our
+people. And now we see how vain our efforts are to be
+Russians. There was a great Jew whose name was Heinrich
+Heine.” (Two of the men manifested their acquaintance
+with the name by a nod.) “He was a great writer
+of poetry. So he once wrote about his mother&mdash;how he
+had abandoned her and sought the love of other women.
+But he failed to find love anywhere, until ultimately he
+came to the conclusion that the only woman in whom he
+was sure of love was his own dear mother. This is the
+way I feel now. I scarcely ever saw the inside of a synagogue
+before, but now I, like the doctor, belong here. It
+is not a question of religion. I am not religious and cannot
+be. But I am a Jew and we all belong together.
+And when a synagogue happens to stand on a site like
+this&mdash;&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>He broke off in the middle of the sentence. His allusion
+to the massacre of two centuries before inspired him
+with an appalling sense of the continuity of Jewish suffering.
+The others stood about gazing solemnly at him,
+until the scholarly old man of eighty with the very white
+beard broke silence. He raised his veined aged little
+hands over Vladimir’s head and said in a nervous treble:</p>
+
+<p>“May God bless you, my son. That’s all I have to say.”</p>
+
+<p>Vladimir was literally electrified by his words.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330"><span class="pagenum">[330]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“But what do they want of us?” asked a man with a
+blueish complexion. “You say they are good-natured. Do
+you call it good-natured when one acts like a wild beast,
+bathing in the blood of innocent people?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, this is the Gentile way of being good-natured,”
+somebody put in, with a sneer, before Vladimir had time
+to answer.</p>
+
+<p>“They have been turned into savages,” Vigdoroff then
+said. He maintained the low, mournful voice, though he
+now put a didactic tone into it. “They are blind, ignorant
+people. They are easily made a catspaw of.”</p>
+
+<p>The man with the blueish complexion interrupted him.
+He spoke of Gentile cruelty, of the Inquisition, the Crusades,
+massacres, and almost with tears of rage in his eyes
+he defied Vladimir to tell him that Jews were capable of
+any such brutalities. Vladimir said no, Jews were not
+capable of any bloodshed, and went on defending the Russian
+people. The man with the sneer was beginning to
+annoy him. He was an insignificant looking fellow with
+very thin lips and a very thin flat blond beard. Even
+when his face was grave it had a sneering effect. He said
+very little. Only occasionally he would utter a word or
+two of which nobody else took notice. Yet it was chiefly
+to him that Vladimir was addressing himself. But the
+assembly was soon broken up. Rabbi Rachmiel’s wife
+came in at the head of several other women who were not
+afraid to walk through the streets after sundown in these
+days. They had grown uneasy about their husbands’
+delay.</p>
+
+<p>Vladimir saluted his aunt warmly. They exchanged a
+few words, but nothing was said of Clara. An “illegal”
+person like her could not be mentioned in public.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331"><span class="pagenum">[331]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>A PAPER FROM THE CZAR.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">A LARGE crowd of peasants, in tall straw hats, many
+of them with their whips in their hands, congregated
+in front of the bailiff’s office at Zorki. It
+was a sultry afternoon in August. A single shirt of
+coarse white linen and a pair of trousers of the same material
+were all the clothes the men wore. The trousers
+were very wide and baggy but drawn tight at the bottom
+by means of strings, so that they dropped at the ankles
+blouse-fashion, and the loose-fitting shirt fell over
+the trousers with a similar effect. Most of the shirts were
+embroidered in red and blue. Sometimes, as a result of
+special rivalry among the young women, one village will
+affect gaudier embroidery and more of it than its neighbours.
+This could be seen now at one corner of the crowd
+where a group of peasants, all from the same place, defined
+itself by the flaming red on the upper part of their sleeves.
+There were women, too, in the crowd, the girls in wreaths
+of artificial flowers and all of them in ribbons and coral
+beads, though some of them were barefoot.</p>
+
+<p>A strong smell of primitive toil emanated from their
+bodies; primitive ideas and primitive interests looked out
+of their eyes. The northern moujik&mdash;the Great, or
+“real,” Russian&mdash;who speaks the language of Turgeneff
+and Tolstoy, has less poetry than the Little-Russian, but<a name="Page_332" id="Page_332"><span class="pagenum">[332]</span></a>
+he also has less cunning and more abandon. To be sure,
+the cunning of the Zorki peasant is as primitive as his
+whole mind. Very few men in the crowd now standing
+in front of the bailiff’s office could have managed to add
+such two numbers as six and nineteen, or to subtract the
+weight of an empty pail from the weight of a pail of honey.
+Their book-keeping consists of notches on the door-jamb,
+and their armour in the battle of life is a cast-iron distrustfulness.</p>
+
+<p>At last the bailiff made his appearance, adjusted the
+straps of his sword across his breast, and asked what they
+wanted. A tall old fellow with a drooping steel-grey
+moustache came out of the crowd, hat in hand, and bowed
+deeply, as he said:</p>
+
+<p>“It’s like this, your nobleness. We wish to know when
+that paper from the Czar about the Jews will be read to
+us?”</p>
+
+<p>“What paper from the Czar?” the bailiff asked. “What
+are you talking about?” He was a dry-boned man, but
+ruddy-faced and with very narrow almond-shaped eyes.
+As he now looked at the crowd through the sharp afternoon
+glare his eyes glistened like two tiny strips of burnished
+metal.</p>
+
+<p>“Your nobleness need not be told what paper. It’s
+about beating the Jews and taking away their goods.”</p>
+
+<p>The scene was being watched by several Jews, plucky
+fellows who had come in the interests of their people at
+the risk of being the first victims of mob fury. Among
+these was Yossl, Makar’s father, at once the most intellectual
+and strongest looking man in the delegation. In
+the meantime the other Jews, stupefied and sick with
+fear, had closed their shops and dwellings and were hiding
+in cellars and in garrets, in the ruins of an old church<a name="Page_333" id="Page_333"><span class="pagenum">[333]</span></a>
+and in the woods. Two women gave birth to stillborn
+children during the commotion, one of these at the bedside
+of her little boy who was too sick to be moved.</p>
+
+<p>“You are a fool,” the bailiff said to the spokesman,
+with a smile, as he raised his narrow eyes in quest of some
+Gentile with whom he might share the fun. “You are a
+lot of fools. Better go home. There is no such paper in
+the world. Whoever told you there was?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, everybody says so. In most places they finished
+the job long ago. Only we are a lot of slow coaches, people
+say. And then, when the higher authorities find out about
+it, who will be fined or put in jail? We, poor peasants.
+As if we did not have troubles enough as it is.”</p>
+
+<p>“What will you be put in jail for?” asked the bailiff,
+chuckling to himself.</p>
+
+<p>Here a younger peasant whispered in the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'spokeman's'">spokesman’s</ins>
+ear not to let himself be bamboozled.</p>
+
+<p>Speaking with unwonted boldness, born of the conviction
+that the bailiff was suppressing a document of the Czar,
+the tall fellow said:</p>
+
+<p>“You can’t fool us, your nobleness. We are only
+peasants, but what we know we know.” And he went on
+to enumerate villages where, according to rumour, the paper
+had already been read and acted upon. “Although uneducated,
+yet we are not such fools as your nobleness takes
+us for. If it is a ukase direct from the Czar we aren’t
+going to take chances, sir. Not we, sir. Better read it to
+us and let’s be done with it. We have no time to waste,
+sir.”</p>
+
+<p>One of the Jews was going to make a suggestion, but
+he was shouted down and waved aside.</p>
+
+<p>The bailiff made a gesture of amused despair and turned
+to go back, when the peasants stepped forward, and chattering<a name="Page_334" id="Page_334"><span class="pagenum">[334]</span></a>
+excitedly, they gave him to understand that they
+would not let him go until he had shown them the imperial
+ukase. The purport of their remonstrance was to the
+effect that the Jews had bribed him to suppress the document.
+The bailiff took it all good-naturedly. In his
+heart of hearts he was looking forward to the sport of an
+anti-Jewish outbreak with delight; but the noise brought
+the local priest upon the scene&mdash;a kindly elderly man
+with the face of a whimpering peasant girl. He was a
+victim of official injustice himself and he implored the
+crowd to listen to reason. His face, at once comic and
+piteous, was the main cause of his failures. He was a
+well-educated priest, yet he was kept in this obscure town.
+His sacerdotal locks, meant to be long and silken, hung in
+stiff, wretched little clumps. Nevertheless, as he now stood
+in his purple broad-sleeved gown, appealing to the multitude
+of white figures, his cross sparkling in the sun, the
+spectacle was like a scene of the early days of Christianity.</p>
+
+<p>“It is a great sin to circulate wicked falsehoods like
+that and it is just as much of a sin to credit them,” he
+said in a pained heartfelt voice. “Ours is a good Czar.
+He does not command his children to do violence to human
+beings.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, well, little father,” one peasant broke in. “You
+don’t seem to have heard of it. That’s all. If the Czar
+has not ordered it, then why do they beat the Jews everywhere
+else and the police and soldiers stand by and see to
+it that they do the work well?”</p>
+
+<p>The bailiff burst into a horse-laugh and slapped his
+knees violently. The priest’s face bore a look of despair.</p>
+
+<p>“Can it be that you believe such foolishness?” he said.</p>
+
+<p>“What do we know? We are only common people. All
+we do know is that whatever happens it is our skin that is<a name="Page_335" id="Page_335"><span class="pagenum">[335]</span></a>
+peeled off. If we can’t get the paper we’ll do our duty
+without it.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s it, without it!” the others chimed in in excited
+chorus.</p>
+
+<p>Further parleying made it clear that many of them
+had no inclination to do any personal harm to the Jews or
+to their property. They were on friendly terms with their
+Jewish neighbours, and all they wanted was to get rid of
+a disagreeable duty. The rest, about half of the entire
+crowd, had had their heads turned with stories of lakes of
+vodka and fabulous piles of loot, but even these proved
+susceptible to argument.</p>
+
+<p>“Here,” Yossl shouted at the top of his voice and with
+great fervour. “I have a scheme, and what will you lose
+by it if you hear me out? If you don’t like it, I’ll take
+it back and it won’t cost you a cent.” The intensity of
+his manner took them by storm. He was allowed to finish.
+“My scheme amounts to this: The Jews will sign a paper
+taking upon themselves all responsibility for your failure
+to smash their shops and houses, so that if the authorities
+call you to account for violating the imperial ukase, we will
+answer and you will come out clear.”</p>
+
+<p>First there was perplexed stillness, then a murmur of
+distrust, and finally a tumult of rejection.</p>
+
+<p>“Crafty Jew! There must be some trick in it!” they
+yelled sneeringly.</p>
+
+<p>The priest was wiping the perspiration from his forehead.
+Finally he shouted <ins class="punct" title="Transcriber's Note: changed . to :">huskily:</ins></p>
+
+<p>“Very well, I’ll sign such a paper.”</p>
+
+<p>After some more arguing, the plan, in its amended form,
+was adopted. The older men flaunted their experience by
+insisting upon a formal “certificate” bearing the priest’s
+official seal and signature, so that when the Czar’s inspectors<a name="Page_336" id="Page_336"><span class="pagenum">[336]</span></a>
+arrived the peasants might have something tangible
+to present. When all this had been complied with,
+there was some portentous talk about the Jews sprinkling
+the bargain with vodka; but having followed the “little
+father’s” advice in the main point the peasants were now
+in a yielding mood toward him generally, and the vodka
+shops being closed, he had no difficulty in getting them to
+go home sober.</p>
+
+<p>A large number of them had to cross the river. To
+occupy their minds while they were waiting for the ferry&mdash;a
+small antediluvian affair which could only accommodate
+about one-fifth of the crowd at a time&mdash;the priest
+asked them for a song. And then the quiet evening air
+resounded with those pensive, soulful strains which for
+depth of melancholy have scarcely an equal in the entire
+range of folk-music. Thus the men who might now have
+been frenzied with the work of pillage, devastation and,
+perhaps, murder, stood transfixed with the poetry of
+anguish and pity. Race distinctions and ukases&mdash;how
+alien and unintelligible these things were to the world in
+which their souls dwelt at this minute! The glint of the
+water grew darker every second. The men on the ferry
+continued their singing. Then somebody on the other
+side joined in and the melody spread in all directions.
+The fresh ringing treble of a peasant girl, peculiarly doleful
+in its high notes, came from across the water. A choir
+of invisible choirs, scattered along both banks, sang to the
+night of the sadness of human existence.</p>
+
+<p>The Jews returned from their hiding-places, but very
+few of them went to bed that night. The tragedy in many
+houses was intensified by the circumstance that the heads
+of these families were absent from the town, having gone
+to the Good Jew for prayer and advice as to the spreading<a name="Page_337" id="Page_337"><span class="pagenum">[337]</span></a>
+calamity. Weinstein’s spacious rooms were full of neighbours
+and their families. The presence of the man whom
+one had been accustomed to regard as a monument of
+worldly power had a special attraction for the poorer Pietists
+this evening. Besides, one dreaded the hallucinations
+of solitude and in Weinstein’s house one was sure to find
+company. Most of them sat in the large prayer room,
+keeping close to each other, conversing in subdued, melancholy
+voices, comfortable in the community of their woe,
+as though content to remain in this huddle until the end
+of time. Yossl was curling his black side-locks morosely.
+The other people in the room importuned him for details
+of the scene in front of the bailiff’s office, but he was not
+in the mood for speaking. Weinstein was snapping his
+fingers at his own florid neck, as he walked backward and
+forward. Presently Maria, his Gentile servant, who spoke
+good Yiddish, addressed him, with sad, sympathetic mien:</p>
+
+<p>“Master dear,” she said in Yiddish. “Will you let me
+break a couple of windows?”</p>
+
+<p>He did not understand.</p>
+
+<p>“You see,” she explained bursting into tears. “If they
+get at me because I did not smash things in your house,
+I’ll be able to swear that I did.” For an instant he stood
+surveying her, then, in a spasm of rage and misery, he
+shrieked out:</p>
+
+<p>“Why, certainly! Go ahead! Break, smash, everything
+you set your eye on. You are the princess, we are
+only Jews. Go smash the whole house.” And in his
+frenzy he went breaking windows and chairs, shrieking as
+he did so:</p>
+
+<p>“Here! Look and let your heart rejoice.”</p>
+
+<p>“Madman,” Yossl said calmly, “you’ll alarm the town.
+They’ll think it’s a riot and the Gentiles will join in.”</p><p><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338"><span class="pagenum">[338]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Weinstein sat down pale and panting. “Go and tell
+your people to come and delight in the sight of a Jew’s
+broken windows,” he said to the Gentile woman.</p>
+
+<p>She put her hands to her face and left the room sobbing.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339"><span class="pagenum">[339]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE DEFENCE COMMITTEE.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">THE little man who played the part of errand boy at
+the cheese shop and who was arrested before the
+work on the mine was well advanced had ultimately
+turned state’s evidence. Among the revolutionists he betrayed
+was Pavel, but the prince was known to him under
+a false name. Still, the information furnished by his
+man, added to some addresses found on other captured
+Nihilists, led to a series of new arrests. The ranks of the
+Will of the People were being rapidly decimated.
+Grisha, the dynamiter, and several other members of
+the innermost circle were seized shortly after the killing of
+the Czar. The few surviving leaders withdrew to the
+provinces, in some cases only immediately to fall into the
+hands of the police there. Thus in April, after a Jewish
+student girl was arrested in Kieff, the “trap” at her
+lodgings caught a woman and a man who proved to be
+Baska, the “wife” of the “cheesemonger” couple, and her
+real husband, “the German.” Urie (the “cheesemonger”),
+Makar and several other active revolutionists
+were in Moscow.</p>
+
+<p>One late afternoon Clara was slowly pacing the painted
+floor of her room, her hands clasped behind her, while her
+lover lay on the lounge, watching her through the gathering
+dusk.</p><p><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340"><span class="pagenum">[340]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“St. Petersburg <i>is</i> too hot now,” he said, breaking a
+long silence. “Everybody is going away.”</p>
+
+<p>“There is really no use staying here just at present,”
+she assented, sadly, without pausing.</p>
+
+<p>They grew silent again. The gloom of the little parlour
+was thickening so rapidly that it seemed as though the outline
+of Clara’s face, as she walked back and forth, became
+vaguer every time she turned in Pavel’s direction.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, with a burst of amorous tenderness, he got up,
+saying:</p>
+
+<p>“Clanya! Let us go for a rest somewhere. You know
+you need it.”</p>
+
+<p>“You need it even more than I do, poor boy,” she
+replied, stepping up close to him. “I do wish you would
+go home for a month or two&mdash;or somewhere else. As to
+myself, I should first like to see my parents. The riots
+may strike Miroslav at any moment. If any harm came
+to them, I should never forgive myself. I must get them
+away from there. That’s all I can think of.” There was
+an obvious blank in her words. She left something unsaid,
+and the consciousness of it made him uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p>“But that’s easily arranged,” he urged. “You can
+send them money and invite them to some safe place.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s what I have been thinking of. I am so restless
+I wish I could start to-morrow. It couldn’t be arranged
+too soon. There are persistent rumors that a riot is coming
+there. I shan’t be gone long, dearest.”</p>
+
+<p>He had it at the tip of his tongue to force a discussion
+of their party’s attitude toward the riots and to have it
+out once for all. In his imagined debates with her on the
+subject he had often exclaimed: “I happen to belong to
+a class of land-robbers and profligates; now, suppose the
+revolution breaks out and my class is attacked by the<a name="Page_341" id="Page_341"><span class="pagenum">[341]</span></a>
+people, will that affect me? A nice revolutionist I should
+be if it did!” This and other arguments were all ready;
+what he lacked, however, was the courage to bring up the
+topic. As to her promise to marry him when the great
+conspiracy was out of the way, her redeeming it now, while
+she was so tremulously absorbed in the question of her
+parents’ safety, could not be thought of.</p>
+
+<p>He gathered her to him and kissed her, at once sympathetically
+and appealingly.</p>
+
+<p>“Go home, Pasha,” she besought. “But not to Miroslav.
+You won’t rest there. Go to some of your mother’s
+country places, or, perhaps some other place would be safer
+for you. Go and take good care of yourself. It would be
+too terrible if I found you arrested when I got back.”</p>
+
+<p>“Will you marry me then?” he asked, impersonating
+a pampered child.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded, in the same playful spirit, and again her
+reticence brought disquiet to his heart. “Something tells
+me she’ll never be mine,” he thought with a sigh.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>While the government was actively fomenting the riots,
+making an electric rod of the Jews, the Nihilists persisted
+in mistaking them for revolutionary kindling wood.
+While the “Chronicle of Arrests” in the revolutionary
+organ included a large number of Jewish names, several
+of them of persons conspicuous in the movement and noted
+for their pluck, another page of the same issue contained
+a letter from the riot-ridden district that was strongly
+flavoured with anti-Semitism. Moreover, a proclamation,
+addressed to the peasantry, was printed on an “underground”
+press, naming the Czar, the landlords and the
+Jews as enemies of the people. This proclamation met
+with a storm of disapproval, however, on the part of Gentiles<a name="Page_342" id="Page_342"><span class="pagenum">[342]</span></a>
+and Jews alike, and was withdrawn from circulation.
+Chaos reigned in the minds of the Nihilists. Their party
+was disorganised, their thinkers for the most part buried,
+dead or alive, the editorial management of their publications
+in the hands of the weakest man on the Executive
+Committee, of one who several years later sent, from Paris,
+a most servile petition to the Czar, abjuring his former
+views and begging permission to return home as an advocate
+of unqualified absolutism and panslavism.</p>
+
+<p>The attitude of the Nihilists toward the Jewish population
+in general was thus anything but sympathetic; and
+yet, so far as the higher strata of the movement were concerned,
+the personal relations between Jew and Gentile
+were not affected by this circumstance in the slightest
+degree. The feeling of intimate comradeship and mutual
+devotion between the two elements was left unmarred, as
+if one’s views on the Jewish question were purely a matter
+of abstract reasoning without any bearing on the Jew of
+flesh and blood one happened to know.</p>
+
+<p>More than this, in their blind theorising according to
+preconceived formulas, most of the active Jewish Nihilists
+shut their eyes to the actual state of things and joined
+their Gentile comrades in applauding the riots as an encouraging
+sign of the times, as “a popular revolutionary
+protest.”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel longed to discuss the riots with Makar. When he
+saw him, however, he found him far more interested in the
+“new revolutionary program” upon which he was engaged
+than in the anti-Semitic crusade.</p>
+
+<p>“As if it was the first time Jewish blood had been shed,”
+he said, answering a question from Pavel, half-heartedly.
+“The entire history of the Jews is one continuous riot.
+Indeed, the present outbreaks are a mere flea-bite to what<a name="Page_343" id="Page_343"><span class="pagenum">[343]</span></a>
+they have undergone before. So, what has happened to
+make one revise one’s views on the movement? One might
+as well stay away from the <i>Will of the People</i> because,
+forsooth, Jews were burned by Gentiles in the 15th century.
+Nonsense.”</p>
+
+<p>“Clara doesn’t seem to take it quite so easy,” Pavel
+thought to himself.</p>
+
+<p>“Clara has gone to meet her parents,” he said, thirsting
+to talk of her.</p>
+
+<p>“Has she? There may be a riot in Miroslav at any time.
+I wonder how Zorki is getting along. But then my father
+will be able to take care of himself,&mdash;and of Miriam,
+too,” he added, lukewarmly. The only thing of which he
+could have spoken with enthusiasm in these days was his
+program.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel came away hankering for more conversation about
+his fiancée and about the riots. Instead of seeking rest
+and safety, as he had promised Clara to do, he coveted a
+new sort of excitement and danger. He felt that there
+was something wrong about that crusade, and he had a
+sportsmanlike craving to see it for himself. Lacking the
+courage to criticise his party, he accused himself of allowing
+his revolutionary convictions to be affected by the interests
+of his love; yet he continued to pray in his heart that the
+Jews of Miroslav, at least, might be spared. He read all
+he found in the newspapers about the atrocities, and on
+taking up a paper he would tremble lest it should contain
+news of a riot in his birthplace.</p>
+
+<p>When he read of the Miroslav panic he went there at
+once.</p>
+
+<p>“If it’s really a riot she’ll never come back to me,” he
+brooded, wretchedly.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" /><p><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344"><span class="pagenum">[344]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The rumours of an impending catastrophe were assuming
+definite outline in Miroslav. A date was mentioned
+and tall Great-Russians in red shirts&mdash;specialists at the
+business&mdash;were said to have been seen about town. Great-Russia
+is and has always been strictly without the pale of
+Jewish settlement, it being one of the characteristic features
+of the anti-Semitic riots of the period that their
+leaders were imported from the rabble in those districts
+in which very few people had an idea what a Jew looked
+like.</p>
+
+<p>The Jews of Miroslav sent a snug bribe to Pavel’s uncle,
+but their agent came back with the money. The governor
+had commissioned him to assure them that everything
+would be done to make an outbreak impossible, but “gratitude”
+he would not accept. The Jews took alarm. “If
+he doesn’t eat honey,” they said, in the phrase of a current
+proverb, “then it looks bad indeed.” When a deputation
+of representative men called on him he lost his temper.</p>
+
+<p>“You Jews are too intense, that’s what’s the trouble
+with you,” he said, blinking his eyes. “I have let you
+know twice that there is no cause for alarm, yet it seems
+that it is not enough for you.” When he had softened
+down he talked quite at length, although in a haughty tone
+of authority and immeasurable aloofness, of the steps he
+had taken. The main point was that the Jews should not
+tempt people to lawlessness by betraying anxiety. He
+delivered quite a lecture on the point. The deputation
+came away greatly encouraged. They knew of the extensive
+business relations which the managers of his estates
+had with Jewish merchants, and they argued, among themselves,
+that a riot, involving as it usually did the wholesale
+destruction of Jewish property and a general demoralisation
+of business, could not but entail serious financial losses<a name="Page_345" id="Page_345"><span class="pagenum">[345]</span></a>
+upon himself. This was in keeping with declarations
+made by the boards of trade at Moscow, Warsaw and
+Kharkoff, the three chief centres of Russian commerce,
+regarding the anti-Jewish crusade. These bodies had
+pointed out the importance of the Jews of the south as
+the prime movers of local industry, as almost the exclusive
+connecting link between the south of Russia and the world
+markets of Germany and England; accordingly, they had
+protested against the anti-Semitic campaign as a source
+of ruin to the economic interests of the whole empire. All
+this the members of the deputation were aware of, so they
+saw no reason to doubt the sincerity of the governor’s
+pledges. His advice not to put the thought of a riot in
+the popular mind by a demonstration of timidity produced
+a strong impression.</p>
+
+<p>The upshot was that the Jews of Miroslav were afraid
+to be afraid. A singular mood took hold of them. Everybody
+made an effort to act upon the presumption that
+Miroslav was immune, that it was in an exceptional position,
+and at the same time everyone read suspense and
+mortal fear in the eyes of everyone else. It was like walking
+in one’s stocking feet with a spectacular effect of making
+a noise. Jewish women still avoided the proximity of
+Christian men, and a Jewish face that did not look Jewish
+was still eyed enviously as a shield against violence. The
+only tangible manifestation of the spirit advocated by the
+governor was a slight lengthening of business hours. Since
+the beginning of the panic Jewish tradesmen had been
+closing their shops before it was quite dark&mdash;three or
+four hours earlier than usual. Now they compromised on
+keeping them open until the street lamps were lit. Nevertheless
+those of them who depended on Christian trade
+continued to treat their customers with a gentleness and<a name="Page_346" id="Page_346"><span class="pagenum">[346]</span></a>
+a fawning attention that had nothing to do with the ordinary
+blandishments of the counter. Inveterate rogues
+among Jewish tradesmen became honest men. On the
+other hand a most respectable Gentile often yielded to
+temptation that amounted to downright robbery, while the
+license of “shady Christian characters” was asserting
+itself more portentously every day.</p>
+
+<p>A queer story came from one of the suburbs. When
+three Gentiles wearing red shirts entered an out-of-the-way
+house to inquire the road, their appearance frightened
+the two Jewish women they found there out of the place,
+whereupon one of these, in a frenzy of terror, jumped into
+a well and was drowned. Meanwhile the three strangers,
+finding themselves alone, stripped the house of its valuables&mdash;a
+finale which struck the fancy of a notorious thief
+and his gang, who then put on red shirts and made a practice
+of plundering Jewish houses after scaring away their
+occupants. The thief was known as Petroucha Sivoucha,
+which, foregoing the rhyme, may be rendered as Cheap
+Vodka Pete. When he was arrested at last he said, impersonating
+a simple-minded peasant:</p>
+
+<p>“But it was only Jewish stuff and everybody says a
+Gentile is welcome to it nowadays, that such is the will
+of our little father, the Czar.”</p>
+
+<p>The riots continued to spread, and while they did,
+General Ignatyeff, the new Minister of the Interior, announced
+measure after measure against the Jews. In a
+country where every official is perpetually craning his neck
+toward the capital, it was only natural that an attitude
+like this on the part of the Minister of the Interior should
+create an atmosphere of anti-Semitic partiality amid which
+justice to the Jew became impossible. Ignatyeff knew of
+the widespread rumour as to the existence of an imperial<a name="Page_347" id="Page_347"><span class="pagenum">[347]</span></a>
+ukase ordering the peasantry to plunder and commit violence
+upon the Jews. Apart from his official sources of
+information, the newspapers were full of instances showing
+the effect of that rumour, yet he did nothing to stop
+it or to disabuse the minds of the peasantry in that connection.
+This was interpreted by the officials as a sign
+that the rumour was not meant to be stopped, and it was
+not.</p>
+
+<p>Governor Boulatoff’s encouraging answers to the Jews
+of his province brought to Miroslav hundreds of people from
+other towns. Some of these were victims of former atrocities,
+left without shelter in their native places; others had
+not yet been through an anti-Semitic outbreak, but dreaded
+one.</p>
+
+<p>While people from other provinces were flocking to Miroslav
+in quest of safety the leading Miroslav families were
+quietly sending their wives and children abroad and taking
+their valuables to the government bank. The offices of
+Dr. Lipnitzky and of Sender the Arbitrator, Vladimir’s
+father, were visited by scores of panic-stricken people daily.</p>
+
+<p>“The rich people put their money and their plate in the
+bank,” said a teamster’s wife to Vladimir and his father,
+“but what shall we do with our traps?”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t worry, my dear woman, there will be no riot in
+Miroslav,” the Arbitrator reassured her.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s all very well to say don’t worry,” the woman retorted
+sharply. “You people can afford to say it, because
+your house is safe. But if they kill my husband’s horse
+and destroy his truck, we’ll have to go begging. It did
+not come easy, I can assure you.” She burst into tears.
+“The years that it has taken to save it all up, the pinching,
+the scrimping&mdash;all in order that a thousand ghosts might
+have something to grab. And what are we going to do<a name="Page_348" id="Page_348"><span class="pagenum">[348]</span></a>
+with ourselves? Where shall we hide? As to my husband
+and myself, well, all they can do is to kill us, but how
+about the children?” And again she burst into sobs.</p>
+
+<p>When an old woman who had two unmarried daughters,
+“both as handsome as a tree,” described her despair concerning
+them, Vladimir’s mother invited the girls to stay
+with her until the storm was over. And then scores of
+other mothers begged her, with heart-breaking lamentations
+and kisses, to take pity on their daughters also; which she
+could not do for sheer lack of room.</p>
+
+<p>The Vigdoroffs felt reasonably safe because Rasgadayeff,
+their Gentile landlord and friend, was sure to keep the
+marauders away. Indeed, the example of all previous outbreaks
+had shown that in most cases it was enough for
+any Gentile to tell the rioters that he was the proprietor
+of the house and that there were no Jews on his premises
+for them to pass cordially on, and Rasgadayeff was one
+of the conspicuous and popular figures in the Gentile community
+of the town. It is true that he was looking forward
+to an anti-Semitic upheaval with joy himself, but his
+liking for the Vigdoroffs was sincere.</p>
+
+<p>Vladimir’s father went about among his depositors asking
+to be relieved of their money, jewelry or silver spoons.
+They refused to accept it. Finally he moved his iron safe
+to Rasgadayeff’s apartment.</p>
+
+<p>Vladimir was in despair. He felt it quite likely that
+the panic should be father to a catastrophe, as the governor
+had said. Once when he spoke in this strain at his father’s
+table, his mother remarked with light irony:</p>
+
+<p>“Look at the brave man. Look at the Cossack of
+straw.”</p>
+
+<p>The retort struck cruelly home. He knew that his
+heart grew faint every time the anti-Semitic mobs pictured<a name="Page_349" id="Page_349"><span class="pagenum">[349]</span></a>
+themselves vividly in his brain, although often, indeed, he
+had a queer feeling as if it would be disappointing to see
+Miroslav left out of the list of towns that were sharing in
+the tragic notoriety of the year, and visioned himself going
+through the experiences of a most brutal outbreak without
+facing its dangers. The tragedy of his people filled his
+heart. He watched them in their terror, in their misery,
+in their clinging despairing love of their children; he
+studied their frightened look, their shrinking, tremulous
+attitudes. Every Jewish woman he met struck him as a
+hunted bird, on the alert for the faintest sound, trembling
+over the fate of her nest. He saw many of them packing
+their things to flee, they did not know whither. Indeed,
+the whole historical life of his race seemed to have been
+spent in packing, in moving, in fleeing without knowing
+whither. “Oh, my poor, my unhappy people!” Vladimir
+said to himself, in a spasm of agony, yet with a glow of
+pleasure in calling them his people. In his heart of
+hearts he knew that while he told everybody to take courage
+his own mind was barren of conviction as to what was
+the best thing to do. He felt crushed. He lost his head.</p>
+
+<p>One day, as Vladimir walked along the street, his attention
+was arrested by a rough-looking young man who was
+circling round him, and scrutinising him now on this side,
+now on that. He felt annoyed. He was not sure that
+the young man was a Jew, and as he asked him sternly,
+“What are you looking at?” he was conscious of a little
+qualm of timidity.</p>
+
+<p>“Excuse me, sir,” the other answered, in Yiddish. “I
+saw you at the synagogue that Friday night. Do you
+remember?”</p>
+
+<p>They paused. The young man had the manner of a
+Jewish horse-driver or blacksmith. He was robust and<a name="Page_350" id="Page_350"><span class="pagenum">[350]</span></a>
+broad-shouldered with small very sparse teeth, somewhat
+bow-legged and somewhat cross-eyed. His coat was literally
+in tatters and gave off a strong smell of herring.</p>
+
+<p>“Well?” asked Vladimir.</p>
+
+<p>“I have been wanting to see you, sir, only I have been
+too bashful.” He gave a smile, his tongue showing between
+his sparse teeth.</p>
+
+<p>Vigdoroff rather liked his manner and invited him to
+his father’s house. On their way thither the young man
+said that his name was Zelig and that he was a cooper by
+trade, making a specialty of herring barrels. When they
+found themselves alone in Vladimir’s room, Zelig grew
+still more bashful, and after surveying the room, to make
+sure that they were not overheard, he said:</p>
+
+<p>“I want to belong to the committee.”</p>
+
+<p>“What committee?”</p>
+
+<p>“You need not be on the lookout with me, sir; I am
+no babbler.”</p>
+
+<p>It appeared that there was a defence committee in town,
+with educated young men at the head, and that in case
+of a riot it was expected to fight “to the last drop of a
+fellow’s blood,” as Zelig phrased it. That there should be
+such a thing in Miroslav without him being so much as
+aware of its existence hurt Vladimir keenly.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know anything about it,” he said, blankly.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t you really?” said Zelig. “I was sure you were
+in it and that you could get me in, too. Why, everybody
+knows about it. Only the committee is strict, because if
+the police hears of it, they’ll all be arrested. It’s against
+the law.” As he offered him more detail of the matter
+he became patronisingly enthusiastic and confided to him
+the names of Elkin and of several university students now
+on their vacation as the organisers and leaders of the<a name="Page_351" id="Page_351"><span class="pagenum">[351]</span></a>
+movement. Vladimir knew these young men and his pain
+became sharper still.</p>
+
+<p>“But what good will it do?” he said, drily. “It will
+only lead to trouble.”</p>
+
+<p>“Trouble! The idea of an educated man speaking like
+that! Can there be more trouble than the Jews are in
+now? I don’t see why we should sell ourselves so cheap.
+Once we are going to be licked, why act like a lot of
+sticks? Let us pay them for their bother at least.
+Come what may, when they attack us, let us go to work
+and crack their skulls at least&mdash;with lumps of iron, clubs
+or even pistols. Let us fondle them so that a ghost
+may get into every bone of theirs.” His words were
+accompanied with mighty swings of his shoulders and
+arms and these gesticulations of his had a peculiar effect
+on Vladimir. They stirred his blood, they hypnotised him.
+“What is the danger? They’ll kill us? Let them. As
+if the life of a Jew were worth living! Besides, aren’t they
+killing and maiming us anyhow?”</p>
+
+<p>“But look here,” Vigdoroff said seriously. “The governor
+has promised us protection and he is perfectly sincere
+about it. Now if he learns that our people take the
+law in their own hands, it may do us great harm. It is a
+very serious matter.”</p>
+
+<p>“Spit upon him, sir! I’m an uneducated man, but the
+governor&mdash;a ghost into his father’s father!&mdash;may all he
+wishes the Jews befall his own head.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s all true enough, but now he has promised us
+protection, and an organisation of that kind is against the
+law and may lead to trouble,” Vigdoroff said with perfunctory
+irritation.</p>
+
+<p>“And an organisation of rioters is not against the
+law? And robbing and killing innocent people is not<a name="Page_352" id="Page_352"><span class="pagenum">[352]</span></a>
+against the law? Long life to you, sir; you’re so wise,
+so educated and yet you are speaking like a baby. Look
+here, sir! If the governor&mdash;a plague take him&mdash;is as
+good as his word, and he does not allow the riot to get
+started, well and good. Then we’ll call the bargain off.
+But suppose he proves to be neither better nor worse than
+all governors?”</p>
+
+<p>Zelig knew of a number of other Jewish artisans who
+were anxious to join the “committee,” and he urged
+Vigdoroff to visit their gathering and to give them a talk
+like the one Zelig had heard from him at the Synagogue
+on that Friday night. “Oh, that was sweet as sugar,” he
+said, kissing two of his dirty fingers. “You see, when
+it comes to striking a scoundrel’s snout such a blow as
+will set his eyes raining sparks, we want no help. That
+we can manage ourselves, but we are only common people,
+and when a smart man like you says a couple of words,
+they simply go melting in a fellow’s bones.”</p>
+
+<p>“But I don’t know anything about the ‘committee.’”</p>
+
+<p>Zelig laughed familiarly. “Sender-the-Arbitrator’s
+son doesn’t know! If you only had the desire, you could
+belong to it yourself and introduce us fellows, too.”</p>
+
+<p>“Very well. I’ll consider it. And I should advise you
+men to do the same.”</p>
+
+<p>“Consider it! We are only plain uneducated people,
+but we aren’t going to do any considering. I have a
+sister, sir, and if a Gentile lays a finger on her he’ll be a
+dead man, I can tell you that. Jewish blood is being
+spilled by the bucket and here you are talking of ‘considering.’”
+He insisted that Vladimir should attend the
+meeting of his informal society, and Vladimir, completely
+in his power, promised to do so.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" /><p><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353"><span class="pagenum">[353]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>That evening, in a spacious barn, half of which was
+crowded with barrels of herring, Vladimir found Zelig
+and some fifteen chums of his. Zelig was playing with a
+huge iron key. He was employed here and the meeting
+was held by his employer’s permission. For more than
+nine persons to assemble without a police permit is a crime;
+so it gave Vigdoroff satisfaction to reflect that he was now
+incurring risks similar to those incurred by Clara and her
+friends. The gathering seemed to be made up of mechanics
+and labourers exclusively. One of the men present
+was the sneering fellow whom Vigdoroff had seen at the
+synagogue. Of the others Vladimir’s attention was attracted
+by two big burly young butchers with dried-up blood
+about their finger-nails, a chimney-sweep, who looked like
+a jet-black negro, with white teeth and red lips, and three
+men with medals from the late war which they apparently
+expected to act as an amulet against Gentile rowdies. The
+chimney-sweep sat apart, cracking sunflower seeds. Now
+and again he made as though to throw his sooty arms
+round somebody’s neck and then burst into laughter over
+his own joke. All the others looked grave. They showed
+Vigdoroff much respect and attention. Even the sneering
+man made a favourable impression on him to-night. Only
+he himself was so ill at ease he could scarcely take part in
+the conversation. Other men came. When one of these
+proved to be Motl, the trunk-maker in his aunt’s employ,
+Vigdoroff felt somewhat more at home.</p>
+
+<p>One of the retired soldiers took to bragging of the courage
+he and his two comrades had shown at the taking of
+Plevna, and when one of the other two signed to him to
+stop boasting, he said, with a blush:</p>
+
+<p>“I am saying all this because&mdash;because&mdash;what good
+did it do us? Does the Czar pat us on the head for it?<a name="Page_354" id="Page_354"><span class="pagenum">[354]</span></a>
+We risked our lives and many of our people died under
+Plevna, and yet if we tried to settle in Great-Russia we
+would be kicked out neck and crop, wouldn’t we?”</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed we would, war record, medal and all,” one of
+the other two chimed in.</p>
+
+<p>“And why? Because we are Jews. We were not chased
+home from the firing line because we were Jews, were we?”</p>
+
+<p>“Talk of Great-Russia,” somebody put in. “As if in
+a place like Miroslav we were allowed to live in peace.”</p>
+
+<p>Another man assented with a sigh, adding: “If a thousandth
+part of the courage shown by the Jews in the war
+was shown in our self-defence against Gentiles, the Gentiles
+would have more respect for us.”</p>
+
+<p>The conversation turned on the subject of pistols, but the
+proposition was overruled.</p>
+
+<p>“Before we get pistols and learn to use them we’ll be
+asleep under a quilt of earth,” said Zelig. “Why, what
+ails my cooper’s hatchet, or a hammer, or a plain crowbar?”</p>
+
+<p>Every time Vigdoroff opened his mouth the faces of the
+others would become tense with expectation. But he had
+nothing to say except to ask an occasional question, and
+every time Zelig, playing with his enormous iron key,
+pressed him for a speech, he would adjure him, in a flutter
+of embarrassment, to let it go this time.</p>
+
+<p>They talked of the prospective fight in phrases like
+“forwarding a remittance to one’s snout” or “pulling up
+sharp under a fellow’s peeper,” which amused and jarred
+on him at once. For the rest, there was a remarkable
+flow of common sense, humour and feeling. The gathering
+cast a spell over him. He had come with the partial intention
+of speaking against their scheme, yet now he felt
+that he could much more readily face a gang of armed<a name="Page_355" id="Page_355"><span class="pagenum">[355]</span></a>
+Gentiles than betray a faint heart to these Jewish artisans.
+Moreover&mdash;and this was the great point with him at the
+present moment&mdash;he felt that with these men by his side
+he could fling himself into the very thick of the hottest
+fight. A peculiar sense of solemnity and of gratification
+came over him. He followed their talk reverentially. He
+humbly offered to call on one of the leaders of the Defence
+Committee and to apply for the admission of this group
+with himself as one of its members.</p>
+
+<p>His first dawn of consciousness as he opened his eyes
+next morning was of something exceedingly important and
+solemn which somehow had the flavour of herring. The
+active participation of a man like Elkin in the work of
+the Defence Committee was a source of disappointment to
+him. He usually kept out of Elkin’s way, as much for his
+venomous pleasantry as for his revolutionary affiliations
+which he divined from his friendship with Clara. He
+wondered whether he meant to give the affair a revolutionary
+character. “He must have warned the other members
+against me as a silk stocking and a coward,” Vigdoroff
+said to himself bitterly. “That’s probably the way Clara
+describes me.”</p>
+
+<p>The next morning he was surprised by a visit from Elkin
+himself. The revolutionist frowned as he spoke, but this
+was clearly a disguise for his embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>“Look here, Vigdoroff,” he said. “There has not been
+much love lost between you and me, but that’s foolish&mdash;at
+a time like this anyhow. We must all work together.
+We are all Jews. I understand you have organised a
+number of good fellows. Let them join the others.”</p>
+
+<p>Vigdoroff’s heart beat fast, with emotion as well as with
+a sense of flattered pride. He would never have expected
+Elkin capable of such soulful talk. Moreover his speaking<a name="Page_356" id="Page_356"><span class="pagenum">[356]</span></a>
+of himself as a Jew seemed to imply that he had abandoned
+Nihilism. “So we ‘cowards’ were not so very
+wrong after all,” he thought to himself triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>“In the first place,” he answered, “it wasn’t I who
+organised them. It was just the other way, in fact.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, anyhow, let them join the rest.”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course we will. Only look here, Elkin. You have
+been frank with me&mdash;&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“I know what you mean, but you need not worry. I
+won’t get you in trouble,” Elkin replied with his usual
+venom in his lozenge-shaped sneer. And then, kindly:
+“It is not as a Russian revolutionist that I have gone into
+this thing. I am one, as much as ever; I have not changed
+my views a bit, in fact. But that’s another matter. All I
+want to say is that in this thing I am as a Jew, as a child
+of our unhappy, outraged, mud-bespattered people.”</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357"><span class="pagenum">[357]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE NIHILISTS’ GUARD.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">PAVEL’S mother, the countess, had not been in Miroslav
+since March. She lived in retirement on one
+of her estates in another province, in a constant
+tremour of fear and compunction. The image of Alexander
+II. bleeding in the snow literally haunted her. She
+took it for granted that Pavel had had a hand in the bloody
+plot, and she felt as though she, too, had been a party to it.</p>
+
+<p>To ascertain the situation with regard to the riot rumours
+Pavel called on his uncle, the governor. He found him
+dozing on a bench in his orchard, a stout cane in one hand
+and a French newspaper in the other. The old satrap was
+dressed in a fresh summer suit of Caucasian silk, which
+somehow emphasised the uncouth fleshiness of his broad
+nose. He was overjoyed to see his nephew, and he plunged
+into the subject of the riots at once and of his own accord.
+It was evidently one of those situations upon which he
+usually had to unburden his mind to somebody.</p>
+
+<p>“Can you tell me what they are up to in that great city
+of yours?” he said, referring to St. Petersburg and the
+higher government circles and blinking as he spoke.
+“There is an administration for you! Perhaps you
+younger fellows are smarter than we oldsters. Perhaps,
+perhaps.” He took out a golden cigarette case, lit a cigarette
+and went on blinking, sneeringly.</p><p><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358"><span class="pagenum">[358]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>His words implied that Pavel, being one of the younger
+generation, was, morally at least, identified with the administration
+of the young Czar.</p>
+
+<p>“What do you mean, uncle?” he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>“What do I mean? Why, I mean that they don’t want
+those riots stopped. That’s plain enough, isn’t it?”</p>
+
+<p>This was a slap at the doctrine of Pavel’s party concerning
+the outrages, and he resented it as well as he could.</p>
+
+<p>“But you have no evidence for such an accusation,
+uncle,” he said. “That’s a mere theory of yours.”</p>
+
+<p>“I knew you would stick up for your generation. Ha,
+ha, ha! Quite commendable in a young chap, too. Ha,
+ha, ha!”</p>
+
+<p>“But where is your evidence?”</p>
+
+<p>“You want to know too much, Pasha. Too young for
+that. If they wanted the riots stopped, it would be a case
+of one, two, three, and there she goes! That’s as much
+as I can tell you, and if you are really clever you can understand
+the rest yourself.”</p>
+
+<p>“He is in league with his fellow fleecers, the Jewish
+usurers,” Pavel remarked inwardly. “He simply cannot
+afford an anti-Jewish demonstration, the old bribe-taker.”</p>
+
+<p>“Neither can you,” a voice retorted from Pavel’s heart,
+“though for quite different reasons.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Prince Boulatoff called on Orlovsky, the government
+clerk in whose house the local revolutionists held their
+meetings. The first thing that struck him was Orlovsky’s
+loss of girth.</p>
+
+<p>“Hello, Aliosha,” he said heartily, meeting him at the
+gate.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, Pasha!” The clerk flung himself upon him,
+and they exchanged three prolonged kisses.</p><p><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359"><span class="pagenum">[359]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“By Jove,” Pavel went on, “you are so changed I came
+near letting you pass. Why, what has become of your
+bulk, old boy? Have you been ill?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not exactly,” the other answered, leading the way indoors;
+then, as his face broke into an expression of wan
+joy, he added: “Been in love, devil wrench it. I take
+these things rather too hard, I suppose, but that’s a small
+matter. How have you been? Climbing upward in the
+service of the revolution, aren’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>The room was the same. The huge tin samovar stood on
+the floor.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, and how is your Circle? First-rate fellows all
+of them,” Pavel said.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, indeed. Only we miss Clara now more than
+ever.”</p>
+
+<p>“Anything specially the matter?” Pavel asked, colouring
+slightly.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, it really used to be a splendid circle&mdash;in our
+humble way, that is&mdash;but those riots have had a bad
+effect on us, deuce take it. Remember Elkin? It was he
+who got us together, and now it’s he who has brought discord
+into our ranks. He is organising people who want
+to go to America. This is his hobby now.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, have the riots knocked all his socialism out of
+him?” Pavel asked, grimly.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, no,” Orlovsky answered with something like dismay.
+“I wouldn’t say that. It’s as an organiser of communistic
+colonies that he is going to emigrate. Only he
+says the Jewish people have a more direct claim upon
+him than Russia.”</p>
+
+<p>“There is a revolutionist for you!” Pavel roared, bitterly.
+“I never did attach much importance to that fellow.
+The sooner he goes the better. God speed him.”</p><p><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360"><span class="pagenum">[360]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“You’re too hard on him, Pasha. He’s a good fellow.
+If we had Clara here she would straighten it all out. We
+miss her very much. As a matter of fact, it was she&mdash;indeed,
+I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell it to you&mdash;it was
+she with whom I was in love.”</p>
+
+<p>“Was it?” Pavel asked, colouring.</p>
+
+<p>He paused, in utter confusion, and resumed, without
+looking at him. “Well, you must excuse me, Aliosha, but
+I fear your frankness goes a bit too far. Such things are
+not meant to be published that way.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why? Why? What a funny view you do take of it,
+Pasha! Suppose a fellow’s heart is full and he meets an
+intimate old friend of his, is it an indiscretion on his part
+if he opens his mind to him?”</p>
+
+<p>“I certainly am a friend of yours, and a warm one, too,
+old boy,” Pavel replied with a smile. “But still, things
+of that sort are usually kept to oneself.”</p>
+
+<p>Several other members came in. The gigantic samovar,
+the improvised sugar bowl, a huge loaf of rye bread, some
+butter and a lamp made their appearance on the table.
+Elkin dropped in later in the evening. He and Pavel
+had not been conversing five minutes when they quarrelled.</p>
+
+<p>“What you are trying to do is to blend the unblendable&mdash;to
+mix socialism with Jewish chauvinism,” Boulatoff
+said in an ill-concealed rage.</p>
+
+<p>“Am I?” the other retorted with one of the most virulent
+of his sneers. “Can socialism be mixed with the welfare
+of the Russian people only?&mdash;the welfare of the Russian
+people with a pailful or two of Jewish blood thrown
+in; in plainer language, socialism can only be mixed with
+anti-Semitism. Is that it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, nonsense!” Pavel hissed. “There are other Jews
+in the movement, lots of them, and one does not hear that<a name="Page_361" id="Page_361"><span class="pagenum">[361]</span></a>
+kind of stuff from them. They have not sickened of the
+bargain on account of the riots.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know whom you mean. Perhaps some of them
+are still under the spell of the fact that a Gentile or two
+will speak to them or even call them by their first names.”</p>
+
+<p>“Calm down, Elkin,” the judge with the fluffy hair and
+the near-sighted eyes interposed. “Come, you won’t say
+that of Clara, for instance?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, not of Clara. But, then, you have not yet heard
+from her. Sooner or later she, too, will open her eyes and
+come to the conclusion that it is wiser to be a socialist for
+her own people than for those who will slaughter and
+trample upon them. I am sure she will give it all up and
+join the emigration&mdash;sooner or later.”</p>
+
+<p>“The devil she will,” Pavel said quietly, but trembling
+with fury.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, she will,” Elkin jeered.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel felt like strangling him.</p>
+
+<p>“She is too good a revolutionist to sneak away from the
+battlefield,” snapped Ginsburg, the red-headed son of the
+usurer, without raising his eyes from the table. “Of
+course, America is a safer place to be a socialist in. There
+are no gendarmes there.”</p>
+
+<p>Elkin chuckled. “You had better save your courage
+for the time the riot breaks out in this town,” he said.
+“You know it is coming. It may burst out at any moment,
+and when it does we’ll have a chance to see how a
+hero like you behaves himself when the ‘revolutionary
+instincts of the people are aroused.’”</p>
+
+<p>“Very well, then, let him go back to the synagogue,”
+Pavel shouted to the others, losing all his self-control.
+“But in that case, what’s the sense of his hanging around
+a place like this?”</p><p><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362"><span class="pagenum">[362]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I see, you are afraid I’ll send spies to this house,
+are you? Well, there is less danger of that than that you
+should take a hand in the slaughter of Jewish shoemakers,
+blacksmiths or water-bearers as a bit of practical ‘equality
+and fraternity,’ I can assure you. But then, after all, you
+may be right. Good-bye, comrades! Don’t judge me
+hard.”</p>
+
+<p>Tears stood in Orlovsky’s eyes. He, the judge, and Mlle.
+Andronoff, the judge’s fiancée, were for running after him,
+but the others stopped them.</p>
+
+<p>Left to themselves, the group of Nihilists began to discuss
+the coming outbreak. Everyone felt, in view of Elkin’s
+charge, that whatever else was done, no effort should
+be spared to keep the mob from attacking the Jewish poor.
+Much was said about “directing the popular fury into revolutionary
+channels,” and “setting the masses upon the
+government,” but most of those who said these things
+knew in their hearts that they might as well talk of directing
+the ocean into revolutionary channels or of setting a
+tornado upon the Russian government. Orlovsky alone
+took it seriously:</p>
+
+<p>“It begins to look something like, by Jove,” he said
+beamingly. “We’ll go out, and when the mob gets going,
+when the revolutionary fighting blood is up in them, we’ll
+call out to them that Jewish usurers are not the only enemies
+of the toiling people; that the Czar is at the head of
+all the enemies of the nation. And then, by Jove, Miroslav
+may set the pace to all Russia. See if it doesn’t.”</p>
+
+<p>The son of the usurer called attention to the extreme
+smallness of their number, but he thought it enough to
+keep the mob from assaulting working people. He knew
+that his own relatives were all safe personally. As to his
+father’s property, he said he would be glad if it was all<a name="Page_363" id="Page_363"><span class="pagenum">[363]</span></a>
+destroyed by the “revolutionary conflagration,” and he
+meant it.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel took no hand in the discussion. Instead, he was
+pacing to and fro mopingly.</p>
+
+<p>At last, after some more speeches, including one by the
+gawky seminarist, who came late and who disagreed with
+everybody else, it was decided that in case of a riot every
+Gentile member of the Circle should be out in the streets,
+“on picket duty,” watching the mob, studying its mood
+and “doing everything possible to lend the disturbance a
+revolutionary character.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Eight Jewish women, including three little girls, were
+brought to the Jewish hospital of Miroslav from a neighbouring
+town, where they had been outraged in the course
+of an anti-Semitic outbreak. The little girls and the prettiest
+of the other five died soon after they arrived. The
+next day the Gentile district bubbled with obscenity. To
+be sure, there were expressions of horror and pity, too, but
+the bulk of the Christian population, including many an
+educated and tender-hearted woman, treated the matter as
+a joke. Where a Jew was concerned the moral and human
+point of view had become a reeling blur. The joke had an
+appalling effect. While the stories of pillaged shops kindled
+the popular fancy with the image of staved vodka barrels
+and pavements strewn with costly fabrics, the case of
+the eight Jewish women gave rise to a hideous epidemic
+of lust. There were thousands of Gentiles for whom it became
+no more possible to pass a pretty Jewish woman than
+to look into the display window of a Jewish shop without
+thinking of an anti-Semitic outbreak.</p>
+
+<p>The storm was gathering. The mutterings of an approaching
+riot were becoming louder and louder. Many<a name="Page_364" id="Page_364"><span class="pagenum">[364]</span></a>
+Jewish shops were closed. Taverns serving as stations for
+stage lines were crowded with people begging to be taken
+away from the city before it was too late.</p>
+
+<p>The Defence Committee did not rest. The volunteers
+of the several Jewish districts were organised into so many
+sections, and a signal system was perfected by which the
+various sections were to communicate with each other.
+The raiders were sure to be drunk, it was argued, while
+the Defence Guard would be sober and acting according to
+a well-considered plan. The Guard was spoiling for a
+fight.</p>
+
+<p>The Nihilists “on picket duty” were strolling around
+the streets.</p>
+
+<p>Troops were held in readiness and placards had been
+posted forbidding people to assemble in the streets. Having
+ordered this, Governor Boulatoff announced himself ill
+and in need of a fortnight’s leave of absence. When a
+delegation implored him to postpone the journey, he replied
+curtly that all had been done to insure order. He
+was in bad spirits and treated them with unusual rudeness.</p>
+
+<p>He left Miroslav in the morning. At about noontime
+of the same day the town was full of sinister rumours.
+One of these was about the poisoning of twelve Christian
+wells by Jews.</p>
+
+<p>A few yards off a retired government clerk, in dilapidated
+though carefully shined boots and with a red nose,
+stood in front of one of the governor’s placards forbidding
+people to congregate in the streets, with a crowd of illiterate
+Gentiles about him.</p>
+
+<p>“‘So by an All High ukase,’” he pretended to read,
+“‘all people of the orthodox Christian faith are hereby
+ordered to attack the Jews, destroy their homes and shops,
+tear their pillows and drink their vodka and wine,<a name="Page_365" id="Page_365"><span class="pagenum">[365]</span></a>
+take from them all they have plundered from Christians
+and administer a drubbing to them.’”</p>
+
+<p>As he proceeded he worked himself up to a tone of maudlin
+solemnity.</p>
+
+<p>“Aye, the day of reckoning hath come,” he went on.
+“Let not a man of that unchristian tribe escape. Let the
+blood of Jesus and of his followers be avenged.” Here,
+however, he spoiled it all by suddenly breaking off with a
+grin of inebriate roguishness.</p>
+
+<p>The revolutionary seminarist was watching this man
+philosophically.</p>
+
+<p>Similar scenes occurred in other neighbourhoods. When
+in one instance they had led to an attack upon a rabbinical
+looking old man who was left bleeding and unconscious
+on the pavement, the troops were ordered out. Then there
+was a scramble for rooms in Gentile hotels. Twenty-five
+rubles a day was charged for a ruble room, and there were
+a dozen applicants for each room. Still, those who had
+money contrived to find shelter. Much greater difficulty
+was encountered in many cases in getting a Christian
+cabman to take a Jew to a place of refuge. Many a Gentile
+rented part of his dwelling to Jews at an enormous price,
+a guarantee of safety being included in the bargain. Then,
+too, there was a considerable number of Gentiles who received
+some of their prosperous Jewish neighbours into
+their houses without accepting any offer of payment. Prosperous,
+because the poorer Jews for the most part lived
+huddled together in the Ghetto and were far removed from
+the Gentile population. At Pavel’s instance Orlovsky
+went to take Clara’s sister and her family to the house
+of a relative of his, but he found their door locked. They
+were taking refuge with the Vigdoroffs.</p>
+
+<p>Toward five o’clock, when the crimson sunlight was playing<a name="Page_366" id="Page_366"><span class="pagenum">[366]</span></a>
+on the gold steeple of the Church of Our Saviour and
+the dazzling blue and white of hussars’ uniforms, a small
+crowd of men and boys came running to the square in
+front of the sacred structure.</p>
+
+<p>“We want to carry out the holy vessels and banners,”
+said a spokesman to an officer. “We hear the Jews have
+decided to set fire to God’s temple.”</p>
+
+<p>“We won’t let them, you may be sure of that,” the
+hussar officer answered. “You can safely go home.”</p>
+
+<p>The crowd was slowly dispersing, when a man in a red
+shirt shouted:</p>
+
+<p>“Boys, I know a Jewish cellar where twenty-five Christian
+corpses are kept in empty vodka casks. Come on!”</p>
+
+<p>The officer did not interfere, and the crowd followed the
+red-shirt round the corner to a closed drink-shop. Half
+an hour later the streets in that locality rang with a
+drunken sing-song: “Death to the Jews! Death to the
+Christ-killers!”</p>
+
+<p>The shop was the property of a Jew, who was hiding
+with his family somewhere, but the street was inhabited
+by Gentiles. Meanwhile on a little square near Nicholas
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'street'">Street</ins>, the best street running through the Jewish quarter,
+a mob of five hundred men and boys, mostly from the scum
+of the population, had seemingly dropped from the sky.
+A savage “Hee-hee-hee!” broke loose, scattered itself,
+died away, and was taken up again with redoubled energy.
+All over the district Jews, men and women, most of them
+with children clasped in their arms, were running along
+the middle of the streets as people run at the sound of
+a volcano. Some were fleeing from their shops to their
+homes and some from their homes to the hiding places
+which they had prepared for themselves. The eyes of
+most of them had the hollow look of mortal fear.<a name="Page_367" id="Page_367"><span class="pagenum">[367]</span></a>
+They ran in family groups, holding close to each other.
+Here and there a man, his feet giving way under him,
+sick and dizzy with fright, would slacken pace for a
+minute, as if giving himself up for lost; then, wiping
+the cold sweat from his face, he would break into a fresh
+run, more desperate than before. Some simply walked
+quickly, a look of grim determination on their faces.
+Here and there an aged man or woman, too feeble to run,
+were making a pitiful effort to keep up with the younger
+members of their families, who were urging them on with
+a look of ghastly impatience. Often a frail little woman
+with two or three children in her arms could be seen running
+as she might down a steep hill.</p>
+
+<p>Christians stood on the sidewalks, jeering and mimicking
+their fright and making jokes.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel watched the spectacle in a singular state of mental
+agitation. His heart leaped at sight of that chaotic mob
+as it paraded through the streets. Visions of the French
+Revolution floated through his brain, quickening his pulse.
+“So our people are <i>not</i> incapable of rising!” he felt like
+exclaiming. “The idea of a revolution is <i>not</i> incompatible
+with the idea of Russia!” It was as if all the sacrifices
+he had been making during the past few years had finally
+been indorsed by life itself, as if they were once for all
+insured against proving to be the senseless sacrifices of a
+modern Don Quixote. He could have embraced this mass
+of human dregs. And while his mind was in this state,
+the panic-stricken men, women and children with oriental
+features who were running past him were stranger than
+ever to him. He simply could not rouse himself to a
+sense of their being human creatures like himself at this
+moment. It was like a scene on a canvas. Clara did
+not seem to belong to these people; and when it came<a name="Page_368" id="Page_368"><span class="pagenum">[368]</span></a>
+fully home to him that she did, and how these scenes were
+apt to stand between him and her, his heart grew faint
+within him; whereupon he felt like a traitor to his cause,
+and at the same time he was overcome with a sense of his
+inward anarchy and helplessness.</p>
+
+<p>Within the Jewish houses and on their courtyards there
+was a rush for sub-cellars, garrets, barrels. As they ran,
+clambered, tiptoed, scrambled, they smothered the cries of
+their frightened babies with several cases of unconscious
+infanticide as a result. Christians hastened to assert the
+immunity of their houses by placing the image of the
+Virgin (a Jewess!) in their windows; and so did many
+a Jew who had procured such images for the purpose.
+Some smashed their own windows and piled up fragments
+of furniture in front of their doors, to give their homes
+or shops the appearance of having already been visited
+by mob fury. Here and there a man was chalking crosses
+on his gate or shutters.</p>
+
+<p>While this was in progress several hundred Jews burst
+from gateways on and about Nicholas <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'street'">Street</ins> and bore down
+on the enemy with frantic yells in Russian and in Yiddish.
+They were armed with crowbars, axes, hammers,
+brass knuckles, clubs and what-not. As to the rioters
+they were mostly unarmed. Following the established
+practice of the crusade, they had expected to begin with
+some hardware store and there to arm themselves with
+battering rams and implements of devastation&mdash;an intention
+which they had not yet had time to carry out. At
+sight of this armed multitude, therefore, they were taken
+aback. Resistance was not what they had anticipated.
+Indeed, for some seconds many of them were under the
+impression that the crowd now descending on them was
+but another horde of hoodlums. They wavered. A crowd<a name="Page_369" id="Page_369"><span class="pagenum">[369]</span></a>
+of Jewish butchers, lumberers, blacksmiths, truck-drivers&mdash;the
+advance guard of the Defence&mdash;made a dash at
+them, jeering and howling at the top of their lungs, in
+Yiddish:</p>
+
+<p>“Let’s hack them to pieces! Lively boys! Let’s drive
+right into their lungs and livers! Let’s make carrot-pudding
+of them! Bravely, fellows, they’re drunk as swine!”</p>
+
+<p>At this point Orlovsky and the seminarist instinctively
+joined the rioters. Elkin and Vigdoroff were on the other
+side. Pavel was looking on from the sidewalk.</p>
+
+<p>The Defence was mistaken. The rioters were almost as
+sober as they, for, indeed, it was another part of the stereotyped
+program of anti-Semitic riots that drink-shops should
+be among the very first targets of attack, so that the invaders
+might fit themselves for the real work of the riot
+by filling themselves full of Jewish vodka. But the Jews,
+as we have seen, descended upon them before they had torn
+down a single door. What the outcome would have been
+had the two opposing crowds been left to themselves is
+unknown, for a troop of hussars whose commander had
+been watching the scene charged on both when they were
+a few inches apart, and dispersed them both. Some fifty
+arrests were made, more than two-thirds of the prisoners
+being Jews. The arrested Gentiles went to police headquarters
+singing an anti-Semitic refrain and mimicking
+the frightened cry of Jewish women. Bystanders, some of
+the Nihilist “pickets” among them, shouted:</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t fear, boys. You’ll soon go home.” And the
+answer was:</p>
+
+<p>“Sure we will, and then we’ll give them a shaking-up,
+the scurvy Jews, won’t we?”</p>
+
+<p>On another business street some boys threw a few
+tentative stones at a shop window. There being no interference<a name="Page_370" id="Page_370"><span class="pagenum">[370]</span></a>
+on the part of the military, a mob of grown men
+sprang up. Doors were burst in and rolls of silk and
+woollen stuffs came shooting to the pavement.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t, boys; you had better go home,” said a handsome
+young lieutenant, affecting the basso of a general.</p>
+
+<p>The raiders did not desist. While some went on emptying
+the shop into the street others were slashing, tearing or
+biting at the goods. They did it without zest and somewhat
+nervously, as if still in doubt as to the attitude of
+the authorities. A servant girl unrolled a piece of blue
+velvet over a filthy spot on the cobblestones before a lieutenant
+of the hussars, saying:</p>
+
+<p>“Here, sir! Why dirty the dear little feet of your
+horse? Here is Jewish velvet for them.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you, my dear girl, but you had better go home,”
+the lieutenant answered, smiling. A crumpled mass of
+unrolled fabrics, silk, woollen, velvet, satin, cotton, lay in
+many-coloured heaps on the pavement and in the gutter.
+The rioters, whose movements were still amateurish and
+lacked snap, soon wearied of the job. Several of them
+then broke into a grocery store and brought forth a barrel
+of kerosene.</p>
+
+<p>“What are you going to do?” asked the lieutenant.</p>
+
+<p>“We’ll pour it over the stuff and set fire to it, your
+high nobleness.”</p>
+
+<p>“That you can’t do,” the officer returned decisively.
+“You’ll have to go home now.”</p>
+
+<p>The rioters obeyed at once, many of them taking rolls
+of silk or velvet along.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371"><span class="pagenum">[371]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXXIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE RIOT.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">THE next morning the Police Master, “in order
+to avoid bloodshed,” issued a proclamation forbidding
+Jews to leave their houses. The order was
+copied from one that had been issued in other riot-ridden
+towns where, as the Miroslav Police Master knew
+but too well, it meant that the Jews were prevented from
+uniting for their self-defence and forced to await the
+arrival of the mob, each family in its own isolated lodgings.
+At the same time every soldier of the Jewish faith
+was called back to barracks, none of their number being
+included in the patrol, “for fear of embittering the Christian
+population.”</p>
+
+<p>A peculiar air hung about the city, an air at once of
+festive idleness and suppressed bustle. It looked as it
+might on the eve of some great fair. Gentile workmen,
+staying away from their shops, were parading the streets,
+many of them shouldering axes, sledge-hammers, bores,
+chisels&mdash;their tools of useful toil to be turned to weapons
+of demolition and pillage; peasants from neighbouring
+villages were arriving with sacks, pails, tubs, spades, axes,
+pitchforks, their waggons otherwise empty and ready to be
+laden with booty. Among the people in the streets were
+gangs of trained rioters, come from towns where their
+work was at an end. The Jews were in their hiding places<a name="Page_372" id="Page_372"><span class="pagenum">[372]</span></a>
+where they had passed the night. Pavel went about alone,
+avoiding company, asking himself questions to which his
+mind had no answer. He was filled with the excitement
+of a sportsman a few minutes before the beginning of a
+great race; with mental chaos and anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>At one corner of Cucumber Market a group of peasants
+took off their coarse straw hats and bowed to two policemen.</p>
+
+<p>“We are only ignorant peasants,” they said. “Will
+your High Nobleness tell us when his Excellency the Police
+Master will give the order to start in?”</p>
+
+<p>“There won’t be any order to start in,” answered one
+of the policemen. “Move along, move along.”</p>
+
+<p>The large market place became white with country people.
+They were getting restive. Their sacks and tubs
+were hungry for the goods of “Christ-killers.” Four years
+ago many of these very people, dressed like soldiers, had
+been driven to the Balkans by a force known to them as
+the Czar, to fire at Turks without having the least idea
+what sort of creatures those people called Turks were or
+what they had done to be fired at. Now they had come
+here, in obedience to the same force, to rob and do violence
+to Jews. Among the out-of-town looters were two tramps
+who had it whispered about that they were two well-known
+generals in disguise, personal emissaries of the Emperor
+sent to direct the attack upon the Jews. These two were
+soon put in gaol, but that which they personified, the idea
+that the anti-Jewish riots met with the Czar’s approval, was
+left at large. It seized upon soldier and civilian alike.
+People who usually kept at a timid distance from everything
+in the shape of a uniform, were now bandying jests
+with army lieutenants and police captains. The question
+this morning was not whether one wore the Czar’s uniform<a name="Page_373" id="Page_373"><span class="pagenum">[373]</span></a>
+or citizen’s clothes, but whether one was a Jew or not. An
+unusual feeling of kinship linked them all together, and
+the source of that feeling was the consciousness that they
+were not Jews.</p>
+
+<p>It was about nine o’clock when a large seedy-looking
+man with a bloated, sodden face, stepped out of a vast
+crowd on Cucumber <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'market'">Market</ins>, and walked jauntily up to a
+deserted fruit stand. Snatching a handful of hickory nuts,
+he flung it high in the air, then thrust his two index fingers
+into his mouth and blew a loud piercing blast, puffing himself
+up violently as he did so. The sound was echoed by
+similar sounds in many parts of the crowded market place.</p>
+
+<p>“Hee-ee-eeee!” came from a thousand frantic throats.</p>
+
+<p>A long stick was raised with a battered hat for a flag, a
+hundred human swarms rushed in all directions, rending
+the air with their yells, and pandemonium was loose.</p>
+
+<p>There was a scramble for hardware shops, vodka shops
+and places where Jewish women were said to be secreted.
+Another few minutes and the streets were streaming with
+spirits. The air was filled with the odour of alcohol, with
+the din of broken glass, with the clatter of feet, with the
+impact of battering rams against doors; and coming
+through this general clang, thud and crash of destruction,
+were smothered groans of agony, shrieks of horror and
+despair, the terror-stricken cry of children, the jeers of
+triumph and lust. Here a row of shops, their doors burst
+in, was sending forth a shower of sugar, kerosene, flour,
+spices, coats, bonnets, wigs, dry goods, crockery, cutlery,
+toys; there a bevy of men were tearing up the street, piling
+up the cobble-stones which others were hurling at shop
+windows. Some men and women were carrying away
+bucketsful of vodka. Others were bending over casks,
+scooping out the liquid with their caps, hands or even<a name="Page_374" id="Page_374"><span class="pagenum">[374]</span></a>
+boots; others were greedily crouching before barrels, their
+mouths to the bungholes. Here and there a man leaning
+over a broken cask was guzzling at its contents in a torpor
+of drunkenness. One rioter, holding a sealed bottle in
+his hand and too impatient to look for a corkscrew,
+smashed its neck against the sidewalk, while another man,
+by his side, broke two similar bottles against each other,
+and then cursed the Jews as he licked wine mixed with
+his own blood off his fingers. Nearby a woman carrying
+a shoe full of vodka toward a four-year-old boy who was
+seated on a pile of logs, yelled frantically:</p>
+
+<p>“Here, my darling! Taste it, precious one, so that
+when you grow up you may say you remember the day
+when the ill-gotten wealth of Jews was smashed by people
+of the True Faith.”</p>
+
+<p>Women and children were serving vodka to the soldiers
+in cans, teapots, saucers, ladles, paper boxes.</p>
+
+<p>Orlovsky mounted a cask and began to shout, wildly:</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t drink too much, boys! Don’t befog your minds!
+For this is a great historical moment! Only why attack
+Jews alone? Behold, the Czar is at the head of all the
+blood-suckers in the land!”</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely anybody listened to him. The crowd was too
+deeply absorbed in its orgy. His voice was drowned by a
+thousand other sounds; his flashing eyes and his air-pounding
+fists were part of a nightmare of brutalised
+faces, attitudes of greed, gesticulations of primitive humanity
+<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'ran'">run</ins> amuck. Presently, however, a group of belated
+rowdies came along in search of drink. They stopped
+in front of Orlovsky, eyeing the cask under his feet hopefully,
+the appearance of the bung showing that its contents
+were still intact.</p>
+
+<p>“Who are you, anyhow?” one of them said to the<a name="Page_375" id="Page_375"><span class="pagenum">[375]</span></a>
+speaker. “It must be the Jews who sent you here to talk
+like that to good Christian people.”</p>
+
+<p>“It isn’t true. You’re mistaken, old boy,” Orlovsky
+answered hoarsely and breathing hard, but with a kindly,
+familiar smile on his flushed, perspiring face. “I am one
+of the best friends you and all the people ever had, I mean
+the good of all of you fellows. What’s the use attacking
+Jews only, I say. We had better turn upon the authorities,
+the flunkeys of the Czar&mdash;&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you hear what he says?” one of his listeners said,
+in perplexity, nudging the fellow by his side.</p>
+
+<p>“He wants to get us in trouble, the sly fox that he is,”
+somebody remarked.</p>
+
+<p>“Sure, he does. And it was by the Jews he was hired
+to come here. I know what I am talking about,” growled
+the man who had spoken first. “Down with him, boys!”</p>
+
+<p>“Down with him!” the others echoed, thirstily.</p>
+
+<p>Orlovsky was pulled off and the group of belated rioters,
+re-enforced by some others, rushed at the cask savagely.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel was in another section of the same street. An
+old little Jewess whom he saw run out of a gate struck
+him as the most pathetic figure he had seen that day. Her
+fright gave her pinched little face something like a pout,
+an air of childlike resentment, as it were. A Gentile boy
+snatched off her wig and held it up, jeering to some bystanders,
+whereupon she covered her gray head with her
+bony hands, her faith forbidding her to expose her hair,
+and ran on with the same childlike pout. A sob of pity
+caught Pavel in the throat. He was about to offer to take
+her to a place of safety, when an elderly rowdy, apparently
+provoked by her outlandish anxiety about her bare hair,
+struck her a vicious blow on the head, accompanying it
+with profanity.</p><p><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376"><span class="pagenum">[376]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“Cur!” Pavel shrieked, springing up to him and landing
+a smart whack in his face.</p>
+
+<p>The rioter looked round with surprise, muttered something
+and joined the looters.</p>
+
+<p>“Come with me, don’t be afraid of the scoundrels,” Pavel
+said, taking her by the hand. His heart was melting with
+pity for all the Jews at this moment. He felt a rush of
+yearning tenderness for Clara, and he wished she could
+see him taking care of this woman of her race.</p>
+
+<p>When he saw two marauders hand out gold and silver
+watches&mdash;the spoils of a raid&mdash;to the patrol, his blood
+was up again.</p>
+
+<p>“Is that what you are here for, thieves, vermin that you
+are?” he shouted.</p>
+
+<p>“Who is that fellow? Run him in!” somebody said.</p>
+
+<p>He fought desperately, cursing the authorities and calling
+to the mob to turn upon the soldiers, but he was overpowered
+and carried away half dead. When his identity
+was discovered at Police Headquarters, it caused a panic
+among the officials of the place. He was reverently placed
+in a carriage and taken to the Palace.</p>
+
+<p>The Defence Guard gave the rioters fight in two places,
+and a desperate encounter it was, but it was not to last long.
+Troops fell upon them, beat them with the butts of their
+rifles and hurled execrations at them for violating the
+police ordinance. Every Jew who was armed and every
+Jew who looked educated, Elkin among them, was arrested.
+The others were driven indoors. Vladimir was brought to
+police headquarters unconscious, with blood gushing from
+his head.</p>
+
+<p>When the first stack of bedding was pitched out on the
+sidewalk at Nicholas <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'street'">Street</ins>, from a residence over a tobacco
+shop, a man with watery eyes and a beautiful Great-Russian<a name="Page_377" id="Page_377"><span class="pagenum">[377]</span></a>
+beard, one of the leaders, selected a big, plump,
+tempting feather-bed, and opened his pocket-knife with
+dignified deliberation. A crowd of about one thousand
+stood about in breathless silence, as though attending a
+religious ceremony of great solemnity. In order to prolong
+the spell, the man with the golden beard played with
+the feather-bed awhile, kneading, patting, punching it,
+brandishing his knife over it, like a barbaric high priest
+performing some mystic rite over a captive about to be
+sacrificed. Then, grasping it with sudden ferocity, his
+teeth a-glitter amid his enormous whiskers, his watery eyes
+flashing murder, he cut a quick, long gash, rent the pillow-case
+apart and hurled its snow-white entrails to the breeze.</p>
+
+<p>“Hurrah! Hurrah!” the mob yelled savagely, as the
+breeze seized the down and flung it in a thousand directions.
+“Hurrah! Hurrah!”</p>
+
+<p>The other feather-beds and pillows were ripped up, disemboweled
+and emptied by some of the other rioters. The
+summer-baked street seemed to be in the grasp of a snow-storm.</p>
+
+<p>It is one of the characteristics of the housewife of the
+Ghetto that she will put up with a poor meal rather than
+with an uncomfortable bed. The destruction of pillows
+and featherbeds is therefore the most typical scene of anti-Semitic
+riots in Russia. An Anglo-Saxon crowd viewing a
+prize-fight is not thrilled more deeply at sight of “first-blood”
+than were the rioters of Miroslav at sight of the
+first cloud of Jewish down. Now the outbreak was in
+full swing. Some of the men came out in fashionable
+clothes, their pockets bulging with plunder. The same
+work of devastation and pillage was going on in many
+places at once. About ten thousand raiders, most of them
+covered with down, were skirmishing about in groups of<a name="Page_378" id="Page_378"><span class="pagenum">[378]</span></a>
+fifty to one hundred, preceded by one or two leaders and
+accompanied, in some cases, with a band of toy-drums and
+whistles. They went from street to street reconnoitering
+for houses or shops that had not yet been visited. Now it
+looked like a real anti-Jewish riot. Hurrah! Hurrah!</p>
+
+<p>After the pillows came the furniture and other household
+goods, every bit of it either shivered to flinders or carried
+off. While some were busy smashing things or throwing
+them out of the windows, others were stripping off their own
+clothes and arraying themselves in the best coats, trousers,
+dresses, bonnets, the raided houses contained. A frowzy
+drunken scrub-woman emerged in a gorgeous ball dress, a
+costly fur cap on her head, with two gold watches dangling
+from her neck. One of these gangs was led by a man who
+wore a woman’s jacket of brown plush and a high hat.
+Another leader was decked out in a fashionable summer
+suit and a new straw hat, but his feet were bare and encrusted
+with dirt. A third gang was preceded by a flag
+consisting of the torn skirt of an outraged Jewish woman,
+the flag-bearer celebrating the exploit as he marched along.</p>
+
+<p>Following the looters were dense crowds of spectators,
+many of them well dressed and with the stamp of education
+and refinement on their faces. These included some well
+known families, members of the aristocracy, who watched
+the scenes of the day from their fashionable equipages.
+Officials, merchants, people of the middle class were out in
+their best clothes. Miroslav made a great gala day of it.
+The aristocracy was in a complacent, race-track mood.
+Occupants of carriages were exchanging greetings and
+pleasantries. Cavaliers were interpreting to their ladies the
+bedlam of sound, odour and colour. The appearance of a
+drunken jade in a ball dress, strutting with her arms akimbo,
+in besotted imitation of a lady, brought forth bursts of<a name="Page_379" id="Page_379"><span class="pagenum">[379]</span></a>
+facetious applause. The well-dressed spectators tried to
+steer clear of down and feathers, but that was almost impossible.
+Many streets were so thickly covered with it
+that it deadened the sound of traffic. But then to catch
+some of the Jewish down on one’s dress or bonnet or coat
+was part of the carnival. Where the street was strewn with
+jewelry, silverware or knicknacks, costly carpets, fabrics,
+many a noblewoman scanned the ground with the haze of
+temptation in her eye. “Isn’t that cameo perfectly
+lovely!” And in many, many instances the cameo, or the
+silver tray, or the piece of tapestry found its way into the
+lady’s carriage. This was during the early stage of the
+riot. Later on, when all restraint had been cast off,
+phaetons with crests on their sides were filled with plunder.
+The lame princess took home one carriage-load and hurried
+back for more. At every turn one saw a cavalier
+offering his lady some piece of finery as he might a rose
+or a carnation, and in most cases it was accepted, on the
+cogent ground that if left on the pavement it would be
+destroyed. On the other hand many of the rioters themselves
+disdained to appropriate anything that was not
+theirs. Very often when a Jew offered his assailants all
+the money he had about him as a ransom the paper money
+was torn to pieces and silver or coppers was flung out into
+the street, whereupon the crowd outside would fall over
+each other in a wild scramble for shreds of the paper or
+the metal. In one place a man offered the mob all he had
+in the world as a ransom for his daughter’s honour, but
+his money was destroyed, his daughter assaulted and he
+himself mortally wounded. When a peasant woman was
+seen carrying an armful of linen and ribbons out of a small
+shop, she was stopped by one of the rioters.</p>
+
+<p>“Drop that, you old hag,” he shouted. “We are no<a name="Page_380" id="Page_380"><span class="pagenum">[380]</span></a>
+robbers, are we?” He added a torrent of unprintable
+Russian and kicked the woman into a swamp of syrup,
+whisky and flour. A short distance from this spot other
+peasant women were stuffing their sacks lustily, whereupon
+some of them preferred loud linen to black silk and cheap
+spoons to silver ones. In several places large sums of
+money were plundered. As the bank and check system
+was (and still is) in its very infancy in Miroslav, this
+meant in most cases that people of means were literally
+reduced to beggary. One family was saved from personal
+violence as well as from the loss of its fortune by an iron
+safe which the looters spent the whole day in vainly trying
+to open. But then, while they were at work on the safe,
+the mother of the family went insane with fright.</p>
+
+<p>Marching side by side with the leaders of the various
+bands were the competitors of Jewish tradesmen or mechanics
+who acted as guides, each pointing out the stores or
+workshops of his rivals. Thus Rasgadayeff, after instructing
+his wife and servants to see to it that no harm was done
+to his tenants, the Vigdoroffs, had gone to the scene of the
+outbreak, where he directed a crowd of rowdies to the store
+of his most formidable business opponent. The place was
+raided. A wealth of costly furs was cut to pieces and
+flung into the street, where cans of kerosene and pails of
+tar were emptied over the pile, while more than half as
+much again was carried off intact.</p>
+
+<p>“Boys, no stealing,” Rasgadayeff said, in a drunken
+gibberish, when it was too late. All he could save from
+the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'maurauders'">marauders</ins> for the slashers was a sable muff over
+which two women rioters were fighting desperately.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime Rasgadayeff’s tenants and the people
+who sought shelter in their house,&mdash;the family of Clara’s
+sister and the two or three strangers&mdash;had had a narrow<a name="Page_381" id="Page_381"><span class="pagenum">[381]</span></a>
+escape from coming face to face with an infuriated band
+of hoodlums. Their presence had been indicated by a
+Gentile woman across the street. Mme. Rasgadayeff had
+tearfully begged the rioters to desist and after some parleying
+it had been agreed that the Vigdoroffs and their guests
+should be allowed to escape to their landlord’s apartments
+before the mob invaded their rooms. From an attic window
+commanding the street Vladimir’s parents then saw
+their household effects and their celebrated library&mdash;the
+accumulations of thirty years&mdash;flung out on the pavement
+where it was hacked, torn, slashed, trampled upon, flooded
+with water, mixed with a stream of preserves, brine, kerosene,
+vinegar, until the contents of eight rooms and cellar,
+all that for the past thirty years had been their home,
+were turned into two mounds of pulp. The Vigdoroffs
+watched it all with a peculiar sense of remoteness, with a
+sort of lethargic indifference. When old Vigdoroff saw
+the rioters struggling with the locked drawer of his desk,
+he remarked to his wife:</p>
+
+<p>“Idiots! Why don’t they knock out the bottom?”
+When one of the mob hurt his fingers trying to rend an
+old parchment-bound folio, he emitted a mock sigh, quoting
+the Yiddish proverb: “Too much hurry brings nothing
+but evil.” Only when Clara’s little niece began to shake
+and cry in a paroxysm of childish anguish, upon seeing her
+doll in the hands of a little girl from across the street, did
+the whole family burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m going to kill them. Let them kill me!” the old
+man said, leaping to his feet. But his wife and daughters
+hung to him, and held him back.</p>
+
+<p>Later on, when the rioters had gone, the family returned
+to their nest. The eight rooms were absolutely
+empty, as though their occupants had moved out.</p><p><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382"><span class="pagenum">[382]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Gradually the various bands of rioters got into the swing
+of their work and did it with the system and method of
+an established trade. First the pavement was torn up,
+the cobblestones being piled up and then crashed into the
+windows; the padlocks were then knocked off by means of
+crowbars, <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'banners'">hammers</ins> or axes and the doors battered down or
+broken in. Next the contents of pillows were cast to the
+wind, after which, the street having thus received its baptism
+of Jewish down, the real business of the rioters was
+begun by the wreckers and the looters. If the shop raided
+was a clothier’s and the freebooters had not yet prinked
+themselves they would do so to begin with, some of them
+returning to the streets in two pairs of trousers, two coats
+and even two hats. After a house or a shop had
+been gutted and its contents wrecked or plundered it would
+be left to children who would then proceed to play riot on
+its ruins. Here and there a committee followed in the
+wake of some band, ascertaining whether some Jewish
+dwelling or shop had not been passed over, or whether a
+roll of woollen or a piece of furniture had not been left
+undestroyed. Not a chair, not a pound of candles was
+allowed to remain unshattered. Kerosene was poured over
+sugar, honey was mixed with varnish, ink or milk. It was
+hard, slow work, this slashing and rending, smashing and
+grinding. Some raiders toiled over a single article till
+they panted for breath. A common sight was a man or a
+woman tearing at a piece of stuff with broken finger-nails
+and bleeding fingers, accompanying their efforts with volleys
+of profanity at the expense of the Jews whose wares
+seemed as hard to destroy as their owners. In one place
+the mob was blaspheming demoniacally because a heap of
+ground pepper from a wrecked grocery store had thrown
+them into a convulsion of sneezing.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" /><p><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383"><span class="pagenum">[383]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The most hideous delirium of brutality was visited upon
+Paradise,&mdash;upon that district of narrow streets and lanes
+in the vicinity of Cucumber Market which was the seat of
+the hardest toil and the blackest need, the home of the
+poorest mechanics, labourers and tradesmen. As though
+enraged by the dearth of things worth destroying, the rioters
+in this section took it out of the Jews in the most
+bestial forms of cruelty and fiendishness their besotted
+minds could invent. The debris here was made up of the
+cheapest articles of furniture and mechanics’ tools. It
+was here that several Jewish women were dragged out into
+the street and victimised, while drunken women and children
+aided their husbands and fathers in their crimes.
+One woman was caught running through a gale of feathers
+and down, her child clasped in her arms. Another
+woman was chuckling aloud in a fit of insanity, as she
+passed through the district in a cab, when she was pulled
+off the vehicle. A good-looking girl tried to elude the
+rioters by disguising herself as a man, but she was recognised
+and the only thing that saved her was a savage fight
+among her assailants. A middle-aged woman came out
+of a house with shrieks of horror, imploring an intoxicated
+army officer to go to the rescue of her daughter. The
+officer followed her indoors, but instead of rescuing the
+younger woman the only thing that saved her own honour
+was his drunken condition. One woman who broke away
+from two invaders and was about to jump out of her
+window, was driven back at the point of the bayonet by
+one of the soldiers in front of the house.</p>
+
+<p>“We are under orders not to allow any Jews to get
+out,” he explained to her, good-naturedly.</p>
+
+<p>“Take pity, oh, do take pity,” she was pleading, when
+her voice was choked off by somebody within.</p><p><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384"><span class="pagenum">[384]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Every synagogue in town was sacked, the holy ark in
+many cases being desecrated in the most revolting manner;
+while the Scrolls of the Law were everywhere cut
+to ribbons, some of which were wound around cats and
+dogs. One woman met her awful fate upon scrolls from
+the Old Synagogue at the hands of a ruffian who had
+once heard it said that that was the way Titus, the Roman
+emperor, desecrated the Temple upon taking Jerusalem.
+Two strong Jews who risked their lives in an attempt to
+rescue some of the scrolls were seen running through the
+streets, their precious and rather heavy burden hugged to
+their hearts. The mob gave chase.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Hear, O Israel!’” one of the two men shrieked,
+“‘God is God. God is one.’”</p>
+
+<p>But the verse, which will keep evil spirits at a respectful
+distance from every Jew who utters it, failed to exercise
+its powers on the rioters. The two men were overtaken
+and beaten black and blue and the scrolls were cut
+to pieces.</p>
+
+<p>A white-haired musician, venturing out of his hiding
+place, begged the mob to spare his violin which he said
+was older than he; whereupon the instrument was shattered
+against the old man’s head. On another street in
+the same section of the city another Jewish fiddler was
+made to play while his tormentors danced, and when they
+had finished he had to break the violin with his own
+hands. Pillows were wrenched from under invalids to be
+ripped up and thrown into the street. In one tailoring
+shop a consumptive old man, too feeble to be moved, was
+found with a bottle of milk in his trembling hands, his
+only food until his children should find it safe to crawl
+back to the house.</p>
+
+<p>“You have drunk enough of our milk, you scabby<a name="Page_385" id="Page_385"><span class="pagenum">[385]</span></a>
+Christ-killer!” yelled a rioter as he knocked the bottle
+out of the tailor’s hand and hit his head with a flat-iron.</p>
+
+<p>Little Market in front of Boyko’s Court, the home of
+Clara’s father and mother, glistened with puddles of
+vodka, in which cats and dogs, overcome by the alcoholic
+evaporations, lay dead or half-dead. Now and then a
+drunken rioter would crouch before one of these puddles,
+dip up a handful of the muddy stuff with his hands and
+gulp it thirstily, with an inebriate smile of apology to
+the bystanders. The corner of a lane nearby was piled
+with brass dust and with broken candle-stick moulds.
+A horse trough in the rear of the police booth was full of
+yolks and egg-shells. When the goose market next door
+to Boyko’s Court was raided some of the fowls were
+stabbed or had their necks wrung on the spot, while others
+were driven into the vodka ponds on the square. A hundred
+geese and ducks went splashing through the intoxicating
+liquid, fluttering and cackling. A number of rioters
+formed a cordon preventing them from waddling out
+and then fell to stabbing them with knives and pitchforks,
+till every pool of vodka was red.</p>
+
+<p>“Jewish geese, curse them! Jewish geese, curse them!”
+they snarled.</p>
+
+<p>Not very far off, hard by a wall, a Jewish woman was
+giving birth to a child. Presently a Gentile woman with
+a basket half filled with loot took pity on the child and
+took it home, giving the policeman her address, while the
+mother was left bleeding to death.</p>
+
+<p>It was also in this district of toil and squalor where
+the most desperate fighting was done by the Jews. One
+lane was held by five of them against a mob of fifty for
+more than half an hour until the five men were lugged off
+to jail, and then the remaining inhabitants of the lane became<a name="Page_386" id="Page_386"><span class="pagenum">[386]</span></a>
+the victims of the most atrocious vengeance in the
+history of the day. A mother defended a garret against
+a crowd of rioters by brandishing a heavy crowbar in front
+of them. The maddened Gentiles then scaled the wall
+and charged the roof with axes and sledge-hammers.
+Part of the roof gave way. The woman continued to
+swing the crowbar until she fell in a swoon.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The houses of the richest Jews were closely guarded by
+the soldiery and, barring one exception, rioters were kept
+at a safe distance from them. Even the house of Ginsburg,
+the most repugnant usurer in town, was taken care of.
+Some army officers, indeed, directed various bands of roughs
+to the place on the chance of having their promissory
+notes destroyed, but the roughs failed to get near it. There
+was an instinct in official circles that the wrecking of
+wealthy Jewish homes was apt to develop in the masses a
+taste for playing havoc with “seats of the mighty.” For
+after all a man like Ginsburg and a titled plunderer of
+peasant lands are not without their bonds of affinity. The
+great point was that in dealing with Jewish magnates
+Popular Fury was liable to confuse the Jew with the magnate,
+the question of race with the question of class.</p>
+
+<p>As to the Gentile magnates their attitude toward the
+rioters was one which seemed to say: “You fellows and
+we are brothers, are we not?” And their mansions were
+safe. Members of the gentry openly joined the rioters,
+some out of sheer hatred of the race, others for the sport
+of the thing, still others honestly succumbing to the contagion
+of beastliness. In the horrid saturnalia of pillage,
+destruction and rapine many a peaceful citizen was drawn
+into the vortex. A man stands looking on curiously,
+perhaps even with some horror, and gradually he becomes<a name="Page_387" id="Page_387"><span class="pagenum">[387]</span></a>
+restless as do the legs of a dancer when the floor creaks
+under a medley of sliding feet. But then there was a
+large number of Gentiles who acted like human beings.
+Among these were members of the priesthood, although
+there were holy “little fathers” who pointed out the
+houses of their Jewish neighbours to the mob.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The best friend of the Jews during that day of horrors
+was Vodka. The sons of Israel were made a safety valve
+of by the government and Vodka rendered a similar service
+to the sons of Israel. It saved scores of lives and
+the honour of scores of women. Hundreds of the fiercest
+rioters were so many tottering wrecks before the atrocities
+were three hours old, while by sundown the number of
+dead and wounded looters was as large as the number of
+murdered and maimed Jews. Two men were found
+drowned in casks of spirits into which they had apparently
+let their heads sink in a daze of intoxication. A handsome
+young rioter in a crimson blouse staggered over the
+balustrade of a balcony, hugging a Jewish vase, and was
+killed on the spot. One man was killed in a struggle
+over a Jewish woman and several others had simply drunk
+themselves to death, while a countless number were bruised
+and disabled in the general mêlée, falling, fighting, injuring
+themselves with their own weapons of destruction.</p>
+
+<p>Toward evening some of the streets had the appearance
+of a battlefield after action. Hundreds of men and
+women, swollen, bleeding, were wallowing in the gutters,
+in puddles, on the sidewalks, between piles of debris, in a
+revolting <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'stupour'">stupor</ins> of inebriety. Some of them slept several
+hours in this condition and then struggled to their
+feet to resume drinking. The trained rioters had thoughtfully
+seen to it that some casks of vodka, as also some<a name="Page_388" id="Page_388"><span class="pagenum">[388]</span></a>
+accordions, should be reserved for the closing scenes of
+the bacchanalia.</p>
+
+<p>The moon came out. Her soft mysterious light
+streamed through the rugged holes of shattered unlit windows;
+over muddy pavements carpeted with silks, velvets,
+satins; over rows and rows of debris-mounds on streets
+snowed under with down; over peasants driving home with
+waggons laden with plunder; over the ghastly figures of
+sprawling drunkards and the beautiful uniforms of patrolling
+hussars. Silence had settled over most of the streets.
+For blocks and blocks, east and west, north and south,
+there was not an unbroken window pane to be seen, not a
+light to glitter in the distance. The Jewish district, the
+liveliest district in town, had been turned into a “city of
+death.” In other places one often saw a single illuminated
+house on a whole street of darkness and ruin.
+The illuminated house was invariably the abode of Christians.
+Officers on horseback were moving about musingly,
+the hoofs of their horses silenced by thick layers of down.
+Most streets were impassable for the debris. Here and
+there the jaded sounds of revelry were heard, but there
+were some peasants who had come out of the day’s rioting
+in full control of their voices.</p>
+
+<p>Seated on empty boxes and barrels, their fingers gripping
+new accordions, their eyes raised to the moon, a company
+of rioters on Little Market were playing and singing
+a melancholy, doleful tune. The Jews were in their hiding
+places.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389"><span class="pagenum">[389]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XL.</h2>
+
+<h3>LIGHT OUT OF DARKNESS.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">CLARA was with her parents in a White-Russian
+town. The inn at which they were stopping was
+entered through a vast yard, partly occupied by
+fruit-barns. It was the height of the fruit season. The
+barns and part of the yard were lined with straw upon
+which rose great heaps of apples and pears of all sizes and
+colours. Applewomen, armed with baskets, were coming
+and going, squatting by the juicy mounds, sampling them,
+haggling, quarrelling mildly. Now and then a peasant
+waggon laden with fruit would come creaking through the
+open gate, attracting general attention. A secluded corner
+of the yard was Clara’s and her mother’s favourite spot
+for their interminable confidences, a pile of large bulky
+logs serving them as a sofa. The people they saw here
+and in the streets were much shabbier and more insignificant-looking
+than those of their native town and the
+south in general. The Yavners lived here unregistered,
+as did most of the guests at the inn, the local police being
+too lazy and too “friendly” with the proprietor to trouble
+his patrons about having their passports vised at the station
+house.</p>
+
+<p>The town was a stronghold of Talmudic learning, and
+Rabbi Rachmiel felt as a passionate art student does on
+his first visit to Italy. When the first excitement of the<a name="Page_390" id="Page_390"><span class="pagenum">[390]</span></a>
+meeting was over the local scholars were of more interest
+to him than his daughter. His joy was marred by his
+fear of being sent to Siberia in case Clara’s (to her
+parents she was still Tamara) identity was discovered by
+the local police; but he had a rather muddled idea of the
+situation and his wife assured him that there was no
+danger. As to Hannah, she was not the woman to flee
+from her daughter for fear of the police. She could not
+see enough of Clara. She catechised her on her political
+career and her personal life, and Clara, completely under
+the spell of the meeting and in her mother’s power, told
+her more than she had a mind to. What she told her was,
+indeed, as foreign to Hannah’s brain as it was to her
+husband’s; but then, in her practical old-fashioned way,
+she realised that her daughter was working in the interests
+of the poor and the oppressed, though she never listened
+to Clara’s expositions without a sad, patronising smile.</p>
+
+<p>One day, during one of their intimate talks on the wood-pile,
+the old woman demanded:</p>
+
+<p>“Tell me, Clara, are you married?”</p>
+
+<p>“What has put such an idea in your mind?” Clara
+returned, reddening. “If I were I would have told you
+long ago.”</p>
+
+<p>“Tamara, you are a married woman,” Hannah insisted,
+looking hard at her daughter.</p>
+
+<p>“I tell you I am not,” Clara said testily.</p>
+
+<p>“Then why did you get red in the face when I said
+you were? People don’t get red without reason, do they?”</p>
+
+<p>The young woman’s will power seemed to have completely
+deserted her. “I am engaged,” she said, “but I
+am not married, and&mdash;let me alone, mamma, will you?”</p>
+
+<p>“If you are engaged, then why were you afraid to say
+so? Is it anything to be ashamed of to be engaged? Foolish<a name="Page_391" id="Page_391"><span class="pagenum">[391]</span></a>
+girl that you are, am I a stranger to you? Why don’t
+you tell me who he is, what he is?”</p>
+
+<p>“He is a nice man and that’s all I can tell you now,
+and pray don’t ask me any more questions, mamma darling.”</p>
+
+<p>After a pause the old woman gave her daughter a sharp
+look and said in a whisper: “He must be a Christian,
+then. Else you wouldn’t be afraid to tell me who he is.”</p>
+
+<p>“He is not,” Clara answered lamely, her eyes on a heap
+of yellow apples in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>“He <i>is</i> a Christian, then,” Hannah said in consternation.
+“May the blackest ill-luck strike you both.”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t! Don’t!” Clara entreated her, clapping her
+hand over her mother’s mouth, childishly.</p>
+
+<p>“What! You <i>are</i> going to marry a Christian? You
+<i>are</i> a convert-Jewess?” Hannah said in a ghastly whisper.</p>
+
+<p>“No, no, mamma! I have not become a Christian, and
+I never will. I swear I won’t. As to him, he is the best
+man in the world. That’s all I can tell you for the present.
+Oh, the young generation is so different from the
+old, mamma!” she snuggled to her, nursing her cheek
+against hers and finding intense pleasure in a conscious
+imitation of the ways of her own childhood; but she was
+soon repulsed.</p>
+
+<p>“Away from my eyes! May the Black Year understand
+you. I don’t,” the old woman said. Her face
+wore an expression of horrified curiosity. Had Clara
+faced her fury with a pugnacious front, it might have
+led to an irretrievable rupture; but she did not. While
+her mother continued to curse, she went on fawning and
+pleading with filial self-abasement, although not without
+an effect of trying to <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'sooth'">soothe</ins> an angry baby. Hannah’s
+curses were an accompaniment to further interrogations<a name="Page_392" id="Page_392"><span class="pagenum">[392]</span></a>
+and gradually became few and far between. Her daughter’s
+engagement and her whole mysterious life appealed
+to an old-fashioned sense of romance and adventure in
+the elderly Jewess; also to a vague idea of a higher altruism.
+Her motherly pride sought satisfaction in the fact
+that her daughter was so kind-hearted as to stake her life
+for the poor and the suffering, and so plucky that she
+braved the Czar and all his soldiers. “It’s from me she
+got all that benevolence and grit,” Hannah said to herself.
+As to Rabbi Rachmiel, he asked no questions and his wife
+was not going to disturb his peace of mind.</p>
+
+<p>“There is no distinction between Jew and Gentile
+among us,” Clara said in the course of her plea.</p>
+
+<p>“No, there is not,” her mother returned. “Only the
+Gentiles tear the Jews to pieces.” And at this Clara
+remembered that circumstance which lay like a revolting
+blemish on her conscience&mdash;the attitude of the revolutionists
+toward the riots.</p>
+
+<p>However, these matters got but little consideration
+from her now. She was taken up with her parents. The
+peculiar intonation with which her father chanted grace
+interested her more than all the “politics” of the world.
+She recognised these trifles with little thrills of joy, as
+though she had been away from home a quarter of a century.
+When her mother took out a pair of brass-rimmed
+spectacles on making ready to read her prayers, Clara
+exclaimed, with a gasp of unfeigned anguish:</p>
+
+<p>“Spectacles! Since when, mamma darling, since
+when?”</p>
+
+<p>“Since about six months ago. One gets older, foolish
+girl, not younger. When you are of my age you’ll have
+to use spectacles, too, all your Gentile wisdom notwithstanding.”</p><p><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393"><span class="pagenum">[393]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Another day or two and her communions with her
+mother and the odour of apples and pears began to pall
+on her. She missed Pavel. Her mind was more frequently
+given over to musings upon that atmosphere amid
+which he and she were a pair of lovers than to the fascination
+of being with her father and mother again. She felt
+the centuries that divided her world from theirs more
+keenly every day. Once, after a long muse by the side of
+her mother, who sat darning stockings in her spectacles,
+she roused herself, with surprise, to the fact that Sophia
+was no more, that she had been hanged. It seemed incredible.
+And then it seemed incredible that she, Clara,
+was by her mother’s side at this moment. She took solitary
+walks, she sought seclusion indoors, she was growing
+fidgety. The change that had come over her was not lost
+upon her mother.</p>
+
+<p>“You have been rather quick to get tired of your father
+and mother, haven’t you?” Hannah said to her one day.
+“Grieving for your Christian fellow? A break into your
+bones, Tamara!”</p>
+
+<p>Clara blushed all over her face. She was more than
+grieving for Pavel. She pictured him in the hands of
+the gendarmes or shot in a desperate fray with them;
+she imagined him the victim of the ghastliest catastrophes
+known to the movement, her heart was torn by the wildest
+misgivings.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, when her mother was speaking to her
+and she was making feeble efforts to disguise her abstraction,
+Hannah, losing patience, flamed out:</p>
+
+<p>“But what’s the use talking to a woman whose mind
+has been bedeviled by a Gentile!”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t, then,” Clara snapped back, with great irritation.</p><p><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394"><span class="pagenum">[394]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“The Black Year has asked you to arrange this meeting.
+Why don’t you go back to your Gentile? Go at
+once to him or your heart will burst.”</p>
+
+<p>Clara was cut to the quick, but she mastered herself.</p>
+
+<p>When she read in the newspapers and in a letter from
+her sister accounts of the Miroslav outbreak, her agony
+was far keener than that of her father and mother. The
+most conspicuous circumstance in every report of the riot
+was the bestial ferocity with which the mob had let itself
+loose on the homes of the poorest and hardest working
+population in those districts of Miroslav known as Paradise
+and Cucumber Market. She knew that neighbourhood
+as she knew herself. She had been born and bred
+in it. The dearest scenes of her childhood were there.
+Tears of homesickness and of a sense of guilt were choking
+her.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time it came home to her that these
+thousands of Jewish tailors, blacksmiths, tinsmiths,
+lumber-drivers, capmakers, coopers, labourers, who toiled
+from fourteen to fifteen hours a day and lived literally
+on the verge of starvation, were as much at least entitled
+to that hallowed name, “The People,” as the demonised
+Russians who were now committing those unspeakable
+atrocities upon them. Yet the organ of her party had not
+a word of sympathy for them! Nay, it treated all Jews,
+without distinction, as a race of fleecers, of human leeches!
+Russian literature of the period was teeming with “fists,”
+or village usurers, types of the great Russian provinces in
+which Jews were not allowed to dwell. Drunkenness in
+these districts was far worse than in those in which the
+liquor traffic was in Jewish hands. And the nobility&mdash;was
+it not a caste of spongers and land-robbers? Yet
+who would dare call the entire Russian people a people of<a name="Page_395" id="Page_395"><span class="pagenum">[395]</span></a>
+human sharks, liquor-dealers and usurers, as it was customary
+to do in the case of the Jews? A Russian peasant
+or labourer was part of the People, while a Jewish tailor,
+blacksmith or carpenter was only a Jew, one of a race of
+profit-mongers, sharpers, parasites.</p>
+
+<p>And this “People,” for whose sake she was staking her
+liberty and her life, was wreaking havoc on Jews because
+they were Jews like her father, like her mother, like
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>People at the inn were talking of the large numbers of
+Jews that were going to America. “America or Palestine?”
+was the great subject of discussion in the three
+Russian weeklies dedicated to Jewish interests. One day
+Hannah said, <ins class="punct" title="Transcriber's Note: changed . to :">gravely:</ins></p>
+
+<p>“I tell you what, Tamara. Drop your Gentile and the
+foolish work you are doing and let us all go to America.”</p>
+
+<p>Clara smiled.</p>
+
+<p>“Will it be better if you are caught and put in a black
+hole?”</p>
+
+<p>Clara smiled again. There was temptation in what her
+mother said. Being in Russia she was liable to be arrested
+at any moment; almost sure to perish in a solitary cell or
+to be transported to the Siberian mines for twenty years.
+And were not the riots enough to acquit her before her
+own conscience in case she chose to retire from a movement
+that was primarily dedicated to the interests of an
+anti-Semitic people; from a movement that rejoiced in
+the rioters and had not a word of sympathy for their victims?</p>
+
+<p>But an excuse for getting out of the perils of underground
+life was not what she wanted. Rather did
+she wish for a vindication of her conduct in remaining
+in the Party of the Will of the People in spite of all “the<a name="Page_396" id="Page_396"><span class="pagenum">[396]</span></a>
+People” did against her race. She was under the sway of
+two forces, each of them far mightier than any temptation
+to be free from danger. One of these two forces was
+Pavel. The other was Public Opinion&mdash;the public
+opinion of underground Russia. According to the moral
+standard of that Russia every one who did not share in
+the hazards of the revolutionary movement was a “careerist,”
+a self-seeker absorbed exclusively in the feathering
+of his own nest; the Jew who took the special interests
+of his race specially to heart was a narrow-minded nationalist,
+and the Nihilist who withdrew from the movement
+was a renegade. The power which this “underground”
+public opinion exerted over her was all the
+greater because of the close ties of affection which, owing
+to the community of the dangers they faced, bound the
+active revolutionists to each other. Pavel and Clara were
+linked by the bonds of love, but she would have staked her
+life for every other member of the inner circle as readily
+as she would for him.</p>
+
+<p>They were all particularly dear to her because they were
+a handful of survivors of an epidemic of arrests that had
+swept away so many of their prominent comrades. The
+notion of these people thinking of her as a renegade was
+too horrible to be indulged in for a single moment. Besides,
+who would have had the heart to desert the party now
+that its ranks had been so decimated and each member was
+of so much value? Still more revolting was such an idea
+to Clara when she thought of the Nihilists who had died on
+the scaffold or were dying of consumption or scurvy or
+going insane in solitary confinement. Sophia, strangled on
+the gallows, was in her grave. Would she, Clara, abandon
+the cause to which that noble woman had given her life?</p>
+
+<p>The long and short of it is that it would have required<a name="Page_397" id="Page_397"><span class="pagenum">[397]</span></a>
+far more courage on her part to go to America and be safe
+from the Russian gendarmes than to live under constant
+fire as an active “illegal” in her native country.</p>
+
+<p>This was the kind of thoughts that were occupying her
+mind at this minute. While her mother was urging her
+to go to America, she exclaimed mutely: “No, Sophia,
+I shan’t desert the cause for which they have strangled you.
+I, too, will die for it.” It seemed easy and the height of
+happiness to end one’s life as Sophia had done. She saw
+her dead friend vividly, and as her mind scanned the mysterious,
+far-away image, the dear, familiar image, her
+bosom began to heave and her hand clutched her mother’s
+arm in a paroxysm of suppressed tears.</p>
+
+<p>“Water! Water!” Hannah cried into the open doorway.
+When the water had been brought and Clara had
+gulped down a mouthful of it and fixed a faint, wistful
+smile on her mother, Hannah remarked fiercely:</p>
+
+<p>“The ghost knows what she is thinking of while people
+talk to her.”</p>
+
+<p>Clara went out for a long walk over the old macadamised
+road that ran through the White-Russian town on its way
+to St. Petersburg. She loved to watch the peasant wagons,
+and, early in the morning and late in the evening, the
+incoming and outgoing stage-coaches. She knew that she
+was going to stay in the thick of the struggle, come what
+might. Yet the riots&mdash;more definitely the one of Miroslav&mdash;lay
+like a ruthless living reproach in her heart.
+She wanted to be alone with this Reproach, to plead with it,
+to argue with it, to pick it to pieces. She walked through
+the shabby, narrow streets and along the St. Petersburg
+highway, thinking a thousand thoughts, but she neither
+pleaded with that Reproach, nor argued with it, nor tried
+to pick it to pieces. Her mind was full of Pavel and of<a name="Page_398" id="Page_398"><span class="pagenum">[398]</span></a>
+Sophia and of her other comrades, living or dead. “It is
+all very well for me to think of going to America and be
+free from danger,” she said to herself. “But can Sophia
+go there? or Hessia?”</p>
+
+<p>At one moment it flashed through her brain that to be
+true to the people was to work for it in spite of all its injustices,
+even as a mother did for her child, notwithstanding
+all the cruelties it might heap on her. The highest
+bliss of martyrdom was to be mobbed by the very crowd
+for whose welfare you sacrificed yourself. To be sure, these
+thoughts were merely a reassertion of the conflict which
+she sought to settle. They offered no answer to the question,
+Why should she, a Jewess, stake her life for a people
+that was given to pillaging and outraging, to mutilating
+and murdering innocent Jews? They merely made a new
+statement of the fact that she was bent upon doing so. Yet
+she seized upon the new formulation of the problem as if
+it were the solution she was craving for. “I shall bear
+the cross of the Social Revolution even if the Russian people
+trample upon me and everybody who is dear to me,”
+she exclaimed in her heart, feeling at peace with the shade
+of Sophia.</p>
+
+<p>She walked home in a peculiar state of religious beatitude,
+as though she had made a great discovery, found a
+golden key to the gravest problem of her personal life.
+Then, being in this uplifted frame of mind, she saw light
+breaking about her. Arguments were offering themselves
+in support of her position. When Russia was free and the
+reign of fraternity and equality had been established the
+maltreatment of man by man in any form would be impossible.
+Surely there would be no question of race or faith
+then. Anti-Jewish riots were now raging? All the more
+reason, then, to work for Russia’s liberty. Indeed, was not<a name="Page_399" id="Page_399"><span class="pagenum">[399]</span></a>
+the condition of the Jews better in free countries than in
+despotic ones? And the Russian peasant, would he in his
+blind fury run amuck the way he did if it were not for the
+misery and darkness in which he was kept by his tyrants?
+Her heart went out to the mob that was so ignorant as to
+attack people who had done them no harm. And then,
+once the great Reproach had been appeased in her mind,
+the entire Jewish question, riots, legal discriminations and
+all, appeared a mere trifle compared to the great Human
+Question, the solution of which constituted the chief problem
+of her cause.</p>
+
+<p>The next time her mother indulged in an attack upon
+Gentiles in general and Clara’s “Gentile friends” in particular
+the young woman begged her, with tears in her
+voice, to desist:</p>
+
+<p>“Look at her! I have touched the honour of the Impurity,”
+the old woman said, sneering.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, they are not the Impurity, mamma darling,” Clara
+returned ardently. “They are saints; they live and die
+for the happiness of others. If you only knew what kind
+of people they were!”</p>
+
+<p>“She has actually been bedeviled, as true as I am a
+daughter of Israel. Jews are being torn to pieces by the
+Gentiles; a Jew isn’t allowed to breathe, yet she&mdash;&mdash;”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, they are a different kind of Gentiles, mamma.
+When that for which they struggle has been realised the
+Jew will breathe freely. Our people have no trouble in a
+country like England. Why? Because the whole country
+has more freedom there. Besides, when the demands of my
+‘Gentile friends’ have been realised the Christian mobs
+won’t be so uneducated, so blind. They will know who is
+who, and Jew and Gentile will live in peace. All will live
+in peace, like brothers, mamma.”</p><p><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400"><span class="pagenum">[400]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Hannah listened attentively, so that Clara, elated by the
+apparent effect of her plea, went on, going over aloud the
+answer that she gave her own conscience. When she
+paused, however, Hannah said with a shrug of her shoulders
+and a mournful nod of her head:</p>
+
+<p>“So you are bound to rot away in prison, aren’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t talk like that, mamma, dear, pray.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why shouldn’t I? Has somebody else given birth to
+you? Has somebody else brought you up?”</p>
+
+<p>“But why should you make yourself uneasy about me?
+I <i>won’t</i> rot away in prison, and if I do, better people than
+I have met with a fate of that kind. I wish I were as good
+as they were and died as they did.”</p>
+
+<p>“A rather peculiar taste,” Hannah said with another
+shrug which seemed to add: “She has gone clear daft on
+those Gentile books of hers, as true as I live.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Clara remained in the White-Russian town two days
+longer than her parents. At the moment of parting her
+mother clung to her desperately.</p>
+
+<p>“Will I ever see you again?” Hannah sobbed. “Daughter
+mine, daughter mine! Will my eyes ever see you
+again?”</p>
+
+<p>The old Talmudist was weeping into a blue bandanna.</p>
+
+<p>As Clara walked back to her lodging alone the streets of
+the strange town gave her an excruciating sense of desolation.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401"><span class="pagenum">[401]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XLI.</h2>
+
+<h3>PAVEL BECOMES “ILLEGAL.”</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">A MONTH had elapsed. Clara was in a train, bound
+for Moscow, where her lover was awaiting her arrival.
+The nearer she drew to her destination the
+more vivid grew his features in her mind and the more
+violent was her fidget. “I am madly in love with him,”
+she said to herself, and the very sound of these words in her
+mind were sweet to her. The few weeks of separation
+seemed to have convinced her that the power of his love
+over her was far greater than she had supposed. Things
+that had preyed upon her mind before now glanced off her
+imagination. She wept over the fate of Hessia and her
+prison-born child, yet she felt that if Pavel asked her to
+marry him at once she would not have the strength to resist
+him. Nay, to marry him was what her heart coveted above
+all else in the world.</p>
+
+<p>Being an “illegal,” she had to slip into the big ancient
+city quietly. As she passed through the streets, alone on a
+droshky, she made a mental note of the difference in general
+pictorial effect between Moscow and St. Petersburg,
+but she was too excited to give her mind to anything in
+particular.</p>
+
+<p>Her first meeting with Pavel took place in a large café,
+built something like a theatre, with two tiers of stalls, a
+gigantic music box sending up great waves of subdued<a name="Page_402" id="Page_402"><span class="pagenum">[402]</span></a>
+sound from the main floor below. He waited for her in
+front of the building. When she came they just shook
+hands smilingly, and he led the way up one flight of stairs
+to one of the stalls&mdash;a fair-sized, oblong private room, its
+walls covered with red plush, with upholstered benching to
+match.</p>
+
+<p>“I am simply crazy, Clanya!” he whispered, pressing
+her to him tremulously.</p>
+
+<p>At first they both experienced a sense of desuetude and
+awkwardness, so that in spite of his stormy demonstrations
+he could not look her full in the face. But this soon wore
+off. They were overflowing with joy in one another.</p>
+
+<p>A waiter, all in white, suave and hearty as only Great-Russian
+waiters know how to be, brought in “a portion of
+tea,” served in attractive teapots of silver, with a glass for
+the man and a cup for the lady, and retired, shutting the
+door behind him, which subdued the metallic melody that
+filled the room still further and added to the sense of mystery
+that came from it. They talked desultorily and
+brokenly, of her parents and of the revolutionists gathered
+in Moscow. The subject of the Miroslav riot was tactfully
+broached by Clara herself, but she strove to give this part
+of their incoherent conversation the tone in which people
+usually discuss some sad but long-forgotten event, and she
+passed to some other topic as quickly and imperceptibly as
+she could. That he had seen that riot he did not tell her,
+though he once caught himself on the point of blurting it
+all out.</p>
+
+<p>When she asked him about the general state of the movement
+he gradually warmed up. The outlook was brilliant,
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>Urie, the tall blond nobleman with the strikingly Great-Russian
+features, who had played the part of cheesemonger<a name="Page_403" id="Page_403"><span class="pagenum">[403]</span></a>
+on Little Garden <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'street'">Street</ins>, St. Petersburg, was in Moscow
+now, mending the shattered organisation. He was the centre
+of a busy group of revolutionists, Jews as well as Slavs.
+Several well-known veterans of both nationalities, who had
+been living in foreign countries during the past year or
+two, were expected to return to Russia. Everybody was
+bubbling with enthusiasm and activity.</p>
+
+<p>“And your fiery imagination is not inclined to view
+things in a rather roseate light, is it?” she asked, beaming
+amorously.</p>
+
+<p>“Not a bit,” he replied irascibly. “Wait till you have
+seen it all for yourself. The reports from the provinces
+are all of the most cheerful character. New men are
+springing up everywhere. The revolution <i>is</i> a hydra-headed
+giant, Clanya.”</p>
+
+<p>“But who says it isn’t?” she asked, with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>She got up, shot out her arms, saying:</p>
+
+<p>“Now for something to do. I feel like turning mountains
+upside down. Indeed, the revolution is a hydra-headed
+giant, indeed it is. And you are a little dear,” she
+added, bending over him and pressing her cheek against
+his.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>They had been married less than a month when he
+learned from a ciphered letter from Masha Safonoff that
+the gendarmes were looking for him.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Clanya,” he said facetiously, as he entered their
+apartment one afternoon, “you are a princess no longer.”</p>
+
+<p>Her face fell.</p>
+
+<p>“Look at her! Look at her! She is grieving over the
+loss of her title.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, do stop those silly jokes of yours, Pasha. Must
+you become illegal?”</p><p><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404"><span class="pagenum">[404]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“Yes, ma’am. I am of the same rank as you. That
+puts a stop to the airs you have been giving yourself.” It
+was in the course of the same conversation that he told her
+of his trip to Miroslav and of all that had happened to him
+there.</p>
+
+<p>They were known here as brother and sister, his legal
+residence being in another place, but now both these residences
+were abandoned, and they moved into a new apartment,
+in another section of the town, which he took great
+pains to put in tasteful shape. Indeed, so elaborately
+fitted up was it that he fought shy of letting any of his fellow
+Nihilists know their new address. A table against one
+wall was piled with drawings, while standing in a conspicuous
+corner on the floor were a drawing-board and a huge
+portfolio&mdash;accessories of the rôle of a russified German
+artist which he played before the janitor of the house. Before
+he let her see it he had put a vase of fresh roses in the
+centre of the table.</p>
+
+<p>When he and Clara entered their new home, he said in
+French, with a gallant gesture:</p>
+
+<p>“Madame, permit me to introduce you.”</p>
+
+<p>He helped her off with her things and slid into the next
+room, where he busied himself with the samovar. She
+had with her a fresh copy of the <i>Will of the People</i>&mdash;a sixteen
+page publication of the size of the average weekly
+printed on fine, smooth paper; so she took it up eagerly.
+Its front page was in mourning for President Garfield. An
+editorial notice signed by the revolutionary executive committee
+tendered an expression of grief and sympathy to the
+bereaved republic, condemning in vigorous language acts
+of violence in a land “where the free will of the people
+determines not only the law but also the person of the
+ruler.” “In such a land,” the Nihilist Executive Committee<a name="Page_405" id="Page_405"><span class="pagenum">[405]</span></a>
+went on to explain, “a deed of this sort is a manifestation
+of that spirit of despotism the effacement of which in
+Russia is the aim of our movement. Violence is not to be
+justified unless it be directed against violence.”</p>
+
+<p>The declaration made an exceedingly pleasant impression
+on Clara.</p>
+
+<p>“Bravo! Bravo!” she called out to her husband, as she
+peered into the inside pages of the paper.</p>
+
+<p>“What’s the matter?” he asked her from the next room,
+distractedly, choking with the smoke of his freshly lit
+samovar.</p>
+
+<p>She made no answer. The same issue of her party’s
+organ devoted several columns to the anti-Jewish riots.
+She began to read these with acute misgivings, and, sure
+enough, they were permeated by a spirit of anti-Semitism
+as puerile as it was heartless. A bitter sense of resentment
+filled her heart. “As long as it does not concern the Jews
+they have all the human sympathy and tact in the world,”
+she thought. “The moment there is a Jew in the case they
+become cruel, short-sighted and stupid&mdash;everything that is
+bad and ridiculous.”</p>
+
+<p>“What’s that you said, Clanya?” Pavel demanded again.</p>
+
+<p>She had difficulty in answering him. “He is a Gentile
+after all,” she said to herself. “There is a strain of anti-Semitism
+in the best of them.” She was in despair.
+“What is to be done, then?” she asked herself. “Is there
+no way out of it?” The answer was: “I will bear the
+cross,” and once again the formula had a soothing effect
+on her frame of mind. And because it had, the cross gradually
+ceased to be a cross.</p>
+
+<p>She warmed to her husband with a sense of her own forgiveness,
+of the sacrifices she was making. She felt a new
+glow of tenderness for him. And then, by degrees, things<a name="Page_406" id="Page_406"><span class="pagenum">[406]</span></a>
+appeared in milder light. Pavel’s rapture over her was so
+genuine, his devotion so profound, and the general relations
+between Jew and Gentile in the movement
+were marked by intimacies and attachments so sincere,
+that the anti-Semitic article could not have
+sprung from any personal taste or sentiment in
+the author. It was evidently a mere matter of revolutionary
+theory. Justly or unjustly, the fact was there: in
+the popular mind the Jews represented the idea of economic
+oppression. Now, if the masses had risen in arms
+against them, did not that mean that they were beginning
+to attack those they considered their enemies? In the
+depth of her heart there had always lurked some doubt as
+to whether the submissive, stolid Russian masses had it in
+them ever to rise against anybody. Yet here they had!
+Misguided or not, they had risen against an element of the
+population which they were accustomed to regard as parasites.
+Was not that the sign of revolutionary awakening
+she had fervently been praying for?</p>
+
+<p>She went so far as to charge herself with relapsing
+into racial predilections, with letting her feelings as a
+Jewess get the better of her devotion to the cause of
+humanity. She was rapidly arguing herself into the absurd,
+inhuman position into which her party had been put
+by the editor of its official organ.</p>
+
+<p>And to prove to herself that her views were deep-rooted
+and unshakable, she said to herself: “If they think in
+Miroslav I am the only person who could restore harmony
+to their circle, I ought to go there and try to persuade
+Elkin to give up those foolish notions of his.” What they
+were saying about her in that town flattered her vanity.
+The thought of appearing in her revolutionary alma mater,
+in the teeth of the local gendarmes and police, an “illegal”<a name="Page_407" id="Page_407"><span class="pagenum">[407]</span></a>
+known to underground fame, was irresistible. Her thirst
+of adventure in this connection was aroused to the highest
+pitch.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>At eight o’clock the next morning she sat in a chair,
+looking at her husband, who was still in bed, sleeping
+peacefully. He had an early appointment, but she could
+not bring herself to wake him. She was going to do so
+a minute or two later, she pleaded with herself, and then
+they would have tea together. The samovar was singing
+softly in the next room. It was of her love and of her
+happiness it seemed to be singing. Her joy in her honeymoon
+swelled her heart and rose to her throat. “I am too
+happy,” she thought. As she remembered her determination
+to go to her native place, she added: “Yes, I am
+too happy, while Sophia is in her grave and Hessia is
+pining away in her cell. I may be arrested at any moment
+in Miroslav, but I am going to do my duty. I must keep
+Elkin and the others from abandoning the revolution.”</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408"><span class="pagenum">[408]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XLII.</h2>
+
+<h3>OMINOUS FOOTSTEPS.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">CLARA alighted from the train at a station immediately
+preceding Miroslav. She was met by Olga,
+the girl with the short hair and sparse teeth who
+was engaged to the judge, the two reaching the city partly
+on a peasant’s waggon, partly on foot. At sight of the familiar
+landscape Clara seemed weird to herself. It was
+her own Miroslav, yet she was worse than a stranger in it.
+She felt like a ghost visiting what was once his home. On
+the other hand, the unmistakable evidences of the recent
+riot contracted her heart with pain and brought back that
+Reproach.</p>
+
+<p>Olga took her to a “conspiracy house.” This was a
+basement in the outskirts of the town, whose squatty windows
+faced the guardhouse of military stores and commanded
+a distant view of the river. The only other
+tenants of that courtyard were three sisters, all of them
+deaf and in a state of semi-idiocy. The basement had been
+rented soon after Clara’s flight. It consisted of three
+rooms, all very meagrely furnished. Lying under the sofa
+of the middle room was a wooden roller, which had once
+been intended for a secret printing office. One of the walls
+was hung with a disorderly pile of clothes of both sexes&mdash;the
+shed disguises of passing conspirators.</p>
+
+<p>But very few members were allowed to visit her. Those<a name="Page_409" id="Page_409"><span class="pagenum">[409]</span></a>
+who were saluted her with admiring looks and generally
+treated her as a heroine, which caressed her vanity most
+pleasantly. With a temerity born of an acquired habit of
+danger, not unmixed with some bravado, Clara was burning
+to visit her parents, her sister and her mother-in-law, and
+to take a look at her native neighbourhood. Her friends
+made an effort to keep her indoors. She would not be
+restrained, assuring them that she was going to take good
+care of herself, but she finally offered to compromise on a
+meeting with her sister, provided she brought her little girl
+with her.</p>
+
+<p>“I am crazy to see her,” she said, meaning the child.</p>
+
+<p>“See little Ruchele! Why you <i>are</i> crazy, Clara!”
+Olga declared. “If you do all Miroslav will know the
+very next day that ‘Aunt Clara’ is in town.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nonsense. She won’t know me. She has not seen me
+for more than a year. Besides, I’ll wear my veil. Oh, I
+must see her; don’t oppose me, Olga, dear.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The meeting took place on a secluded bit of lawn under
+a sky suffused with the lingering gold of a dying sunset.
+And sure enough, Ruchele was extremely shy of the lady in
+black. When Clara caught her in her arms passionately
+she set up a scream so loud that her mother wrenched her
+from her aunt’s embrace for fear of attracting a crowd
+from a neighboring lane.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>A debate between Clara and Elkin was to take place in
+Orlovsky’s house the next evening. A few hours before
+the time set for the gathering Clara received an unexpected
+call from Elkin. This was their first meeting since her
+arrival, and she welcomed him with sincere cordiality.
+She respected him as her first teacher of socialism. As to<a name="Page_410" id="Page_410"><span class="pagenum">[410]</span></a>
+his love for her, which could still be read in his eyes, it
+flattered her now.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” he said, trying to take a light tone, but betraying
+agitation. “There is some news in town. Clara Yavner
+has been seen about.”</p>
+
+<p>“What do you mean?”</p>
+
+<p>“I mean that Clara Yavner has been seen about,” he
+repeated with sarcastic articulation. And by way of putting
+a period to the sentence, he opened his lips into a
+lozenge-shaped sneer and leaned his head against the mass
+of hung-up clothes under which he sat on an oblong stool.</p>
+
+<p>She was seated on another tabouret, with her back to the
+low window. His manner exasperated her. “But I have
+been out only once,” she retorted calmly, controlling her
+anger, “and then I was heavily veiled.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, could not some people have recognised you by
+your figure and carriage? I am sure I could. At any rate
+your cousin, Vigdoroff, was to see me a little while ago, for
+the express purpose of conveying this message to you, Clara.
+The gossips of Cucumber Market are whispering about your
+having been seen in town, ‘and in addition to truths no end
+of fibs are being told.’ Your mother is quite uneasy about
+it, and&mdash;well, Clara, at the risk of having it set down to a
+desire on my part to slip out of the debate, I should suggest
+that you take no further chances and leave Miroslav at
+once.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, nonsense. Am I not safe in this basement at
+least?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I think you are, but if the police should get wind
+of your presence in town, why, they would not leave a stone
+unturned. They have been itching for a chance to tone
+down their reputation for stupidity ever since your disappearance.”</p><p><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411"><span class="pagenum">[411]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>She smiled and frowned at once.</p>
+
+<p>“Besides,” he went on, leaning back against the clothes
+and gazing at the ceiling, “if that debate is your chief
+mission here I am willing to capitulate in advance. You
+know I cannot debate with you, Clara. I am still in your
+power. My brain is in a whirl in your presence. It is at
+this moment. If that debate took place I should simply
+not know what I was talking about. You would not wish
+me to make an exhibition of the abject helplessness that
+comes over me when I see you, would you?”</p>
+
+<p>His words, uttered in monotonous accents, contrasted so
+sharply with the air of mockery that had attended his
+former attempts at an avowal; they sounded so forlornly
+simple, his spirit was so piteously broken that he seemed
+a changed man. She was touched.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t speak like that,” she said kindly. “I’ll do as
+you say. I’ll leave Miroslav at once.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is there absolutely no hope for me, Clara?”</p>
+
+<p>“I am no longer free, Elkin. I am a married woman,”
+she said, flushing violently. “Let us change the subject.
+Tell me something about your Americans.”</p>
+
+<p>He dropped his eyes, and after a rather long pause he
+said, blankly:</p>
+
+<p>“Well, pardon me, then. You have my best wishes,
+Clara. I say it from my heart. I shall be your warmest
+friend as long as I live. I confess I dreamed of your joining
+our party, so that I might be near you, and hoped that
+some day you would become mine.”</p>
+
+<p>“The right place for a revolutionist is here, in Russia,
+Elkin.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nobody is going to try to persuade you to leave the
+movement,” he said, levelling a meek, longing look at her.
+“The Russian people act like wild beasts toward our poor<a name="Page_412" id="Page_412"><span class="pagenum">[412]</span></a>
+Jews, Clara; yet they and the Russian revolution will ever
+be dear to our hearts. We appreciate that it is their blindness
+which makes such brutes of them. We shall always
+think of those who are in the fight here; we shall adore
+you; we shall worship you, Clara; and perhaps, too, we shall
+be able to do something for Russian liberty from there.
+But if you condemn us for joining the emigrants, I wish to
+say this, that if you had been in Miroslav during the riot
+you would perhaps take a more indulgent view of our step.
+So many Jewish revolutionists have sacrificed their lives by
+‘going to the people’&mdash;to the Russian people. It’s about
+time some of us at least went to our own people. They
+need us, Clara.”</p>
+
+<p>“Look here, Elkin,” she said with ardent emphasis,
+striving to deaden the consciousness of his love-lorn look
+that was breaking her heart, “you must not think I am so
+soulless as to take no interest in the victims of those horrors,
+for I do. I do. I can assure you I do. I have been
+continually discussing this question in my mind. I have
+studied it. My heart is bleeding for our poor Jews, but
+even if it were solely a question of saving the Jews, even
+then one’s duty would be to work for the revolution. How
+many Russian Jews could you transport to America and
+Palestine? Surely not all the five million there are. The
+great majority of them will stay here and be baited, and
+the only hope of these is a liberated Russia. All history
+tells us that the salvation of the Jews lies in liberty and in
+liberty only. England was the first country to grant them
+the right to breathe because she was the first country where
+the common people wrested rights for themselves. The
+French revolution emancipated the Jews, and so it goes.
+If there were no parliamentary governments in Western
+Europe, the Jews of Germany, Austria, or Belgium would<a name="Page_413" id="Page_413"><span class="pagenum">[413]</span></a>
+still be treated as they are in Russia. When Russia has
+some freedom at least, her Jews, too, will be treated like
+human beings.”</p>
+
+<p>“But we are not like the Palestinians, Clara. We don’t
+propose to estrange ourselves from the revolutionary movement.
+We shall support it with American money, and we
+hope to fit out expeditions to rescue important prisoners
+from Siberia, and to take them across the Pacific Ocean to
+our commune.”</p>
+
+<p>“Dreams!” she said, laughing good-naturedly.</p>
+
+<p>The discussion lasted about an hour longer. He had
+not the strength to get up, and she had not the heart to cut
+him short. They listened to each other’s arguments with
+rapt attention, yet they were both aware of the unspoken
+other discussion&mdash;on the pathos of his love&mdash;that went
+on between them all the while they talked of the great
+exodus.</p>
+
+<p>And while she commiserated Elkin and felt flattered by
+her power over him, her heart was full of yearning tenderness
+for her husband, of joy in him and in her honeymoon
+with him.</p>
+
+<p>When Elkin rose from his seat at last he said:</p>
+
+<p>“By the way, I came near forgetting it&mdash;your cousin
+wants to see you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Volodia? Volodia Vigdoroff? I thought he would
+dread to come near me.”</p>
+
+<p>Time being short, the meeting was set for an early hour
+the very next morning. Elkin had made his adieux, but
+he still lingered. There was an extremely awkward stillness
+which was broken by the appearance of Olga. Then
+he left.</p>
+
+<p>Disclosing the location, or, indeed, the existence, of a
+“conspiracy house” to one uninitiated into underground<a name="Page_414" id="Page_414"><span class="pagenum">[414]</span></a>
+life was impossible. Accordingly, Vladimir was to meet
+Clara in a scanty pine grove near the Nihilists’ basement.
+On his way thither Vladimir was continually
+looking over his shoulder, lest he was being followed by
+spies. He was flurried and the sight of every policeman he
+met gave him a moment or two of abject terror. But the
+part he had taken in the fight of the Defence Guard
+had left him with a sense of his own potential courage;
+so he was trying to live up to it by keeping this appointment
+with his “illegal” cousin, whom he was so
+thirsting to see. That she was married he did not know.
+He was going to persuade her to join his American party.
+At this minute, in the high-strung state of his mind, the
+result of recent experiences, he felt as though she were not
+merely his “second sister,” which is Russian for cousin,
+but a real one. His chief object for seeking this interview,
+however, had been to celebrate his own vindication. By
+her enthusiasm for the revolutionary movement from which
+he stayed away she had formerly made him feel like a
+coward and a nonentity; now, however, that in his judgment
+the riots plainly meant the moral bankruptcy of that
+movement, so far at least as it concerned revolutionists of
+Jewish blood, he mentally triumphed over her.</p>
+
+<p>The meeting had been fixed for an early hour. The air
+in the woods was cold and piquant with the exhalations of
+young evergreens. The grass, considerably yellowed
+and strewn with cones, was still beaded with dew, save for
+a small outlet of the clearing which was being rapidly
+invaded by the sun.</p>
+
+<p>They met with warm embraces and kisses.</p>
+
+<p>“Clara, my sister! If you only knew what we have
+gone through!” he said, with the passion of heartfelt tragedy
+in his subdued voice.</p><p><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415"><span class="pagenum">[415]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“How is uncle? How is auntie?” she asked with similar
+emotion.</p>
+
+<p>His kiss and embrace had left an odd sensation in him.
+He had never had an occasion to kiss her before; and now
+that he had not seen her for about a year the contact of his
+lips with the firm, though somewhat faded, cheek of this
+interesting young woman had revealed to him what seemed
+to be an unnatural and illicit fact that she was not a sister
+to him, but&mdash;a woman.</p>
+
+<p>They seated themselves in a sunny <ins class="punct" title="Transcriber's Note: added .">spot.</ins></p>
+
+<p>“Are you really going to America, Volodia?” she inquired
+with a familiar smile, carefully hiding her grief.</p>
+
+<p>“I certainly am, and what is more, I want you to come
+along with us,” he answered, admiring her figure and the
+expression of her face as he had never done before. “Oh,
+I am quite in earnest about it, Clara. You see, the fist
+of the rioter has driven it home to me that I am a Jew. I
+must go where my people go. Come, Clara, you have
+staked your life for the Russians long enough, and how have
+they repaid you? Come and let us do something for our
+own poor unfortunate Jews.”</p>
+
+<p>She listened with the attention of one good-naturedly
+waiving a discussion.</p>
+
+<p>“And what has become of that bridge you were building?”
+she asked.</p>
+
+<p>“And what has become of that gallows, of the martyr’s
+scaffold, which you said united Jew and Gentile? Has <i>that</i>
+done anybody any good? As to the bridge I was building
+across the chasm that divides us from the Christians, I
+admit that it has been wrecked to splinters; wrecked unmercifully
+by that same fist of the rioter. I dreamed of
+the brotherhood of Jew and Gentile and that fist woke me.
+The only point of contact between Jew and Gentile possible<a name="Page_416" id="Page_416"><span class="pagenum">[416]</span></a>
+to-day is this”&mdash;pointing at a scar slightly back of his ear,
+his badge of active service as a member of the Defence
+Committee.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, did you get it in the riot?” she asked with a gesture
+of horror.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s a trifle, of course. Others have been crippled for
+life, but such as this bit of a scar is it will stand me in
+good stead as a reminder that I am a Jew. The fact is now
+everlastingly engraven on my flesh. There is no effacing it
+now. But joking aside, Clara, I love the Russian people
+as much as I ever did. My heart breaks at the thought
+of leaving Russia. I don’t think the Russians themselves
+are capable of loving their people as I do. But it can’t
+be helped. There is an impassable chasm between us.”</p>
+
+<p>He was conscious of being on his mettle, as though the
+fiascoes he had sustained in his last year’s talks with her
+were being retrieved. As to her, there was a look of curiosity
+and subtle condescension in her eye as she listened.
+But she was thoroughly friendly and warm-hearted, so for
+the moment he saw nothing but encouragement to his flow
+of conversation. From time to time he would be seized
+with mortal fear lest they should be pounced upon by gendarmes,
+but he never betrayed it.</p>
+
+<p>At one point, when he had put a question to her and
+paused, she said, instead of answering it:</p>
+
+<p>“Really, Volodia, I somehow can’t get it into my head
+that you are actually going to America.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I am, I am. I am going to that land ‘where one’s
+wounded feelings are sure of shelter.’ Come along, Clara.
+Haven’t you taken risks enough in Russia? Come and
+serve your own people, your poor, trodden people. Have
+not the riots been enough to open your eyes, Clara?”</p>
+
+<p>“As if those were the only riots there were,” she returned,<a name="Page_417" id="Page_417"><span class="pagenum">[417]</span></a>
+pensively. “All humanity is in the hands of rioters.”</p>
+
+<p>“But our homes are being destroyed, Clara,” he urged
+in an impassioned undertone. “Our people are being
+plundered, maimed, their every feeling is outraged, their
+daughters are assaulted.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is there anything new in that?” she asked, in the
+same pensive tone. “Are not the masses robbed of the
+fruit of their toil? Are they not maimed in the workshops
+or in the army? Are not their daughters reduced to dishonour
+by their own misery and by the lust of the mighty?
+Are not the cities full of human beings without a home?
+All Russia is riot-ridden. The whole world, for that
+matter. The riots that you are dwelling upon are only
+a detail. Do away with <i>the</i> riot and all the others will
+disappear of themselves.”</p>
+
+<p>A note of animation came into her melancholy voice.</p>
+
+<p>“What you ‘Americans’ propose to do,” she continued,
+“is to clasp a handful of victims in your arms and to flee
+to America with them. Well, I have no fault to find with
+you, Volodia. I wish you and your party success. But the
+great, great bulk of victims, Gentiles as well as Jews, remain
+here, and the rioters&mdash;the throne, the bureaucracy,
+the drones&mdash;remain with them.”</p>
+
+<p>She struck him as amazingly beautiful this morning and
+she seemed to speak as one inspired. He listened to her
+with a feeling of reverence.</p>
+
+<p>“But you have done enough, Clara,” he said when she
+finished. “You have faced dangers enough. Sooner or
+later you will be taken, and then&mdash;” (he threw up his
+hands sadly). “You have a perfect right to save your life
+and liberty now.”</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head.</p><p><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418"><span class="pagenum">[418]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>“You are a wonderful woman, Clara. By George, you
+are! Therefore, if you are arrested, it will be a great loss
+not only to your relatives, but to all the Jews. Haven’t
+the Gentiles robbed us enough?”</p>
+
+<p>“Would you have them rob us of our sacred principles,
+too?” she retorted, with a faint smile. “Indeed, the right
+to die for liberty is the only right the government cannot
+take away from the Jew.”</p>
+
+<p>“Come to America, Clara.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, that’s utterly impossible, Volodia,” she answered,
+gazing at the cones.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The discovery that Prince Boulatoff was prominently
+connected with the underground movement, which originated
+in the confession of one of his revolutionary pupils,
+had created considerable excitement in St. Petersburg.
+The secret service had no difficulty in securing his photograph,
+and when it was shown to the little man who had
+acted as an errand boy at the celebrated cheese-shop he at
+once identified him as one of those who dug the mine. That
+Pavel had recently been in Miroslav was known to the
+whole town. Accordingly, the central political detective
+office at St. Petersburg despatched several picked men
+there to scent for his underground trail. These practically
+took the matter out of the hands of the local gendarmes,
+whom they treated with professional contempt.
+They gradually learned that Pavel had been a frequent visitor
+at Orlovsky’s house, and then they took to shadowing
+Orlovsky and those in whose company he was seen. They
+made discovery after discovery.</p>
+
+<p>One of these imported spies was the fellow who once
+shadowed Clara in St. Petersburg&mdash;the tall man with the
+swinging arm and the stiff-looking neck whom she met<a name="Page_419" id="Page_419"><span class="pagenum">[419]</span></a>
+on the day when the revolutionist with the Greek name
+was arrested.</p>
+
+<p>It was about 8 o’clock in the evening, some ten minutes
+before train time, when this spy saw an uneducated Jewish
+woman in blue spectacles crossing the square in front
+of the station. She seemed familiar to him, yet not enough
+so to attract serious attention.</p>
+
+<p>It was Clara. Her disguise, in addition to the blue
+spectacles, consisted of a heavy Jewish wig, partly covered
+by a black kerchief, and an old-fashioned cloak. To spare
+her the risk of facing the gendarmes of the station, her
+ticket had been bought for her by somebody else, her intention
+being to slip into her car at the last moment. Having
+reached the place too early, however, she was now trying
+to kill the interval by sauntering about. This time the
+spy escaped her notice, but a little later, less than a minute
+before the third bell was sounded and while she was
+scurrying through the third class restaurant, she caught
+sight of him, as he stood half leaning against the counter
+drowsily.</p>
+
+<p>Here he had a much better look at her. She certainly
+was familiar to him, but he was still unable to locate her,
+and before he knew his own mind he let her pass. It was
+not until the train had pulled out, and its rear lights were
+rapidly sinking into the vast gloom of the night, that it
+dawned upon him that she looked like the girl he used to
+spy upon in St. Petersburg. Blue spectacles as a means of
+concealing one’s identity are quite a commonplace article,
+so he called himself names for not having thought of it in
+time and hastened to telegraph to the gendarmes at the
+next station to arrest the young woman, giving a description
+of Clara’s disguise and general appearance.</p>
+
+<p>Some three quarters of an hour later an answer came<a name="Page_420" id="Page_420"><span class="pagenum">[420]</span></a>
+from the next station that the train had been detained for
+a careful search, but that no such woman could be found on
+it.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>While that search was in progress Clara, her disguise
+removed, entered the “conspiracy house,” where Olga had
+been waiting for her, in case she should have found it
+inconvenient to board the train.</p>
+
+<p>“There you are!” Olga said, in despair, as she beheld
+her friend’s smiling face in the doorway. “What has happened?”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s a fizzle, that’s all. But it might have been worse
+than that. There is a <ins class="punct" title="Transcriber's Note: added .">St.</ins> Petersburg fellow at the station.
+He knows me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Did he see you?” Olga demanded breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>“I should say he did,” Clara replied with another smile.
+“Well, I thought it was all up. Gracious! didn’t my feet
+grow weak under me. But my star has not gone back on
+me yet, it seems. I got into one of the cars just as the
+third bell was heard. I was sure he was close behind me,
+but, when I turned around, looking for a seat, I saw he was
+not there. He must have gone to another car for the moment,
+or something. Anyhow, I tried to get out again.
+I thought I had nothing to lose, and&mdash;here I am. But
+look here, Olya<a name="Anchor-E" id="Anchor-E"></a><a title="Go to footnote E" href="#Footnote-E" class="fnanchor">[E]</a>, are you sure there is nobody outside?”</p>
+
+<p>“I think I am,” Olga answered firmly. “Why?”</p>
+
+<p>“I thought I saw a queer looking individual as I turned
+into this street. I must have been mistaken. Still, I confess,
+the presence of that fellow in this town is anything
+but a pleasant surprise to me. I don’t like it at all. I
+wonder why we have not heard from Masha about him.”</p>
+
+<p>The reason they had not heard from her was simply this,<a name="Page_421" id="Page_421"><span class="pagenum">[421]</span></a>
+that the invasion of the St. Petersburg detectives had had
+such an overbearing effect on everybody in the local gendarmerie
+that her brother had become unusually reticent
+on the affairs of his office even at home.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Two or three hours had passed, when Clara and Olga
+heard an ominous confusion of footsteps in the vestibule.
+The next moment the room was crowded with men, some
+in uniforms, others in citizens’ clothes. One of the St.
+Petersburg officers rushed to a window where a blue medicine
+bottle&mdash;Clara’s “window signal”&mdash;stood on the sill,
+to prevent either of the two Nihilist girls from removing it
+by way of warning to their friends.</p>
+
+<p>“You here!” the tall, baronial-looking procureur, Princess
+Chertogoff’s son-in-law, said to Olga, in amazement.
+He bowed to her most chivalrously, but she turned away
+from him with a contemptuous gesture.</p>
+
+<p>“And may I ask for <i>your</i> name, Miss,” a gendarme officer
+accosted Clara.</p>
+
+<p>“I decline to answer,” she returned, simply. Her eyes
+were on a pistol which she saw in the hand of one of the
+gendarmes.</p>
+
+<p>“You live in Miroslav, don’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>Instead of answering this question she sprang at the
+man who held the pistol, seized it from him and began firing
+at the wall. This was her substitute for a removal of
+the safety signal from the window.</p>
+
+<p>The weapon was instantly knocked out of her hand by a
+blow with the flat of a gleaming sword, and she was
+forced into a seat, two men holding her tightly by the
+arms, while a third was tying a handkerchief around her
+bleeding hand.</p>
+
+<p>“I merely wanted to alarm the neighbourhood,” she said<a name="Page_422" id="Page_422"><span class="pagenum">[422]</span></a>
+calmly. “But, of course, you people will turn it into a
+case of armed resistance.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>When Orlovsky learned of Clara’s and Olga’s arrest,
+one of his first thoughts was about notifying Pavel, of whose
+relations toward Clara he had by this time been informed.
+It appeared that the only man he knew who had “underground”
+connections in the two capitals and was in a position
+to communicate with Boulatoff was the former leader
+of the Miroslav Circle, Elkin. This, however, did not stop
+Orlovsky. To Elkin he went and explained the situation to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>“Elkin, darling, you know you are a soul of a fellow,”
+he implored him. “Pavel is either in St. Petersburg or in
+Moscow, and you are the only man who could get at him.”</p>
+
+<p>Elkin stood, thinking glumly, at the window for a few
+minutes, and then said:</p>
+
+<p>“Very well, I am going.”</p>
+
+<p>He started on the same day, accompanied by a spy. That
+evening Orlovsky, the judge and several other members
+of the Miroslav Circle, were arrested at Orlovsky’s house,
+and a few days later news came from Moscow that Pavel
+and Elkin had been taken in a café, while Makar had fallen
+into a “trap” at the house of an old friend of Elkin’s,
+who had been seized several hours before.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423"><span class="pagenum">[423]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XLIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>A MESSAGE THROUGH THE WALL.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="cap">MONTHS had passed. Spring was three or four
+weeks old, but cell No. &mdash; on the first floor of the
+Trubetzkoy Bastion, Fortress of Peter and Paul,
+had not yet tasted its caressing breath. It was a rather
+spacious, high-ceiled vault, but being quite close to the
+stone fence outside, it was practically without the range of
+sunshine and breeze. Its window, which was high overhead,
+at the top of a sloping stretch of sill, sent down twilight
+at noonday and left it in the grip of night two or three
+hours after. The chill, damp air was laden with a stifling
+odour of must. The lower part of the walls was covered
+with a thick layer of mould which looked like a broad band
+of heavy tapestry of a dark-greenish hue.</p>
+
+<p>The solitary inmate of this pit was walking back and
+forth diagonally, from corner to corner. He wore a loose,
+shapeless cloak of coarse but flimsy material, which he was
+continually wrapping about his slim, emaciated figure. He
+was shivering. As he walked to and fro, his head was for
+the most part thrown back, his eyes raised to the window,
+whose sloping sill he could have scarcely touched with the
+tips of his fingers. Now and then he paused and turned
+toward one of the walls, as though listening for some
+sounds, and then, with an air of nerveless disappointment,
+he would resume his walk.</p><p><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424"><span class="pagenum">[424]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>It was Pavel.</p>
+
+<p>The spy who accompanied Elkin from Miroslav to Moscow
+had shadowed him in the ancient city until he saw him with
+Prince Boulatoff and then with Makar and a university
+student, in whose room the four revolutionists were arrested,
+shortly after, in the course of a heated debate between
+Makar and Elkin on the riots and the question of
+emigration to America.</p>
+
+<p>During the first few weeks of Pavel’s stay in the fortress
+the guards, who had been converted to revolutionary sympathies
+by a celebrated political prisoner named Nechayeff,
+had carried communications not only from prisoner to prisoner,
+but also from them to the revolutionists at large; so
+that the <i>Will of the People</i> was at one time partly edited
+from this fortress, and a bold plot was even planned by
+Nechayeff to have the Czar locked up in a cell while he
+visited its cathedral. But these relations between the
+guards and the revolutionists, which lasted about a year,
+had finally been disclosed, and since then Pavel and the
+inmates of the other cells had been treated with brutal
+stringency.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel’s trial was not likely to take place for another year
+or two, but his fate was clear to him: death, probably commuted
+to life-imprisonment, which actually amounted to
+slow death in a spacious grave like this vault, or in the
+mines of Siberia, was the usual doom of men charged with
+“crimes” like his. His future yawned before him in the
+form of a black, boundless cavern charged with dull, gnawing
+pain, like the pain that was choking him at this moment.
+The worst part of his torture was his solitude. The
+most inhuman physical suffering seemed easier to bear than
+this speechless, endless, excruciatingly monotonous solitude
+of his. “Oath-men” as the sworn-in attendants of the<a name="Page_425" id="Page_425"><span class="pagenum">[425]</span></a>
+prison were called (under-sized, comical looking fellows,
+most of them) came into his cell three or four times a day&mdash;with
+food, or to put things to rights hastily&mdash;but neither
+they nor the gendarmes who invariably accompanied them
+ever answered his questions. One morning, in an <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'access'">excess</ins>
+of self-commiseration and resentment at their stolid taciturnity,
+he had spat in the face of a gendarme. He had
+done so, at the peril of being flogged, in the hope of hearing
+him curse, at least; but the gendarme merely wiped his
+bewhiskered face and went on watching the “oath-man”
+silently.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever Pavel was taken out for his 15-minute walk
+in a secluded little yard, which was once in two days, the
+sentinels he met would turn their backs on him, lest he
+should see more faces than was absolutely necessary. The
+warden and the prison doctor were the only human beings
+whose voices he could hear, and these were brutally laconic
+and brutally rude or ironical with him. To be taken to the
+prison office for an examination by the procureur was the
+one diversion which the near future held out to him; but
+then his near future might be a matter of weeks and might
+be a matter of months.</p>
+
+<p>Back and forth he walked, at a spiritless, even pace, as
+monotonous as his days of gloom and misery, as that dull
+pain which was ceaselessly choking his throat and gnawing
+at his heart. At one moment he paused and felt his gums
+with his fingers. Were they swollen? Was he developing
+scurvy? Or was it mere imagination? He also passed his
+hand over his cheeks, and it seemed to him that they were
+sunken a little more than they had been the day before.
+But the great subject of his thoughts to-day was his mother,
+and tantalising, heart-crushing thoughts they were. Where
+was she? How was she? Was she alive at all? He pictured<a name="Page_426" id="Page_426"><span class="pagenum">[426]</span></a>
+her committing suicide because of his doom, and the cruel
+vision persisted. And if she was not dead, her life was little
+better than death. He tried to think of something else, but
+no, the appealing, reproachful image of his mother, of his
+poor dear mother who had scarcely had a day of happiness
+since she married, would not leave his mind. As a matter
+of fact, his efforts to think of something else were scarcely
+sincere. He would not shake that image out of his brain
+if he could. It was tearing his heart to pieces, yet he would
+rather stand all these tortures than shut his mother out of
+his thoughts. To talk to somebody was the only thing that
+could have saved him from the terrible pang that was harrowing
+him at this moment; but the chimes of the cathedral,
+which played the quarter-hours as well as the hours,
+and the crash of iron bolts at the opening of cells at meal-time
+were the only sounds that he could expect to hear to-day.
+His heart was writhing within him. Something was
+clutching at his brain. He seemed to feel himself going
+mad. He was tempted to cry at the top of his voice; to
+cry like a wild beast; but, of course, he was not going to
+give such satisfaction to the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>He gazed at the sloping window-sill. For the thousandth
+time a desire took hold of him to mount it and take a look
+through the glass; and for the thousandth time he cast a
+hopeless glance at his bed, at the table, the chair, the wash-stand:
+they were all nailed to the floor, a large earthen
+water-cup and a salt-cellar made of lead being the only
+movable things in his room.</p>
+
+<p>Four months ago there had been a prisoner in the adjoining
+cell with whom he carried on long conversations by rapping
+out his words on the wall, but one day their talk had
+been interrupted in the middle of a sentence, after which
+that man had been removed. The cell had long remained<a name="Page_427" id="Page_427"><span class="pagenum">[427]</span></a>
+empty, as could be inferred from the fact that Pavel never
+heard its door opened at meal-time. Since a week ago it
+had been tenanted again, but all his attempts at conversation
+with his new neighbour had so far been futile. His
+taps on the wall had been left unanswered.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, as he was now pacing his floor, his heart melting
+with homesickness and anguish at the thought of his
+mother, he heard a rapid succession of fine, dry sounds on
+the right wall. He started, and, breathless and flushed with
+excitement, he listened. “Who are you?” the mould-grown
+wall demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel cast a look at the peephole in the heavy door, and
+seeing no eye in it, he took a turn or two up and down the
+room and stopped hard by the wall, upon which he rapped
+out his reply:</p>
+
+<p>“Boulatoff. Who are you?”</p>
+
+<p>“The Emperor of all Africa,” came the answer.</p>
+
+<p>“What?” Pavel asked in perplexity. “You have not
+finished your sentence, what were you saying?”</p>
+
+<p>“Begone!” the wall returned. “How dare you doubt my
+title? I am the Emperor of all Africa. How dare you
+speak to me? Away with you!”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel’s heart sank. It was apparently some political
+prisoner who had gone insane in a damp, cold, isolated cell.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear friend, dear comrade!” he implored. “Can’t you
+try and remember your name?”</p>
+
+<p>“Begone, or I’ll order your arrest, mean slave that you
+are!” This was followed by some incoherencies. Pavel
+went away from the wall with tears in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon of the third day he was striding to and
+fro, in excellent spirits. He had been in this mood since he
+opened his eyes that morning. Nothing but the most encouraging
+moments in the history of his connection with<a name="Page_428" id="Page_428"><span class="pagenum">[428]</span></a>
+the movement would come to his mind to-day. He felt as
+though he and all his revolutionary friends were looking
+at each other, and conversing mentally, all as cheerful and
+happy as he was now. Everything pointed toward the
+speedy triumph of their cause. He beheld barricades in
+the streets of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa; he saw the
+red flag waving; he heard the Marseillaise. He recalled
+Makar’s vision of the time when victorious revolutionists
+would break into the fortress of Peter and Paul and take
+its prisoners out to celebrate the advent of liberty with the
+people. He thought of Clara, and his heart went out to
+her and to their interrupted honeymoon; he imagined her
+on his arm marching with others, he did not know whither,
+and whispering words of love and exultation to her, and
+once more his heart leaped with joy. He recalled jokes,
+comical situations. He felt like bursting into a roar of
+merriment, when there came a shower of taps on the wall.</p>
+
+<p>“Who are you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Boulatoff,” Pavel answered, with sadness in his heart.
+He expected other absurdities from his insane neighbour.
+“And you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Bieliayeff. I am not well. But I feel much better to-day.
+My lucid interval, perhaps. I remember everything.”</p>
+
+<p>Pavel had met him two years before. They talked of
+themselves, of their mutual friends, of the last news that
+had reached Bieliayeff through his other wall. It appeared
+that Bieliayeff’s neighbour on that side of his cell was
+Elkin.</p>
+
+<p>Pavel received the information with a thrill of pleasure.
+He was going to ask Bieliayeff to convey a message to his
+fellow townsman; but at this he had an instinctive feeling
+that there was an eye at the peephole and he dropped his
+hand to his side, pretending to be absorbed in thought.</p><p><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429"><span class="pagenum">[429]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>They resumed their conversation a quarter of an hour
+later.</p>
+
+<p>“Tell Elkin I love him; he is dear to me,” Pavel tapped
+out. “I feel guilty and miserable. If it were not for me
+he would be in America now. Besides, I have been unjust
+to him. This oppresses me more than anything else.”</p>
+
+<p>These communications through the wall are the most
+precious things life has to offer in living graves like those
+of the fortress of Peter and Paul. The inmate of such a
+grave will listen to the messages of his neighbours with the
+most strenuous attention, with every faculty in his possession,
+with every fibre of his being; and he will convey every
+word of a long message as if reading it from a written
+memorandum.</p>
+
+<p>After a lapse of five or ten minutes Bieliayeff came back
+with Elkin’s answer.</p>
+
+<p>“He says he loves you,” the tap-tap said, “and that it
+is he who ought to apologise. It was he who was unjust.
+As to his American scheme, he is happy to be here. It is
+sweet to be suffering for liberty, he says.”</p>
+
+<p>Makar was at the other end of the same corridor, and a
+message from him reached Pavel by way of a dozen walls.</p>
+
+<p>“Hello, old boy!” it said. “At last I have completed the
+revolutionary programme I have been so long engaged upon.
+It’s a dandy! It is not the same I spoke to you about in
+Moscow. It covers every point beautifully. It would save
+the party from every mistake it has ever made or is liable
+to make.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>One day Pavel learned that Clara had arrived in the fortress,
+after a long confinement and no end of examinations<a name="Page_430" id="Page_430"><span class="pagenum">[430]</span></a>
+in Miroslav. She was in another part of the building and
+communicating with her was impossible. Pavel scarcely
+ever thought of anything else. Could it be true that she
+was in the building and he would not even have a chance
+to see her? He was fidgeting and writhing like a bird in
+a cage.</p>
+
+<p>At last, on a morning, the wall brought him a message
+from her. It had come through walls, floors and ceilings.</p>
+
+<p>“Clanya sends her love,” it ran, “and tells him to keep
+away from the damp walls as much as possible.”</p>
+
+<p>“Tell Clanya I think of her day and night,” he rapped
+back.</p>
+
+<p>Then a footstep sounded at his door, and with a heart
+swelling with emotion he threw himself upon his bed and
+buried his face in his hands.</p>
+
+
+<div class="center"><br />
+THE END.
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote-A" id="Footnote-A"></a><a href="#Anchor-A" title="Return to text."><span class="label">[A]</span></a> A classical Russian high school modelled after its German namesake.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote-B" id="Footnote-B"></a><a href="#Anchor-B" title="Return to text."><span class="label">[B]</span></a> Affectionate diminutive of Vladimir.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote-C" id="Footnote-C"></a><a href="#Anchor-C" title="Return to text."><span class="label">[C]</span></a> Diminutive of Alexander.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote-D" id="Footnote-D"></a><a href="#Anchor-D" title="Return to text."><span class="label">[D]</span></a> A sign of contempt and defiance consisting in the thumb being put
+between the next two fingers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote-E" id="Footnote-E"></a><a href="#Anchor-E" title="Return to text."><span class="label">[E]</span></a> Diminutive of Olga.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<div class="tnote-end">
+
+<p class="center"><a name="tn-end" id="tn-end"><b>Transcriber's Note:</b></a></p>
+
+ <p>Most inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation found in the original text were retained, including:</p>
+
+<ul class="discrepancies"><li>"assistant procureur" and "assistant-procureur"</li>
+<li>"ball-room" and "ball room"</li>
+<li>"bedroom" and "bed-room"</li>
+<li>"candlestick" and "candle-stick"</li>
+<li>"capmaker" and "cap-maker"</li>
+<li>"Catherine" and "Catharine"</li>
+<li>"Chernishevsky" and "Chernyshevsky"</li>
+<li>"cobblestones" and "cobble-stones"</li>
+<li>"colour" and "color"</li>
+<li>"drily" and "dryly"</li>
+<li>"favourite" and "favorite"</li>
+<li>"featherbeds" and "feather-beds"</li>
+<li>"fiascos" and "fiascoes"</li>
+<li>"footsteps" and "foot-steps"</li>
+<li>"grey" and "gray"</li>
+<li>"heartfelt" and "heart-felt"</li>
+<li>"homebound" and "home-bound"</li>
+<li>"laborer" and "labourer"</li>
+<li>"market place" and "market-place"</li>
+<li>"neighbour" and "neighbor"</li>
+<li>"odour" and "odor"</li>
+<li>"organisation" and "organization"</li>
+<li>"parlour" and "parlor"</li>
+<li>"pedlar" and "peddlar"</li>
+<li>"peephole" and "peep-hole"</li>
+<li>"realise" and "realize"</li>
+<li>"regime" and "régime"</li>
+<li>"reverie" and "revery"</li>
+<li>"Rodkevitch" and "Rodkevich"</li>
+<li>"rumour" and "rumor"</li>
+<li>"side whiskers" and "side-whiskers"</li>
+<li>"stepchild" and "step-child"</li>
+<li>"topboots" and "top-boots"</li>
+<li>"tramcar" and "tram-car"</li>
+<li>"trunkmaker" and "trunk-maker"</li>
+<li>"undersized" and "under-sized"</li>
+<li>"Vice-Emperor" and "vice-Emperor"</li>
+<li>"wagons" and "waggons"</li>
+<li>"waiting room" and "waiting-room"</li>
+<li>"woolen" and "woollen"</li></ul>
+
+<p>The following is a list of corrections made to the original. The
+
+first passage is the original passage, the second the corrected one.</p>
+
+
+<ul class="corrections">
+
+<li><a href="#Page_5">Page 5</a>:<br/>
+
+Don’t take it ill, <span class="correction">ma chere</span>.” She<br/>
+
+Don’t take it ill, <span class="correction">ma chère</span>.” She
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_8">Page 8</a>:<br/>
+
+the present Czar, then still <span class="correction">Czarowitch,</span><br/>
+
+the present Czar, then still <span class="correction">Czarowitz,</span>
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_15">Page 15</a>:<br/>
+
+pulling at his <span class="correction">waistcoast</span> as though<br/>
+
+pulling at his <span class="correction">waistcoat</span> as though
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_16">Page 16</a>:<br/>
+
+and in his <span class="correction">ecstacy</span> over<br/>
+
+and in his <span class="correction">ecstasy</span> over
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_23">Page 23</a>:<br/>
+
+Venus de <span class="correction">Medicis</span>&mdash;and the<br/>
+
+Venus de <span class="correction">Medici</span>&mdash;and the
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_34">Page 34</a>:<br/>
+
+their <span class="correction">essence?</span> For the<br/>
+
+their <span class="correction">essence?”</span> For the
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_36">Page 36</a>:<br/>
+
+who saw <span class="correction">Alexander</span> Alexandrovich off<br/>
+
+who saw <span class="correction">Alexandre</span> Alexandrovich off
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_44">Page 44</a>:<br/>
+
+<span class="correction">myterious</span> air of the “radicals”<br/>
+
+<span class="correction">mysterious</span> air of the “radicals”
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_44">Page 44</a>:<br/>
+
+one number of <span class="correction"><i>Forward</i></span> and another<br/>
+
+one number of <span class="correction"><i>Forward!</i></span> and another
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_47">Page 47</a>:<br/>
+
+nunnish <span class="correction">face</span> She made quite<br/>
+
+nunnish <span class="correction">face.</span> She made quite
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_65">Page 65</a>:<br/>
+
+restrain the “<span class="correction">idotic</span> breadth” of his<br/>
+
+restrain the “<span class="correction">idiotic</span> breadth” of his
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_68">Page 68</a>:<br/>
+
+trimmed whiskers <span class="correction">a lá</span> Alexander II.,<br/>
+
+trimmed whiskers <span class="correction">à la</span> Alexander II.,
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_95">Page 95</a>:<br/>
+
+on the part of <span class="correction">Alexandre</span>  II.<br/>
+
+on the part of <span class="correction">Alexander</span>  II.
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_104">Page 104</a>:<br/>
+
+beaming <span class="correction">at sight</span> of the<br/>
+
+beaming <span class="correction">at the sight</span> of the
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_104">Page 104</a>:<br/>
+
+in turning the <span class="correction">cosversation</span><br/>
+
+in turning the <span class="correction">conversation</span>
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_114">Page 114</a>:<br/>
+
+Pavel <span class="correction">Vassilyevitch</span>. Everything<br/>
+
+Pavel <span class="correction">Vassilyevich</span>. Everything
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_130">Page 130</a>:<br/>
+
+“Exactly,” <span class="correction">Paval</span> assented,<br/>
+
+“Exactly,” <span class="correction">Pavel</span> assented,
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_137">Page 137</a>:<br/>
+
+as many as <span class="correction">three fourths</span> of them<br/>
+
+as many as <span class="correction">three-fourths</span> of them
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_145">Page 145</a>:<br/>
+
+view of <span class="correction">it.</span> At this<br/>
+
+view of <span class="correction">it.”</span> At this
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_146">Page 146</a>:<br/>
+
+Olga, the <span class="correction">Judge</span>, and the<br/>
+
+Olga, the <span class="correction">judge</span>, and the
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_151">Page 151</a>:<br/>
+
+house for <span class="correction">tête-a-tête</span> purposes.<br/>
+
+house for <span class="correction">tête-à-tête</span> purposes.
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_163">Page 163</a>:<br/>
+
+imprisoned army <span class="correction">officer,</span> slipped away<br/>
+
+imprisoned army <span class="correction">officer</span> slipped away
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_166">Page 166</a>:<br/>
+
+Their immediate <span class="correction">surrounding</span> were<br/>
+
+Their immediate <span class="correction">surroundings</span> were
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_167">Page 167</a>:<br/>
+
+<span class="correction">minature</span> garden between<br/>
+
+<span class="correction">miniature</span> garden between
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_186">Page 186</a>:<br/>
+
+well-travelled <span class="correction">fellow</span> He can<br/>
+
+well-travelled <span class="correction">fellow.</span> He can
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_215">Page 215</a>:<br/>
+
+she says. <span class="correction">“You</span> have a<br/>
+
+she says. <span class="correction">You</span> have a
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_219">Page 219</a>:<br/>
+
+dwelt on Zola’s <span class="correction">L’Assomoir</span> and<br/>
+
+dwelt on Zola’s <span class="correction">L’Assommoir</span> and
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_231">Page 231</a>:<br/>
+
+a hurried <span class="correction">bood-bye</span> and made for<br/>
+
+a hurried <span class="correction">good-bye</span> and made for
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_242">Page 242</a>:<br/>
+
+Meanwhile Count <span class="correction">Loris Melikoff</span> had<br/>
+
+Meanwhile Count <span class="correction">Loris-Melikoff</span> had
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_248">Page 248</a>:<br/>
+
+speak <span class="correction">Littlie</span>-Russian to Purring Cat,<br/>
+
+speak <span class="correction">Little</span>-Russian to Purring Cat,
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_248">Page 248</a>:<br/>
+
+from <span class="correction">Littlie</span> Russia, answered<br/>
+
+from <span class="correction">Little</span> Russia, answered
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_249">Page 249</a>:<br/>
+
+<span class="correction">by the the “gay</span> bard,” which Clara<br/>
+
+<span class="correction">by the “gay</span> bard,” which Clara
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_252">Page 252</a>:<br/>
+
+still in <span class="correction">Lavadia</span> with his bride,<br/>
+
+still in <span class="correction">Livadia</span> with his bride,
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_254">Page 254</a>:<br/>
+
+his heart with cruel <span class="correction">insistance</span>.<br/>
+
+his heart with cruel <span class="correction">insistence</span>.
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_267">Page 267</a>:<br/>
+
+residence, the <span class="correction">Michail</span> Palace,<br/>
+
+residence, the <span class="correction">Michaïl</span> Palace,
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_275">Page 275</a>:<br/>
+
+your fur <span class="correction">cap”</span> she gestured.<br/>
+
+your fur <span class="correction">cap,”</span> she gestured.
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_283">Page 283</a>:<br/>
+
+the Little Garden <span class="correction">street</span> precinct<br/>
+
+the Little Garden <span class="correction">Street</span> precinct
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_286">Page 286</a>:<br/>
+
+Garden <span class="correction">street</span> for the Czar's<br/>
+
+Garden <span class="correction">Street</span> for the Czar's
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_288">Page 288</a>:<br/>
+
+A <span class="correction">distinquished</span> revolutionary writer<br/>
+
+A <span class="correction">distinguished</span> revolutionary writer
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_289">Page 289</a>:<br/>
+
+cheese shop on Little Garden <span class="correction">street</span><br/>
+
+cheese shop on Little Garden <span class="correction">Street</span>
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_294">Page 294</a>:<br/>
+
+<span class="correction">“Don’t”</span> he begged them,<br/>
+
+<span class="correction">“Don’t,”</span> he begged them,
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_305">Page 305</a>:<br/>
+
+the prison <span class="correction">corridor,</span> answered his<br/>
+
+the prison <span class="correction">corridor</span> answered his
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_326">Page 326</a>:<br/>
+
+such a <span class="correction">cap?”</span> says I.<br/>
+
+such a <span class="correction">cap?’</span> says I.
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_333">Page 333</a>:<br/>
+
+whispered in the <span class="correction">spokeman’s</span> ear<br/>
+
+whispered in the <span class="correction">spokesman’s</span> ear
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_335">Page 335</a>:<br/>
+
+Finally he shouted <span class="correction">huskily.</span><br/>
+
+Finally he shouted <span class="correction">huskily:</span>
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_366">Page 366</a>:<br/>
+
+near Nicholas <span class="correction">street</span>, the best<br/>
+
+near Nicholas <span class="correction">Street</span>, the best
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_368">Page 368</a>:<br/>
+
+about Nicholas <span class="correction">street</span> and bore down<br/>
+
+about Nicholas <span class="correction">Street</span> and bore down
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_373">Page 373</a>:<br/>
+
+crowd on Cucumber <span class="correction">market</span>, and<br/>
+
+crowd on Cucumber <span class="correction">Market</span>, and
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_374">Page 374</a>:<br/>
+
+primitive humanity <span class="correction">ran</span> amuck<br/>
+
+primitive humanity <span class="correction">run</span> amuck
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_376">Page 376</a>:<br/>
+
+Nicholas <span class="correction">street</span>, from a residence<br/>
+
+Nicholas <span class="correction">Street</span>, from a residence
+
+</li>
+
+
+<li><a href="#Page_380">Page 380</a>:<br/>
+
+the <span class="correction">maurauders</span> for the slashers<br/>
+
+the <span class="correction">marauders</span> for the slashers
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_382">Page 382</a>:<br/>
+
+crowbars, <span class="correction">banners</span> or axes<br/>
+
+crowbars, <span class="correction">hammers</span> or axes
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_387">Page 387</a>:<br/>
+
+revolting <span class="correction">stupour</span> of inebriety.<br/>
+
+revolting <span class="correction">stupor</span> of inebriety.
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_391">Page 391</a>:<br/>
+
+trying to <span class="correction">sooth</span> an angry baby.<br/>
+
+trying to <span class="correction">soothe</span> an angry baby.
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_395">Page 395</a>:<br/>
+
+One day Hannah said, <span class="correction">gravely.</span><br/>
+
+One day Hannah said, <span class="correction">gravely:</span>
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_403">Page 403</a>:<br/>
+
+<span class="correction">street</span>, St. Petersburg, was<br/>
+
+<span class="correction">Street</span>, St. Petersburg, was
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_415">Page 415</a>:<br/>
+
+in a sunny <span class="correction">spot</span><br/>
+
+in a sunny <span class="correction">spot.</span>
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_420">Page 420</a>:<br/>
+
+There is a <span class="correction">St</span> Petersburg<br/>
+
+There is a <span class="correction">St.</span> Petersburg
+
+</li>
+
+<li><a href="#Page_425">Page 425</a>:<br/>
+
+in an <span class="correction">access</span> of self-commiseration<br/>
+
+in an <span class="correction">excess</span> of self-commiseration
+
+</li>
+</ul>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The White Terror and The Red, by Abraham Cahan
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE TERROR AND THE RED ***
+
+***** This file should be named 39166-h.htm or 39166-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/9/1/6/39166/
+
+Produced by Rosanna Murphy, Suzanne Shell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/39166-h/images/tp.jpg b/39166-h/images/tp.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c6bb0cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/39166-h/images/tp.jpg
diff --git a/39166.txt b/39166.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3c8cf2e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/39166.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,13830 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The white terror and the red, by Abraham Cahan
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: The White Terror and The Red
+       A novel of revolutionary Russia
+
+Author: Abraham Cahan
+
+Release Date: March 16, 2012 [EBook #39166]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE TERROR AND THE RED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Rosanna Murphy, Suzanne Shell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE TERROR AND THE RED
+
+
+
+
+    THE WHITE TERROR
+    AND
+    THE RED
+
+    A Novel of Revolutionary Russia
+
+    BY
+    A. CAHAN
+    Author of "Yekl" and "The Imported Bridegroom."
+
+    [Illustration]
+
+    NEW YORK
+    A. S. BARNES & COMPANY
+    1905
+
+
+
+
+    Copyright, 1905
+    BY A. S. BARNES & COMPANY
+
+    _All rights reserved_
+
+    _Published February, 1905_
+    _Second Printing, February, 1905_
+    _Third Printing, March, 1905_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+    CHAPTER                                    PAGE
+
+          I. An Affront to His Czar               1
+
+         II. The White Terror                    14
+
+        III. Pievakin Pleads Guilty              20
+
+         IV. The "Demonstration"                 28
+
+          V. Pavel's First Step                  40
+
+         VI. A Meeting on New Terms              57
+
+        VII. "Terrorism Without Violence"        62
+
+       VIII. Makar's Canvass                     76
+
+         IX. A Day Underground                   81
+
+          X. The Czar's Escape                   93
+
+         XI. A Mysterious Arrest                 97
+
+        XII. A Bewildering Encounter            103
+
+       XIII. A Gendarme's Sister                112
+
+        XIV. Underground Miroslav               121
+
+         XV. A Warning                          135
+
+        XVI. Clara at Home                      147
+
+       XVII. The Countess' Discovery            151
+
+      XVIII. Pavel at Boyko's Court             160
+
+        XIX. Strawberries                       169
+
+         XX. A "Conspiracy Trip"                178
+
+        XXI. Makar's Father                     187
+
+       XXII. From Cellar to Palace              196
+
+      XXIII. An Unforeseen Suggestion           205
+
+       XXIV. Vladimir Finds His Cause           211
+
+        XXV. Clara Becomes "Illegal"            227
+
+       XXVI. On Sacred Ground                   235
+
+      XXVII. A Postponed Wedding                244
+
+     XXVIII. A Second Courtship                 252
+
+       XXIX. A Hunted Monarch                   260
+
+        XXX. The Mystery of a Shop              267
+
+       XXXI. A Reassuring Search                277
+
+      XXXII. The Red Terror                     287
+
+     XXXIII. The Revelation                     299
+
+      XXXIV. The Czar Takes Courage             310
+
+       XXXV. A Hunted People                    319
+
+      XXXVI. A "Paper from the Czar"            331
+
+     XXXVII. The Defence Committee              339
+
+    XXXVIII. The Nihilist's Guard               357
+
+      XXXIX. The Riot                           371
+
+         XL. Light out of Darkness              389
+
+        XLI. Pavel Becomes "Illegal"            401
+
+       XLII. Ominous Footsteps                  408
+
+      XLIII. A Message Through the Wall         423
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE TERROR AND THE RED
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE TERROR AND THE RED.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+AN AFFRONT TO HIS CZAR.
+
+
+Alexander II. passed part of the summer of 1874 in a German
+health-resort taking the mineral waters. When not in the castle in which
+he was staying with his train he affected the life of an ordinary
+citizen. He did so as much from necessity as from choice. Czar or
+subject, the same water must be drunk at the same spot and hour by all
+who seek its cure. Nor can any distinction be made in the matter of the
+walk which the patient is to take after draining his two or three
+gobletsful.
+
+The promenade at a watering place is a great parade-ground for the
+display of plumage, the gayest and costliest gowns being reserved for
+the procession that follows the taking of the remedy; but while the race
+is under way and everybody is striving to throw everybody else into the
+shade, the fact of their being there pierces each dress as with "X"
+rays, showing their flesh to be of the same fragile clay.
+
+So the Czar accepted the levelling effect of the place good-naturedly
+and sought diversion in the unsustained role of a common mortal.
+Unsustained, because he carried his gigantic, beautiful form with a
+graceful self-importance and a martial erectness that betrayed his
+incognito even in the open country stretches to which he would stroll
+off in search of mild adventure and flirtation.
+
+It was a late afternoon in the valley. The river glittered crimson. The
+hills on the other side of the summer town were capped by a sultry haze.
+Donkeys used in ascending these hills were trotting about impishly or
+standing in stupid row awaiting custom. The sun blazed down upon a
+parade of a hundred countries, including a jet black prince from Africa,
+a rajah, a Chinaman in dazzling silks, a wealthy Galician Jew in atlas,
+and a pasha with German features.
+
+The Czar, his immense figure encased in a light frock coat of excellent
+fit, was sauntering along apparently unaccompanied except by his terrier
+and cane. When saluted he would raise his straw hat and nod his enormous
+well-shaped head with a cordiality that bordered on good-fellowship. He
+seemed to relish this exchange of courtesies with people who were not
+his subjects in this little republic of physical malady. It was as
+though he felt apart from his autocratic self without feeling out of
+that pampering atmosphere of deference and attention which was his
+second nature; and he gave an effect of inhaling his freedom as one does
+the first whiffs of spring air.
+
+As to his fellow patients, they either discovered something majestic in
+the very dog that followed him, or were struck by the knuckles of his
+ungloved hands, for example, as if it were remarkable that they should
+be the same sort of knuckles as their own. He was strikingly well-built
+and strikingly handsome. He wore thick close-cropped side whiskers of
+the kind that is rarely becoming, but his face they became very well
+indeed, adding majesty to a cast of large, clear-cut features. It was
+the most monarchical face of its time, and yet it was anything but a
+strong face. His imposing side whiskers and moustache left bare a full
+sensuous mouth and a plump weak chin; his blueish eyes gave forth
+suggestions of melancholy and anguish. Interest in him was whetted by
+stories of his passion for Princess Dolgoruki, lady in waiting to the
+Czarina; so the women at the watering place tried to decipher the tale
+of his liaison in those sad amative eyes of his.
+
+Two refined looking, middle-aged women attracted attention by the
+bizarre simplicity with which one of them was attired and coiffured. She
+was extremely pale and made one think of an insane asylum or a convent.
+She was grey, while her companion had auburn hair and was shorter and
+flabbier of figure. They were conversing in French, but it was not their
+native tongue. The one with the grey hair was Pani Oginska, a Polish
+woman; the other a Russian countess named Anna Nicolayevna Varova
+(Varoff). They had first met, in this watering place, less than a
+fortnight ago, when a chat, in the course of which they warmed to each
+other, led to the discovery that their estates lay in neighbouring
+provinces in Little Russia. They were preceded by a slender youth of
+eighteen in a broad-brimmed straw hat and a clean-shaven elderly little
+man in one of soft grey felt. These were Prince Pavel Alexeyevich
+Boulatoff, a son of the countess by a former marriage, and Alexandre
+Alexandrovich Pievakin, his private tutor, as well as one of his
+instructors at the gymnasium[A] of his native town. Pavel's straw hat
+was too sedate for his childish face and was pushed down so low that a
+delicately sculptured chin and mouth and the turned up tip of a rudely
+hewn Russian nose was all one could see under its vast expanse of yellow
+brim. The old man knew no German and this was his first trip abroad, so
+his high-born pupil, who had an advantage over him in both these
+respects, was explaining things to him, with an air at once patronising
+and respectful. Presently Pavel interrupted himself.
+
+  [A] A classical Russian high school modelled after its German
+  namesake.
+
+"The Czar!" he whispered, in a flutter. "The Czar!" he repeated over his
+shoulder, addressing himself to his mother.
+
+Pievakin raised his glance, paling as he did so, but was so overawed by
+the sight that he forthwith dropped his eyes, a sickly expression on his
+lips.
+
+When the men came face to face with their monarch they made way and
+snatched off their hats as if they were on fire. Countess Varoff,
+Pavel's mother, curtseyed deeply, her flaccid insignificant little body
+retreating toward the side of the promenade and then sinking to the
+ground; while the Polish woman proceeded on her way stiffly without so
+much as a nod of her head. The Czar returned the greeting of the Russian
+woman gallantly and disappeared in the rear of them.
+
+The group walked on in nervous silence, the two women now in the lead.
+When they reached a deserted spot the youth suddenly flushed a violent
+red, and, thrusting out his finely chiselled chin at his mother, he
+said, in quick pugnacious full-toned accents as out of keeping with his
+boyish figure as his hat:
+
+"Mother, you are not going to keep up acquaintance with a person who has
+offered an insult to our Czar."
+
+"Paul! What has come over you?" the countess stammered out, colouring
+abjectly as she paused.
+
+"I mean just what I say, mother."
+
+The elderly little man by his side looked on sheepishly, the cold sweat
+standing in beads on his forehead.
+
+"Don't mind this wild boy, I beg of you," Anna Nicolayevna said to the
+Polish woman. "Don't pay the least attention to him. He imagines himself
+a full grown man, but he is merely a silly boy and he gives me no end of
+trouble. Don't take it ill, _ma chere_." She rattled it off in a great
+flurry of embarrassment, straining the boy back tenderly, while she was
+condemning him.
+
+"I don't take it ill at all," Pani Oginska answered tremulously. "He's
+perfectly right. Your acquaintance has been a great pleasure to me,
+countess, but I can see that my company at this place would be very
+inconvenient to you. Adieu!"
+
+She walked off toward a row of new cottages, and Anna Nicolayevna, the
+countess, stood gazing after her like one petrified.
+
+"You are a savage, Pasha," she whispered, in Russian.
+
+"Why am I? I have done what is right, and you feel it as well as I do,"
+he returned hotly, in his sedate, compact, combative voice, looking from
+her to his teacher. When he was excited he sputtered out his sentences
+in volleys, growling at his listener and seemingly about to flounce off.
+This was the way he spoke now. "Why am I a savage? Can you afford to
+associate with a woman who will behave in this impudent, in this
+rebellious manner toward the Czar? Can you, now?"
+
+"That's neither here nor there," she said, with irritation, as they
+resumed their walk. "She is a very unhappy creature. All that she holds
+dear has been taken from her. Her husband was hanged during the Polish
+rebellion and now her son, a college student, has been torn from her and
+is dying in prison of consumption. If you were not so heartless you
+would have some pity on her."
+
+"Her husband was hanged and her son is in prison and you wish to
+associate with her! Do you really? What do you think of it, Alexandre
+Alexandrovich?"
+
+"A very painful incident," Pievakin murmured, wretchedly.
+
+"As if I were eager for her company," she returned, timidly. "As if one
+could help the chance acquaintances that fall into one's way while
+travelling. Besides, _she_ is no rebel. Indeed, she is one of the most
+charming women I ever met, and to hear her story is enough to break a
+heart of stone. You have no sympathy, Pasha."
+
+"She is no rebel! Why, if she did in Russia what she did here a minute
+ago she would be hustled off to Siberia in short order, and it would
+serve her right, too. And because I don't want my mother to go with such
+a person I have no sympathy."
+
+"Pardon me, Anna Nicolayevna," Pievakin interposed, with embarrassed
+ardour, "but if I were you I should keep out of her way. She is an
+unfortunate woman, but, God bless her,--Pasha is right, I think."
+
+"I should say I was," the boy said, triumphantly. "She wouldn't dare do
+such a thing in Russia, would she? But then in Russia a woman of that
+sort would have no chance to do anything of the kind. Oh, I do hate the
+Germans for exposing the Czar to these insults. It is simply terrible,
+terrible. Couldn't they arrange it so that he should not have to rub
+shoulders with every Tom, Dick and Harry and be exposed to every sort of
+affront? And yet when I say so I am a savage and have no heart." He
+gnashed his teeth and burst into tears.
+
+"Hush, dear, I didn't mean it. Don't be excited, now."
+
+"But you did mean it; you know you did."
+
+"Sh, calm down, Pasha," the old man besought him, and Pavel's features
+softened.
+
+Alexandre Alexandrovich was the only teacher at the high school of whom
+Pavel was fond. He was an old-fashioned little man, with cravats of a
+former generation and with features and movements which conveyed the
+impression that he was forever making ready to bow. His cackling good
+humour when the recitations were correct and fluent, his distressed air
+when they were not; his mixed timidity and quick temper--these things
+are recalled with fond smiles in Miroslav. He was attached to both his
+subjects and when put on his mettle by the attention of his class he
+really knew how to put life into the dullest lesson. On such occasions
+his timid manner would disappear, and he would draw himself up, and go
+strutting back and forth with long, defiant steps and hurling out his
+sentences like a domineering rooster. It was only when a lesson of this
+sort was suddenly disturbed by some sally from a scapegrace of a pupil
+that Pievakin would fly into a passion and then he would take to jumping
+about, tearing at his own hair, and groaning as though with physical
+pain.
+
+Pavel was perhaps the most ardent friend Alexandre Alexandrovich had in
+all Miroslav. The young prince was in a singular position at the
+gymnasium. Somehow things were always done in a way to make one remember
+that he was Prince Boulatoff and a nephew of the governor of the
+province of which Miroslav was the capital. He was the only boy who
+usually came to school in a carriage and it seemed as though the
+imposing vehicle had the effect of isolating him from the other boys. As
+to his teachers, they took a peculiar tone with him--one of
+ill-concealed reverence which would betray itself with all the more
+emphasis when they tried to take him to task. The upshot was that most
+of the other pupils, including the only other prince in the class (who
+was also the wildest boy in it) kept out of Pavel's way, while those
+who did not treated him with a servility that was even more offensive to
+him than the aloofness of the rest. He had made several attempts to get
+on terms of good fellowship with two or three of the boys he liked, but
+his own effort to laugh and frolic with them had jarred on him like a
+false note. He had finally settled down to a manner of haughty
+reticence, keeping an observant eye on his classmates and finding a
+peculiar pleasure in these silent observations.
+
+The only two teachers who did not indulge him were Pievakin and the
+teacher of mathematics, a cheerful hunchback with a pale distended face
+lit by a pair of comical blue eyes, whom the boys had dubbed "truncated
+cone." The teacher of mathematics made Pavel feel his exceptional
+position by treating him with special harshness. As to Pievakin, who had
+begun by addressing the aristocratic youth with an embarrassed air, he
+had gradually adopted toward him a manner of fatherly superiority that
+developed in the boy's heart a filial attachment for the old pedagogue.
+In order to increase his income Pavel had made him his private tutor,
+although he stood high in his class and needed no such assistance, and
+this summer, when the old man complained of rheumatism, he had caused
+his mother to invite him to the German resort.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they reached their hotel the countess unburdened herself to her
+son's tutor of certain memories which interested her now far more than
+did her unexpected rupture with the Polish woman. She described a court
+ball at St. Petersburg at which the present Czar, then still Czarowitz,
+conversed for five minutes with her. She treated the gymnasium teacher
+partly as she would her priest, partly as if he were her butler, and
+now, in her burst of reminiscence, she overhauled her past to him with
+the whole-hearted, childlike abandon which is characteristic of her race
+and which put the humble old teacher ill at ease. "He told me to take
+good care of my 'pretty eyes and golden eyebrows,'" she said. "And yet
+it was for these very eyebrows that Pavel's father disliked me."
+
+She had been the pet daughter of a wealthy nobleman, high in the service
+of the ministry for foreign affairs, but Pavel's father, and her living
+husband, from whom she was now practically separated, had almost
+convinced her that to be disliked was her just share in life. Her
+parents and sisters were dead. She had a little boy by her second
+marriage, but she was still in love with the shadow of her first
+husband, and the son he had left her was the one passion of her life.
+Having spent her youth in the two foreign countries to which her
+father's diplomatic career took the family, she deprecated, in a dim
+unformulated way, many of the things that surrounded her in her native
+land. She was unable to reconcile her luminous image of the Emperor with
+the mediaeval cruelties that were being perpetrated by his order. She was
+at a loss to understand how such a gentle-hearted man could send to the
+gallows or to the living graves of Siberia people like the Polish
+patriots. The compulsory religion of the Orthodox Russian Church, too,
+with its iron-clad organisation and grotesque uniforms, impressed her as
+a kind of spiritual gendarmerie. Yet she accepted it all as part of that
+panorama of things which whispered the magic word, "Russia." And now the
+sight of the Czar had rekindled memories of her better days and stirred
+in her a submissive sense of her cheerless fate.
+
+Pavel was meanwhile putting the case of the Polish woman to Onufri, one
+of the two servants who accompanied them in their present travels--a
+retired hussar with a formidable moustache in front of a pinched
+hollow-cheeked face.
+
+"Her highness, your mother, is good as an angel, sir," was Onufri's
+verdict.
+
+"And you are stupid as a cork," Pavel snarled. His sense of the
+desecration to which the person of his Czar was being subjected by
+mingling with people like the widow of a hanged rebel rankled in his
+heart. He worked himself up to a state of mind in which the very
+similarity in physical appearance between the untitled people with whom
+the Czar and born aristocrats like himself and his mother were compelled
+to mingle at a place like this resort struck him as an impertinence on
+the part of the untitled people.
+
+Later when he lay between two German featherbeds and Onufri brought him
+his book and a candle he asked him to take a seat by his bedside.
+
+"Why are you such a deuced fool, Onufri?"
+
+"If I am it is God's business, not mine, nor your highness'."
+
+"Look here, Onufri. How would you like to have all common people black
+like those darkies?"
+
+The servant spat out in horror and made the sign of the cross.
+
+"For shame, sir. What harm have the common people done you that you
+should wish them a horrid thing like that? And where does your highness
+get these cruel thoughts? Surely not from your mother. For shame, sir."
+
+"Idiot that you are, it's mere fancy, just for fun. There ought to be
+some difference between noble people and common. There is in some
+countries, you know." He told him about castes, the slave trade in
+America and passed to the days of chivalry, his favourite topic, until
+the retired hussar's head sank and a mighty snore rang out of his bushy
+moustache. Pavel flew into a passion.
+
+"Ass!" he shouted, getting half out of bed and shaking him fiercely.
+"Why don't I fall asleep when you tell me stories?"
+
+Onufri started and fell to rubbing one eye, while with his other eye he
+looked about him, as though he had slept a week. The stories he often
+told young Boulatoff mostly related to the days of serfdom, which had
+been abolished when Pavel was a boy of five. Onufri's mother had been
+flogged to death in the presence of her master, Pavel's grandfather, and
+the former hussar would tell the story with a solemnity that reflected
+his veneration for the "good old times" rather than grief over the fate
+of his mother.
+
+That night Pavel dreamed of a pond full of calves that were splashing
+about and laughing in the water. He carried them all home and on his way
+there they were transformed into one pair, and the two calves walked
+about and talked just like Onufri and the transformation was no
+transformation at all, the calves being real calves and negroes at the
+same time. When he awoke, in the morning, and it came over him that the
+dream had had something to do with Onufri, he was seized with a feeling
+of self-disgust. He thought of the Polish woman and his treatment of
+her, and this, too, appeared in a new light to him.
+
+Two or three hours later, when the countess returned from her morning
+walk Pavel, dressed to go out, grave and mysterious, solemnly handed her
+a sealed note from himself.
+
+"Don't open it until I have left," he said. "I am going out for a
+stroll."
+
+"What you said yesterday about my being hard-hearted and incapable of
+sympathy," the letter read, "left a deep impression on me. I thought of
+it almost the first thing this morning as I opened my eyes, and it kept
+me thinking all the morning. I looked deep into my soul, I overhauled my
+whole ego. I turned it inside out, and--well, I must say I have come to
+the conclusion that what you said was not devoid of foundation. Not that
+I am prepared to imagine ourselves as having anything to do with a woman
+whose family is a family of rebels and who has the audacity to pass our
+emperor without bowing; but she is a human being, too, and her
+sufferings should have aroused some commiseration in me. I envy you,
+mother. Compared to you I really am a hard-hearted, unfeeling brute, and
+it makes me very, very unhappy to think of it. My heart is so full at
+this moment that I am at a loss to give expression to what I feel, but
+you will understand me, darling little mother mine. I do _not_ want to
+be hard and cruel, and I want you to help me.
+
+                               "Your struggling son,
+                                                         "PAVEL."
+
+When Anna Nicolayevna laid down the letter her large meek grey eyes
+first grew red and then filled with tears. She sat with her long slim
+arms loosely folded on a davenport, weeping and smiling at once. There
+was much charm in her smile, but, barring it and her mass of fine auburn
+hair, she was certainly not good looking. She was small, ungainly,
+flat-chested, with a large thin-lipped mouth and, in spite of her
+beautiful gowns, with a general effect of rustiness.
+
+When Pavel and his mother met at dinner he felt so embarrassed he could
+not bring himself to look her in the face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE WHITE TERROR.
+
+
+Miroslav was trisected longitudinally by a clear, cheerful river and by
+Kasimir Street, its principal thoroughfare, which contained most of its
+public buildings and best shops. The middle one of the three sections
+thus formed was the home of the higher nobility and the official class;
+the district across the bridge from here was inhabited by Christian
+burghers and workmen, with here and there a clay hovel, the home of a
+peasant family, gleaming white in the distant outskirts; while the hilly
+quarter beyond Kasimir Street was the seat of Jewish industry and Jewish
+poverty, part of this neighbourhood being occupied by the market places
+and "the Paradise," as the slums of the town were called ironically. The
+governor's house, which faced Governor's Prospect--a small square with a
+fountain in the centre--and Anna Nicolayevna's were the two most
+imposing buildings in Miroslav.
+
+The countess' residence was the only structure in town that had a
+colonnaded front. The common people called it the Palace and the section
+of Kasimir Street it faced the Pillars. The sidewalk opposite was the
+favourite promenade of the younger generation, and every afternoon, in
+auspicious weather, it glittered with the uniforms of army officers and
+gymnasium boys. The Palace was built by her grandfather in the closing
+days of the previous century. It abutted on a long narrow lane formed
+on one side by Anna Nicolayevna's garden and leading to Theatre Square,
+where stood the playhouse and the Nobles' Club. When the white rigidity
+of these buildings was relieved by the grass of its lawns and the
+foliage of its trees the spot was the joy of the town.
+
+During the winter of the year following the countess' sojourn at the
+German watering place, Miroslav was stirred by a sensation, the central
+figure of which was Pavel's tutor, the instructor of geography and
+history in the local gymnasium, Alexandre Alexandrovich Pievakin. Pavel
+was then in the graduating class.
+
+Besides being connected with the male gymnasium Pievakin taught at the
+female high school of Miroslav. The town was fond of him and he was fond
+of the town and upon the whole he was contented. One of the things that
+galled him was the fact that his superior, the newly appointed director
+of the school, was his inferior both in years and in civil rank.
+Pievakin was a "councillor of state," while Novikoff, the head of the
+male gymnasium, was only a "collegiate assessor." Novikoff was a
+painstaking, narrow-minded functionary, superciliously proud of his
+office and slavishly loyal to the letter of the law. He was a slender,
+dark-complexioned man of forty, but he tried to look much older and
+heavier. He copied the Czar's side-whiskers, walked like a corpulent
+grandee, perpetually pulling at his waistcoat as though he were burdened
+by a voluminous paunch, and interlarded his speech with aphorisms from
+the Latin Grammar.
+
+One day as the director strutted ponderously along one of the two
+corridors, the word "parliament" fell on his ear. It was Pievakin's
+voice. The old man was explaining something to his class with great
+ardour. Novikoff paused, his lordly walk congealing into the picture of
+dignified attention. The next minute, however, his grandeur melted away.
+His face expressed unfeigned horror. Pievakin was drawing an effusive
+parallel between absolute monarchies and limited. This was distinctly in
+violation of the Circular of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment
+enjoining teachers of geography, in cases of this kind, to adhere
+strictly to the bare terminology of the approved text-book without
+venturing into anything like an elucidation. Not that Pievakin was
+betraying any partiality for limited monarchies. Indeed, to him the
+distinction between the two forms of government was neither of more nor
+of less interest than the difference between a steppe and a prairie or a
+simoon and a hurricane. It appealed to him because it was geography, and
+in his ecstasy over the lesson all thought of the Ministry and its
+Circulars had escaped his mind.
+
+That afternoon he was summoned to the director's office on the floor
+below.
+
+Novikoff was at his large, flat-topped desk, studiously absorbed in some
+papers. He silently motioned the teacher of geography to a seat, and
+went on with his feigned work. After a lapse of some minutes he
+straightened up, played a few scales upon the brass buttons of his
+uniform, and said:
+
+"It pains me to have to say it, Alexandre Alexandrovich, but these are
+queer times and the passions of youth should be moderated, held in
+check, suppressed, not aroused. The imagination of one's pupils is not
+to be trifled with, Alexandre Alexandrovich."
+
+He paused mournfully. The little old man, who had not the least idea
+what he was driving at, waited in consternation. The room was
+overheated, and the pause had an overpowering effect on him. He felt on
+the verge of fainting.
+
+"The point is," Novikoff resumed, with a sudden spurt in his voice,
+"that in your class work you sometimes suffer yourself to say things
+that cannot but be regarded as dangerous. Dangerous particularly in view
+of the evil influences at work among the young of our generation; in
+view of the very sad fact that college students will disguise themselves
+as peasants----"
+
+"What do you mean, sir?" Pievakin burst out, reddening violently. "How
+dare you liken me to those fellows? I was serving the Czar while you
+were still a whippersnapper. I'm a councillor of state, sir. How dare
+you make these insinuations?"
+
+"I expected as much," Novikoff answered, nervously polishing his
+buttons. "Defying one's superior is of a piece with the views you're
+trying to instill into the minds of your scholars."
+
+"What is of a piece with what? Speak out, sir," Pievakin shrieked.
+
+"Bridle your temper, sir. I can't allow that."
+
+"Then tell me what it's all about," the teacher of history and geography
+said in a queer, half-beseeching, half-threatening voice.
+
+"Well, this morning you were expatiating upon the blessings of a
+constitutional government. Yes, sir. There are no spies to eavesdrop on
+one in this building, but it seems you never speak so loud nor with so
+much gusto as when you get to the subject of constitutions and
+parliaments and things of that kind."
+
+"It isn't true. I merely said a word or two on the various forms of
+government. It's practically all in Smirnoff's Geography."
+
+"'Practically'! It's against the law. I am very sorry, but it becomes my
+duty to report it to the curator."
+
+Here Pievakin, losing control of himself, shouted "Spy!" and
+"Scoundrel!" and darted out of the room.
+
+This happened at a time when the "peasantist" movement, the peaceful,
+unresisting stage in the history of what is commonly known as Nihilism,
+was at its height. The educated young generation was in an ecstasy of
+altruism. It was the period of "going to the people," when hundreds of
+well-bred men and women, children of the nobility, would don peasant
+garb and go to share the life of the tillers of the soil, teaching them
+to read, talking to them of universal love, liberty and equality. The
+government punished this "going to the people" with Asiatic severity.
+Russia has no capital punishment for the slaying of common mortals, the
+average penalty for murder being about ten years of penal servitude in
+Siberia; and this penalty the courts were often ordered to impose on
+absolutely peaceable missionaries, on university students who
+practically did the same kind of work as that pursued by the "university
+settlements" in English-speaking countries. There were about one
+thousand of these propagandists in the political prisons of the empire,
+and their number was growing. They were kept in solitary confinement in
+cold, damp cells. Scores of them went insane or died of consumption,
+scurvy or suicide before their cases came up for trial.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pievakin's house was searched by gendarmes, but no "underground"
+literature was discovered there. He was not arrested, but spies shadowed
+his movements and about a month after the domiciliary visit he was
+officially notified by the curator's office that he was to be
+transferred to the four-year "progymnasium" of a small town a
+considerable distance off. This implied that his work was to be
+restricted to boys of fourteen and less in a town out of the way of
+"dangerous tendencies." He grew thin and haggard and a certain look of
+fright never left his eye. The other instructors at the gymnasium, all
+except one, and many of his private acquaintance plainly shunned him. He
+had become one of those people with whom one could not come in contact
+without attracting the undesirable attention of the police. One of those
+who were not afraid to be seen in his company was the "truncated cone."
+"My crooked back is the only one that does not bend," the deformed man
+would joke. The tacit philosophy of his attitude toward the world seemed
+to be something like this: "You people won't consider me one of you. I
+am only a hunchback, something like an elf, and you will take many an
+unwelcome truth from me which you would resent in one like yourselves.
+So let us proceed on this understanding."
+
+When Boulatoff heard that his favourite teacher was to be exiled to a
+small town "to render him harmless," he was shocked. Alexandre
+Alexandrovich Pievakin was the last man in the world he would have
+suspected to be guilty of seditious agitation. His only idol at school
+was thus shattered. Pievakin had not the courage to visit the countess'
+house now, and Pavel, on his part, held aloof from him. The old man was
+hateful to him, not only as a rebel, but also as an impostor and a
+hypocrite. He felt duped. His blood rankled with disgust and resentment.
+At the same time the situation did not seem quite clear to him.
+Something puzzled him, although he could not have put his finger on it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+PIEVAKIN PLEADS GUILTY.
+
+
+A lesson in Latin was in progress. The teacher was a blond Czech. Pavel
+looked at him intently, trying to follow the exercises, but he only
+became the more aware of the foreigner's struggles with Russian and made
+the discovery that his clumsy carriage, as he walked up and down the
+room, was suggestive of a peasant woman trying to catch a chicken. His
+thoughts passed to Pievakin and almost at the same instant a question
+flashed into his brain: If Pievakin was unreliable politically, why,
+then, was he getting off so easily? How was it that instead of being cut
+off from the living world, instead of being thrown into a dungeon to
+waste and perish, as was done with all fellows of that sort, he was
+merely transferred to another school?
+
+The bell sounded. The Czech put his big flat record-book under his arm
+and left the room. Most of the pupils went out soon after. The two long
+corridors were bubbling with boys in blue, a-glitter with nickel-plated
+buttons and silver galloon, some laughing over their experience with the
+lesson just disposed of, others eagerly reviewing the one soon to be
+recited. Pievakin passed along. The pupils bowed to him with curious
+sympathetic looks, and he returned their salutes with an air of mixed
+timidity and gratitude. Presently the teacher of mathematics emerged
+from one of the glass doors, his deformity bulging through the blue
+broadcloth of his uniform.
+
+"Alexandre Alexandrovich!" he shouted demonstratively, and catching up
+with him he threw his arm around his waist.
+
+Pavel, who had been watching the scene, was about to return to his
+class-room so as to avoid bowing to Pievakin, when, by a sudden impulse,
+he saluted the two teachers, and advancing to meet them, with that
+peculiar air of politeness which reminded his classmates of his equipage
+and the colonnade in front of his mother's mansion, he accosted the
+instructor of history and geography, turning pale as he did so:
+
+"May I speak to you, Alexandre Alexandrovich?" When the mathematician
+had withdrawn, he inquired in a tone of pain and concern: "What has
+happened, Alexandre Alexandrovich?"
+
+"Oh, I'm in trouble, prince," the old man faltered. He had never
+addressed the youth by his title before, and there was a note of abject
+supplication in his voice, as if the boy could help him. His face had a
+pinched, cowed look.
+
+"But, Alexandre Alexandrovich, it's a terrible thing they are accusing
+you of. You've been so dear to me, Alexandre Alexandrovich. I want to
+know all. I cannot rest, Alexandre Alexandrovich."
+
+"The story is easily told. A misfortune has befallen me. While touching
+upon the constitutional form of government, I was somewhat carried away.
+That I don't deny. I know it was wrong of me, but I assure you, prince,
+I meant no harm."
+
+It sounded as though he were a pleading pupil and the boy before him his
+teacher.
+
+Pavel was touched and perplexed.
+
+"But that's in the text-book, Alexandre Alexandrovich."
+
+"To be sure it is. Only the text-book merely uses the term without
+explaining it, while I, absent-mindedly, proceeded to do so, which is
+against the rules, and, as ill luck would have it, I warmed up a bit.
+When I was first asked about it I was not aware of having done any
+wrong. I was so shocked, in fact, I lost my temper. That was the worst
+of it. I am a ruined man, prince. Thirty-six years have I served the
+Czar and there is not a blemish on my record."
+
+"But why should you call yourself a ruined man, Alexandre
+Alexandrovich," Pavel said impetuously. "I don't see why it should be
+too late to straighten it all out. I'm going to see my uncle. Or, better
+still, my mother will see him. We can't let it go that way. We should
+all be a lot of scoundrels if we did. I'm going to tell him so."
+
+"Do it, prince, if you can," the old man said with shamefaced eagerness.
+"I shall never forget it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Pavel came home he found his mother's sleigh in front of the main
+entrance, her coachman in dazzling attire, waiting with pompous
+stolidity. When the liveried porter threw the door open to him and he
+entered the vestibule he saw coming down the immense staircase his
+mother and his five-year-old half-brother, Kostia, dressed for their
+afternoon drive, Anna Nicolayevna in her furs and the little fellow in
+the costume of a Caucasian horseman, which became his grave little face
+charmingly. Following at some distance, with a smile of admiration, half
+servile, half sincere, on her fresh German face, was Kostia's governess.
+She was not dressed for a drive. She was merely going to see her charge
+off.
+
+"Mother, I am afraid I shall have to detain you," Pavel said, solemnly.
+"I wish to speak to you about Alexandre Alexandrovich."
+
+"Won't it keep?" she asked, with a facetious gesture.
+
+"Don't make fun of it, mother," he reproached her. "It's a serious
+matter. My head is in a whirl."
+
+Kostia was burning to show himself in public in his new Circassian cap
+and when he saw his mother yield he screwed up his face for a cry, but
+he forthwith straightened it out again. He scarcely ever cried in
+Pavel's presence for fear of being called "damsel" by him--an
+appellation he dreaded more than being locked up alone in the
+schoolroom.
+
+They went into Anna Nicolayevna's favorite sitting-room, a square
+chamber furnished and decorated in tan, in no particular style, but with
+an eye to the combined suggestions of old-time solidity and latter-day
+elegance. It was the embodiment of rest and silence, an effect to which
+two life-sized bronze statues--a Diana and a Venus de Medici--and the
+drowsy ticking of an ancient clock contributed not a little. It was
+known as the English room because its former furnishings had been
+modelled after London standards.
+
+Pavel painted Pievakin as a penitent, broken spirit till Anna
+Nicolayevna's eyes grew red.
+
+"Still, maybe he does hold dangerous views?" she asked.
+
+"Dangerous nothing! It's all nonsense. He's more loyal than Novikoff
+anyhow, for Novikoff is a soulless, attitudinising nincompoop, while he
+is the kindliest, most conscientious, most soulful man in the world."
+
+"Unfortunately all this has nothing to do with loyalty," she said,
+sadly. "This is a very queer world, Pasha. It's just like those
+wretches who would do away with czars to be warm-hearted and good to
+everybody. They don't believe there ought to be rich and poor, either.
+When you come across a man of this sort keep away from him, Pasha."
+
+"But what has that got to do with Pievakin?" he shouted. "The very sight
+of a Nihilist would be enough to frighten him out of his wits. I want
+you to tell it all to uncle, _mamman_. Give him no peace until he
+promises you to write to the curator about the poor old man."
+
+The governor of Miroslav was a Boulatoff, being a cousin of Pavel's
+deceased father; but he was also related to the young man by marriage to
+his mother's sister, who had died less than a year ago. Anna Nicolayevna
+promised to see her brother-in-law the next morning, but Pavel would not
+wait. He pleaded, he charged her with heartlessness, tapping the thick
+rug with his foot and shaking all over as he spoke, until she agreed to
+go at once.
+
+While she was gone Pavel and Kostia went into the ball room and played
+"hunter and partridge," a game of the gymnasium boys' inventing. They
+had not been many minutes at it before Pavel had forgotten all about the
+errand on which he had despatched his mother and the vast ball room
+echoed with his voluminous laughter. His great pleasure was to tease
+Kostia until the little boy's mouth would begin to twitch, and then to
+shake his finger at him and say: "Better not cry, Kostia, or you know
+what I am going to call you." Whereupon Kostia would make a desperate
+effort to look nonchalantly grave and Pavel would burst into a new roar
+of merriment.
+
+Anna Nicolayevna came back converted to a rigorous point of view, and
+although her son had no difficulty in convincing her once again that
+Pievakin deserved mercy, he made up his mind to see his uncle himself,
+and he did so the very next morning.
+
+Governor Boulatoff was a massive, worn, blinking old satrap, shrewd,
+tight-fisted, and, what was quite unusual for a man of his class, with
+an eye to business. His nose was extremely broad and fleshy, his hair
+was elaborately dressed, and altogether he looked like a successful old
+comedian. Bribe-giving was as universal in Miroslav as tipping was in
+its leading cafe. One could not turn round without showing "gratitude."
+The wheels of government would not move in the desired direction unless
+they were greased, the price of this "grease" or "gratitude" varying all
+the way from a ten-copeck piece to ten or fifteen thousand rubles.
+Governor Boulatoff, who had come to Miroslav a ruined man, was now the
+largest land-owner in the province. Whenever he was in need of ready
+cash he would galvanize into a new lease of life some defunct piece of
+anti-Jewish legislation. This was known among the other officials as
+"pressing the spring"--the spring of the Jewish pocketbook, that is, the
+invariable effect of the proceeding being the appearance of a delegation
+with a snug piece of Jewish "gratitude." He was continually sneering at
+the powers behind the throne, and mildly striving for recognition; yet
+so comfortable did he feel in this city of gardens, card-playing and
+"gratitude," from which "the Czar was too far off and God too high up,"
+that he was in mortal fear lest the promotion which he coveted should
+come in the form of a transfer to a more important province.
+
+Pavel found him in his imposing "den." The old potentate was in his
+morning gown, freshly bathed, shaved and coiffured and smelling of
+pomade and cigarette smoke.
+
+"Well, my little statesman," he greeted him in French. "What brings you
+so early this morning? Aren't you going to school at all?" He called him
+statesman because of his ambition to follow in the footsteps of his
+diplomatic grandfather.
+
+"I shall stay away from the first three lessons," Pavel answered. "I
+cannot rest, uncle. I want to speak to you about that unfortunate man."
+
+The governor was very fond of Pavel, but he persisted in treating him as
+a boy, and the only serious talk young Boulatoff got out of him
+regarding Pievakin was an exhortation to give "men of that sort a wide
+berth."
+
+"But, uncle----"
+
+"Don't argue," the governor interrupted him, blinking as he spoke. "This
+is not the kind of thing for a boy of your station to get mixed up in."
+
+"Oh, it's enough to drive one crazy. The poor man is sincerely
+repentant, uncle. He'll never do it again, uncle."
+
+"I see you're quite excited over it. Just the kind of effect fellows of
+that stamp will have on the mind of a boy. This is just where the danger
+comes in. Don't forget your name, Pasha. Come, throw it all out of your
+clever little head. There's a good boy."
+
+"Uncle darling, he'll never do it again. Let him stay where he is."
+
+"You're a foolish boy. Whether he'll do it again or no, his very
+presence in this town would be a source of danger. Whoever sets his eyes
+on him will say to himself: 'Here is the man who once talked of the way
+people live under a constitution.' So you see he'll be a reminder of
+unlawful ideas. We have no use for fellows of this sort. They are like
+living poison. Do you see the point? Let your teacher thank his stars
+the case was not put in the hands of the gendarmes entirely, or he
+would be sent to a colder place."
+
+All this the governor said in the playful manner of one conversing with
+a child and, by way of clinching the matter, he explained that he had
+nothing to do with the case and that it was under the jurisdiction of
+the "curator of educational district."
+
+Pavel was in despair and his being treated as a boy threw him into a
+rage, but he held himself in check for Pievakin's sake.
+
+"Oh, the curator will do anything you ask of him, uncle," he said in a
+tone of entreaty and resentment at once.
+
+"You don't want your uncle to write letters begging for a fellow who was
+foolish enough to get mixed up in such an affair as that, do you? I used
+to think you really cared for your uncle."
+
+Pavel contracted his forehead and put out his chin sullenly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE "DEMONSTRATION."
+
+
+At the hour of Pievakin's departure the Miroslav railway station was
+crowded with gymnasium pupils of both sexes, but Pavel was not among
+them. He had not been informed that such a gathering was in
+contemplation at all.
+
+Alexandre Alexandrovich, a satchel slung across his breast, wan and
+haggard, but flushed with excitement, was bustling about in a listless,
+mechanical way. He was accompanied by his large family and the teacher
+of mathematics. A number of gendarmes, stalwart, bewhiskered,
+elaborately formidable, were pacing up and down the large waiting room.
+The gendarmerie is the political police of the Czar. It forms a special
+military organisation quite distinct from the police proper. A detail of
+such gendarmes, proportionate to the importance of the place, is to be
+found in every railroad station of the country. On this occasion,
+however, the presence of the gendarmes seemed to have some special
+bearing upon the nature of the scene. They were all big strapping
+fellows. Their jingling spurs, red epaulets and icy silence belonged to
+the same category of things as the terrible political prisons of
+Kharkoff and St. Petersburg; as the clinking of convict-chains, as the
+frozen wastes of Siberia.
+
+All at once most of the bespurred men disappeared. After an absence of
+two or three minutes they came back, considerably re-enforced.
+
+"All gymnasium pupils, ladies and gentlemen, will please leave the
+station," they called out.
+
+About one-half of the throng struck out for the doors as if the place
+were on fire. Some fifteen or twenty pupils stood still, frowning upon
+the guardians of the Czar's safety, in timid defiance. The rest, a crowd
+of about two hundred, made a lunge in the direction of the corner where
+Alexandre Alexandrovich and his family were pottering about some light
+baggage, when three lusty gendarmes planted themselves in front of the
+little old man.
+
+"Go home, ladies and gentlemen, go home!" Pievakin besought his friends,
+waving his hands and stamping his feet desperately.
+
+"Have we no right to say good-bye to our own teacher?" one boy ventured.
+
+"Not allowed!" a gendarme answered, sternly. "Get out, get out!"
+
+The crowd surged back; but at this point a young feminine voice,
+sonorous with indignation and distress, rose above the din of the
+scramble:
+
+"Good heavens! Can it be that we shall leave without saying good-bye to
+our dear teacher? All they say of him is a lie, a malicious lie. They're
+a lot of knaves, and he is the best man in the world. Let them arrest us
+if they will, let them kill us. It would be a shame if we went away like
+traitors to our dear teacher."
+
+The rest was lost in a hubbub of shouts and shrieks. In their effort to
+get at the speaker, who was shielded by the other pupils, the gendarmes
+were beating young women with their sheathed swords or pulling them by
+the hair. With the exception of a few who had skulked out through back
+doors, the young people now all stood their ground, ready to fight.
+
+"Arrest us all!" they yelled. "We all say the same thing."
+
+"Yes, Alexandre Alexandrovich is the best man in the world. There!"
+
+"A better man than Novikoff!"
+
+"Novikoff is a hypocrite and a rogue!"
+
+In the commotion the gendarmes lost sight of the girl they were about to
+arrest. She could not have left the room, but then it was not easy to
+tell her from any of the other girls. The gendarmes had seen her at a
+distance, and all they could say was that she was blonde. In their
+eagerness to pick her out, they were rudely scanning every young woman
+in the waiting-room. Had she been arrested it would have gone hard with
+her. As good luck would have it, however, Major Safonoff, the officer in
+command of the railroad gendarmes, was the brother of one of the girls
+present. He was a plump, good-natured bachelor, and his devotion to his
+sister, who had been under his care since she was a year old, was a
+source of jests and anecdotes. When it occurred to him that the
+conflict, which was beginning to look like a serious affair, was likely
+to cause trouble to his sister, he hastened to make light of it.
+
+"Go home, ladies and gentlemen," he said, in a remonstrative amicable
+voice, taking the matter in his own hands.
+
+His friendly tone and his smiling fat face, added to the tacit
+understanding that the girl who had made the speech was not to be
+persecuted, acted as a balm; but the flattering notion that the
+gendarmes had surrendered kindled new fighting blood.
+
+"Your men have hit ladies. They've no right to hit anybody. They're a
+lot of brutes. All we wanted was to say good-bye to Alexandre
+Alexandrovich."
+
+"But that's impossible, so what's the use getting excited, gentlemen?
+Better go home."
+
+The pupils obeyed, in a leisurely way, as though leaving of their own
+accord.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the following few weeks this "victory" over the gendarmes was the
+great topic of discussion. The personality of the girl who "started the
+demonstration" was emblazoned with the halo of heroism. The curious part
+of it was that only a minority of those who had participated in the
+scene had any idea who she was. When the crowd at the railroad station
+had dispersed, the handful that knew her whispered her name to some of
+those who did not, so that the number of pupils in the secret was by now
+comparatively large, but it was a "revolutionary" secret, so it was
+guarded most zealously against unreliable pupils as well as against the
+authorities.
+
+One of the page-proofs of the _Miroslav Messenger_ that were sent to the
+censor at midnight contained the following paragraph:
+
+"Alexandre Alexandrovich Pievakin, for many years instructor of History
+and Geography at our male gymnasium, left for his new place of service
+yesterday afternoon. A large number of gymnasium pupils were at the
+railway station."
+
+The entire paragraph was stricken out, so that the _Messenger_ next
+morning contained not the remotest reference to the departure of the old
+teacher.
+
+When Pasha heard what had happened at the railway station his heart
+sank.
+
+"I must speak to you, mother," he gasped out, bursting into her room,
+after school time. When her companion, a dried-up little Frenchwoman
+with a thriving streak of black moustache, had withdrawn, he said:
+"Mother, I am a miserable egoist and a scoundrel." He told her the story
+of Pievakin's departure. His dear old teacher was in trouble, the victim
+of a cruel injustice, yet he, Pasha, had not even thought of going to
+see him off. Everybody had been there except him. But what tantalised
+him more than anything else was the fact that a girl was the only person
+who had taken a brave noble stand in the old man's behalf. This hurt his
+knightly sense of honour cruelly. He should have been on the scene and
+done exactly what that girl had done.
+
+"I'm an egoist and a coward, _mamman_. I hate myself. Oh, I do hate
+myself!"
+
+Anna Nicolayevna's eyes grew red. She had an impulse to fold him in her
+arms and to offer to take him to Pievakin's new place so that he might
+protest his sympathy and affection for the old man, but her instinct
+told her that this would be improper. Oh, there were so many things that
+made a strong appeal to one's better feelings which were considered
+improper. So she emitted a sigh of resignation and said nothing.
+
+Pavel was pacing the floor so vehemently that he came near running into
+and knocking down the life-sized Diana. He walked with rapid heavy steps
+until his brain grew dizzy and his despair was dulled as from the effect
+of drink. Suddenly the situation rushed back upon him.
+
+"I tell you what, mother, he's too good for them," he said, stopping in
+front of her. "He is better than uncle, anyhow."
+
+"Hush, you mustn't say that."
+
+"The devil I mustn't. It's true."
+
+"You are impossible, Pasha. Can't you calm down?"
+
+"I'll tell you calmly, then: uncle is a bribe-taker and a heartless
+egoist. There."
+
+"Dear me," she said, in consternation.
+
+"But you know he is, mother. And do you call that loyalty to the Czar?
+Pievakin is pure as an infant. If the Czar knew the real character of
+both, he would know that the poor man could give uncle points in
+loyalty."
+
+A few days after this conversation the governor dined at "The Palace,"
+as Countess Varoff's residence was known among the common people of
+Miroslav. Pavel refused to leave his room. When Anna Nicolayevna pleaded
+his uncle's affection for him, he said:
+
+"His affection be hanged. Who wants the affection of a bribe-taker who
+will let an honest man perish? Look here, mother, you have no business
+to tell him I have a headache. I want him to know the truth. Tell him
+it's men like himself, bribe-takers, cowards, who spread sedition, not
+men like Pievakin. 'Living poison,' indeed! Tell him he is a lump of
+living poison himself. Oh, I hate him, I do hate him."
+
+His brain was working feverishly. The image of Pievakin with three
+gendarmes between him and a crowd of pupils haunted him. Why could he
+not be pardoned? Was there no mercy in this world? His sense of the
+cruelty of the thing and of his own helplessness seized him as with a
+violent clutch again and again.
+
+Once, as he was reviewing the situation for the thousandth time, a voice
+in him exclaimed: "Pardoned? What was Pievakin to be pardoned for? What
+had he done? Why should it be wrong to dwell on the vital features of
+parliamentary government? Such governments existed, didn't they? And if
+they did, then why should one be forbidden to explain their essence?"
+For the first time did his attention fix itself on this point, and
+questions came crowding upon him. Where was the sense of having such
+terms as "limited monarchy" in the text-book at all, if the pupils were
+not to be told what this meant? Above all, why should the government be
+afraid of such explanations? There seemed to be something cowardly,
+sneaking, about all this which jarred on Pavel's sense of the knightly
+magnificence of the Czar and left him with a bad taste in the mouth, as
+the phrase is.
+
+Alexandre Alexandrovich, then, had done no wrong, and yet he had been
+banished as "living poison," treated by everybody as a criminal, until
+he came to believe himself one. Why, of course he was better than
+Novikoff. Novikoff was a self-seeking, posing wretch, and all the other
+teachers were cringing and crouching before him; and these insects
+turned their backs upon Alexandre Alexandrovich! Corruption passed for
+loyalty, and a really good man was persecuted, hunted down like a wild
+beast, trampled upon. "Trampled upon, trampled upon, trampled upon!"
+Pavel whispered audibly, stamping his foot and gnashing his teeth as he
+did so.
+
+The only gleam of light was the veiled figure of that gymnasium girl.
+She alone had had sympathy and courage enough to raise her voice for the
+poor man. "Why, she is a perfect heroine," he said in his aching heart.
+
+At the gymnasium he felt his loneliness more keenly than ever. Wherever
+he saw a cluster of boys, he felt sure they were whispering about the
+gendarmes and the girl who had made the "speech" at the railroad
+station. His pride was gone. He now saw himself an outcast, shut out of
+the most important things life contained.
+
+The leader of the "serious-minded" boys in Pavel's class was an underfed
+Jewish youth, with an anaemic chalky face and a cold intelligent look,
+named Elkin. To Pavel he had always been repugnant. Since Pievakin's
+departure, however, the aristocratic boy had looked at his classmates in
+a new light, and Elkin now even inspired him with respect.
+
+"Who is the girl that made that speech at the station?" he asked simply.
+The two had scarcely ever spoken before.
+
+Elkin gave Boulatoff a stare of freezing irony, as who should say: "What
+do you think of the assurance of this man?" and then, dropping his eyes,
+he asked:
+
+"What girl?" When he spoke his lips assumed the form of two obtuse
+angles, exposing to view a glistening lozenge of white teeth.
+
+"Look here, Elkin, I want to know who that girl is and all about the
+whole affair, and if you think I ought not to know it because--well,
+because I am a Boulatoff and my uncle is the governor, I can assure you
+that if I had been there I should have acted as she did. What's more, I
+hate myself for not having been there."
+
+"I don't know what you're talking about," replied Elkin. "As to your
+hating yourself, that's your own affair."
+
+"Well, however I may feel toward myself, I certainly have nothing but
+contempt for a man like you," Pasha snapped back, paling. "But if you
+think you can keep it from me, you're mistaken."
+
+Elkin sized him up with a look full of venom, as he said:
+
+"Pitiful wretch! How are you going to find it out? Through the political
+spies?"
+
+Pavel turned red. It was with a great effort that he kept himself from
+striking Elkin. After a pause he said:
+
+"Now, I can tell you from the bottom of my heart that you are a knave."
+
+"Besides," said Elkin, as though finishing an interrupted remark, "most
+of the gymnasium girls who saw Alexandre Alexandrovich off are daughters
+of poor, humble people, so of what interest would it have been to a man
+in your position?"
+
+Boulatoff stood still for a few moments, and then said under his breath:
+
+"Well, you're a fool as well as a knave," and turned away.
+
+The heroine of the demonstration was hateful to him now. She and Elkin
+seemed to stand at the head of the untitled classes all arrayed against
+him. He retired into himself deeper than ever. He abhorred her because
+she had done the right thing, and each time his sympathy for Pievakin
+welled up he hated himself for not having been at the station, and her
+for having been there. He sought relief in charging Elkin with
+cowardice. "What did he do there?" he would say to himself. "To think of
+a lot of fellows running away when they are told they can't say good-bye
+to their martyred teacher, and a girl being the only one who has courage
+enough to act properly. And now that she has done it this coward has the
+face to give himself airs, as if he were entitled to credit for her
+courage. If I had been there I should not have run away as Elkin and his
+crew did."
+
+This placed Elkin and his followers on one side of the line and Pavel
+and the girl on the other. So what right had that coward of a Jew to
+place himself between her and him?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Toward spring, some two months after the old teacher's departure, and
+when the incident was beginning to grow dim in the public mind, the
+sensation was suddenly revived and greatly intensified by an
+extraordinary piece of news that came from the town to which Pievakin
+had been transferred: The Third Section of His Majesty's Own Office--the
+central political detective bureau of the empire--had taken up the case,
+with the result that the action of the Department of Public Instruction
+had been repudiated as dangerously inadequate. The idea of a man like
+Pievakin participating in the education of children! Accordingly, the
+poor old man was now under arrest, condemned to be transported to
+Viatka, a thinly populated province in the remote north, where he was to
+live under police surveillance, as a political exile strictly debarred
+from teaching, even in private families.
+
+Pavel was stunned. He received the news as something elemental. He could
+find fault with his uncle, but the government at St. Petersburg was a
+sublime abstract force, bathed in the effulgence of the Czar's
+personality. It was no more open to condemnation than a thunderstorm or
+a turbulent sea. But the incident made an ineffaceable impression upon
+him. It left him with the general feeling that there was something
+inherently cruel in the world. And the picture of a pretty girl boldly
+raising her voice for poor Pievakin in the teeth of formidable-looking
+gendarmes and in the midst of a crowd of panic-stricken men remained
+imbedded in his fancy as the emblem of brave pity. An importunate sense
+of jealousy nagged him. He often caught himself dreaming of situations
+in which he appeared in a role similar to the one she had played at the
+railroad station.
+
+His perceptions and sensibilities took a novel trend.
+
+One day, for example, as he walked through Theatre Square, he paused to
+watch an apple-faced ensign, evidently fresh from the military school,
+lecture a middle-aged sergeant. The youthful officer sat on a bench,
+swaggeringly leaning back, his new sword gleaming by his side, as he
+questioned the soldier who stood at attention, the picture of
+embarrassment and impotent rage. A young woman, probably the sergeant's
+wife, sweetheart, or daughter, stood aside, looking on wretchedly.
+Seated on a bench directly across the walk were two pretty gymnasium
+girls. It was clear that the whole scene had been gotten up for their
+sake, that the ensign had stopped the poor fellow, who was old enough to
+be his father, and was now putting him through this ordeal for the sole
+purpose of flaunting his authority before them. When the sergeant had
+been allowed to go his way, but before he was out of hearing, Pavel
+walked up to the ensign and said aloud:
+
+"I wish to tell you, sir, that you tormented that poor man merely to
+show off."
+
+"Bravo!" said the two gymnasium girls, clapping their hands with all
+their might; "bravo!"
+
+The ensign sprang to his feet, his apple-cheeks red as fire. "What do
+you mean by interfering with an officer--in the performance of his
+duty?" he faltered. He apparently knew that the young man before him was
+a nephew of the governor.
+
+"Nonsense! You were not performing any duties. You were parading. That's
+what you were doing."
+
+The two girls burst into a ringing laugh, whereupon the ensign stalked
+off, mumbling something about having the gymnasium boy arrested.
+
+"Mother," he said, when he came home. "The world is divided into
+tormentors and victims."
+
+Anna Nicolayevna gave a laugh that made her rusty face interesting. "And
+what are you--a tormentor or a victim?" she asked. "At any rate you had
+better throw these thoughts out of your mind. They lead to no good,
+Pasha."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+PAVEL'S FIRST STEP.
+
+
+When Pavel arrived in St. Petersburg, in the last days of July, his
+recent tribulations seemed a thing of the faded past. The capital was a
+fascinating setting for the great university which he was soon to enter
+and in which he was bent upon drinking deep of the deepest mysteries of
+wisdom. His "certificate of maturity"--his gymnasium diploma--was a
+solemn proclamation of his passage from boyhood to manhood--a change
+which seemed to assert itself in everything he did. He ate maturely,
+talked maturely, walked maturely. He felt like a girl on the eve of her
+wedding day.
+
+He had not been in the big city for six years, and so marked was the
+distinction between it and the southern town from which he hailed, that
+to his "mature" eyes it seemed as if they were seeing it for the first
+time. The multitude of large lusty men, heavily bearded and wearing
+blouses of flaming red; the pink buildings; the melodious hucksters; the
+cherry-peddlars, with their boards piled with the succulent fruit on
+their shoulders; the pitchy odor of the overheated streets; the soft,
+sibilant affectations in the speech of the lower classes; the bustling
+little ferry-boats on the Neva--all this, sanctified by the presence of
+the university buildings across the gay river, made his heart throb with
+a feeling as though Miroslav were a foreign town and he were treading
+the soil of real Russia at last.
+
+He matriculated at the Section of Philology and History, St. Petersburg.
+Before starting on his studies, however, he went off on a savage debauch
+with some aristocratic young relatives. The debauch lasted a fortnight,
+and cost his mother a small fortune. When he came to the university at
+last, weary of himself and his relatives, he settled down to a winter of
+hard work. But the life at the university disturbed his peace of mind.
+He found the students divided into "crammers," "parquette-scrapers" and
+"radicals." The last named seemed to be in the majority--a bustling,
+whispering, preoccupied crowd with an effect of being the masters of the
+situation. There was a vast difference between Elkin and his followers
+and these people. Pavel knew that the university was the hotbed of the
+secret movement, of which he was now tempted to know something. There
+was no telling who of his present classmates might prove a candidate for
+the gallows. The wide-awake, whispering, mysterious world about him
+reminded him of the Miroslav girl and of his rebuff upon trying to
+discover who she was. When he made an attempt to break through the magic
+circle in which that world was enclosed his well-cared-for appearance
+and high-born manner went against him. A feeling of isolation weighed on
+his soul that was much harder to bear than his ostracism at the
+gymnasium had been. Harder to bear, because the students who kept away
+from him here struck him as his superiors, and because he had a humble
+feeling as though it were natural that they should hold aloof from him.
+And the image of that Miroslav girl seemed to float over these
+whispering young men, at once luring and repulsing him. He often went
+about with a lump in his throat.
+
+One day he met a girl named Sophia Perovskaya, the daughter of a former
+governor of the Province of St. Petersburg and the granddaughter of a
+celebrated cabinet minister. She was a strong-featured, boyish-looking
+little creature, with grave blue eyes beneath a very high forehead. He
+had known her when he was a child. There was something in her general
+appearance now and in the few words she said to him which left a
+peculiar impression on Pavel. As he thought of her later it dawned upon
+him that she might belong to the same world as those preoccupied,
+whispering fellow-students of his. He looked her up the same day.
+
+"I should like to get something to read, Sophia Lvovna," he said,
+colouring. "Some of the proscribed things, I mean." Then he added, with
+an embarrassed frown, "Something tells me you could get it for me. If I
+am mistaken, you will have to excuse me."
+
+The governor's daughter fixed her blue eyes on him as she said, simply:
+
+"All right. I'll get you something."
+
+She lent him a volume of the "underground" magazine _Forward!_ and some
+other prints. The tales of valour and martyrdom which he found in these
+publications, added to the editorials they contained calling upon the
+nobility to pay the debt they owed to the peasantry by sacrificing
+themselves for their welfare, literally intoxicated him.
+
+"Dear Mother and Comrade," he wrote in a letter home, "I have come to
+the conclusion that the so-called nobility to which I belong has never
+done anything useful. For centuries and centuries and centuries we have
+been living at the expense of those good, honest, overworked people, the
+peasantry. It is enough to drive one to suicide. Yes, mamma darling, we
+are a race of drones and robbers. The ignorant, unkempt moujiks that we
+treat like beasts are in reality angels compared to us. There is
+something in them--in their traditions and in the inherent purity of
+their souls--which should inspire us with reverence. Yet they are
+literally starved and three-fourths of their toil goes to maintain the
+army and the titled classes."
+
+Further down in the same letter he said: "Every great writer in the
+history of our literature has been in prison or exiled. Our noblest
+thinker and critic, Chernyshevsky, is languishing in Siberia. Why? Why?
+My hair stands erect when I think of these things."
+
+When it came to posting the letter, it dawned upon him that such
+sentiments were not to be trusted to the mails, and, feeling himself a
+conspirator, he committed the epistle to the flames.
+
+He was touched by the spirit of that peasant worship--the religion of
+the "penitent nobility"--which was the spirit of the best unproscribed
+literature of the day as well as of the "underground" movement.
+Turgeneff owed the origin of his fame to the peasant portraits of his
+_Notes of a Huntsman_. Nekrasoff, the leading poet of the period, and a
+score of other writers were perpetually glorifying the peasant, going
+into ecstasies over him, bewailing him. The peasant they drew was a
+creature of flesh-and-blood reality, but shed over him was the golden
+halo of idealism. The central doctrine of the movement was a theory that
+the survival of the communistic element in the Russian village, was
+destined to become the basis of the country's economic and political
+salvation; that Russia would leap into an ideal social arrangement
+without having to pass through capitalism; that her semi-barbaric
+peasant, kindly and innocent as a dove and the martyr of centuries,
+carried in his person the future glory, moral as well as material, of
+his unhappy country. As to the living peasant, he had no more knowledge
+of this adoration of himself (nor capacity to grasp the meaning of the
+movement, if an attempt had been made to explain it to him) than a
+squirrel has of the presence of a "q" in the spelling of its name.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sophia disappeared from St. Petersburg, and Pavel found himself cut off
+from the "underground" world once more. The prints she had left him only
+served to excite his craving for others of the same character. The
+preoccupied, mysterious air of the "radicals" at the university
+tantalised him. He was in a veritable fever of envy, resentment,
+intellectual and spiritual thirst. He subscribed liberally to the
+various revolutionary funds that were continually being raised under the
+guise of charity, and otherwise tried to manifest his sympathy with the
+movement, all to no purpose. His contributions were accepted, but his
+advances were repulsed. One day he approached a student whom he had once
+given ten rubles "for a needy family"--a thin fellow with a very long
+neck and the face of a chicken.
+
+"I should like to get something to read," he said, trying to copy the
+tone of familiar simplicity which he had used with Sophia. "I have read
+one number of _Forward!_ and another thing or two, but that's all I have
+been able to get."
+
+"Pardon me," the chicken-face answered, colouring, "I really don't know
+what you mean. Can't you get those books in the book-stores or in the
+public library?"
+
+Pavel was left with an acute pang of self-pity. He felt like a pampered
+child undergoing ill-treatment at the hands of strangers. His mother and
+all his relatives thought so much of him, while these fellows, who
+would deem it a privilege to talk to any of them, were treating him as
+a nobody and a spy. The tears came to his eyes. But presently he
+clenched his fists and said to himself, "I _will_ be admitted to their
+set."
+
+In his fidget he happened to think of Pani Oginska. As the scene at the
+German watering-place came back to him, he was seized with a desire to
+efface the affront he had offered her. "How can I rest until I have seen
+her and asked her pardon?" he said to himself. "If I were a real man and
+not a mere phrase-monger I should start out on the journey at once. But,
+of course, I won't do anything of the kind, and writing of such things
+is impossible. I _am_ a phrase-maker. That's all I am."
+
+But he soliloquized himself into the reflection that Pani Oginska was
+likely to know some of her imprisoned son's friends, if, indeed, she was
+not in the "underground" world herself, and the very next morning found
+him in a railway car, bound for the south.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pani Oginska's estate was near the boundary line between the province to
+which it belonged and the one whose capital was Miroslav, a considerable
+distance from a railway station. Pavel covered that distance in a
+post-sleigh drawn by a troika. His way lay in the steppe region. It was
+a very cold forenoon in mid-winter. The horses' manes were covered with
+frost; the postilion was bundled up so heavily that he looked like an
+old woman. The sun shone out of a blue, unconcerned sky upon a waste of
+eery whiteness. There were ridges of drifts and there were black patches
+of bare ground, but the general perspective unfolded an unbroken plane
+of snow, a level expanse stretching on either side of the smooth road,
+seemingly endless and bottomless, destitute of any trace of life save
+for an occasional inn by the roadside or the snow-bound hovel and
+outhouses of a shepherd in the distance--a domain of silence and numb
+monotony. That this desert of frozen sterility would four or five months
+later, be transformed into a world of grass and birds seemed as
+inconceivable as the sudden disappearance of the ocean.
+
+The last few versts were an eternity. Pavel's heart leaped with a
+foretaste of the exciting interview.
+
+"Lively, my man," he pressed the postilion. "Can't your horses get a
+move on them?"
+
+The postilion nodded his muffled head and set up a fierce yelp, for all
+the world like a wolf giving chase; whereupon the animals, apparently
+scared to death, broke into a desperate gallop, the scud flying, the
+sleigh dashing along like an electric car in open country, its bell
+ringing frostily.
+
+"That's better," Pavel shouted with a thrill of physical pleasure and
+speaking with difficulty for the breakneck speed that seemed to fling
+the breath out of his lungs. "That's better, my man. You shall get a
+good tip. But where have you learned the trick?"
+
+The postilion gave a muffled grunt of appreciation and went on howling
+with all his might.
+
+They passed through a small village. The chimneys of some of the white
+clay hovels on either side of the road poured out clouds of sweetish,
+nauseating smoke. Wood being scarce in these parts, the peasantry made
+fuel of manure.
+
+At last the sleigh swung into the great front yard of Pani Oginska's
+manor house. It was greeted by the curious eyes of half a dozen
+servants. Pavel entered a warm vestibule with a painted floor, where he
+found waiting to meet him Pani Oginska and an aged man with hair as
+white as the snow without. He bowed politely and asked, in French, with
+nervous timidity:
+
+"Do you remember me, Madame Oginska?"
+
+She screwed up her eyes as she scanned his flushed, frozen face.
+
+"Prince Boulatoff!" she said in a perplexed whisper.
+
+"I have come all the way from St. Petersburg to beg your pardon, Madame
+Oginska," he fired out. "I acted like a brute on that occasion. I was an
+idiotic boy. Forgive me."
+
+"Have you actually come all the way from St. Petersburg, to tell me
+that?" she asked with a hearty peal of laughter. She introduced him to
+the white-haired man, her father, who first made a bow full of
+old-fashioned dignity and then gave Pavel's cold hand a doddering grasp.
+
+"So you have really come for that express purpose?" Pani Oginska
+resumed, while a servant was relieving the newcomer of his fur-lined
+coat, fur cap, heavy gloves, muffler and storm shoes. "A case of
+compunction, I suppose?"
+
+Her father followed them as far as the open door of a vast, plainly
+furnished parlour, and after looming on the threshold for a minute or
+two, in an attitude of pained dignity, he bowed himself away. Pani
+Oginska gently pressed the young man into a huge, rusty easy-chair, she
+herself remaining in a standing posture, her mind apparently divided
+between hospitality and an important errand upon which she seemed to
+have been bent when he arrived. She wore a furred jacket, her head in a
+grey shawl and her feet in heavy top-boots--a costume jarringly out of
+accord with her pale, delicate, nunnish face. She made quite a new
+impression on the young prince.
+
+"I was blind then," he began, when they were left alone. "My eyes were
+closed."
+
+"Oh, you needn't go into detail," she rejoined with an amused look. "I
+think I can guess how it has come about. You have caught the contagion,
+haven't you?"
+
+"Why call it 'contagion?' It's the truth; it's justice. If I hadn't been
+such a silly boy when I first had the pleasure of meeting you, I should
+certainly not have acted the way I did."
+
+"A boy? And what are you now, pray? An old man with the weight of
+experience on your shoulders?" she asked with motherly gaiety. "Well,
+we'll talk it over later on, or, indeed, we'll find better things to
+talk about; and meanwhile I want you to excuse me, prince, and make
+yourself comfortable without me. You are hungry, of course?"
+
+"Not at all. I had luncheon at the station."
+
+"Well, you shall have some refreshments at any rate, and by and by I
+shall be back. I am a rather busy woman, you see. I have to be my own
+manager, and there are a thousand and one things to look after, and the
+snow is rather deep"--pointing at her heavy boots. "Well, here are some
+books and magazines. _Au revoir._" She made for the door, but faced
+about again. "By the way, prince, does your mother know of this crazy
+trip of yours?"
+
+"I confess she does not," he answered, feeling helplessly like a boy.
+"Why?"
+
+"Why! Because she is the best woman in the world, and because it's too
+bad you did anything so foolish without letting her know at least. By
+the way, this is anything but a desirable place for a young man to
+visit. Since my son got into trouble the police have tried to keep an
+eye on us; but then the police are so stupid. Still, I am sorry you
+didn't first consult your mother. If you boys would only let yourselves
+be guided by your mothers you would be spared many a trouble."
+
+"Is that the prime object of life--to guard against harm to oneself?"
+Pavel protested.
+
+She fixed him with a look of amusement, and then remarked sadly: "You
+_have_ caught the contagion, poor thing. I'll write your mother about
+it. Let her put a stop to it if it isn't too late."
+
+He took fire. "I don't know what you are hinting at, Madame Oginska," he
+said. Asking her to introduce him to Nihilists seemed out of the
+question.
+
+"I am hinting at those 'circles,' prince. You probably belong to one of
+them; that's what I am hinting at. Don't you, now?"
+
+"I don't belong to any circles. Nor do I know what you mean, madame."
+
+"Well, well. You have come to ask me not to be offended with you, and
+now it seems to be my turn to ask you not to be angry with me. Don't be
+uneasy, prince. I shan't write to your mother. Indeed, she couldn't
+afford to be in correspondence with me at all. However, if you really
+aren't yet mixed up in those dreadful things"--there was a dubious
+twinkle in her eye--"you had better keep out of them in the future, too.
+Think of your charming mother and take care of yourself, prince. Well, I
+have got to go. It's barbaric of me to leave you, but I'll soon be back.
+Here are some books and magazines. Or wait, I have another occupation
+for you. I want you to meet the best Jew in the world. I want you to
+examine him in 'Gentile lore,' as his people would put it. They would
+kill me, his people, if they knew he came to read my 'Gentile books.'"
+
+"He is a brainy fellow," she went on, leading the way through a
+labyrinth of rooms and corridors, "chockful of that Talmud of theirs,
+don't you know. Now that he is married they are trying to make a
+business man of him, but he prefers worldly wisdom and that sort of
+thing. I let him use my library, the only place he has for his 'unholy'
+studies, in fact. He is supposed to come on business here. He lives in a
+small town a mile from here."
+
+She was speaking in Russian now, a language she had perfect command of,
+but which she spoke with a strong Polish accent, making it sound to
+Pavel as though she was declaiming poetry. Twelve years ago, before she
+inherited this estate, and when she still lived in Poland, her
+birthplace, she could scarcely speak it at all.
+
+She took him into a room whose walls were lined with books, mostly old
+and worn, and whose two windows looked out upon a frozen pond in front
+of a snow-covered clump of trees.
+
+"Monsieur Parmet, Prince Boulatoff," she said, as a man sprang to his
+feet with the air of one startled from mental absorption. He was of
+strong, ungainly build, with the peculiar stamp of rabbinical
+scholarship on a plump, dark-bearded face. "See how much he knows,
+prince. He thinks he can take the examination for a certificate of
+maturity and enter the university. But then he thinks he knows
+everything." With this she left them to themselves.
+
+Pavel was in a whirl of embarrassment and annoyance, but the abashed
+smile of the other mollified him. "What I need more than anything else
+is to be examined in Latin and Greek," Parmet said. "I haven't had my
+exercises looked over for a long time, and it may be all wrong for all I
+know." His Russian had a Yiddish accent. He spoke in low, purring tones
+that seemed to soften the heavy outline of his figure. He was a
+lumbering mass of physical strength, one of those bearlike giants whom
+village people will describe as bending horseshoes like so many blades
+of grass or driving nails into a wall with their bare knuckles for a
+hammer. His dark-brown eyes shone meekly.
+
+"Have you learned it all by yourself?" Pavel asked.
+
+"Not altogether."
+
+Pavel began with an air of lofty reluctance, but he was soon carried
+away by the niceties of the ancient syntax, and his stiffness melted
+into didactic animation. As to Parmet, his plump, dark face was an image
+of religious ecstasy. Pavel warmed to him. His Talmudic gestures and
+intonation amused him.
+
+"There's no trouble about your Latin," he said, familiarly; "no trouble
+whatever."
+
+"Isn't there? It was Pani Oginska's son who gave me the first start,"
+the other said, blissfully, uttering the name in a lowered voice. "If it
+had not been for him I should still be immersed in the depths of
+darkness."
+
+"'Immersed in the depths of darkness!' There is a phrase for you! Why
+should you use high-flown language like that?"
+
+Parmet smiled, shrugging his shoulders bashfully. "Will you kindly try
+me on Greek now?" he said.
+
+"One second. That must have been quite a little while ago when Pani
+Oginska's son taught you, wasn't it?"
+
+Parmet tiptoed over to the open door, closed it, tiptoed back and said:
+"Not quite two years. If you knew what a man of gold he was! They are
+slowly killing him, the murderers. And why? What had he done? He could
+not harm a fly. He is all goodness, an angel like his mother. He was of
+delicate health when they took him, and now he is melting like a
+candle. Why, oh why, should men like him have to perish that way?"
+
+"Isn't it rather risky for you to be coming here?" Pavel demanded,
+looking him over curiously.
+
+Parmet smiled, a queer, outlandish smile, at once naive and knowing, as
+he replied:
+
+"Risky? No. What does an old-fashioned Jew like myself care about
+politics? I am supposed to come here on business. Did you know Eugene?"
+
+"Who is Eugene? Pani Oginska's son?"
+
+"Yes. I thought you knew him."
+
+"I wish I had. People like him are the only ones worth knowing. Most of
+the others are scoundrels, humbugs, cold-blooded egoists; that's what
+they are."
+
+So talking, they gradually confided to each other the story of their
+respective conversions and tribulations. Parmet followed the prince's
+tale first with a look of childlike curiosity and then with an air that
+betrayed emotion. As he listened he kept rubbing his hand nervously.
+When Pavel had concluded, the Jew took to tiptoeing up and down the
+room, stopped in front of him and said, with great ardour:
+
+"Don't grieve, my dear man. I may be able to help you. I know a friend
+of Eugene's who could put you in touch with the proper persons."
+
+"Is he in St. Petersburg?"
+
+"No, but that's no matter. He can arrange it. He knows somebody there.
+I'll see him as soon as I can, even if I have to travel many miles for
+it."
+
+Pavel grasped his hand silently.
+
+"Well," the other said. "There was a time when I thought every Christian
+hard-hearted and cruel. Now I am ashamed of myself for having harboured
+such ideas in my mind. Every Christian whose acquaintance I happen to
+make turns out to be an angel rather than a human being."
+
+"Why these compliments?" Pavel snarled. "Most of the Christians I know
+are knaves. The whole world is made up of knaves for that matter."
+
+When Pani Oginska came home and saw them together, she said:
+
+"I knew I should find you two making love to each other."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A month or two after Pavel's return to St. Petersburg a tall blond young
+man with typical Great-Russian features looked him up at the university.
+
+"I have received word from the south about you," he said, without
+introducing himself.
+
+"I am pleased to meet you," Pavel returned gruffly, "but I hope I won't
+be kept on probation and be subjected to all sorts of humiliations."
+
+"Why, why," the other said, in confusion. "I'll be glad to let you have
+any kind of literature there is and to introduce you to other comrades.
+That's why I have been looking for you. Why should you take it that
+way?"
+
+Pavel's face broke into a smile. "Dashed if I know why I should.
+Something possessed me to put on a harsh front. It was mere parading, I
+suppose. Don't mind it. What shall I call you?"
+
+"Why--er--oh, call me anything," the other answered, colouring.
+
+"Very well, then. I'll call you Peter; or no, will 'godfather' do? That
+is, provided you are really going to be one to me," Pavel said, in a
+vain struggle to suppress his exultation.
+
+"It'll be all right," his new acquaintance replied with bashful ardour.
+
+"Godfather, then?"
+
+Godfather introduced him to several other "radicals," who gave him
+underground prints and a list of legitimate books for a course of
+"serious" reading. He would stay at home a whole week at a time without
+dressing or going down for his meals, perusing volume after volume,
+paper after paper. When he did dress and go out it was to get more books
+or to seek answers to the questions which disturbed his peace. He was in
+a state of vernal agitation, in a fever of lofty impulses. And so much
+like a conspirator did he feel by now, that he no longer even thought of
+opening his mind to his mother. Indeed, the change that had come over
+him was so complete that she was not likely to understand him if he had.
+To drive her to despair seemed to be the only result he could expect of
+such a confession. The secret movement appealed to him as a host of
+saints. He longed to be one of them, to be martyred with them. It was
+clear to him that some day he would die for the Russian people; die a
+slow, a terrible death; and this slow, terrible death impressed him as
+the highest pinnacle of happiness.
+
+When his mother came to see him, a year later, she thought he was in
+love.
+
+He was in the thick of the movement by that time. He was learning
+shoemaking with a view to settling in a village. He would earn his
+livelihood in the sweat of his brow, and he would carry the light of his
+lofty ideas into the hovels of the suffering peasantry. But his plans in
+this direction were never realized. The period of "going to the people"
+soon came to an end.
+
+The mothlike self-immolation of university students continued, but the
+spirit of unresisting martyrdom could not last. Violence was bound to
+result from it.
+
+The next year saw the celebrated "trial of 193," mostly college men and
+college women. They were charged with political propaganda, and the bold
+stand they took thrilled the country. The actual number tried was,
+indeed, much less than 193, for of those who had been kept in prison in
+connection with that case as many as seventy had perished in their cold,
+damp cells while waiting to be arraigned. Of those who were tried many
+were acquitted, but instead of regaining their liberty a large number of
+these were transported to Siberia "by administrative order." Moreover,
+hundreds of people were slowly killed in the dungeons or exiled to
+Siberia without any process of law whatsoever. School children were
+buried in these consumption breeding cells; whole families were ruined
+because one of their members was accused of reading a socialist
+pamphlet. Student girls were subjected to indignities by dissolute
+officials--all "by administrative order."
+
+The Russian penal code imposes the same penalty for disfiguring the eyes
+of an imperial portrait as it does for blinding a live subject of the
+Czar. But political suspects were tortured without regard even to this
+code.
+
+It gradually dawned upon the propagandists that instead of being
+decimated in a fruitless attempt to get at the common people they should
+first devote themselves to an effort in the direction of free speech. By
+a series of bold attacks it was expected to extort the desired reforms
+from the government. Nothing was lawless, so it was argued, when
+directed, in self-defence, against the representatives of a system that
+was the embodiment of bloodthirsty lawlessness.
+
+Thus peaceful missionaries became Terrorists. The government inaugurated
+a system of promiscuous executions; the once unresisting propagandists
+retaliated by assassination after assassination. Socialists were hanged
+for disseminating their ideas or for resisting arrest; high officials
+were stabbed or shot down for the bloodthirsty cruelty with which they
+fought the movement; and finally a series of plots was inaugurated
+aiming at the life of the emperor himself.
+
+The White Terror of the throne was met by the Red Terror of the
+Revolution.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+A MEETING ON NEW TERMS.
+
+
+It was an evening in the spring, 1879. The parlour of a wealthy young
+engineer in Kharkoff--a slender little man with eyelids that looked
+swollen and a mouth that was usually half-open, giving him a drowsy
+appearance--was filled with Nihilists come to hear "an important man
+from St. Petersburg." The governor of the province had recently been
+killed for the maltreatment of political prisoners and students of the
+local university, while a month later a bold attempt had been made on
+the life of the Czar at the capital. The new phase of the movement was
+asserting itself with greater and greater emphasis, and the address by
+the stranger, who was no other than Pavel Boulatoff, though he was known
+here as Nikolai, was awaited with thrills of impatience.
+
+The room was fairly crowded and the speaker of the evening was on hand,
+but the managers of the gathering were waiting for several more
+listeners. When two of these arrived, one of them proved to be Elkin. He
+and Pavel had not met since their graduation from the Miroslav
+gymnasium. Both wore scant growths of beard and both looked considerably
+changed, though Pavel was still slim and boyish of figure and Elkin's
+face as anaemic and chalk-coloured as it had been four years ago. Elkin
+had been expelled from the University for signing some sort of
+petition. Since then he had nominally been engaged in revolutionary
+business. In reality he spent his nights in gossip and tea-drinking, and
+his days in sleep. Too proud to sponge on his Nihilist friends for more
+than tea and bread and an occasional cutlet, and too lazy to give
+lessons, he was growing ever thinner and lazier. He was a man of
+spotless honesty, overflowing with venom, yet endowed with a certain
+kind of magnetism.
+
+When Elkin discovered who the important revolutionist from St.
+Petersburg was the blood rushed to his face. It was a most disagreeable
+surprise. But Pavel greeted him with a cordiality so free from
+consciousness, and his roaring laughter, as he compared the
+circumstances of their last quarrel and those that surrounded their
+present meeting, was so hearty that Elkin's hostility gave way to a
+feeling of elation at being so well received by the lion of the evening.
+He was one of the rank and file of the local "Circles," and the
+prominence into which Pavel's attention brought him at this meeting, in
+the presence of several of his chums, gave him a sense of promotion and
+triumph. He wished he could whisper into the ear of everybody present
+that this important revolutionist who was known to the gathering as
+Nikolai was Prince Boulatoff.
+
+"I am still in the dark as to the identity of that girl," said Pavel.
+
+"I shouldn't keep it from you now," the other returned, exposing an
+exultant lozenge of white teeth. "Next time we meet in Miroslav I shall
+look her up and introduce you to her. I have not seen her for a long
+time. She is quite an interesting specimen."
+
+"I should like to meet her very much," Pavel said earnestly. "I have
+been wanting to know something about her all along. You see, if there
+were a circle in that blessed out-of-the-way town of ours one might be
+able to find out things, but if there is I have not seen anybody who
+knows of its existence. I myself have not been there for two years."
+
+"I was there last summer. There is a small circle there. At least there
+are several people who get things through me, but that girl I have not
+seen for a long time."
+
+"Is it possible? Can it be that you have not tried to get her in?
+Really, a Miroslav circle without her seems like Hamlet without the
+Prince of Denmark."
+
+"Yes, she is a lass with some grit to her, and with brains too."
+
+"If she is, we ought to get her in. We ought to get her in."
+
+"She was only sixteen when that affair happened."
+
+"Was she? Well, you wouldn't believe it, but my curiosity about that
+girl has been smouldering ever since. If it were not for her and for
+poor Pievakin I might not be in the movement now."
+
+"I see. It needed a little girl to make a convert of a great man like
+you. Well, well. That's interesting," Elkin remarked, with a
+lozenge-shaped sneer; but he hastened to atone for it by adding,
+ardently: "You're right. She should be in the circle. I'll make it my
+business to see her next time I am there. I'll go there on purpose, in
+fact."
+
+He was always trying to be clever, for the most part with venom in his
+attempts. Friend or foe, whatever humour was his was habitually coloured
+by an impulse to sting. "For the sake of a pretty word he would not
+spare his own father," as a Russian proverb phrases it, and his pretty
+words or puns were usually tinctured with malice.
+
+He painted the Miroslav girl in the most attractive colours. It gave
+him a peculiar satisfaction to whet Pavel's curiosity and to be able to
+say mutely: "Indeed, she is even more interesting than you suppose, yet
+while you are so crazy to know her, I, who do know her, have not even
+thought of getting her into my Circle."
+
+When Pavel was making his speech Elkin, whose natural inclination was to
+disapprove, listened with an air of patronising concurrence. Pavel's
+oratory was of the unsophisticated, "hammer-and-tongs," fiery type, yet
+its general effect, especially when he assailed existing conditions, was
+one of complaint. In spite of the full-throated buzz of his voice and
+the ferocious rush of his words, he conveyed the impression of a
+schoolboy laying his grievance before his mother.
+
+Before he took leave from his former classmate the two had another talk
+of the "heroine of the Pievakin demonstration." It was Elkin who brought
+up the subject, which took them back to the time when, from a Nihilist
+point of view, he was Pavel's superior. He found him a ready listener.
+The student girls of the secret movement, their devotion to the cause,
+their pluck, the inhuman sufferings which the government inflicted on
+those of them who fell into its hands,--all this was the aureole of
+Pavel's ecstasy. His heart had remained spotless, the wild oats he had
+sown during the first weeks of his stay in the capital notwithstanding.
+The word Woman would fill him with tender whisperings of a felicity
+hallowed by joint sacrifices, of love crowned with martyrdom, and it was
+part of the soliloquies which the sex would breathe into his soul to
+tell himself that he owned his conversion to a girl. But these were
+sentimentalities of which the Spartan traditions of the underground
+movement had taught him to be ashamed. Moreover, there was really no
+time for such things.
+
+During the following summer and fall mines were laid in several places
+under railway tracks over which the Emperor was expected to pass. The
+revolutionists missed their aim, but the Czar's narrow escape, coupled
+with the gigantic scope of the manifold plot, with the skill and the
+boldness it implied, and with the fact that the digging of these
+subterranean passages had gone on for months without attracting notice,
+made a profound impression. Such a display of energy and dexterity on
+the part of natives in a country where one was accustomed to trace every
+bit of enterprise to some foreign agency, could not but produce a
+fascinating effect. The gendarmes were apparently no match for the
+Nihilists.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+"TERRORISM WITHOUT VIOLENCE."
+
+
+One afternoon, in December of the same year, Pavel sat in a student
+restaurant, in the capital, eating fried steak and watching the door for
+a man with whom he had an appointment. He ate without appetite and
+looked fatigued and overworked. He had been out from an early hour,
+bustling about on perilous business and dodging spies. It was extremely
+exhausting and enervating, this prowling about under the perpetual
+strain of danger. He was liable to be arrested at any moment. It was
+like living continually under fire.
+
+The restaurant was full of cigarette smoke and noise. Somebody in the
+rear of Pavel, who evidently had nothing to say, was addressing somebody
+else in high-flown Russian and with great gusto. His fine resonant
+voice, of which he was apparently conscious, jarred on Pavel's nerves,
+interfering with what little relish he had for his meal. He was eyeing
+the design on the frost-covered door-glass and lashing himself into a
+fury over the invisible man's phrase-mongery, when he was accosted by a
+fair-complexioned young woman:
+
+"Pardon me, but if I am not mistaken you are Prince Boulatoff?"
+
+"That's my name. And with whom have I the pleasure----?"
+
+"Oh, that would really be uninteresting to know. I'll tell you, though,
+that I belong to Miroslav."
+
+He reluctantly invited her to a glass of tea, which she accepted,
+saying: "It may look as if I were forcing myself upon your acquaintance,
+prince, but I really could not help it. Whatever comes from Miroslav is
+irresistible to me." And talking rapidly in effervescent, choking
+sentences, she told him that her name was Maria Andreevna Safonova
+(Safonoff), that she was a student at the Bestusheff Women's College and
+that her brother was a major of gendarmes.
+
+Pavel had heard of there being a daughter or a sister of a Miroslav
+gendarme officer at the Bestusheff College; also that she made a
+favourable impression on her classmates; but he had been too busy to
+give the information more than passing notice.
+
+"Is your brother in Miroslav?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, and I can assure you he is a gentleman, even if he is in the
+gendarme service. Some day, I hope, he'll give it up. He is really too
+good to be in the business."
+
+Pavel ascribed her ebullition to the nature of the subject, but he soon
+found that she was in the same state of excitement when a railroad
+ticket was the topic. She looked twenty-three but she had the cheeks and
+eyes of a chubby infant, while her arms and figure had the lank,
+immature effect of a girl of thirteen.
+
+While they sat talking, a dark man in the military uniform of the
+Medico-Surgical Academy entered the cafe. It was Parmet, the man Pavel
+was waiting for. Finding him engaged, the newcomer passed his table
+without greeting him, took a seat in a remote corner and buried himself
+in a book.
+
+Mlle. Safonoff did all the talking. She had not sat at Boulatoff's
+table half an hour nor said much about Miroslav before she had poured
+out some of her most intimate thoughts to him.
+
+"If you think it a pleasure to be the sister of a gendarme officer you
+are mistaken," she said. "It is not agreeable to be treated by everybody
+as though you had been put at the college to spy upon the girls, is it?
+My brother is a better man than the brothers and fathers and
+grandfathers of all the other student-girls put together, I assure you,
+prince. But then, of course, you may think I'm trying to spy on you,
+too."
+
+"No, I don't," said Boulatoff with a laugh, pricking up his ears.
+
+"Don't you, really?" And her eyes bubbled.
+
+"Of course, I don't."
+
+"Oh, if you knew how good he is, my brother. Do you remember the time
+when poor Pievakin left Miroslav? I know you do. You were in the eighth
+class then. Well, I may as well tell you, prince"--she lowered her
+voice--"had it not been for my brother there would have been no end of
+arrests at the railroad station. He simply told his men not to make a
+fuss. You see, I can confide in you without hesitation, for who would
+suspect a Boulatoff of--pardon the word--spying? But I, why, I am the
+sister of a gendarme officer, so it is quite natural to suppose, and so
+forth and so on, don't you know."
+
+"Do you know the girl who made that speech?"
+
+"There you are," she said dolefully. "I happened to be at the other end
+of the room just then. When I tried to find out who she was everybody
+was mum. Fancy, my best girl-friend said to me: 'If I were you, Masha, I
+shouldn't want to know her name if I could. Suppose you utter it in
+sleep and your brother overhears you.' The idiots! They didn't know it
+was my brother who saved that girl from being arrested. And, by the way,
+if she had been arrested by some of his men, it would not have been hard
+for her to escape. I know I am saying more than I should, but I really
+can't help it. You have no idea how I feel about these things. And now,
+at the sight of you, prince--a man from Miroslav--I seem to be going to
+pieces altogether. Well, I don't mean, though, that my brother would
+have let her escape. But then I have an aunt, who is related to the
+warden of the Miroslav prison by marriage, so she can arrange things
+there. Oh, she's the greatest revolutionist you ever saw. Of course, I
+don't know whether you sympathise with these things, prince, but I'll
+tell you frankly, _I_ do. It was that aunt of mine who talked it into
+me. She is simply crazy to do something. She is sorry there are no
+political prisoners in Miroslav. If there were she would get them out.
+She's just itching for a chance to do something of that sort. And yet
+she never met a revolutionist in her life, nor saw a scrap of
+underground paper."
+
+To question the ingenuousness of this gush seemed to be the rankest
+absurdity. The Russian spies of the period were poor actors. Pavel was
+seized by a desire to show her that he, at least, did not suspect her of
+spying, and quite forgetting to restrain the "idiotic breadth" of his
+Russian nature for which he was often rebuked by a certain member of the
+revolutionary Executive Committee who was forever berating his comrades
+for their insufficient caution, he slipped a crisp copy of the _Will of
+the People_ into her hand.
+
+"Put it into your muff," he said.
+
+The colour surged into her chubby face. Her whole figure seemed tense
+with sudden excitement, as though the fine glossy paper in her hand
+were charged with electricity.
+
+"How shall I thank you?" she gasped.
+
+Pavel saw a moist glitter in her eyes, and as he got up, his slender
+erect little frame, too, seemed charged with electricity. When she had
+gone he asked himself whether it had not all been acting, after all. He
+cursed himself for his imprudence, but he said: "Oh, well, what must be
+will be," and as usual the phrase acted like an effectual incantation on
+his frame of mind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Parmet had been dubbed Bismarck, because he bore considerable
+resemblance to Gambetta. Another nickname, one which he had invented
+himself, on a similar theory of contrasts, was Makar. Makar was as
+typically Slavic as his face was Semitic. His military uniform, which he
+had to wear because his Academy was under the auspices of the War
+Department, ill became him. Instead of concealing the rabbinical
+expression of his face, it emphasised it. When they came out of the
+restaurant, a man, shouldering a stick, was running along the
+snow-covered pavement, lighting the street-lamps, as though in dread of
+being forestalled by somebody.
+
+"Guess who that girl is," Pavel said.
+
+"Have I heard of her?"
+
+"No. Quite an amusing sort of a damsel. Seething and steaming for all
+the world like a samovar. You should have seen her calflike ecstasy when
+I handed her something to read. I was afraid she was going to have a
+fit."
+
+Makar trotted silently on, continually curling himself in his wretched
+grey cloak and striking one foot against the other, to knock the caked
+drab-coloured snow off his boots. Pavel wore a new furred coat.
+
+"She may be useful though," Pavel resumed, after a pause. "That is,
+provided she is all she seems to be. Her brother is a gendarme major.
+What do you think of that?"
+
+"Is he?" Makar asked, looking up at his companion in beatific surprise.
+
+"Yes, and she says he's a good fellow, too. Of course, she's quite a
+full-fledged ninny herself, and ought to be taken with a carload of
+salt, but she referred to some facts with which I happen to be
+familiar." While he was describing the girl's aunt, a passing soldier
+saluted Makar, mistaking him for an army officer. Makar, however, was
+too absorbed in his companion's talk to be aware of what was going on
+about him. Pavel shrieked with laughter. "He must be a pretty raw sort
+of recruit to take _you_ for a warrior," he said. When he had finished
+his sketch of the woman who was longing to set somebody free, the
+medical student paused in the middle of the sidewalk.
+
+"Why, she's a godsend, then," he said.
+
+"Moderate your passions, Mr. Army Officer," Pavel said languidly,
+mocking his old gymnasium director. "If she does not turn out to be a
+spy we'll see what we can do with her. She strikes me rather favourably,
+though."
+
+"Why, you oughtn't to neglect her, Pasha. If I were you I would lose no
+time in making her brother's acquaintance. Think of the possibilities of
+it!"
+
+"Bridle your exuberance, young man. Her brother lives many miles from
+here. He is on the hunt for sedition in the most provincial of
+provinces. Want to make a Terrorist of him? Go ahead. He lives in
+Miroslav. There."
+
+"In Miroslav!" Makar echoed, with pride in the capital of his native
+province.
+
+Presently they entered a courtyard and took to climbing a steep stony
+staircase. Strong, inviting odours of cabbage soup and cooked meat
+greeted them at several of the landings. Makar's lodging was on the
+sixth floor. He had moved in only a few days ago and the chief object of
+Pavel's visit was to make a mental note of its location.
+
+The first thing Makar did as he got into the room was to put a pitcher
+on one of his two windows. The windows commanded a little side street,
+and the pitcher was Makar's safety signal. When he had lit his lamp a
+sofa, freshly covered with green oil-cloth, proved to be the best piece
+of furniture in the room, the smell of the oil-cloth mingling with the
+stale odours of tobacco smoke with which the very walls seemed to be
+saturated.
+
+"Ugh, what a room!" Pavel said, sniffing. They talked of a revolutionist
+who had recently been arrested and to whom they referred as "Alexandre."
+Special importance was attached by the authorities to the capture of
+this man, because among the things found at his lodgings was a diagram
+of the Winter Palace with a pencil mark on the imperial dining hall. As
+the prisoner was a conspicuous member of the Terrorists' Executive
+Committee, the natural inference was that another bold plot was under
+way, one which had something to do with the Czar's dining room, but
+which had apparently been frustrated by the discovery of the diagram.
+The palace guard was strongly re-enforced and every precaution was taken
+to insure the monarch's safety. Now, the Terrorists had their man in the
+very heart of the enemy's camp, and the result of the search of
+Alexandre's lodgings was no secret to them. This revolutionist, whose
+gloomy face was out of keeping with his carefully pomaded hair, kid
+gloves, silk hat, showy clothes and carefully trimmed whiskers a la
+Alexander II., was known to Makar as "the Dandy." Less than a year
+before he had obtained a position in the double capacity of spy and
+clerk, at the Third Section of his Majesty's Own Office, and so liked
+was he by his superiors that he had soon been made private secretary to
+the head of the secret service, every document of importance passing
+through his hands. Since then he had been communicating to the Executive
+Committee, now a list of new suspects, now the details of a contemplated
+arrest, now a copy of some secret circular to the gendarme offices of
+the empire.
+
+While they were thus conversing of Alexandre and the Dandy, Pavel
+stretched himself full length on the sofa and dozed off. When he opened
+his eyes, about two hours later, he found Parmet tiptoeing awkwardly up
+and down the room, his shadow a gigantic crab on the wall. Pavel broke
+into a boisterous peal of laughter.
+
+"Here is a figure for you! All that is needed is an artist to set to
+work and paint it."
+
+"Are you awake? Look here, Pasha. Your gendarme's sister and her aunt
+are haunting my mind."
+
+"Why, why, have you fallen in love with both of them at once?" Pavel
+asked as he jumped to his feet and shot his arms toward the ceiling. He
+looked refreshed and full of animal spirits.
+
+"Stop joking, Pasha, pray," Makar said in his purring, mellifluous
+voice. "It irritates me. It's a serious matter I want to speak to you
+about, and here you are bent upon fun." Pavel's story of the gendarme
+officer's sister had stirred in him visions of a mighty system of
+counter-espionage. He had a definite scheme to propose.
+
+Pavel found it difficult to work himself out of his playful mood until
+Makar fell silent and took to pacing the floor resentfully. When he had
+desisted, with a final guffaw over Makar's forlorn air, the medical
+student, warming up to fresh enthusiasm, said:
+
+"Well, to let that prison stand idle would be criminal negligence. That
+girl's aunt must be given a chance."
+
+"What's that?" Pavel said, relapsing into horseplay. "Do you want
+somebody nabbed on purpose to give a bored lady something to excite her
+nerves?" He finished the interrogation rather limply. It flashed upon
+him that what Makar was really aiming at was that some revolutionist
+should volunteer to be arrested on a denunciation from the Dandy or some
+other member of the party with a view to strengthening its position in
+the Third Section.
+
+Makar went on to plead for an organised effort to get into the various
+gendarme offices.
+
+"It is a terrible struggle we are in, Pasha. Our best men fall before
+they have time to turn round. If we had more revolutionists on the other
+side, Alexandre might be a free man now."
+
+"Well, and sooner or later you and I will be where he is now and be
+plunged into the sleep of the righteous, and there won't even be a goat
+to graze at our graves. Let the dead bury the dead, Makashka. We want
+the living for the firing line. We can't afford to let fresh blood turn
+sour in a damp cell, if we can help it."
+
+"But this is 'the firing line'," Makar returned with beseeching, almost
+with tearful emphasis. "If you only gave me a chance to explain myself.
+What I want is to have confusion carried into every branch of the
+government; I want the Czar to be surrounded by a masquerade of enemies,
+so that his henchmen will suspect each other of being either agents of
+the Third Section or revolutionists. Do you see the point? I want the
+Czar to be surrounded by a babel of mistrust and espionage. I want him
+to be dazed, staggered until he succumbs to this nightmare of suspicion
+and hastens to convoke a popular assembly, as Louis XVI. was forced to
+do; I want the inhabitants of our tear-drenched country to be treated
+like human beings without delay. My scheme practically amounts to a
+system or terrorism without violence, and I insist that one good man in
+the enemy's camp is of more value than the death of ten spies." His low,
+velvety voice rang clear, tremulous with pleading fervour; his face
+gleamed with an intellectual relish in his formula of the plan. As he
+spoke, he was twisting his mighty fist, opening and closing it again,
+Talmud-fashion, in unison with the rhythm of his sentences.
+
+Ejaculations like "visionary!" "phrase-maker!" were on the tip of
+Pavel's tongue, but he had not the heart to utter them. Aerial as the
+scheme was, Makar's plea had cast a certain spell over him. It was like
+listening to a beautiful piece of mythology.
+
+"Let us form a special force of men ready to go to prison, to be
+destroyed, if need be," Makar went on. "The loss of one man would mean,
+in each case, the saving of twenty. Think how many important comrades a
+single leak in the Third Section has saved us. It's a matter of plain
+arithmetic."
+
+"Of plain insanity," Pavel finally broke in.
+
+"Don't get excited, Pasha, pray. Can't you let me finish? If I am wrong
+you'll have plenty of time to prove it."
+
+His purring Talmudic voice and the smell of the fresh oil-cloth were
+unbearable to Pavel now.
+
+"It's like this," Makar resumed. "In the first place [he bent down his
+little finger] every honest man is sure to be arrested some day, and
+what difference does it make whether the end comes a few months sooner
+or a few months later? In the second place [he bent down the next
+finger] there must be some more people like that girl's aunt. It is
+quite possible that most of those who would be arrested on this plan
+would get out, and that itself would be a good thing, for it would add
+to the prestige of the party. Everything that reveals the weakness of
+the government on the one hand, and the cleverness and daring of our
+people on the other, is good for the cause. Every success scored by the
+'Will of the People' is a step in the direction of that for which men
+like yourself are staking their lives, Pasha. Don't interrupt me, pray.
+I'll go a step further. I am of the opinion that under certain
+conditions, where an escape is assured, it wouldn't be a bad idea to let
+one's self be arrested just in order to add another name to the list of
+political gaol-breakers, that is to say, to the list of the government's
+fiascos. Every little counts. Every straw increases that weight which
+will finally break the back of Russia's despot."
+
+"Do you really mean what you say, Makar? Do you actually want to be
+arrested?" Pavel asked.
+
+"Not at all. All I want is that another good man should gain the
+confidence of the Third Section and that another political prisoner
+should escape."
+
+"And what if all Mlle. Safonoff says turns out to be as idiotic a dream
+as all this tommyrot of yours?"
+
+"'If one is afraid of wolves one had better keep out of the woods.' You,
+yourself, have taken much greater chances than that, Pasha. If I am
+arrested with papers and the worst comes to the worst they won't hang
+me."
+
+"I see you take it seriously after all. Well, if you think I'll let you
+do anything of the kind you are a fool."
+
+"You can't prevent me from doing what I consider to be right. Nor do I
+want anybody else to send the denunciation which is to result in my
+arrest. I'll send it myself. All I want is that somebody should claim
+credit for it afterward, when I am in prison--on that very day, if
+possible. The search and arrest will be ordered from St. Petersburg, and
+then some of our men will say at the Third Section that the anonymous
+letter was his, adding some details about me. Details can be worked out
+later. Where there is a will there is a way. At any rate, I don't expect
+anybody but myself to bear the moral responsibility for my arrest."
+
+He talked on in the same strain until Pavel sprang to his feet, flushed
+with rage. "It's all posing--that's all there's to it!" he shouted. "On
+the surface it means that you are willing to sacrifice yourself without
+even attracting attention, but in reality this subtle modesty of yours
+is only the most elaborate piece of parading that was ever conceived.
+It's love of applause all the way through, and you are willing to stake
+your life on it. That's all there is about it."
+
+Makar grew yellow in the face and sweat broke out on his forehead. "In
+that case, there's no use talking, of course," he said in a very low
+voice. "If I am a humbug I am a humbug."
+
+"And if you are a fool, you are a fool," Pavel rejoined, with a
+conciliatory growl.
+
+"You need not back out, Pasha. Maybe you are right," Makar rejoined.
+"Who is absolutely free from vanity? Human nature is such a complex
+mechanism. One may be governed by love of approbation and, perhaps,
+also, by a certain adventuresome passion for the danger of the thing.
+The great question is whether there is something besides this. No, it is
+not all posing, Pasha. There are moments when I ask myself why I should
+not live as most people do, but I only have to realise all that is going
+on around us; the savage tyranny, the writhing millions, the hunger,
+the bottomless darkness, the unuttered groans,--I only have to think of
+this and of the dear comrades I have known who have been strangled on
+the gallows or are wasting away in the casemates; I need only picture
+all this, I say, to feel that even if there be an alloy of selfishness
+in my revolutionary interests, yet, in the main, it is this sense of the
+Great Wrong which keeps me from nursing my own safety. Do you know that
+the dangling corpses of our comrades are never absent from my mind? I am
+not without a heart, Pasha."
+
+"Nobody says you are, only you are a confounded dreamer, Makashka,"
+Pavel answered. "We have no time for dreams and poetry. Our struggle is
+one of hard, terrible prose."
+
+"You are even more of a dreamer than I, Pasha," Makar retorted,
+blissfully.
+
+When Makar resumed speaking the last echo of resentment was gone from
+his voice. "After all, one gets more than one gives. When I think of the
+moments of joy the movement affords me, of the ties of friendship with
+so many good people--the cream of the generation, the salt of the earth,
+the best children Russia ever gave birth to--when I think of the
+glorious atmosphere that surrounds me, of the divine ecstasy with which
+I view the future; when I recall all this I feel that I get a sort of
+happiness which no Rothschild could buy. To be kept in solitary
+confinement is anything but a pleasure, to be sure, but is there nothing
+to sweeten one's life there? And how about the thought that over yonder,
+outside, there are people who are going on with the struggle and who
+think of you sometimes? Sooner or later the government will yield. And
+then, oh then somebody--some comrade of ours--will throw the cell-door
+open, and I'll join in the celebration of our triumph. Really, Pasha, I
+am strong as a bull, and a few years of confinement would not kill me.
+While some of our people may die by the hand of the hangman, my life
+would be spared. Did you ever stop to think of the time when the cells
+of Siberia and of Peter and Paul are thrown open and one says to the
+immured comrades, 'Out with you, brothers! You're free! The nation is
+free!' Come, another year or two and this will be realised."
+
+"You had better save your sentimentalities for novices," Pavel said.
+"And, by the way, your eloquence is certainly of more use than your
+dreaming in a dungeon would be."
+
+He was arguing with a rock of stiff-necked will-power.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+MAKAR'S CANVASS.
+
+
+Parmet now gave most of his time to the secret movement, making himself
+useful in a variety of ways. His great unrealised ambition, however, was
+to work in an underground printing office--an offence which at the
+period was punished by a long term of penal servitude in Siberia. He had
+a feeling as though nothing one did for the movement could be regarded
+as a vital service to the cause of free speech as long as it fell short
+of typesetting in a secret printing establishment. He had applied for
+work of this kind several times, but his proverbial absent-mindedness
+stood in his way. Being in the habit of reading some book or newspaper
+as he walked through the streets, he would sometimes catch himself
+drinking in the contents of some "underground" publication in this
+manner. Once as he stood on a street corner intent upon a revolutionary
+leaflet, he heard an infuriated whisper:
+
+"Imbecile! Scoundrel!"
+
+When he raised his eyes he saw the ample back of a compactly built man
+dressed in citizen's clothes except for a broad military cap with a red
+band. This was "the Janitor," so nicknamed because he made it his
+business to go the rounds of "conspiracy houses" every morning and to
+pick a quarrel with those of their occupants who had neglected to
+furnish their windows with safety signals or were guilty of some other
+manifestation of "Russian breadth." The episode antedated the above
+conversation between Makar and Pavel by two months, and the medical
+student had not seen the Janitor since. He dreaded to meet him. At this
+minute, however, he was just the man he wanted to see, for it was he who
+had taken the initiative in getting the Dandy into the Third Section.
+Accordingly, Pavel had no sooner left him than he betook himself to a
+place at which he expected to find that revolutionist. The place was the
+lodging of a man who was known in the organisation as Purring Cat--a
+nickname based on his shaggy eyebrows and moustache. His face was almost
+entirely overgrown with hair. Short of stature, with a thick dark beard
+that reached down to his knees and with blue eyes that peered up from
+under his stern eyebrows, this formidable looking little man, the
+nearest approach to the wax-works version of a Russian Nihilist, was the
+gentlest soul on the Executive Committee. Besides Purring Cat and the
+Janitor, Makar found in the room Andrey, an extremely tall man with
+Tartarian features.
+
+The Janitor greeted Makar with a volley of oaths, stuttering as he
+spoke, as was usually the case when he was angry.
+
+"You have no business to be here," he fulminated. "You are just the man
+to bring a spy in tow. I shouldn't be a bit surprised if you had one at
+your heels now."
+
+"Come, don't fume," Makar pleaded, confusedly. "I won't be absent-minded
+any more. I have taken myself in hand. Besides, my absent-mindedness is
+not without its redeeming feature. You see, I am the last man to be
+suspected of being on my guard; so the spies would never bother me."
+
+Andrey and Purring Cat smiled. The Janitor started to do the same, but
+changed his mind. Instead, he broke into a more violent fit of temper
+and a more painful stutter than before. His compact figure was of medium
+height, his face very blond, with prominent eyes and well-trimmed red
+beard. His military cap matched the passport of a retired army officer
+under which he was registered at the police station. He was supposed to
+be employed at some civil tribunal, and every morning, on the stroke of
+eleven he would leave his lodgings, a portfolio under his arm, his
+military cap slightly cocked--the very personification of the part he
+acted. The name in his passport was Polivanoff. His real name was
+Michailoff, and under that name he was wanted by the gendarmes in
+prominent connection with several attempts on the life of the Czar. He
+had once escaped from under arrest and on another occasion he had
+managed to disappear from a railroad train while it was being searched
+for him. He was one of the ablest and bravest men in the party. His
+un-Russian punctuality and indefatigable attention to detail; his
+practical turn of mind and the way he had of nagging his friends for
+their lack of these qualities, were common topics of banter among the
+Terrorists. He had made a special study of every lane and court in the
+capital by which one might "trash" one's trail. He not only shadowed his
+fellow revolutionists to see if they were aware of being shadowed or
+whether they dressed in accordance with the type implied by their false
+passports, but he also made a practice of spying over the spies of the
+Third Section. With this end in view, he had once rented a room across
+the street from that office--an institution that would have given
+millions for his head. Here he would sit for hours at his window,
+scrutinising every new person who entered the building so as to be able
+to keep track of their movements afterward. Having thus discovered a
+boarding house in which lived an important officer of the secret service
+he had sent the Dandy to hire a room there. The desired appointment had
+then been obtained without difficulty.
+
+When Makar had laid the practical part of his scheme before the three
+men, the Janitor fixed his prominent eyes on him and said, without
+stammering:
+
+"And you are just the chap to do it, aren't you?"
+
+"And why not? It certainly doesn't need much adroitness and vigilance to
+get arrested."
+
+"The devil it does not. A fellow like you would get ten men arrested
+before he fooled the measliest cub spy in the Third Section. Better keep
+your hands off."
+
+"Oh, well, if the escape was really a sure thing, the matter might be
+arranged," Purring Cat interposed, charitably, in a low, gentle voice.
+"Only this is scarcely the time for it." Whereupon Makar, feeling
+encouraged, launched out to describe his far-reaching scheme in detail.
+The look of the Janitor's prominent eyes, however, disturbed him, so
+that he expounded the plan in a rather nerveless way; when he had
+finished, the Janitor declared:
+
+"He's certainly crazy."
+
+Purring Cat's blue eyes looked up under their bushy brows, as he said,
+gravely:
+
+"There may be something in it, though, theoretically at least. In
+reality, however, I am afraid that general state of chaos would rebound
+upon ourselves. The government may get its spies into our circles until
+one does not know who is who. It may become a double-edged weapon, this
+'babel of distrust.' As to that prison scheme it might be tried some
+day. Only don't be in a hurry, Makar."
+
+"And what is your opinion?" Makar addressed himself to Andrey
+solicitously.
+
+Andrey who was a man of few words, and spoke with a slight lisp, said he
+had no definite opinion to offer, but, when Makar pressed him hard, he
+said:
+
+"Well, we have one man there" (meaning the Third Section), "so let us
+not make the mistake of the woman who cut her hen open in order to get
+at all her eggs at once. Still, if the scheme could be worked in some of
+the provinces, it might be worth while. It all depends on circumstances,
+of course."
+
+Makar longed to see Sophia, the daughter of the former governor of St.
+Petersburg. She had taken an active part in one of the most daring
+rescues and was celebrated for the ingenuity and motherly devotion with
+which she gave herself to the "Red Cross" work of the party, supplying
+political prisoners with provisions and keeping them in secret
+communication with their relatives. It was the story of this young
+noblewoman's life which afterwards inspired Turgeneff's prose poem, _The
+Threshold_. Makar thought she might take an active interest in his
+scheme, but she was overwhelmed with other work and inaccessible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A DAY UNDERGROUND.
+
+
+About a week had elapsed, when Pavel read in his morning paper of the
+hanging of three revolutionists in Odessa: two Gentiles and a Jew. He
+had never met these men, but he knew that two of them had not been
+implicated in anything more violent than the diffusion of socialist
+ideas. Also that the parents of the one who belonged to the Jewish race
+were under arrest, condemned to be exiled to Siberia for no other crime
+than their having given birth to an enemy of the existing regime.
+
+Pavel moved about his room with a sob of helpless fury in his throat. He
+found feverish satisfaction in the thought that he had some chemicals in
+his overcoat which he was to carry to the dynamite shop of the
+Terrorists. The explosives to be made from it were intended for a new
+attempt upon the life of the Emperor. Not being directly connected with
+the contemplated attack, neither he nor the dynamite makers of the
+organisation had any clear idea about the plot, which was in the hands
+of a special sub-committee, Alexandre's place having been taken by
+another man; but he did know that preparations were under way in the
+Winter Palace.
+
+The dynamite shop was kept by a woman with a deep-chested, almost
+masculine voice, and a man with a squeaky feminine one. They were
+registered as man and wife. She was the daughter of a priest, but she
+looked like a woman of the people and dressed like one--a thick-set
+extremely blonde young woman with coarse yet pleasing features. Her
+revolutionary name was Baska. Her fictitious husband, who was one of the
+chemists of the party, was addressed by the revolutionists as Grisha. He
+had a scholarly face, yet the two had no difficulty in passing among the
+neighbours for a tradesman or shop clerk and his wife. For the greater
+reality of the impersonation and as a special precaution against
+curiosity they made friends with the porter of the house and his wife
+and with the police roundsman of the neighbourhood, often inviting them
+to a glass of vodka. The porter of St. Petersburg, like his brother of
+Paris under the empire, is a political detective "ex-officio." The two
+spies and the police officer were thus turned into unconscious witnesses
+of the young couple's political innocence, for in the first place they
+had many an opportunity to convince themselves that their dwelling was
+free from anything suspicious and, in the second, people who drank vodka
+and went, moreover, on sprees with the house porter, certainly did not
+look like Nihilists.
+
+"Good morning, Pavel," Baska greeted him vivaciously, as she gave his
+hand a hearty squeeze, while her other hand held a smoking cigarette.
+"Just in time! I hate to eat my breakfast all alone. Grisha has another
+bad headache, poor fellow. But I see you, too, have a long face. Where
+did you get it?"
+
+Pavel smiled lugubriously as he handed her the package. He had not the
+heart to disturb her good spirits, and she went on chirping and
+laughing.
+
+Grisha came in, haggard, sickly and trying to smile. The skin of both
+his hands was off. This, like his frequent headaches, was the effect of
+the work he did in these rooms--of inhaling nitroglycerine and kneading
+dynamite with his bare fists.
+
+Baska gayly told how the porter's wife had offered her a salve for her
+"husband," and how the night before, as Grisha was pouring
+nitroglycerine into some dynamite "dough," there was an explosion and
+the house filled with smoke.
+
+"Our next door neighbour knew at once that our kerosene stove exploded
+and set fire to a rag," Baska said with a deep-voiced titter. "She gave
+me quite a lecture on negligence."
+
+"She only wondered why there should be such a strange smell to the
+smoke," Grisha added, his hand to his head.
+
+As Pavel looked at Baska relishing her tea and her muffin and talking
+merrily between gulps, a desire took hold of him to spoil her vivacity.
+It jarred on him to see her enjoy herself while the image of the three
+new gallows was so vivid in his mind.
+
+"You people don't seem to know what's going on in the world," he said
+testily. "They have hanged Malinka, Maidanski and Drobiazgin."
+
+"Have they?" Baska asked paling. She had known two of them personally.
+
+While Pavel took out his newspaper and read the brief despatch, her head
+sank on the table. Her solid frame was convulsed with sobbing.
+
+"Be calm, be calm," Grisha entreated, offering her a glass of water. In
+spite of her excellent physique she was subject to violent hysterical
+fits which were apt to occur at a time when the proffer of neighbourly
+sympathy was least desirable.
+
+She told all she remembered of the executed men, whom she had met in
+the south. But that was not much; so Pavel went to see Purring Cat who,
+being a southerner, had detailed information to give him about the three
+Nihilists. Boulatoff could talk of nothing else that day. When he met
+Makar, in the afternoon, he said:
+
+"People are being strangled right and left and here you are bent on that
+_idee fixe_ of yours."
+
+"Fine logic, that," Makar replied. "If my _idee fixe_ had been realised
+a year ago these men would now be free. But this is not the time to talk
+about things of that kind." Instead of mourning the loss of the three
+revolutionists he was in a solemn, religious sort of mood at the thought
+of the new human sacrifices offered on the altar of liberty. He was
+panting to speak about the Jew who had been executed. He was proud of
+the fact that two men of his race had given their lives for the cause
+within five months. The other Jewish revolutionist had been executed in
+Nicolayeff. A letter which he had addressed to the revolutionists a few
+days before his execution, exhorting them not to waste any of the forces
+of the movement on attempts to avenge his death, was enshrined in
+Makar's heart as the most sacred document in the entire literature of
+the struggle. But race pride was contrary to the teachings of the
+movement; so he not only kept these sentiments to himself, but tried to
+suppress them in his own bosom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the evening Pavel took two young cavalry officers of his acquaintance
+to the house of a retired major where a revolutionary meeting was to be
+held. They found the major's drawing room sparkling with military
+uniforms. The gathering was made up of eight officers, two men in
+citizen's clothes, and one woman, the dark long-necked hostess.
+
+Two cheap lithographs, one of General Suvoroff and the other of the
+reigning monarch, occupied the centre of the best wall, in jarring
+disharmony with the refined and somewhat Bohemian character of the rest
+of the room. The two portraits had been put there recently, to bear
+witness to the political "reliability" of the house. The hostess
+presided over a pile of yellow aromatic tobacco, rolling cigarettes for
+her guests and smoking incessantly herself. An idiotic-looking
+man-servant and a peasant girl fresh from the country kept up a supply
+of tea, zwiebacks and preserves. Every time they appeared the hostess,
+whose seat commanded the door, would signal to the company. She did it
+rather perfunctorily, however, the revolutionary discussion proceeding
+undisturbed. The cultured, bookish Russian of the assemblage was Greek
+to the two servants. They talked of the three executions.
+
+Presently two other civilians were announced.
+
+"At last!" the hostess said, getting up from her pile of tobacco in a
+flutter.
+
+The two newcomers were both above medium height, of solid build and
+ruddy-faced; but here their similarity of appearance ceased. One of them
+looked the image of social refinement and elegance, while the clothes
+and general aspect of the other bespoke a citified, prosperous peasant.
+His rough top-boots, the red woolen belt round his coat and the rather
+coarse tint of his florid complexion, like his full Russian beard,
+proclaimed the son of the unenlightened classes. He was taller than his
+companion and remarkably well-built, with a shock of dark brown hair
+thrown back from a high prominent forehead and regular features. He was
+introduced to the gathering as Zachar. He and the stylish-looking man by
+his side whose revolutionary nickname was "My Lord," conveyed the
+effect of a bright, shrewd tradesman and a high-class lawyer bent on
+some legal business.
+
+"If we are late, blame this guide of mine, not me," Zachar said to the
+hostess, in a deep, rather harsh baritone, pointing at his companion.
+"It turned out that he did not know the place very well himself. There
+is a pilot for you." He accepted a glass of tea in a silver holder and
+during the ensuing small talk the room rang with his merriment. His
+jests were commonplace, but his Russian and all he said betrayed the man
+of education. The tradesman's costume was his disguise, and if it became
+him so well it was because his parents were moujiks. Born in serfdom but
+brought up as a nobleman at the expense of his former master, this
+university-bred peasant--a case of extreme rarity--for whom the
+gendarmes were searching in connection with a bold attempt to blow up an
+imperial train, loomed in the minds of the revolutionists as the most
+conspicuous figure of their movement.
+
+"And how is my young philosopher?" he said to Pavel. "I was at your
+place this morning, but found you out, Pasha."
+
+"I'll see you later on," Pavel said dryly. "Philosopher" referred to the
+nature of the studies which Pavel's mother thought him to be pursuing.
+There was a touch of patronage in the way Zachar used the word, and
+Pavel resented it.
+
+As the gathering began to lapse into a graver mood the conversation was
+expectantly left to Zachar, who by degrees accepted the role of the
+principal speaker of the evening. That he relished this role and was
+fond of a well turned phrase became apparent at once, but the impression
+soon wore off. He compelled attention.
+
+"The practice of nations being inherited like furniture or chickens has
+been out of date for centuries," he said in the course of a ferocious
+attack on the existing adjustment of things. "But our party does not
+demand full justice at once. The Will of the People is not
+inconsiderate. We are willing to project ourselves into the position of
+an old chap with whom the love of power has been bred in the bone. All
+our party does demand, as a first step, is some regard for the rights of
+the individual; of those rights without which the word civilisation is
+of a piece with that puerile sort of hypocrisy as our late war with
+Turkey, when the ambitious old fellow in his unquenchable thirst for
+territory sent his subjects to die for the liberty of Bulgarians so that
+their own children at home might be plunged into more abject slavery
+than ever.
+
+"The government knows, of course, that its days are numbered and that it
+is only cowardice and incapacity for concerted action which make its
+brief respite possible. To retreat honourably, before it is too late, to
+yield to the stern voice of the revolution under some specious
+pretext--this is the step indicated by the political situation, but then
+this is not what the ambitious oldster is after. Is there any wonder he
+has lost his head? So much the better for the revolution. One or two
+decisive blows and the government will topple over. Thanks to the
+splendid army section of the Will of the People, on the one hand, and to
+our powerful Workingmen's Section, on the other, one hundred resolute
+men will be enough to seize the Winter Palace, to cut off all egress,
+arrest the new Czar and, amid the general confusion following the death
+of the old tyrant, proclaim a provisional government. What a glorious
+opportunity to serve one's country!"
+
+His speech lasted an hour and a half. Most of his hearers were recent
+converts, and these the matter-of-fact tone of his utterances took by
+storm. The Third Section had heard of him as an irresistible agitator.
+So he was, and the chief secret of his success lay--despite an effect of
+conscious floridity and bravado--in a sincere depth of conviction
+manifested by a volcanic vehemence of delivery. His speeches took it for
+granted that Russia was at the threshold of a great historical change
+and that his organisation was going to play a leading part in that
+change. He gathered particular assurance from the fact that the "army
+section" that had been formed by his efforts included several officers
+of the court guard whose number he hoped to increase. These court
+officers it was whom his imagination pictured as "cutting off all
+egress" at the Winter Palace. The funds of his party included
+contributions from some high sources. Things seemed to be coming the
+"Will of the People's" way. As he spoke his strong physique seemed to be
+aflame with contagious passion, sweeping along audience and speaker. The
+harshness of his mighty baritone was gone; his peasant face was
+beautiful. Words like "party," "citizen," "National Assembly," are
+winged with the glamour of forbidden fruit in Russia, and when Zachar
+uttered these words, in accents implying that these things were as good
+as realised, his audience was enravished. To all of which, in the
+present instance, should be added the psychological effect of a group of
+dashing army officers, all members of the nobility, reverently listening
+to an address by a peasant. He struck one as a giant of energy and
+courage, of nervous vitality as well as of bodily strength. He had the
+stuff of a political leader in him. Under favourable conditions he would
+have left his mark as one of the strong men of the nineteenth century.
+He carried people along current-fashion rather than magnetised them.
+
+Pavel was the next speaker, but the outraged sense of justice which was
+the keynote of his impassioned plea, coming as it did upon the heels of
+Zachar's peremptory and matter-of-course declarations, sounded out of
+date.
+
+"Oh, it takes an idiot to talk after you, Zachar," he said, breaking off
+in the middle of a sentence. "One feels like being up and doing things,
+not talking. I wonder why we don't start for the Winter Palace, at
+once."
+
+"That's the way I feel, too," chimed in a very young cavalry officer,
+while two older men in brilliant uniforms, were grasping Zachar each by
+one hand. The long-necked hostess was brushing the tears from her eyes
+and calling herself "fool," for joy.
+
+An artillery officer with bad teeth of whom Pavel could not think
+without thinking of the rheumatism of which that revolutionist had once
+complained to him, drew his sword fiercely, the polished steel flaming
+in the bright light of the room, as he said:
+
+"By Jove!"
+
+"Look at him! Look at him!" Zachar shouted.
+
+"Bridle your passions, old boy," Pavel put in.
+
+A minute or two later he called the orator into the next room and handed
+him what looked like a package of tobacco.
+
+Zachar was in high feather over the success of his speech and loath to
+leave the atmosphere of adoration that surrounded him here; but an
+important engagement forced him to take his departure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A quarter of an hour's ride in a tramcar and a short walk through the
+moonlit streets brought him to a deserted corner in the vicinity of the
+Winter Palace, where he was met by a man dressed like an artisan, as
+tall as himself, but slimmer of girth, and the two went on trudging
+along the snow-encrusted sidewalk together. The other man had an
+expressive sickly face which the pallid glare of the moonlight gave a
+ghastly look.
+
+"How is your health?" Zachar asked.
+
+"Bad," the sickly looking man answered, holding out his hand into which
+Zachar put the package of tobacco, saying:
+
+"See if it isn't too heavy for a quarter of a pound."
+
+"It is, rather, but it'll pass," the other replied, weighing the package
+in his hand and then putting it into his pocket. Buried in the tobacco
+was a small quantity of dynamite.
+
+"It's too bad you are not feeling well."
+
+"Yes, my nerves are playing the devil with me. The worst of it is that I
+have got to keep the stuff under my pillow when I sleep. That gives me
+headaches."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder. The evaporations of that stuff do that as a rule.
+But can't you find another place for it?"
+
+"Not for the night. They might go through my trunk then. They are apt to
+come in at any time. Oh, those surprise visits of theirs keep my
+wretched nerves on edge all the time."
+
+While the gendarmerie and the police knew him to be a leader among the
+revolutionary workmen of the capital and were hunting for him all over
+the city, this man, whose name was Stepan Khaltourin, had for the past
+few months been making his home, under the name of Batushkoff, in the
+same building as the Czar, in the Winter Palace, where his work as a
+varnisher was highly valued. He was a self-taught mechanic, unusually
+well-read and clear-headed. Of retiring disposition and a man of few
+words, with an iron will under a bashful and extremely gentle manner,
+he was one of the prominent figures of the Will of the People, having
+been driven to terrorism by the senseless persecutions which he had met
+at the hands of the authorities in his attempts to educate some of his
+fellow-workmen. He now lodged, together with other mechanics, in
+the basement of the Winter Palace, with only one room--the
+guard-room--between the ceiling over his head and the floor of the
+Imperial dining hall. Indeed, the frequent raids which a colonel at the
+head of a group of gendarmes had been making upon that basement since
+the seizure of "Alexandre's" diagram were largely a matter of display
+and red tape. There was more jingling of spurs and flaunting of
+formidable looking moustaches than actual searching or watching. Nowhere
+was the incapacity of Russian officialdom illustrated more glaringly
+than it was in the very home of the Czar. The bold Terrorist for whom
+the police were looking high and low had found little difficulty in
+securing employment here, and one of the first things that had attracted
+his attention in the place was the prevailing state of anarchy and
+demoralisation he found in it. Priceless gems and relics were scattered
+about utterly unguarded; stealing was the common practice of the court
+servants, and orgies at which these regaled their friends from the
+outside world upon wines from the imperial cellars were a nightly
+occurrence. Since Alexandre's arrest the vigilance of the court
+gendarmes had been greatly increased, so that no servant could enter the
+palace without being searched; yet Khaltourin contrived to smuggle in a
+small piece of dynamite every evening, thus gradually accumulating the
+supply that was needed for the terrible work of destruction he was
+preparing.
+
+As to his position within the palace, he played his role so well that he
+was the favourite of gendarmes and servants alike, often hearing from
+them stories of the Nihilists and of the great plot to blow up the
+dining hall that was supposed to have been nipped in the bud.
+
+"Well, how is that old gendarme of yours?" Zachar inquired. "Still
+teaching you manners?"
+
+"Yes," Khaltourin answered with a smile. "I am getting sick of his
+attentions, though. But there is something back of them, it appears.
+What do you think he's after? Why, he has a marriageable daughter, so he
+has taken it into his head to make a son-in-law of me."
+
+"Ho-ho-ho-ho!" Zachar exploded, restraining a guffaw.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE CZAR'S ESCAPE.
+
+
+On Tuesday, February 17th, at about six o'clock in the evening, Pavel
+and Makar were sauntering through the streets of the Vassili Island.
+Their conversation languished. While indoors they had had another
+discussion of Makar's scheme, a heart-to-heart talk in which Pavel
+showed signs of yielding; and now that they were out in the snow-dappled
+night they were experiencing that feeling of embarrassment which is the
+aftermath of sentimental communion between two men. When they reached
+the Neva, Pavel cast a glance across, in the direction of the Winter
+Palace. The frozen river looked infinitely wider than it was. Dotted
+with lamps and crossed by streams of home-bound humanity, it lay vast,
+gorgeous, uncanny--a white plain animated with mysterious brightness and
+mysterious motion. The main part of the capital, on the Palace side of
+the Neva, was a world of gloom starred with myriads and myriads of
+lights, each so distinct that one almost felt tempted to count them; all
+this seemingly as far away as the gold-dotted sky overhead. Makar was
+huddling himself in his grey military cloak, his bare hands loosely
+thrust into its sleeves, looking at nothing. Pavel, his furred coat
+unbuttoned, gazed across the Neva.
+
+"Come on," the medical student urged, knocking one foot against the
+other. "It's too cold to be tramping around like this."
+
+"One moment," Pavel responded, impatiently. He had been visiting this
+point at the same hour every day for the past week or two. Makar, who
+did not know of it, relapsed into his revery.
+
+Suddenly there came a dull rolling crash. It burst from the other side,
+and as Pavel and Makar looked across the river they saw that the lights
+of the Winter Palace which had been burning a minute ago, were out,
+leaving a great patch of darkness. The human stream paused. Then came a
+rush of feet on all sides.
+
+"It's in the Palace," Boulatoff whispered; and seizing his companion's
+hand at his side he pressed it with furious strength.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next day the newspapers were allowed to state that the previous
+evening, as the Czar and a royal guest were about to enter the dining
+hall through one door and the other members of the imperial family
+through another, a terrific explosion had occurred, making a hole in the
+floor ten feet long and six wide; that eleven inmates of the guard room,
+which was directly under the dining hall, were killed and fifty-seven
+injured, the Czar's narrow escape having been due to an accidental delay
+of the dinner. The explosion had shattered a number of windows and blown
+out the gas, leaving the palace in complete darkness. Traces of an
+improvised dynamite mine had been discovered in the basement. Three
+artisans employed in the palace were arrested, but their innocence was
+established, while a fourth man, a varnisher named Batushkoff, had
+disappeared. Now that Batushkoff was gone the Third Section learned that
+he was no other than Stepan Khaltourin, one of the active
+revolutionists its agents were looking for.
+
+One week after the explosion the Czar signed a decree which practically
+placed the government in the hands of a Supreme Executive Commission--a
+body especially created to cope with the situation and whose head, Count
+Loris-Melikoff, was invested with all but the powers of a regent. Count
+Melikoff was neither a Slav nor of noble birth. He was the son of an
+Armenian merchant. He was a new figure in St. Petersburg, and when his
+carriage passed along the Neva Prospect his swarthy face with its
+striking Oriental features were pointed out with expressions of
+perplexity. Although one of the two principal heroes of the late war
+with Turkey and recently a governor-general of Kharkoff, he was looked
+upon as an upstart. The extraordinary powers so suddenly vested in him
+took the country by surprise.
+
+He was known for the conciliatory policy toward the Nihilists at which
+he had aimed while he was governor-general of Kharkoff. Accordingly, his
+promotion to what virtually amounted to dictatorship was universally
+interpreted as a sign of weakening on the part of Alexander II. Indeed,
+Melikoff's first pronunciamento from the lofty altitude of his new
+office struck a note of startling novelty. He spoke of the Czar as
+showing "increased confidence in his people" and of "public cooperation"
+as "the main force capable of assisting the government in its effort to
+restore a normal flow of official life"--utterances that were construed
+into a pledge of public participation in affairs of state, into an
+unequivocal hint at representative legislation.
+
+Loris-Melikoff was one of the ablest statesmen Russia had ever produced.
+He was certainly the only high official of his time who did not try to
+prove his devotion to the throne by following in the trodden path of
+repression. He knew that Russia could not be kept from joining in the
+march of Western civilisation and he was not going to serve his personal
+interests by pretending that it could. Instead, he hoped to strengthen
+his position by winning the Czar over to his own moderate liberalism, by
+reconciling him to the logic of history. But the logic of history could
+best have been served by prompt and vigorous action, while the chief of
+the Supreme Executive Commission was rather slow to move. Nor, indeed,
+was he free from interference. The Czar was still susceptible to the
+influence of his unthinking relatives and of his own vindictive nature.
+
+Chaos marked the situation. Loris-Melikoff's first week in office was
+signalised by the most cruel act in the entire history of the
+government's struggle against Nihilism. A gymnasium boy, seventeen years
+old (a Jew), was hanged in Kieff for carrying a revolutionary
+proclamation. The dictator's professions of liberalism were branded as
+hypocrisy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+A MYSTERIOUS ARREST.
+
+
+A young man had been seized with seditious publications. It was the
+first political arrest in Miroslav, and the report was spreading in a
+maze of shifting versions. This much seemed certain: the prisoner
+pretended to be a deaf-mute and so far the gendarmes and the procureur
+had failed to disclose his identity. The local newspaper dared not
+publish the remotest allusion to the matter.
+
+Countess Anna Nicolayevna Varova (Varoff) first heard the news from her
+brother-in-law, the governor, and although the two belonged to that
+exceptional minority which usually discussed topics of this character in
+their normal voices, yet it was in subdued tones that the satrap
+broached the subject. Anna Nicolayevna offered to send for Pavel, who
+had recently arrived from St. Petersburg, after an absence of three
+years, but the governor checked her.
+
+"Never mind, Annette," he said, impatiently, "I've dropped in for a
+minute or two, in passing, don't you know. He called on me yesterday,
+Pasha. Quite a man. Tell him he must look in again and let me see how
+clever he is. Quite a man. How time does fly!" Then sinking his voice,
+he asked: "Have you heard of the fellow they've bagged? One of those
+youngsters who are scaring St. Petersburg out of its wits, you know."
+
+He gave a laugh and fell to blinking gravely.
+
+"What do you mean, George? Did the gendarmes catch a Nihilist?" she
+asked, in dismay. "Did they? Bless me! That's all that's wanted. If
+there is one there must be a whole nest of them." She made a gesture of
+horror--"But who is he, what is he?"
+
+"That I know no more than you do."
+
+"Well, it's too bad, it's really too bad. I thought Miroslav was immune
+from that plague at least." And seeing his worried look she added: "I
+hope it's nothing serious, George."
+
+Governor Boulatoff shook his head. "I don't think it is. Although you
+never can tell nowadays. You never can tell," he repeated, blinking
+absently. "The Armenian doesn't seem to be cleaning those fellows out
+quite so rapidly as one thought he would, does he? They are playing the
+devil with things, that's what they are doing." "One" and "they"
+referred to the Emperor and his advisers.
+
+"Pooh, they'll weary of that parvenu, it's only a matter of time," she
+consoled him.
+
+The old man proceeded to quote from Loris-Melikoff's recent
+declarations, which the countess had heard him satirise several times
+before. "'In the cooperation of the public,'" he declaimed theatrically,
+"'lies the main force capable of assisting the government in its effort
+to restore a normal flow of official life.' Do you understand what all
+this jugglery means? That we are knuckling down to a lot of ragamuffins.
+It means an official confession that the 'flow of official life' has
+been checked by a gang of rascally college boys. 'The public is the main
+force capable of assisting the government!' Charming, isn't it? Might
+as well invite 'the public' to be so kind and elect representatives,
+deputies, or what you may call 'em, start a parliament and have it over
+with."
+
+Anna Nicolayevna made another attempt to bring the conversation back to
+the political prisoner, but her visitor was evidently fighting shy of
+the topic.
+
+"Birch-rods, a good, smart flogging, that's what the public needs," he
+resumed, passionately gnashing his teeth, in response to his own
+thoughts.
+
+"Oh, don't say that, George. After all, one lives in the nineteenth
+century."
+
+But this only spurred him on.
+
+The arrest having been ordered from St. Petersburg, the implication was
+that the presence of the revolutionist in town had escaped the attention
+of the local authorities. So Governor Boulatoff, who had had no
+experience in cases of this kind, wondered whether the affair was not
+likely to affect his own standing. Besides, the governor of Kharkoff had
+recently been killed, and Boulatoff was asking himself whether the
+arrest of the unknown man augured the end of his own peace of mind. This
+he kept to himself, however, and having found some relief in
+animadverting upon the policy of Loris-Melikoff he took leave.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The countess was left with a pang of sympathy for her brother-in-law.
+Not that she had any clear idea of the political situation at which he
+was forever scoffing and carping. She felt sure that his low spirits
+were traceable to loneliness, and her compassion for him revived
+heart-wringing memories of his dead wife, her sister.
+
+The young prince was out in the garden romping about with Kostia, his
+half-brother, now a ten-year-old cadet on sick leave. Anna Nicolayevna
+went to take a look at them through the open window of a rear room. The
+garden was so jammed with fresh-tinted lilacs, so flooded with their
+scent, that it seemed like an explosion of color and fragrance. Two
+Germans were at work with picks and spades. From an invisible spot where
+a new summer house was being constructed came sounds of sawing and
+hammering, while the air near the window rang with a multitudinous
+twitter of sparrows. Pavel was trying to force Kostia into a
+wheelbarrow, the boy kicking and struggling silently, and a huge shaggy
+dog barking at Pavel ferociously.
+
+"Come in, Pasha. I want to speak to you," said Anna Nicolayevna.
+
+The return indoors was a race, in which the gigantic dog took part. The
+convalescent little cadet was beaten.
+
+"Wait till I get well," he said.
+
+"Wait nothing. Your excellency will be rolling along like a water-melon
+all the same. Good-bye, Monsieur le Water-melon!"
+
+Presently Pavel stood before his mother, mopping his flushed, laughing
+face.
+
+"Do you remember his 'express trains' in the garden?" he said. "Now it
+is beneath his dignity, to be sure." He was always trying to prove to
+himself that the present Kostia and the five-year-old boy he used to
+fondle five years ago were one and the same person.
+
+"He's right," said the countess. "He's a baby no longer. It's you who
+are acting like one. Uncle has been here. He was in a hurry, so I didn't
+send for you." Her serious-minded, intellectual son inspired her with a
+certain feeling of timidity. She had not the courage to bring up the
+subject of the political arrest. Her mind was so vague on matters of
+this kind, while Pavel was apparently so well informed and so profound,
+she was sure of making a poor showing. So she told herself that it was
+not a proper topic to discuss in a well-ordered family and kept her own
+counsel.
+
+"I didn't know he was here," he said.
+
+"Poor man! he seems to be feeling lonely."
+
+Pavel made no reply.
+
+"Why, don't you think he does?"
+
+"What matters it whether I do or not," he said, lightly.
+
+"You haven't a bit of heart, Pasha."
+
+He would not be drawn into conversation, treating everything she said
+with an inscrutable, somewhat patronising flippancy that nettled her. At
+last he said he was going out.
+
+"'Looking up old chums' again?" she asked. "And does it mean that you
+are going to dine out once more?"
+
+"I'll try not to, mother," he answered, with a fond smile in his bright,
+aggressive eyes.
+
+His small slender figure, beautifully erect, and his upward-tending,
+frank features haunted her long after he left. She felt like a jealous
+bride. Otherwise he kept her thoughts tinged with sunshine. A great
+attachment on quite new terms had sprung up between mother and son since
+his arrival. At the same time he seemed to belong to a world which she
+was at a loss to make out. Nor did he appear disinclined to talk of his
+life in St. Petersburg--a subject upon which she was continually plying
+him with questions. The trouble was that the questions that beset her
+mind could no more be formulated than a blind man can formulate his
+curiosity as to colour. Moreover, all these questions seemed to come
+crowding upon her when Pavel was away and to vanish the moment she set
+eyes on him. She told herself that he belonged to a different
+generation from hers, that it was the everlasting case of "fathers and
+sons." But this only quickened her jealousy of the "sons" and her
+despair at being classed with the discarded generation. And the keener
+her jealousy, the deeper was her interest in Pasha.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+A BEWILDERING ENCOUNTER.
+
+
+When Pavel was in St. Petersburg Anna Nicolayevna had missed him only
+occasionally. Now that he was with her his absences were a continuous
+torture to her. On the present occasion she sought diversion in a visit
+to Princess Chertogoff where she expected to hear something about the
+mysterious prisoner. Princess Chertogoff was a lame, impoverished
+noblewoman whose daughter was married to the assistant-procureur. In
+higher circles she was looked down upon as a social outcast, so that
+Anna Nicolayevna's visits to her had a surreptitious character and
+something of the charm of forbidden fruit. Pavel's mother was fond of
+the stir her appearance produced in houses of this kind. The curious
+part of it was that the impecunious princess was one of the very few
+persons in the world whose presence irritated her. It seemed as though
+this irritation had a peculiar attraction for her.
+
+It was an early hour in the afternoon. She was received in the vestibule
+by Helene, the assistant-procureur's wife, with an outburst of kisses
+and caresses which had something to do with the young woman's expecting
+to become a mother. Rising in the background was the hostess, Lydia
+Grigorievna Chertogova (Chertogoff) and her gorgeous crutches. She was
+large, dark, and in spite of her made-over gowns, imposingly handsome.
+Aware of the fantastic majesty which these crutches gave her stalwart
+form, she paraded her defect as she did her beautiful dark eyes. At this
+moment it seemed as though the high-polished ebony crutches joined her
+in beaming at the sight of the distinguished visitor. Helene, a small
+woman of twenty-four, usually compact as a billiard ball, was beginning
+to resemble an over-ripe apple.
+
+When the three women found themselves in the drawing room Lydia
+Grigorievna lost no time in turning the conversation on the arrested
+Nihilist. Her son-in-law had carefully abstained from opening his mouth
+on the subject, yet she talked about it authoritatively, with an
+implication of reserved knowledge of still graver import, but Helene
+gave her away.
+
+"Woldemar would not speak about it," she complained, reverently. "'An
+affair of state,' he said. You can't get a single word out of him." She
+exulted in the part he was playing as an exterminator of the enemies of
+the Czar, and in the air-castles she was building as to the promotion to
+which the present case was to pave his way.
+
+"But what do they want, those scamps?" Lydia Grigorievna resumed, in
+soft, pampered accents. "Would they have us live without a Czar? I
+should have them cut to pieces, the rogues. Is it possible that the
+government should be powerless to get rid of them? To think of a handful
+of striplings keeping cabinet ministers in a perpetual state of terror."
+
+"Oh, nobody is really afraid of them," Helene retorted, holding her face
+to the breeze which came in through an open window.
+
+"But your husband is not yet a cabinet minister, dear," her mother said
+with a smile toward the countess.
+
+"Oh, you're always suspecting me of something or other, _mamman_. I was
+not thinking of Woldemar at all."
+
+The charm of her presence, the appealing charm of a pretty young woman
+about to become a mother, added itself to the tenderness and mystery of
+spring. Lydia Grigorievna addressed another smile to the countess, but
+Anna Nicolayevna dropped her glance. The princess went on raging at the
+revolutionists. In reality, however, that handful of striplings who
+"kept cabinet ministers in a perpetual state of terror" had stirred up a
+curiosity in her that sprang from anything but indignation or contempt.
+She was hankering for a specimen of their literature, of those
+publications the very handling of which was apt to bring death. Her
+thirst in this direction was all the keener because she felt sure that
+some of the Nihilist papers that had been confiscated at the arrest of
+the unknown man were upstairs in her son-in-law's desk.
+
+"A constitution may be all very well in Germany or France," she said.
+"This is Russia, not Germany or France or England, thank God. Yet those
+wretches will go around stirring up discontent. On my way home from
+Moscow last winter I heard a passenger say that if we had less bribery
+and more liberty and popular education we would be as good as any nation
+in Western Europe. I knew at once he was a Nihilist. You can tell one by
+the first word he utters. I confess I was afraid to sit near him. He had
+grey side-whiskers, but maybe they were just stuck on. Oh, I should show
+them no mercy."
+
+She was all flushed and ill at ease. She received no encouragement. Her
+sugared enunciation and the false ring of what she said grated on her
+hearer's nerves. Anna Nicolayevna listened in silence. The lame princess
+was a sincere woman coated with a layer of insincerity. But the
+countess thought her the embodiment of affectation and hated her,
+bizarre beauty, enunciation, altered gowns, crutches and all.
+
+Lydia Grigorievna was interrupted by the appearance of the
+assistant-procureur himself. He was tall and frail with a long straight
+straw-coloured mane and pontifical gestures. His figure made one think
+of length in the abstract. As you looked at him he seemed to be
+continually growing in height. Helene had fallen in love with him
+because he resembled the baron in a play she had seen in Moscow.
+
+"I've just looked in to bid you good afternoon, countess," he said. "I
+saw your carriage through the window. But unfortunately--_business
+before pleasure_." It was one of two or three English phrases which he
+kept for occasions of this character and which he mispronounced with
+great self-confidence.
+
+When Anna Nicolayevna got into the street she felt as though she had
+emerged from the suffocating atmosphere of some criminal den. In the May
+breeze, however, and at sight of the river her spirits rose. She
+dismissed her carriage. When she reached the macadamised bank and caught
+the smell of the water it was borne in upon her afresh that it was
+spring. She had passed this very spot, in a sleigh only a short while
+ago, it seemed. Lawns and trees had been covered with snow then; all had
+been stiff with the stiffness of death; whereas now all was tenderly
+alive with verdure and bloom, and wild-flowers smiled upon her at every
+turn. Here it struck her as though spring had just been born; born in
+full attire overnight. Flushed and radiant, with her rusty chin in the
+air and her flat chest slightly thrown out, spinning her parasol, she
+was briskly marching along, a broad streak of water to the right of her,
+a row of orchards to the left. The river beamed. From somewhere
+underneath she heard the clanking of chains of lumber-horses,
+accompanied by the yell of boys. The greased wooden screws of a receding
+cable-ferry were squirming in the air like two erect snakes of silver;
+the brass buttons of a soldier-passenger burned like a column of flames.
+All this and the lilac-laden breeze and Anna Nicolayevna's soul were
+part of something vast, swelling with light and joy. But the breath of
+spring is not all joy. Nature's season of love is a season of yearning.
+One feels like frisking and weeping at once. Spring was with us a year
+ago, but the interval seems many years. It is like revisiting one's home
+after a long absence: the scenes of childhood are a source of delight
+and depression at once. It is like hearing a long forgotten song: the
+melody, however gay, has a dismal note in it. Anna Nicolayevna had not
+been out many minutes when she began to feel encompassed by an immense
+melancholy to which her heart readily responded. There was a vague
+longing in the clear blue sky, in the gleaming water, in the patches of
+grass on either side of the public promenade, in the distant outlines
+across the river, but above all in the overpowering freshness of the
+afternoon air. The travail of an unhappy soul seemed to be somewhere
+nearby. A look of loneliness came into her eyes. She was burning to see
+Pavel, to lay bare her soul to him.
+
+When a passing artisan in top-boots and with glass buttons in his
+waistcoat reverently took off his flat cap she returned the salute with
+motherly fervour and slackened her pace to a more dignified gait. "I'm
+respected and loved by the people," she mentally boasted to Pavel.
+
+Arrived at the bridge, she paused to hand a twenty-copeck piece to a
+blind beggar who sat on the ground by the tollman's booth. He apparently
+recognised her by the way her gloved hand put the coin in his hand. She
+had given him alms as long as she could remember, and usually he made no
+more impression on her than the lamp-posts she passed. This time,
+however, it came back to her how her mother used to send her out of
+their carriage with some money for him. She paused to look at him and to
+listen to his song. She recalled him as a man of thirty or forty with
+thick flaxen hair. Now he was gray and bald. "Great heavens! how time
+does fly!" she exclaimed in her heart, feeling herself an old woman. The
+blind man seemed to be absorbed in his song. All blind beggars look
+alike and they all seem to be singing the same doleful religious tune,
+yet this man, as he sat with his eyes sealed and his head leaned against
+the parapet, gave her a novel sensation. He was listening to his own
+tones, as if they came from an invisible world, like his own, but one
+located somewhere far away.
+
+Anna Nicolayevna gave him a ruble and passed on. Followed by the
+beggar's benedictions, she made to turn into the street which formed the
+continuation of the bridge, when an approaching flour truck brought her
+to a halt. Besides several sacks of meal the waggon carried a cheap old
+trunk, and seated between the trunk and the driver was--Pavel; Pavel
+uncouthly dressed in the garb of an artisan. His rudimentary beard was
+covered with dust; his legs, encased in coarse grimy topboots, were
+dangling in the air. The visor of his flat cap was pushed down over his
+eyes, screening them from the red afternoon sun which sparkled and
+glowed in the glass buttons of his vest. It certainly was Pavel. Anna
+Nicolayevna was panic-stricken. She dared not utter his name.
+
+The toll paid, the truck moved on. The countess followed her son with
+her eyes, until a cab shut him out of view, and then she remained
+standing for some time, staring at the cab. "What does it all mean?" she
+asked herself with sickening curiosity. Finally her eye went to the
+water below. She gazed at its rippling stretches of black and masses of
+shattered silver; at a woman slapping a heap of wash with a wash-beater,
+at a long raft slowly gliding toward the bridge. "Is he disguised? What
+does it all mean? Was it really Pasha?"
+
+Doubt dawned in her mind. In her eagerness to take another look at the
+man on the truck she raised her eyes. After waiting for some moments she
+saw the waggon with the two men as it appeared and forthwith disappeared
+at the other end of the bridge. The thought of the arrested man stunned
+her. Was Pavel a Nihilist? The image of her son had assumed a new, a
+forbidding expression.
+
+The revolutionists moved about on the verge of martyrdom, and as the
+mere acquaintance with one of their number meant destruction, the
+imagination painted them as something akin to living shadows, as beings
+whose very touch brought silence and darkness. People dared not utter
+the word "Nihilist" or "revolutionist" aloud. Anna Nicolayevna belonged
+to the privileged few, but at this moment she dreaded so much as to
+think of her son by these ghastly names. It now appeared to Anna
+Nicolayevna that all through her call at Lydia Grigorievna's she had had
+a presentiment of an approaching calamity. She took the first cab that
+came along.
+
+"As fast as you can drive," she said.
+
+The moment Anna Nicolayevna got home she inquired whether Pavel was in
+his room, and when the porter said that his Highness had not been back
+since he had left, in the morning, a fresh gust of terror smote her
+heart and brain. She stole into his room. On the table lay a German
+pamphlet on Kant and a fresh number of the _Russian Messenger_, the
+ultra-conservative magazine published in Moscow. In several places the
+leaves were cut. A Nihilist was the last person in the world one would
+expect to read this organ of Panslavists. What Anna Nicolayevna did not
+know was that the cut pages of the conservative magazine, which Pavel
+had received from St. Petersburg the day before, contained a hidden
+revolutionary message. Here and there a phrase, word, or a single
+letter, was marked, by means of an inkstain, abrasion or what looked
+like the idle penciling of a reader, these forming half a dozen
+consecutive sentences.
+
+Anna Nicolayevna was perplexed and her perplexity gave her a new thrill
+of hope. She was in a quiver of impatience to see her son and have it
+all out.
+
+The dinner hour came round and Pavel was not there. She could not eat.
+Every little while she paused to listen for a ring of the door bell. She
+sent a servant to his room to see if he had not arrived unheard. He had
+not.
+
+The other people at table were Kostia, in huge red shoulder-straps which
+made his well-fitting uniform look too large for him; Kostia's old
+tutor, a powerful looking German with a bashful florid face, and the
+countess' own old governess, an aged Frenchwoman with a congealed smile
+on her bloodless lips. This restlessness of the countess when Pavel was
+slow in coming was no news to them, but this time she seemed to feel
+particularly uneasy. Silence hung over them. The Frenchwoman's dried-up
+smile turned to a gleam of compassion. The German ate timidly. This
+man's services had practically ceased when Kostia entered the cadet
+corps, but Anna Nicolayevna retained him in the house for his quiet
+piety. She had a feeling that so far as the intelligent classes were
+concerned the simple forms of Protestantism were more compatible with
+religious sincerity than were the iron-bound formalities of her native
+church. So, with her heart thirsting for spiritual interest, she found
+intense pleasure in her theological conversations with this well-read,
+narrow-minded, honest Lutheran, whose religious convictions she envied.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+A GENDARME'S SISTER.
+
+
+When Pavel told his mother that he was going out he expected to meet
+Makar, who had been in Miroslav for the past four days. Once again he
+was going to plead with him to give up his scheme. The affair kept Pavel
+in bad humour, but that morning his mind was occupied by the thought
+that there was an interesting meeting in store for him. In the evening
+he was to make the acquaintance of Clara Yavner, the heroine of the
+Pievakin "demonstration."
+
+On his way down the spacious corridor he was stopped by Onufri, his
+cheeks still hollower and his drooping moustache still longer and
+considerably greyer than of yore. Pavel had once tried to make a convert
+of him, but found him "too stupid for abstract reasoning." Onufri was
+polishing the floor. As Pavel came past he faced half way about and gave
+him a stern look from under his bushy eyebrows.
+
+"They've pinched a gentleman, the blood-guzzlers." Saying which he fell
+to dancing on his foot-cushions again.
+
+"What do you mean?" Pavel asked, turning white as he paused.
+
+"You know what I mean, sir. You know you do," answered Onufri, going on
+with his work.
+
+"Is it true? Who made the arrest? Gendarmes?"
+
+"That's it. I wouldn't bother your Highness if the police'd nabbed a
+common crook, would I?"
+
+The servant bent on his young master a long look of sympathetic
+reproach, adding under his breath:
+
+"You had better give it all up, sir. Better let it go to the devil."
+
+"Give up what? What on earth are you prating about, Onufri?"
+
+A few minutes later, while Pavel was destroying some papers in his room,
+the door swung open and in came Onufri. The old man burst into tears and
+dropped to his knees.
+
+"Take pity, sir," he wailed, kissing Pavel's fingers. "You've played
+with fire long enough, sir. If they put you in prison, the murderers,
+and sent you away it would kill her Highness, your mother."
+
+"Get up, Onufri. I have no patience with you just now, really I
+haven't."
+
+"It's bad enough when your Highness takes chances in another town, but
+if you're mixed up in this here thing, sir----"
+
+"I'm not mixed up 'in this here thing.' Don't bother me. Come, get up.
+Up with you, now. There is a good fellow!"
+
+The old hussar obeyed distressedly.
+
+Instead of going to the place where he expected to see Makar, Pavel went
+to the house of Major Safonoff, the gendarme officer, an
+uncomfortable-looking frame building across the river. As he approached
+it, Masha, the major's sister, who stood at a second story window at
+that moment, apparently waiting for somebody, burst out beckoning to him
+and stamping her feet. Her excited gesticulations drew the attention of
+a knife-grinder and two little girls. Pavel dropped his eyes. "She is a
+perfect idiot," he said to himself in a rage, "and I am another one. The
+idea of taking up with such a creature!"
+
+"Didn't you torture me!" she greeted him on the staircase. "I thought my
+heart was going to snap. Don't be uneasy. I have dismissed our servant.
+There is nobody around." When they reached the low-ceiled parlor, she
+sank her voice and said solemnly, yet with a certain note of triumph:
+"He was arrested at four o'clock yesterday on the railway tracks. The
+gendarme office had information that he was in the habit of taking walks
+there. I happened to be away--think of it! At a time like that I was
+away. Else I should have let you know at once, of course. Anyhow, he's
+there."
+
+"You say it as if it was something to rejoice in," Pavel remarked,
+disguising his rage. "It's quite a serious matter, Maria Gavrilovna."
+
+Mlle. Safonoff stared. "But we'll get him out. Why, are you afraid we
+mayn't? I see you're depressed and that makes me miserable, too. Really
+it does."
+
+"Do I look depressed? Well, I must confess I rather am. It's no laughing
+matter, Maria Gavrilovna," he said, flushing.
+
+"Oh, well, if you are going to talk like that. That is I myself haven't
+the slightest doubt about it. Only you frighten me so. If this thing is
+going to last another week it will drive me mad." Her childish eyes
+shone with tears. "Why should you take such a gloomy view of it? I must
+say it's cruel of you, Pavel Vassilyevich. Everything is just as I
+expected. He is as good as free, I assure you."
+
+Pavel answered, by way of consoling himself as well as her: "Well, maybe
+I do take it too hard. Our chances seem to be good, and--well, we must
+get him out. That's all there is to it."
+
+"Of course we must. Now I like you, Boulatoff. We must and we will, and
+when the story is published--oh, I do wish we could get out special
+proclamations!--anyhow, won't it make a stir!" She paused and then
+resumed, in a new burst of frankness, "I know what makes you uneasy
+about me. The great trouble with me is my lack of tact, isn't it? If I
+had that I would be all right. That's what worries you about me in this
+affair, isn't it, now? You're afraid I may make a mess of the whole
+business. I know you are. Well, and I don't blame you, either. The
+Safonoffs have never been distinguished for their heads. When it happens
+to be a matter of hearts, we hold our own, but brains, well--." She gave
+a laugh. "I tell you what, Boulatoff, I'm afraid of you, and I don't
+care to bear the brunt of this important affair. Anyhow, I want you to
+keep an eye on me. I'll do all you want me to, but you must take the
+responsibility off my shoulders, else I'll go crazy. What makes you
+smile? You think I'm crazy already, don't you?"
+
+"I wasn't smiling at all. So far you have managed things beautifully. I
+confess I'm getting impatient. Well, I do feel wretched, Maria
+Gavrilovna."
+
+She grasped his hand, shook it silently and whispered: "Don't be uneasy.
+We shall win."
+
+When Safonoff came home at the lunch hour he told of the excitement at
+the gendarme office. His manner toward Boulatoff was a non-committal
+mixture which seemed to say: "You and I understand each other perfectly,
+don't we? Still, if you think you can get me to call a spade a spade or
+to help you you are mistaken."
+
+His compact, well-fed figure had the shape of a plum. He was
+perpetually mimicking somebody or chuckling and his speech was full of
+gaps, many of his sentences being rendered in dumb show.
+
+"My chief may get in trouble for having ordered the arrest too soon," he
+said. "We were to let the prisoner--" (he brandished his hand to
+represent a man going around at large) "for some time, so as to let him
+show us with whom he is acquainted. But my chief--" (he struck an
+attitude meant to caricature a decrepit, coughing, old fellow) "was all
+of a tremble for fear the canary-bird might take wing. You see he had
+never arrested a political before. You should have seen our men when we
+took that chap on the railroad track. They were more frightened than he,
+I assure you, prince. They thought he was going to--" (he aimed an
+imaginary dagger at Pavel and burst into laughter). "Monsieur Unknown is
+certainly no coward whatever else he may be. You should have seen the
+look of surprise and contempt he gave me!"
+
+Pavel beamed while Masha's face wore a pained expression. "It's time you
+had left this nasty business of yours, Andrusha," she said.
+
+When Andrusha reached the assistant procureur's part in the case he
+sketched off a pompous imbecile. There was no love lost between the
+public attorney and the gendarme officers, so Safonoff described, with
+many a gurgle of merriment, how, during the attempted examination of the
+prisoner, Zendorf, the assistant procureur (he burlesqued an obeisance
+as the epitome of snobbishness) had tried to impress his uniformed
+rivals with his intellectual and social superiority.
+
+"You see, my chief is a rough and ready sort of customer. Whatever else
+he may be, frills and fakes are not in his line. So he went right at it.
+'Speak up,' he squeaked at the prisoner, 'speak up, or I'll have your
+mouth opened for you.' So Zendorf called him gently to order and fixed
+his dignified peepers at the prisoner. He expected to cast some sort of
+spell over him, I suppose, but it was no go. As to me, I was just
+choking. As bad luck would have it I took it into my head at that moment
+that the best way to make that fellow talk would be to have his armpits
+tickled till he roared. Well, I had to leave the room to have my giggle
+out."
+
+Safonoff was indifferent to his sister's revolutionary ventures because
+he never vividly realised the danger she incurred. His mind retained the
+most lifelike impressions, but its sensitiveness was of the photographic
+kind; it was confined to actual experiences. He had no imagination for
+the future. He was an easy-going man, incapable of fear. People often
+arrived at the conclusion that he was "a fool after all." But then there
+are fools who are endowed with a keen perception and a lively sense of
+character.
+
+Speaking of the warden of the jail, Safonoff impersonated a cringing,
+hand-kissing, crafty time-server. He had never met a convert Jew or
+convert Pole who was not an adventurer and an all-round knave, he said,
+and Rodkevitch was the most typical convert Pole he had ever come
+across. The sight of money took his breath away, gave him the vertigo,
+made his eyes start from their sockets. Rustle a crisp paper ruble in
+his ear and he will faint away.
+
+"He's a candidate for Siberia anyhow and he needs money to pull him out
+of some of the roguish schemes he is tangled up in. The contractors who
+furnish his prisoners sand for flour and garbage for potatoes are his
+partners in some of his outside swindles also. Do you understand,
+prince?" The question was put with special emphasis, which Pavel
+interpreted as a direct hint at the possibility of bribing the warden.
+
+It occurred to Boulatoff that Makar's luggage was quite likely to
+contain some incriminating papers or other things that might aggravate
+the case. To fear this in view of Makar's notorious absent-mindedness
+was quite reasonable. But this was not all. He had been bent upon making
+his arrest as important in the eyes of the Third Section as possible,
+and Pavel was almost certain he had left something in his lodgings on
+purpose. "You never know what you are at with a crazy, obstinate
+bull-dog like that," he thought in a qualm of anxiety.
+
+When Safonoff had gone Pavel wrote a note to his imprisoned friend
+asking for the address of his lodgings.
+
+"Can you get this to him, and an answer brought back?" he demanded of
+Mlle. Safonoff in a peremptory tone.
+
+"I think so. My aunt will probably get it through. I am almost sure of
+it, in fact."
+
+"There you are. You're _almost_ sure. Was this enough to let a man put
+himself in the hands of the Third Section?"
+
+Mlle. Safonoff hurried out of the house in dumb dismay. After an
+interval of less than an hour, which to Pavel seemed a year, she burst
+into the parlour, accompanied by an older woman, whom she introduced as
+her aunt, Daria Stepanovna Shubeyko. Both were breathless with
+excitement. They had the desired address, the sum Makar owed his
+landlady and another note to the landlady. Pavel's heart swelled with
+joy and gratitude, but he did not show it.
+
+"Very well," he said, with a preoccupied scowl. "And now for that trunk
+of his."
+
+The two women went on to describe, continually interrupting each other,
+their plans for setting Makar free, but Pavel checked them.
+
+"We'll discuss it all afterwards," he said. "What we need at this minute
+is a coarse suit of clothes, something to make a fellow look like a
+workman or porter. We must clear his room before his landlady has
+notified the police of his disappearance." The costume was brought by
+Masha. When Pavel emerged from the major's bedroom transformed into a
+laborer, Masha's aunt applauded so violently that he could not resist
+gnashing his teeth at her.
+
+"Excuse me, but I've never seen a real man of action before," she
+pleaded. "Now I feel newly born, really I do. I tell you what,
+Boulatoff, I'll go with you. In case of trouble I may be of some use,
+you know. We can't afford to let an active man like you perish."
+
+"But then if you perish," Pavel answered gayly, "there won't be anybody
+to arrange that escape."
+
+"That's true," she replied forlornly. She was a healthy, good-looking
+woman with a smile so exultantly silly that Pavel could not bear to look
+at it. Every time that smile of hers brightened her full-blooded face,
+he dropped his eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was the risk of his being recognised by somebody in the street.
+Then, too, Makar's lodgings might have been discovered by the police and
+made a trap of. The errand was full of risks, but this only stimulated a
+feeling in which Pavel's passion for this sort of adventure was coupled
+with a desire to vindicate himself before his own conscience by sharing
+in Makar's dangers.
+
+The trip was devoid of all adventure, however. Even his meeting with his
+mother was lost on him. He was sincerely contemplating the blind beggar
+at that moment.
+
+Makar's landlady was a garrulous Jewess. When she learned that her
+lodger had been taken ill at the house of a friend and that the
+workingman had been sent for his things and to pay the bill, she
+launched out into an effusion of bad Russian that taxed Pavel's patience
+sorely. She exacted the address of Makar's friend, so as to send the
+patient some of her marvellous preserves. The prince left with the trunk
+on his shoulder--an excellent contrivance for screening his face from
+view--but it proved too heavy, and when he came across a truckman who
+agreed to take him and his load part of the way to his destination he
+was glad to be relieved of the burden.
+
+While he was in the next room, shedding his disguise, Masha's aunt
+bombarded him with impatient shouts and giggles. When he had opened the
+trunk at last she insisted upon helping him examine its contents,
+whereupon she handled each article she lifted out as she might a holy
+relic; and when the trunk proved to contain nothing of a compromising
+quality even Pavel felt disappointed. Mme. Shubeyko overwhelmed him with
+questions, one of which was:
+
+"Look here, Boulatoff, why shouldn't the people rise and put an end to
+the rule of despotism at once? What on earth are we waiting for?"
+
+"If the people were all like you they would have done so long ago," he
+answered, with a hearty laugh. He warmed to her in an amused way and
+felt like calling her auntie; only that smile of hers continued to annoy
+him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+UNDERGROUND MIROSLAV.
+
+
+Pavel dined at the major's house. He was in high spirits, but the hour
+of his expected meeting with the girl of the Pievakin demonstration was
+drawing near, and his impatience was getting keener every minute. He
+reached the place, a little house occupied by a government clerk named
+Orlovsky and his mother, ahead of time.
+
+"Your name is Boulatoff, is it not?" asked the host, his square Slavic
+nose curling up with the joy of his welcome. Then, crouching before the
+absurdest looking samovar Pavel had ever seen, he explained that his
+mother had gone to his sister's for the night, as she did very often to
+avoid the noise of his gatherings. In the centre of a bare round table
+lay an enormous loaf of rye bread and a great wedge of sugar, near which
+stood an empty candy box, apparently used as a sugar bowl. Pavel divined
+that at least one-half of Orlovsky's salary was spent on the tea, bread
+and butter on which his guests regaled themselves while they talked
+liberty.
+
+"I'm only a private of the revolution," Orlovsky said, trying to blow
+two charcoals into flame until his face glowed like the coals and his
+eyes looked bleared. "But if there is anything I can do command me." At
+his instance the two addressed each other in the familiar diminutives of
+their Christian names--"Pasha" and "Aliosha." While Aliosha was
+struggling with his smoking samovar, Pasha set to work cutting up the
+sugar.
+
+"Wait till you have seen our crowd," said Aliosha, flicking the open
+side of an old top-boot at the samovar by way of bellows. "I tell you
+Miroslav is destined to play a prominent part in the liberation of
+Russia. We have some tip-top fellows and girls. Of course, we're mere
+privates in the ranks of the revolution."
+
+But Pavel's mind was on the speaker's sackcoat of checkered grey, which
+was so tight on him that his prominent thighs were bulging out and the
+garment seemed on the point of bursting. The sight of it annoyed Pavel
+in the same way as Mme. Shubeyko's smile had done, and he asked Orlovsky
+why he should not unbutton himself, to which the other answered, half in
+jest, half in earnest, that he was getting so fat that he was beginning
+to look "like a veritable bourgeois, deuce take it."
+
+"But it makes a fellow uncomfortable to look at you," Pavel shouted,
+irascibly.
+
+"Ah, but that's a question of personal liberty, old man," Orlovsky
+returned in all seriousness. "What right have you, for instance, to
+impose upon me rules as to how I am to wear my coat?"
+
+"That right which limits the liberty of one man by the liberty of other
+men. But this is all foolishness, Aliosha. Upon my word it is. The days
+of hair-splitting are dead and buried. There is plenty of work to
+do--living, practical work."
+
+Orlovsky leaped up from his samovar, a fishy look in his eye, and
+grasping Pavel's hand he pressed it hard and long. Pavel felt in the
+presence of the most provincial Nihilism he had ever come across.
+
+Other members of the Circle came. They all knew the governor's nephew
+by sight. Also that he was "a sympathiser," yet his presence here was a
+stirring surprise to most of them, although they strove to conceal it.
+One man, Orlovsky's immediate superior in office, shook Pavel's hand
+with a grimace which seemed to say: "You're Prince Boulatoff and I am
+only an ordinary government official, but then all titles and ranks will
+soon go to smash." A Jewish gymnasium boy with two bubbling beads for
+eyes made Pavel's acquaintance with a preoccupied air, as if in a hurry
+to get down to more important business. His small, deep-seated eyes
+spurted either merriment or gloom. Elkin had said there was not enough
+of them to make one decent-sized eye, and dubbed him "Cyclops," which
+had since been the boy's revolutionary nickname.
+
+Orlovsky's superior had a vast snow-white forehead that gave his face a
+luminous, aureole-lit effect, but he was an incurable liar. He was one
+of the most devoted members of the Circle, however, and recently he had
+sold all his real estate, turning over the proceeds to the party. As he
+seated himself a telegraph operator in a dazzling uniform sat down by
+his side, saying, in a whisper:
+
+"That was an affected look of yours a moment ago."
+
+"When? What are you talking about?" the man with the sainted forehead
+asked, colouring.
+
+"You know what. You made a face as if you were not glad to see
+Boulatoff. You know you were, weren't you, now?"
+
+"I confess I was."
+
+"Now I like you, old boy. All that is necessary is to take one's self in
+hand. Nothing like self-chastisement."
+
+"Cyclops" bent over to an army captain with a pair of grandiose
+side-whiskers and said something in order to hear himself address a
+Gentile and an army officer in the familiar "thou." Another young Jew, a
+red-headed gymnasium boy named Ginsburg, sat close to the lamp, reading
+a book with near-sighted eyes, the yellow light playing on his
+short-clipped red hair. His father was a notorious usurer and the chief
+go-between in the governor's bribe-taking and money-lending
+transactions. Young Ginsburg robbed his father industriously, dedicating
+the spoils to the socialist movement.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The expectation that that hazy, featureless image which had resided in
+his mind for the past five years would soon stand forth in the flesh and
+with the mist lifted made Pavel restless. When a girl with short hair
+and very sparse teeth told him that Clara Yavner was sure to be around
+in less than fifteen minutes, his heart began to throb. The girl's name
+was Olga Alexandrovna Andronova (Andronoff). She was accompanied by her
+fiance, a local judge--a middle-aged man with a mass of fluffy hair. The
+judge was perceptibly near-sighted, like Ginsburg, only when he screwed
+up his eyes he looked angry, whereas the short-sightedness of the
+red-headed young man had a beseeching effect. The two girls were great
+friends, and Olga spoke of her chum in terms of persuasive enthusiasm.
+That Boulatoff had special reasons to be interested in Clara Yavner she
+was not aware.
+
+"What has become of her?" she said, looking at the door impatiently.
+
+"You are adding fuel to my curiosity, Olga Alexandrovna," Pavel said. "I
+am beginning to feel somewhat as I once did in the opera, when I was
+waiting to see Patti for the first time."
+
+"And when she came out you were not disappointed, were you?" Olga
+asked, exposing her sparse teeth in a broad, honest smile.
+
+"No," he laughed.
+
+"Well, neither will you be this time."
+
+Pavel said to himself humorously: "I am so excited I am afraid I shall
+fall in love with that girl. But then predictions seldom come true."
+Then he added: "And now that I predict it won't, it will."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When she came at last he said inwardly: "That's what she looks like,
+then! She certainly does not seem to be a fool whatever else she may
+be." That was what people usually said upon their first meeting with
+her: "She seems to be no fool." She was a fair-complexioned Jewish girl
+of good height. To those unfamiliar with the many types of her race she
+might have looked Teutonic. To her own people her face was
+characteristically Jewish, of the blond, hazel-eyed variety. It was a
+rather small face, round and with a slightly flattened effect between
+eyes and mouth that aroused interest. Her good looks were due to a
+peculiar impression of intelligence and character to which this effect
+contributed and to the picturesqueness of her colouring--healthy white
+flesh, clear and firm, set off by an ample crown of fair hair and
+illuminated by the brown light of intense hazel eyes. She had with her a
+two-year-old little girl, her sister's, and accompanying the two was
+Elkin, from whose manner as he entered the crowded room it was easy to
+see, first, that he had told Mlle. Yavner of the revolutionary "general"
+he was going to introduce her to; second, that he was the leader of the
+Circle and the connecting link between it and revolutionary generals.
+
+"I tried to steal away from her," she said to Olga, meaning the little
+girl, "but she ran after us and filled the streets with her cries." She
+smiled--an embarrassed smile which made her intelligent face look still
+more intelligent.
+
+When Boulatoff was introduced to her, by Elkin, she blushed slightly. He
+watched her with keen curiosity. At the same time the judge's fiancee
+was watching him, in the fond hope that he would indorse her opinion of
+her friend. When Clara averted her face, while speaking to somebody, her
+features became blurred in Pavel's mind, and he sought another look at
+her. Whether Elkin had told her of the effect her "speech" during the
+Pievakin scene had had on him he had no knowledge.
+
+Some of the men in the gathering made a point of ignoring the little
+privileges of the sex, treating the girls "as human beings, not as
+dolls," but Clara and Olga made a joke of it. When Orlovsky offered the
+judge's fiancee a chair next to Clara's she thanked him much as an
+"unemancipated" girl would have done; whereupon Mlle. Yavner shook her
+finger at her, saying merrily:
+
+"You're getting conservative, Olga. You had better look out."
+
+The Circle was a loose, informal organisation. There were no fixed rules
+or ceremonies for the admission of members nor anything like regularly
+elected officers. Nor, indeed, did the members practise formal communism
+among themselves, although the property of one was to a considerable
+extent the property of all.
+
+The gathering to-night was naturally larger than usual, owing to the
+great news of the day. No one except Pavel knew anything about the
+arrested man, each wondering whether the others did. To betray
+inquisitiveness, however, would have been unconspiratorlike, so as they
+sat about, whispering, in twos or threes, they were at once trying to
+suppress their curiosity and to draw each other out.
+
+The telegraph operator and Orlovsky's superior left early in the
+evening, but there soon came two other members, a sergeant of the
+captain's command and a gawky seminarist with a trick of drawing in his
+neck and throwing out his Adam's apple when he laughed.
+
+The sergeant took a seat beside his officer and the two fell into
+conversation about their regiment, while the theological student at once
+set to plying Pavel with questions. Elkin, in an embroidered
+Little-Russian shirt, sat smoking a pipe and smiling non-committally.
+Every little while he would remove the pipe from his mouth, take a grave
+look at the theologian and resume his pipe and his smile.
+
+The little girl sat on the captain's lap, quietly playing with his sword
+until she fell asleep. When Clara beheld the officer struggling to keep
+his luxurious side-whiskers from waking the child, she took her niece in
+her arms and carried her, with noiseless kisses, toward the door.
+
+"I'll soon be back. It isn't far," she whispered to Orlovsky, declining
+his assistance.
+
+The men followed her out of the room with fond glances. More than half
+of them were in love with her.
+
+When she got back, somewhat short of breath, Boulatoff was describing
+the general feeling in the universities and among working people. His
+talk was vague. His rolling baritone rang dry. And now his grip on the
+subject was weakened still further by the reappearance of the girl in
+whom, during the first few minutes, he instinctively felt a rival centre
+of interest. No sooner, however, had the seminarist attacked the party
+press than the prince became furious and made a favourable impression.
+Once or twice he fell into Zachar's manner and even used several of his
+arguments. The seminarist urged his objections chiefly because he wanted
+to prove to himself and to the others that he was a man of convictions
+and not one to quail before a revolutionary "general." But Pavel took
+him seriously. Once when the seminarist attempted to interrupt him,
+Clara said, forlornly:
+
+"He's bound to be right. He's just bound to be right."
+
+"Don't cry," said Cyclops. Several of the men laughed, and when Clara
+joined them their eyes betrayed her power over them. Nothing betrays
+your feelings toward another person more surely than the way you take
+his merriment.
+
+The most important topic of the evening was a circular letter from the
+Executive Committee of the Will of the People, as Pavel's party was
+called, as to the "preparatory work" that was to pave the way to a final
+uprising. The discussion was left to the judge, Elkin and Pavel. The
+gawky seminarist was silent, with an angry air which implied that the
+arguments one was compelled to follow here were exasperatingly beneath
+one's criticism. The others listened spellbound, though some of them
+scarcely felt convinced. Ingrained in the consciousness of these was the
+idea of an abstract elemental giant, tremendous and immutable as the
+northern winter, of which the blind forces of the army were only a
+personified detail. That this giant should some day, in the near future,
+cease to be did not clearly appeal to their imagination. The boldness,
+therefore, with which the judge and Pavel spoke of these things greatly
+enhanced the fascination of their speeches.
+
+Cyclops, a huge slice of rye bread in his hand, evidently had something
+to say, but did not know how. He was quoting history, blushing,
+sputtering, swallowing his own tongue, and finally he lost himself in a
+jumble of words. Elkin was just the reverse. He was so calm, so glib and
+so lucid of phrase that as long as his speech lasted one was
+involuntarily nodding assent; yet when it was over one did not seem to
+know exactly what he had said or whether he had had anything to say at
+all. At one point he and the judge locked horns and fought long and hard
+without clearly understanding each other, until they proved to be
+arguing on the same side of the issue. Orlovsky, who took it for granted
+that the theoretical discussion was beyond his mental powers, looked on
+with stupid admiration. "Here is a bunch of cracks for you!" his beaming
+face seemed to say.
+
+In the course of a pause Clara whispered something to Olga.
+
+"Why don't you ask it then?" the short-haired girl answered, aloud.
+
+Clara turned pale, as she began to speak. She went straight to the
+point, however, and presently cast off all restraint.
+
+"All this is very well," she said, referring to a certain passage in the
+circular letter, "provided the local authorities really desert the
+throne. But suppose they don't, suppose they prove to be hardened
+conservatives, devoted slaves of the crown? It seems to me as if we were
+inclined to take things for granted--counting without the host, as it
+were."
+
+"Devoted to the crown!" said the gawky theologian. "The fact is that the
+high officials are a mere lot of self-seeking curs."
+
+"Exactly," Pavel thundered, bringing his hands together
+enthusiastically.
+
+Elkin removed the pipe from his mouth and bawled out: "Rats rather than
+curs, I should say; rats that are sure to forsake the ship of state the
+moment it shows signs of danger."
+
+The seminarist was annoyed at this attempt to steal the applause from
+him, but Boulatoff did not like Elkin's manner and offered him no
+encouragement. This disarmed the seminarist's opposition. From this
+moment on he listened to Pavel with friendly nods, as who should say:
+"Now you are hitting it; now you are talking sense!"
+
+"Of course," Pavel resumed, "the pamphlet means we should keep agitating
+until we are sure of our ground. There is a large liberal-minded class
+that does not stir merely because it is made up of a lot of cowards.
+These fellows will rally around our banner the moment the government
+begins to totter. As to the bureaucracy, it is so decayed, so
+worm-eaten, that all it knows at present is how to bend double for an
+increase of salary or promotion in rank. A lot of back-boneless
+flunkeys, that's what they are. You don't actually think they serve the
+Czar from principle?" he asked, addressing himself to Mlle. Yavner.
+
+"The only principle they care for," Elkin interposed, "is, 'To the devil
+with all principles!'"
+
+"Exactly," Pavel assented, with some irritation.
+
+"Yes," the seminarist chimed in, "and when they hear the tocsin of
+Liberty, Equality and Fraternity--"
+
+"Liberty, Equality and Fiddlesticks!" Clara mimicked him, mildly,
+signing to him not to interrupt the speaker.
+
+Pavel went on. He spoke at length, looking mostly at her. He was making
+an effort to convince her that in the event of a revolution the high
+officials would turn cowards, and her face seemed to be saying: "He's
+the nephew of a governor, so he ought to know."
+
+When the yard windows were thrown open the bewhiskered captain sat down
+to the piano and struck up an old national tune, to the accompaniment of
+two male voices. The others continued their talk under cover of the
+music. Pavel made up his mind that the judge and Clara were the most
+level-headed members of the Circle, and decided to seek their
+cooperation in the business which had brought him to Miroslav. Only the
+judge was the more reposeful of the two, as well as incomparably the
+better informed. As a rule he was absorbed in his own logic, while Mlle.
+Yavner was jarred by every false note in others, nervously sensitive to
+all that went on about her, so that when Cyclops, for example, got
+tangled in his own verbosity her eyes would cloud up with vexation and
+she would come to his rescue, summing up his argument in a few clear,
+unobtrusive sentences. There was a glow of enthusiasm in her look which
+she was apparently struggling to suppress. Indeed, she was struggling to
+suppress some feeling or other most of the time. Her outward calm seemed
+to cover an interior of restlessness.
+
+Pavel's unbounded faith in the party instilled new faith into her. The
+great point was that he was a member of the aristocracy. If a man like
+him had his whole heart in the struggle, the movement was certainly not
+without foundation. Moreover, Boulatoff was close to the revolutionary
+centre, and he obviously spoke from personal knowledge. All sorts of
+questions worried her, many of which were answered at the present
+gathering, partly by herself, partly by others. The new era, when there
+would be neither poverty nor oppression, the enchanted era which had won
+her heart, loomed clearer than ever. At one moment as she sat listening,
+her blond hair gleaming golden in the lamplight, her face lit up by a
+look of keen intelligence, Pavel said to himself: "And this Jewish girl
+is the one who had the feeling and the courage to make that rumpus over
+Pievakin! If I became a revolutionist it was the result of gradual
+development, through the help of conditions, books, people; whereas this
+girl acted like one, and in the teeth of grave danger, too, purely on
+the spur of the moment and long before she knew there was any such thing
+as a revolutionary movement; acted like one while I was still a blind,
+hard-hearted milksop of a drone." In the capital he knew a number of
+girls who were continually taking their lives in their hands and several
+of whom were like so many saints to him, but then Mlle. Yavner belonged
+to the realm of his home and his boyhood. What he regarded as an act of
+heroism on her part was hallowed by that sense of special familiarity
+and comprehensibility which clings to things like the old well that
+witnessed our childish games.
+
+She made a very favourable impression on him. If he had been a formal
+candidate for her hand, come "bride-seeing," he could not have studied
+her more closely than he did now. Indeed, so absorbed was he in her that
+once while she was speaking to him laughingly her words fell on a deaf
+ear because at that moment he was remarking to himself: "She laughs in a
+little rising scale, breaking off in a rocket."
+
+"There must be something in her, then," he thought "which was the source
+of that noble feeling and of that courage." He took to scanning her
+afresh, as though looking for a reflection of that something in her
+face, and as he looked at her and thought of the Pievakin
+"demonstration" it gave him pleasure to exaggerate her instrumentality
+in his own political regeneration.
+
+Olga had relieved her fiance at the piano, and later on when she, too,
+rose from the keyboard, Clara eagerly took her place. There was no life
+in Mlle. Yavner's tones, but the impassioned sway of her head and form
+as she played told of a soul touched with ecstasy; told of the music
+which her fingers failed to evoke from the instrument. And the eyes of
+half a dozen love-stricken men added their rapture to the sounds.
+
+Pavel listened to her melody and breathed the scented night air that
+came in from the little garden in the yard. He reflected that Clara
+might visit the warden's house as a piano teacher. At this it came home
+to him that Makar was in prison, and that unless he escaped he was a
+lost man. He was seized with terror. The piano sang of a lonely ship,
+blue waves, and a starlit night, but to Pavel it spoke of his imprisoned
+friend and his own anguish. He joined in the chorus with ferocious
+ardour. His heart was crying for Makar's liberation and for a thousand
+other things. When she left the piano stool he leaped up to her.
+
+"Allow me to grasp your hand, Clara Rodionovna," he said, as though
+thanking her for the merit of her playing. And then, all unmindful of
+comment, he drew her into a secluded corner and said vehemently:
+
+"I wish also to tell you, Clara Rodionovna, that I have a special reason
+to be glad of knowing you; for if I have a right to be among good people
+it is you whom I have to thank for it." A thick splash of crimson came
+into her face; but before she had time to put her surprise into words,
+he poured forth the story of his awakening and how he had all these five
+years been looking forward to a meeting with her. As he spoke his face
+bore an expression of ecstatic, almost amorous grimness. The girl was
+taken by storm. She was literally dazed. An overwhelming, unspoken
+intimacy established itself between them on the spot.
+
+Olga's face was a blend of beaming triumph and tense perplexity. The men
+were making an effort to treat Boulatoff's sally with discretion, as if
+it were a bit of revolutionary conspiracy and they knew enough to mind
+their own business.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+A WARNING.
+
+
+It was one o'clock when the assemblage broke up. They scattered over
+various sections of the town, Pavel going to his home in the Palace,
+while Clara, accompanied by Elkin and Orlovsky, set off in the direction
+of Paradise Town. But whatever the character of the district one was
+bound for, in their hearts there was the same feeling that they belonged
+to a higher life than did those who slept behind the closed shutters
+they were passing. This feeling made them think of their group as a
+world within a world. Their Circle was a magic one. Somewhere in St.
+Petersburg, Moscow, Kieff, Odessa, Siberia, men and women were being
+slowly tortured, dying on the gallows; a group of brave people still at
+large--the mysterious Executive Committee--was doing things that
+thrilled the empire; and they, members of the Miroslav Circle, were the
+kin of those heroes. As they dispersed through the sleeping town each
+unconsciously remembered the organisation as so many superior beings
+dotting a population of human prose.
+
+"He must be quite close to the Centre," Orlovsky said.
+
+The other two made no answer. It struck Clara as sacrilege to talk of
+Boulatoff, whose fervent face was vivid before her at this minute.
+Particularly unbearable was the allusion to the prince to her because it
+was Orlovsky who made it. The stout government clerk was one of the men
+in love with her, while she often disliked him to abhorrence. She felt a
+sincere friendship for him, yet sometimes when he spoke she would be
+tempted to shut her ears and to gnash her teeth as people do when they
+hear a window pane scratched. This was one of her causeless hatreds with
+which she was perpetually struggling.
+
+Orlovsky construed their irresponsiveness as a rebuke for his speaking
+of the revolutionary "centre" in the street; so he started to tell them
+about his mother. With Clara by his side his tongue would not rest. Not
+so Elkin, who nursed his love in morose silence. When they heard the
+whistle of a distant policeman and the answer of a watchman's rattle by
+way of showing that he had not fallen asleep on his post, Orlovsky
+raised his voice.
+
+"She is getting more pious every day," he said, as though defying the
+invisible policeman to find anything seditious in his words.
+
+Clara's mind was on Boulatoff. The strange avowal of the man whom she
+had never seen before save through the window of a princely carriage
+tingled through her veins in a medley of new-born exaltations. Boulatoff
+did seem to be close to the Executive Committee, and the sentiments of
+that wonderful body, voiced by this high-born young man, the nephew of
+the governor of Miroslav, had lit stirring images in her consciousness.
+Pavel stood out amid the other revolutionists of her acquaintance even
+as the whole Miroslav Circle did in the midst of the rest of her native
+town.
+
+The interchange of signals between policeman and watchman which now and
+then sounded through the stillness of the night reminded her of the
+unknown man the gendarmes had arrested, of the hard glint of chains, of
+gallows. She wondered whether Elkin or Boulatoff knew anything about
+that man. She saw herself rapidly marching toward something at once
+terrible and divine. She was not the only one who followed this
+course--that was the great point. The kindest and best people in
+Miroslav, the best and the wisest in the land, and among them children
+of governors, of noblemen, were consecrated to that same something which
+was both terrible and luring. Her heart went out to her comrades known
+and unknown, and as she beheld a sleepy watchman curled up in the recess
+of his gateway, she exclaimed without words: "I'm going to die for
+you--for you and all the other poor and oppressed people in the world."
+
+Here and there they passed an illuminated window or an open street door,
+through which they saw Jewish artisans at work. They saw the bent forms
+of Jewish tailors, they heard the hammer sounds of Jewish carpenters,
+tinsmiths, blacksmiths, silversmiths; yet all these made no impression
+upon her. There were about 50,000 Jews in Miroslav and as many as
+three-fourths of them were pinched, half-starved mechanics, working
+fourteen hours a day, and once or twice a week all night, to live on rye
+bread and oatmeal soup; yet they made no appeal to her sympathies, while
+the Gentiles who were huddled up in front of the gates she was passing
+did. The great Russian writers whose stories and songs had laid the
+foundation to her love of the masses dealt in Gentiles, not in Jews.
+Nekrasoff bewailed the misery of the Russian moujik, not of the common
+people of her own race. Turgeneff's sketches breathe forth the poetry of
+suffering in a Great-Russian village, not the tragedy and spiritual
+beauty of life among the toiling men and women of her own blood. She had
+never been in Great Russia, in fact; she had never seen those moujiks
+in the flesh. Those she had seen were the Little-Russian peasants, who
+came to Miroslav from the neighbouring villages. Her peasants,
+therefore, were so many literary images, each with the glamour which
+radiates from the pages of an adored author. This was the kind of
+"people" she had in mind when she thought of the _Will of the People_.
+The Jewish realities of which her own home was a part had nothing to do
+with this imaginary world of hers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Clara's home was on a small square which was partly used as a cart-stand
+and in one corner of which, a short distance from Cucumber Market,
+squatted a policeman's hut. This was the district of a certain class of
+artisans and small tradesmen; of harness-makers, trunk-makers,
+wheelwrights; of dealers in tar, salt, herring, leaf tobacco, pipes,
+accordions, cheap finery. The air was pungent with a thousand strong
+odours. The peasants who brought their produce to market were here
+supplied with necessaries and trinkets. The name of the big market-place
+extended to the entire locality, and Paradise Town was just beyond the
+confines of that locality.
+
+The square for which Clara was bound was called Little Market. A gate in
+the centre of one of its four sides, flanked by goose-yards on one side
+and by a row of feed-shops and harness-shops on the other, led into a
+deep and narrow court, known as Boyko's. At this moment the gate was
+closed, its wicket, held ajar by a chain, showing black amid the grey
+gloom of the square.
+
+As Clara and her two escorts came in sight of the spot they saw a man
+sitting on a low wooden bench near the gate.
+
+"Somebody is waiting for me," she said gravely. She thanked them and
+bade them good-bye and they went their several ways.
+
+The man on the bench rose and went to meet her. As he walked toward her
+he leaned heavily on his stout, knotty cane--a pose which she knew to be
+the result of embarrassment. He was a tall, athletic fellow in a long
+spring overcoat, a broad-brimmed felt hat sloping backward on his head.
+He bore striking resemblance to Clara; the same picturesque flatness in
+the middle part of the face, the same expression. Only his hair was
+dark, and his eyes and mouth were milder than hers. They looked like
+brother and sister and, indeed, had been brought up almost as such, but
+they were only cousins. His name was Vladimir Vigdoroff. His family was
+the better-to-do and the worldlier of the two. When he was a boy of four
+and he envied certain other two boys because each of them had a little
+sister, and he had not, he had made one of his cousin. It was his father
+who subsequently paid for Clara's education.
+
+"You here?" Clara said quietly.
+
+He nodded, to say yes, with playful chivalry. They reached the bench in
+silence, and then he said in a decisive, business-like voice which she
+knew to be studied:
+
+"I expected to have a talk with you, Clara. That's why I waited so long.
+But it's too late. Can I see you to-morrow?"
+
+"Certainly. Will you drop in in the afternoon?"
+
+He had evidently expected to be detained. He lingered in silence, and
+she had not the heart to say good-bye. From a neighbouring lane came the
+buzz-buzz of a candlestick-maker's lathe. They were both agitated. She
+had been looking forward to this explanation for some time. They divined
+each other perfectly. As they now stood awkwardly without being able
+either to speak or to part, their minds were in reality saying a good
+deal to each other.
+
+Until recently she had made her home in her uncle's house more than she
+had in her father's. Her piano stood there, her uncle's gift, for which
+there was no room in the basement occupied by her parents. She had kept
+her books there, received her girl friends and often slept there. But
+since her initiation into the secret society she had gradually removed
+her headquarters to her parents' house, and her visits at Vladimir's
+home had become few and far between. Clara had once offered him an
+underground leaflet, whereupon he had nearly fainted with fright at
+sight of it. He had burned the paper in terror and indignation, and
+then, speaking partly like an older brother and partly like the master
+of the house which she was compromising, he had commanded her never
+again to go near people who handled literature of that sort. Accustomed
+to look up to him as her intellectual guide and authority, as the most
+brilliant man within her horizon, she had listened to his attack upon
+Nihilism and Nihilists with meek reserve, but the new influences she had
+fallen under had proven far stronger than his power over her. To relieve
+him from the hazards of her presence in the house she had little by
+little removed her books and practically discontinued her visits. In the
+event of her getting into trouble with the gendarmes her own family was
+too old-fashioned and uneducated, in a modern sense, to be suspected of
+complicity. As to Vladimir, he missed her keenly, as did everybody else
+in the house, but her estrangement had a special sting to it, too, one
+unconnected with their mutual attachment as cousins who had grown up
+together. Clara's consideration for his safety, implying as it did that
+he was too timid and too jealous for his personal security to work for
+the revolution, an inferior being uninitiated into the world of pluck
+and self-sacrifice to which she, until recently his pupil, belonged,
+galled him inordinately.
+
+At last he lost control over himself.
+
+"You are playing with fire, Clara," he said, lingering by the bench.
+
+"I suppose that's what you want to speak to me about," she answered with
+calm earnestness, "but this is hardly the place for a discussion of this
+sort, Volodia."[B]
+
+  [B] Affectionate diminutive of Vladimir.
+
+"If you want me to go home you had better say so in so many words. The
+high-minded interests you are cultivating are scarcely compatible with
+shyness or lack of frankness, Clara."
+
+"Don't be foolish, Volodia. You know you will make fun of yourself for
+having spoken like that."
+
+"I didn't mean to say anything harsh, Clara. But this thing is scarcely
+ever out of my mind. It's a terrible fate you have chosen."
+
+"How do you know I have?" she asked in a meditative tone that implied
+assent.
+
+"How do I know? Can't we have a frank, honest talk for once, Clara? Let
+us go somewhere."
+
+"We can talk here. To be on the safe side of it, let us talk in
+Yiddish."
+
+He made a grimace of repugnance, and seating himself on the bench he
+went on in nervous Russian.
+
+"You have fallen into company that will do you no good, Clara. If you
+are arrested it will break the heart of two families. Is there no soul
+left in you?"
+
+"What put it into your mind that I should be arrested?" she returned,
+lugubriously. "And is that all one ought to be concerned about? All
+Russia is in prison."
+
+"I expected something of that sort. Alluring phrases have made you deaf
+and blind. It is my duty to try to save you before it is too late."
+
+He had come for friendly remonstrance, for an open-hearted explanation,
+but that mood had been shattered the moment he saw her approaching with
+two of her new friends. He persisted in using the didactic tone he had
+been in the habit of taking with her, and he could not help feeling how
+ridiculously out of place it had become. He chafed under a sense of his
+lost authority, and the impotent superiority of his own manner impelled
+him to bitterness.
+
+"Is that what you have come for--to rescue me from empty phrases and bad
+company?"
+
+"Yes, to rescue you from the intoxication of bombast and dangerous
+company, whether you are in a sarcastic mood or not."
+
+"And how are you going to do it, pray?" she asked with rather
+good-natured gaiety.
+
+"Laugh away. Laugh away. Since you took up with those scamps----"
+
+"Scamps! I can't let you speak like that, Volodia. I don't know what you
+mean by 'taking' up with them, but if by 'scamps' you mean people who
+are sacrificing themselves----"
+
+"You misunderstand me----"
+
+"If by scamps you mean people who will be tortured or hanged for
+opposing the tyranny that is crushing us all rather than feather their
+own nests, then it is useless for us to continue this talk."
+
+"Be calm, Clara. You don't wish to misjudge me, do you? Of course, I
+needn't tell you that what you say about sacrificing oneself and all
+that sort of business is no news to me. Some other time, when you are
+not excited, I may have something to say about these things----"
+
+"That everlasting 'something to say!' People are being throttled,
+butchered and you--you have 'something to say.' We are speaking in two
+different languages, Volodia."
+
+"Maybe we are. And I must say you have picked up that new language of
+yours rather quickly. I am not going to enter into a lengthy discussion
+with you to-night. All I will say now is this: You know that four Jewish
+revolutionists have been hanged within the last few months--in Odessa,
+Nicolayeff, Kieff and St. Petersburg. If you think that does the Jewish
+people any good I am very sorry."
+
+"What else would you have Jews do? Roll on feather-beds and collect
+usury? Would that do 'the Jewish people' good?"
+
+"You talk like an anti-Semite, Clara."
+
+"There is no accounting for tastes. You may call it anti-Semitism. You
+may be ashamed of four men who die bravely in a terrible struggle
+against despotism."
+
+He cast an uneasy look in the direction of the police booth, but his
+courage failed him to urge her to lower her voice.
+
+"As for me," she went on, "I certainly am proud of them. I hold their
+names sacred, yes, sacred, sacred, sacred, do you understand? And if you
+intend to continue calling such people scamps then there is nothing left
+for us to say to each other. And, by the way, since when have _you_ been
+a champion of 'the Jewish people'--you who have taught me to keep away
+from everything Jewish; you who are shocked by the very sound of
+Yiddish, by the very sight of a wig or a pair of side-locks; you who are
+continually boasting of the Gentiles you are chumming with; you who
+would give all the Jews in the world for one handshake of a Christian?"
+
+"Well, I am prepared to take abuse, too, to-night. As to my hatred of
+Yiddish and side-locks, that does no harm to anybody. If all Jews
+dropped their antediluvian ways and became assimilated with the Russian
+population half of the unfortunate Jewish question would be solved."
+
+"Oh, this kind of talk is really enough to drive one mad. The whole
+country is choking for breath, and here you are worrying over the Jewish
+question. But then--since when have _you_ been interested in the Jews
+and their 'question?'"
+
+"Whether I have or not, I never helped to aggravate it as those 'heroes'
+of yours do. If there are some few rights which the Jew still enjoys,
+they, too, will be taken away from him on account of that new-fangled
+heroism which has turned your head."
+
+"Nobody has any 'rights.' Everybody is trampled upon, everybody. That's
+what those 'scamps' are struggling to do away with."
+
+"Everybody has to die for that matter, yet who cares to die an unnatural
+death? If the Jews were oppressed like all others and no more, it would
+be another matter, but they are not. Theirs is an unnatural oppression."
+
+"Well, that's what those 'scamps' are struggling for: to do away with
+every sort of oppression. Would you have the Jews keep out of that
+struggle? Would you have them take care of their own precious skins, and
+later on, when life becomes possible in Russia, to come in for a share
+of the fruit of a terrible fight that they carefully stayed away from?"
+
+"Those are dreams, Clara. Dreams and phrases, phrases and dreams. That's
+all you have learned of your new friends. Do you deny the existence of a
+Jewish question?"
+
+She scrutinised his face in the grey half-tones of the gathering dawn
+and said calmly:
+
+"Look here, Volodia, you know you are seizing at this 'Jewish question'
+as a drowning man does at a straw. You know you have no more interest in
+it than I have."
+
+"I am certainly not delighted to see it exist, if that's what you mean."
+
+"May I be frank with you, Volodia? All the Jews of the world might cease
+to exist, for all you care."
+
+"It isn't true. All I want is that they should become Russians, cultured
+Russians."
+
+"Well, as for me there is only one question--the question of plain
+common justice and plain elementary liberty. When this has been achieved
+there won't be any such thing as a Jewish, Polish or Hottentot question.
+Yes, those 'scamps' are the only real friends the Jews have."
+
+"But one cannot live on the golden mist of that glorious future of
+yours, Clara. It takes a saint to do that. Every-day mortals cannot help
+thinking of equal rights before the law in the sordid present."
+
+"Think away! Much good will it do the Jews. The only kind of equal
+rights possible to-day is for Jew and Gentile to die on the same gallows
+for liberty. That's the 'scamps'' view of it." At this the word struck
+her in conjunction with the images of Boulatoff, Olga, the judge, and
+the other members of the Circle, whereupon she burst out, with a stifled
+sob in her voice: "How dare you abuse those people?"
+
+Not only had she broken loose from his tutelage, but he had found
+himself on the defensive. They had changed roles. The pugnacious tone of
+conviction, almost of inspiration, with which she parried his jibes
+nonplussed him. Usually a bright talker, he was now colourless and
+floundering. And the more he tried to work himself back to his old-time
+mastery the more helplessly at a disadvantage he appeared.
+
+"I don't recognise you, Clara," he said. "They have mesmerised you,
+those phrase-makers."
+
+She leaped to her feet. "I don't intend to hear any more of this abuse,"
+she said. "And the idea of you finding fault with phrase-makers! you of
+all men, you to whom a well-turned phrase is dearer than all else in the
+world! If they make phrases they are willing to suffer for them at
+least."
+
+"Oh well, they have made a perfect savage of you," he retorted under his
+breath. "Good night."
+
+She was left with a sharp twinge of compunction, but she had barely
+dived under the wicket chain when her thoughts reverted to Boulatoff and
+what he had said to her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+CLARA AT HOME.
+
+
+At Boyko's Court the chilly dawn lit up a barricade of wheels, axles,
+and bodies of peasant waggons. Through wide cracks of a fence came the
+shifting light of a lantern and the sleepy cackling of geese. At the far
+end of the deep narrow court hung the pulley chains and bucket of a
+roofed well. Clara went through a spacious subterranean passage, dark as
+a pocket and filled with the odour of paint. It was crowded with stacks
+of trunks, finished and unfinished, but she steered clear of them
+without having to feel her way.
+
+A door swung open, revealing a dimly lighted low-ceiled interior. The
+odour of sleep mingled with the odours of paint and putty.
+
+"Is that you, Tamara?" asked a tall, erect, half-naked old woman in
+Yiddish, Tamara being the Jewish name which had been arbitrarily
+transformed, at Vladimir's instance, into Clara.
+
+"Yes, mamma darling," Clara replied.
+
+"Master of the universe! You get no sleep at all."
+
+The girl kissed her mother gayly. "You know what papa says," she
+rejoined, "'sleep is one sixtieth of death.' Life is better, mamma
+dear."
+
+"I have not studied any of your Gentile books, yet I know enough to
+understand that to be alive is better than to be dead," the tall, erect
+old woman said without smiling. "But if you want to be alive you must
+sleep. Go to bed, go to bed."
+
+There were between them relations of quizzical comradeship, implying
+that each treated the interests of the other with patronising levity,
+with the reservation of a common ground upon which they met on terms of
+equality and ardent friendship.
+
+"By the way," the old woman added, yawning, "Volodia was here. He wants
+to see you."
+
+"I know. I found him at the gate."
+
+"Very well, then, go to bed, go to bed."
+
+"Is father asleep?"
+
+At this a red-bearded little man in yellow drawers and a white shirt
+open at the neck and exposing a hairy breast, burst from an open side
+door.
+
+"How can one sleep when one is not allowed to?" he fired out. "May she
+sink into the earth, her ungodly books and all. I'll break every unclean
+bone in you. Who ever heard of a girl roaming around as late as that?"
+
+"Hush," his wife said with a faint smile, as she urged him back to their
+bed-room, much as she would a child.
+
+The family occupied one large basement room, the better part of which
+was used as a trunk-maker's shop and a kitchen, two narrow strips of its
+space having been partitioned off for bed-rooms. It was Hannah, Clara's
+mother, who conducted the trunk business. The bare wooden boxes came
+from a carpenter's shop and she had them transformed into trunks at her
+house. Clara's father spent his days and evenings in a synagogue,
+studying the Talmud "for its own sake." There were other such scholars
+in Miroslav, the wife in each case supporting the family by engaging in
+earthly business, while her husband was looking after their common
+spiritual welfare in the house of God. Clara's mother was generally
+known as "Hannah the trunk-maker," or "Hannah the Devil." In her very
+humble way she was a shrewd business woman, tireless, scheming, and not
+over-scrupulous, but her nickname had originated long before she was old
+enough to be a devil on Cucumber Market. She was a little girl when
+there appeared in the neighbourhood what Anglo-Saxons would call "Jack
+the Window-Smasher." Window-pane after window-pane was cracked without
+there being the remotest clue to the source of the mischief. The
+bewigged old women said it was an evil spirit, and engaged a "master of
+the name" to exorcise it from the community; but the number of broken
+windows continued to grow. The devil proved to be Hannah, and the most
+startling thing about the matter, according to the bewigged women of the
+neighbourhood, was this, that when caught in the act, she did not even
+cry, but just lowered her eyes and frowned saucily.
+
+Rabbi Rachmiel, as Clara's father was addressed by strangers, was
+innocent of "things of the world" as an infant--a hot-tempered,
+simple-minded scholar, with the eyes and manner of a tiger and the heart
+of a dove. His wife tied his shirt-strings, helped him on with his socks
+and boots, and generally took care of him as she might of a baby. When
+he spoke of worldly things to her, she paid no heed to his talk. When he
+happened to drop a saying from the Talmud she would listen reverently
+for more, without understanding a word of what he said.
+
+Had Clara been a boy her father would have sooner allowed her to be
+burned alive than to be taught "Gentile wisdom." But woman is out of the
+count in the Jewish church, so he neither interfered nor tried to
+understand the effect that Gentile education was having on her.
+
+Father, mother and daughter represented three distinct worlds, Clara
+being as deeply engrossed in her "Gentile wisdom" as Rabbi Rachmiel was
+in his Talmud, or as her mother in her trunks. That the girl belonged to
+a society that was plotting against the Czar the old people had not the
+remotest idea, of course.
+
+Besides Clara and her married sister the old couple had two sons, one of
+them a rabbi in a small town and the other a merchant in the same place.
+
+Clara put out the smoky light of a crude chimneyless little lamp (with a
+piece of wire to work the wick up and down), which had been left burning
+for her. A few streaks of raw daylight crept in through the shutters,
+falling on a pair of big rusty shears fastened to the top of a wooden
+block, on a heap of sheet-iron, and on several rows of old Talmudic
+folios which lined the stretch of wall between Clara's partition and one
+of the two windows.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE COUNTESS' DISCOVERY.
+
+
+As Pavel mounted the majestic staircase of his mother's residence he
+became aware that an abstract facial expression was all his memory
+retained of Mlle. Yavner's likeness. He coveted another glance at her
+much as a man covets to hear again a new song that seems to be singing
+itself in his mind without his being able to reproduce it.
+
+He found his mother sitting up for him, on the verge of a nervous
+collapse. She took him to a large, secluded room, the best in the vast
+house for _tete-a-tete_ purposes. It was filled with mementoes, the
+trophies of her father's diplomatic career, with his proud collection of
+rare and costly inkstands, and with odds and ends of ancient furniture,
+each with a proud history as clear-cut as the pedigree of a high-born
+race-horse.
+
+Anna Nicolayevna had planned to lead up to the main question
+diplomatically, but she was scarcely seated on a huge, venerable couch
+(which made her look smaller than ever) than she turned pale and blurted
+out in a whisper:
+
+"Did you cross the bridge this afternoon?"
+
+"No. Why?" He said this with fatigued curiosity and looking her full in
+the face.
+
+She dropped her glance. "I thought I saw you there."
+
+"You were mistaken, then, but what makes you look so uneasy? I did not
+go in that direction at all, but suppose I did. Why, what has happened?"
+
+She cowed before the insistence of his interrogations and beat a
+retreat.
+
+"I am not uneasy at all. I must have been mistaken, then. It is about
+Kostia I have been wanting to speak to you. It is quite a serious
+matter. You see he is too delicate for the military schools. So I was
+thinking of putting him in the gymnasium, but then many of the boys
+there are children of undesirable people. One can't be too careful these
+days." She was now speaking according to her carefully considered
+program, and growing pale once more, she fixed him with a searching
+glance, as she asked: "You must have heard of the man the gendarmes
+caught, haven't you?"
+
+"Oh, you mean the fellow who would not open his mouth," he said with a
+smile. "Quite a sensation for a town like this. In St. Petersburg or
+Moscow they catch them so often it has ceased to be news."
+
+She went on to speak of the evil of Nihilism, Pavel listening with
+growing interest, like a man who had given the matter some
+consideration. Poor Anna Nicolayevna! She was no match for him.
+
+Finally he got up. "Well, I don't really know," he said. "It seems to me
+the trouble lies much deeper than that, _mamman_. Those fellows, the
+Nihilists, don't amount to anything in themselves. If it were not for
+that everlasting Russian helplessness of ours they could do no more harm
+than a group of flies. Our factories and successful farms are all run by
+Germans; we simply can't take care of the least thing."
+
+"But what have factories and farms to do with the pranks of demoralised
+boys?"
+
+He smiled. "But if we were not a helpless, shiftless nation a handful of
+boys couldn't frighten us, could they?"
+
+"Very well. Let us suppose you are a minister. What would you do?"
+
+"What would I do? I shouldn't let things come to such a pass, to begin
+with."
+
+He was tempted to cast circumspection to the winds and to thunder out
+his real impeachment of existing conditions. This, however, he could not
+afford; so he felt like a boat that is being rowed across stream with a
+strong current to tempt her downward. He was sailing in a diagonal
+direction. Every now and then he would let himself drift along, only
+presently to take up his oars and strike out for the bank again. He
+spoke in his loud rapid way. Every now and again he would break off,
+fall to pacing the floor silently and listening to the sound of his own
+voice which continued to ring in his ears, as though his words remained
+suspended in the air.
+
+Anna Nicolayevna--a curled-up little heap capped by an enormous pile of
+glossy auburn hair, in the corner of a huge couch--followed him
+intently. Once or twice she nodded approval to a severe attack upon the
+government, without realising that he was speaking against the Czar. She
+was at a loss to infer whether he was opposed to the new advisers of the
+Emperor in the same way in which her brother-in-law and the
+ultra-conservative Slavophiles were opposed to them or whether he was
+some kind of liberal. He certainly seemed to tend toward the Slavophiles
+in his apparent hatred of foreigners.
+
+"They'll kill him, those murderous youngsters, they are sure to kill
+him," he shouted at one point, speaking of the Czar. "And who is to
+blame? Is such a state of things possible anywhere in Western Europe?"
+
+Anna Nicolayevna's eyes grew red and then filled with tears, as she
+shrank deeper into the corner of the couch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She was left in a frame of mind that was a novel experience to her. Her
+pity was lingering about a stalwart military figure with the gloom and
+glint of martyrdom on his face--the face of Alexander II. Quite apart
+from this was the sense of having been initiated into a strange ecstasy
+of thought and feeling--of bold ideas and broad human sympathies. She
+was in an unwonted state of mental excitement. Pavel seemed to be a
+weightier personage than ever. The haze that enveloped him was
+thickening. Nevertheless his strictures upon Russia's incapacity left
+her rankling with a desire to refute them. That national self-conceit
+which breeds in every child the conviction that his is the greatest
+country in the world and that its superiority is cheerfully conceded by
+all other nations, reasserted itself in the countess with resentful
+emphasis. To be sure, all the skill, ingenuity and taste of the refined
+world came from abroad, but this did not lessen her contempt for
+foreigners any more than did the fact that all acrobats and
+hair-dressers were Germans or Frenchmen. Her childhood had been spent in
+foreign countries and she knew their languages as well as she did her
+own; nevertheless her abstraction of a foreigner was a man who spoke
+broken Russian--a lisping, stammering, cringing imbecile. She revolted
+to think of Russia as being inferior to wretches of this sort, and when
+the bridge incident swept back upon her in all the clearness of fact,
+her blood ran chill again. "He is the man I saw in the waggon after
+all," she said to herself, in dismay.
+
+She went to bed, but tossed about in an agony of restlessness. When the
+darkness of her room began to thin and the brighter objects loomed into
+view, she slipped on a wrapper and seated herself at a window, courting
+composure in the blossom-scented air that came up from the garden; but
+all to no purpose. Ever and anon, after a respite of tranquillity she
+would be seized with a new rush of consternation. Pasha was the man she
+had seen on the bridge, disguised as an artisan; he was a Nihilist.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While Anna Nicolayevna was thus harrowed with doubt, Pavel was pacing
+his room, his heart on the point of bursting with a desire to see his
+mother again and to make a clean breast of it. The notion of her being
+outwitted and made sport of touched him with pity. Come what might, his
+poor noble-hearted mother must be kept in the dark no longer. She would
+appreciate his feelings. He would plead with her, with tears in his eyes
+he would implore her to open her eyes to the appalling inhumanity of the
+prevailing adjustment of things. And as he visioned himself making this
+plea to her, his own sense of the barbarity of the existing regime set
+his blood simmering in him, and quickened his desire to lay it all
+before his mother.
+
+Presently somebody rapped on his door. It was Anna Nicolayevna.
+
+"I must speak to you, Pasha; I can't get any sleep," she said.
+
+They went into a newly-built summer house. The jumble of colour and
+redolence was invaded with light that asserted its presence like a great
+living spirit. The orchard seemed to be worlds away from itself.
+
+As a precaution, they spoke in French.
+
+"Pasha, you are the man I saw on the bridge," she said. "You are a
+Nihilist."
+
+"Sh-h, don't be agitated, mother dear, I beg of you," he replied with
+tender emphasis. "I am going to tell you all. Only first compose
+yourself, mamma darling, and hear me out. Yes, I'm what you call a
+Nihilist, but I am not the man you saw."
+
+"You a Nihilist, Pasha!" she whispered, staring at him, as though a
+great physical change had suddenly come over him. "Anyhow, you have
+nothing to do with the man they have arrested?"
+
+He shook his head and she felt relieved. His avowal of being a Nihilist
+was so startling a confession to make, that she believed all he said. He
+was a Nihilist, then--a Nihilist in the abstract; something shocking, no
+doubt, but remote, indefinite, vague. The concrete Nihilism contained in
+the picture of a man disguised as a laborer and having some thing to do
+with the fellow under arrest--that would have been quite another matter.
+He told her the story of his conversion in simple, heart-felt eloquence;
+he pictured the reign of police terror, the slow massacre of
+school-children in the political dungeons, the brutal fleecing and
+maltreatment of a starving peasantry.
+
+"I found myself in a new world, mother," he said. "It was a world in
+which the children of refined, well-bred families fervently believed
+that he who did not work for the good of the common people was not a man
+of real honour. Indeed, of what use has the nobility been to the world?
+They are a lot of idlers, _mamman_, a lot of good-for-nothings. For
+centuries we have been living on the fat of the earth, luxuriating in
+the toil, misery and ignorance of the peasants. It is to their drudgery
+and squalor that we owe our material and mental well-being. We ought to
+feel ashamed for living at the expense of these degraded, literally
+starving creatures; yet we go on living off their wretchedness and even
+pride ourselves upon doing so. Let us repay our debt to them by working
+for their real emancipation. We have grown fat on serfdom, so we must
+give our blood to undo it, to bring about the reign of liberty. This is
+the sum and substance of our creed, mother. This is the faith that has
+taken hold of me. It is my religion and will be as long as I live."
+
+In his entire experience as a revolutionary speaker he had never felt as
+he did at the present moment.
+
+A host of sparrows burst into song and activity, all together, as though
+at the stroke of a conductor's baton; and at this it seemed as if the
+flood of perfume had taken a spurt and the sunlight had begun to smile
+and speak. He went on in the same strain, and she listened as she would
+to a magic tale that had no bearing upon the personality of her son. His
+voice, sharp and irascible as it often sounded, was yet melodious in its
+undercurrent tone of filial devotion. The vital point, indeed, was that
+at last he was uncovering his soul to her. She was not shocked by what
+she heard. Rather, she was proud of his readiness to sacrifice himself
+for an ideal, and what is more, she felt that his world lured her heart
+also.
+
+"But the Emperor is a noble soul, Pasha," she said. "He has emancipated
+the serfs. If there ever was a friend of the common people the present
+Czar is one."
+
+Her objections found him ready. He had gone over these questions
+hundreds of times before, and he gave her the benefit of all his former
+discussions and reading. At times he would borrow a point or two from
+Zachar's speeches. Touching upon the emancipation of the serfs, he
+contended that Alexander II. had been forced to the measure by the
+disastrous results of the Crimean War; and that the peasants, having
+been defrauded of their land, were now worse off than ever.
+
+"Oh, mother," he suddenly exclaimed, "whenever you think of the
+abolition of serfdom think also of the row of gallows he had erected
+about that very time for noble-minded Polish patriots. Do you remember
+Mme. Oginska, that unfortunate Polish woman we met at the health-resort?
+Gallows, gallows, nothing but gallows in his reign."
+
+When she referred to the late war "in behalf of the oppressed Slavonic
+races of the Balkans," Pavel asked her why the Czar had not first
+thought of his own oppressed Russians, and whether it was not hypocrisy
+to send one's slaves to die for somebody else's freedom. The Emperor had
+secured a constitution for Bulgaria, had he? Why, then, was he hanging
+those who were striving for one in his own land? A war of emancipation
+indeed! It was the old Romanoff greed for territory, for conquest, for
+bloodshed.
+
+He literally bore her down by a gush of arguments, facts, images. Now
+and again he would pause, sit looking at the grass in grim silence, and
+then, burst into another torrent of oratory. It was said of Zachar that
+a single speech of his was enough to make a convert of the most hopeless
+conservative. Pavel was far from possessing any such powers of pleading
+eloquence, when his audience was made up of strangers, but he certainly
+scored a similar victory by the appeal which he was now addressing to
+his mother.
+
+He went to order coffee. When he returned, reveille was sounding in the
+barracks.
+
+"There you have it!" he said. "Do you know what that sound means? It
+means that the youngest, the best forces of the country are turned into
+weapons of human butchery."
+
+The brass notes continued, somewhat cracked at times, but loud and
+vibrant with imperious solemnity.
+
+"It means, too, that people are forced to keep themselves in chains at
+the point of their own bayonets," he added.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next few days were spent by the countess in reading "underground"
+literature. She was devouring paper after paper and pamphlet after
+pamphlet with tremulous absorption. The little pile before her included
+scientific treatises, poetry and articles of a polemical nature, and she
+read it all; but she was chiefly interested in the hair-breadth escapes,
+pluck and martyrdom of the revolutionists. The effect this reading had
+on her was something like the thrilling experience she had gone through
+many years ago when she was engrossed in the Lives of Saints.
+
+"It makes one feel twenty years younger," she said to Pavel, bashfully,
+as she laid down a revolutionary print and took the glasses off her
+tired eyes one forenoon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+PAVEL AT BOYKO'S COURT.
+
+
+Clara was introduced to Mme. Shubeyko, the warden's sister-in-law, and
+to her niece, the gendarme officer's sister. At first communication with
+Makar was held by means of notes concealed in cigarettes and carried to
+and fro by one of the warders, who received half a ruble per errand; but
+Clara was soon installed in the warden's house. Once or twice Pavel
+spoke with Makar directly, by means of handkerchief signals based on the
+same code as the telegraph language which political prisoners rap out to
+each other through their cell walls. These signals Pavel sent from the
+top of a hill across the river from Makar's cell window. To allay
+suspicion he would wave his handkerchief toward Masha or Clara, who
+stood for the purpose on a neighbouring hill, giving the whole
+proceeding the appearance of a flirtation. As to Makar, his cell was in
+an isolated part of the prison, facing the outer wall. Still, this mode
+of communication was exasperatingly slow and attended by some risks
+after all, and Pavel had recourse to it only in case of extreme
+necessity, although to the prisoner it was a welcome diversion.
+
+One day, when Clara, Masha and Pavel were together, he said to the
+gendarme officer's sister, with mystifying gaiety:
+
+"Well, have you discovered the heroine of the Pievakin demonstration?"
+He regretted the question before it had left his lips. Clara was
+annoyed.
+
+"No, why?" Masha asked, looking from him to her.
+
+"I have the honour to introduce--" he said, colouring. For some reason
+Masha did not seem to be agreeably impressed by the announcement, and
+Clara did not fail to notice it.
+
+As it was rather inconvenient for the son of Countess Varoff to be seen
+at the house of a major of gendarmes, Clara was to report to him at the
+residence of her parents. In the depth of the markets and the Jewish
+quarter his identity was unlikely to be known. Clara had lived at the
+warden's house about a fortnight when Pavel's first visit at the trunk
+shop took place. She offered him a rude chair in the small space between
+the partition of her bed-room and the window by the wall that was lined
+with the worn folios of her father's meagre library. The room was
+pervaded by odours of freshly planed wood, putty and rusty tin which the
+breath of spring seemed to intensify rather than to abate.
+
+Motl, Hannah's sole employe, was hammering away at his bindings and
+courting attention by all sorts of vocal quirks and trills. During the
+Days of Awe, the solemn festivals of autumn, he sang in a synagogue
+choir; so he never ceased asserting his musical talents. As Clara's
+visitor took no heed of his flourishes he proceeded to imitate domestic
+animals, church bells, a street organ playing a selection from Il
+Trovatore, and a portly captain drilling his men, but all to no purpose.
+As the noise he was making was a good cover for their talk, she did not
+stop him. At any rate, Motl scarcely understood any Russian.
+
+"I have only seen him at a distance," Clara said, meaning the prisoner.
+"But I know that he eats and sleeps well, and looks comfortable."
+
+"He would look comfortable if you tied him up in a sack. Is he still
+'dumb'?"
+
+She portrayed the warden's bed-ridden and voiceless wife who suffered
+from a disease of the spinal and vocal chords, and the disorder at his
+house and in the prison. She had always wondered at the frequent cases
+of political gaol-breaking, but if every gaol were conducted as this one
+was the number would be much larger, she thought. That vodka was quite
+openly sold and bought in every common gaol in the empire was no news to
+her, but this was a trifle compared to what she had heard of Rodkevich's
+administration. One of his gaolers had told her of imprisoned thieves
+whom he would give leave of absence in order that he might confiscate
+part of their booty when they came back.
+
+"Yes, I think he is a man who would go into any kind of scheme that
+offered money, or--excitement," she said, gravely; and she added with a
+smile: "He might even become a man of principle if there were money in
+it."
+
+"He won't give 'a political' 'leave of absence,' though, will he?" Pavel
+joked. "Still, upon the whole, it looks rather encouraging."
+
+"I think it does."
+
+"Do you?" And his eyes implored her for a more enthusiastic prediction
+of success.
+
+"Indeed I do," she answered soberly. "But whether I do or not, we must
+go to work and get him out."
+
+"This damsel is certainly not without backbone," he said to himself.
+
+He had familiarised himself with the details in the case of almost every
+revolutionist who had escaped or attempted to escape from prison. Some
+of these had made their way through an underground passage; others had
+passed the gateman in the disguise of a soldier or policeman; still
+others had been wrenched from their convoy, while being taken to the
+gendarme office or a photograph gallery. Prince Kropotkin had simply
+made a desperate break for liberty while the gates of the prison
+hospital in which he was confined stood open, a cab outside bearing him
+off to a place of safety. Another political prisoner regained his
+freedom by knocking down a sentinel with brass knuckles, while still
+another, who was awaiting death in Odessa, would have made his escape by
+means of planks laid from his cell window to the top of the prison
+fence, had not these planks proved to be too flimsy. In one place an
+imprisoned army officer slipped away under cover of a flirtation in
+which a girl prisoner had engaged the warden. A revolutionist named
+Myshkin had tried to liberate Chernishevsky, the celebrated critic, by
+appearing at the place of his banishment, in far-away Siberia, in the
+guise of a gendarme officer with an order for the distinguished exile,
+and a similar scheme had been tried on the warden of a prison in
+European Russia. Both these attempts had failed, but then in the case in
+hand there was the hope of Rodkevich, the warden, acting as a willing
+victim. Pavel said he would impersonate one of the gendarmes.
+
+"Some of the gaolers may know you," Mlle. Yavner objected.
+
+"That's quite unlikely, I was away so long. Besides, the thing would
+have to be done in the evening anyhow. I must be on hand. It will be
+necessary."
+
+"You might be recognised after all," she insisted, shyly.
+
+Another project was to have a rope thrown over the prison fence, in a
+secluded corner of the yard. This was to be done at a signal from
+within, while Makar was out for exercise, in the charge of a bribed
+guard. The guard was to raise an alarm when it was too late, telling how
+his prisoner knocked him down and was hoisted out of sight. Or Makar
+might be smuggled out in a barrel on some provision waggon, the
+prescribed examination of the vehicle being performed by a friendly
+gaoler. Whatever plan they took up, Pavel insisted on playing the
+leading part in it. He was for taking Makar away in a closed carriage,
+if need be under cover of pistol shots. Clara urged that in the event
+the equipage had to wait for some time, its presence about the prison
+was sure to arouse dangerous curiosity. Altogether she was in favour of
+a quiet and simple proceeding. Safonoff's house was within easy distance
+from the prison, so if Masha could undertake to keep her brother away
+from home, Clara would prefer to have Makar walk quietly to that place,
+as a first resort, thence to be taken, thoroughly disguised, to the
+"conspiracy house" of the Circle. But Pavel picked the proposition to
+pieces.
+
+Since her initiation into the warden's house Clara had been in a
+peculiarly elevated state of mind, her whole attention being absorbed in
+her mission in which she took great pride. This uplifted mood of hers
+she strove to suppress, and the clear-headed, matter-of-fact way in
+which she faced the grave dangers of her task animated Pavel with a
+feeling of intimate comradeship as well as admiration.
+
+As they now sat in the cleanest and brightest corner of the trunk shop
+he was vaguely sensible of a change in her appearance. Then he noticed
+that instead of the dark woolen dress she had worn at the time of their
+previous meetings she had on a fresh blouse of a light-coloured fabric.
+To be seen in a new colour is in itself becoming to a woman, but this
+blouse of Clara's was evidently a tribute to spring. Her face seemed to
+be suffused with the freshness of the month.
+
+While they sat talking, her mother came in, an elderly Jewess, tall and
+stately, with a shrewd, careworn look, her hair carefully hidden beneath
+a strip of black satin.
+
+"Is that you, Tamara?" she asked without taking notice of the stranger.
+She said something to Motl, made for the door, but suddenly returned,
+addressing herself to her daughter again. She wanted to know something
+about the law of chattel-mortgages, but neither Clara nor her visitor
+could furnish her the desired information.
+
+"Always at those books of theirs, yet when it comes to the point they
+don't know anything," she said, with a smile, as she bustled out of the
+room.
+
+"Are these Talmud books?" Pavel asked, pointing at Rabbi Rachmiel's
+library.
+
+"Yes," Clara nodded with an implied smile in her voice.
+
+"Can you read them?"
+
+"Oh, no," she answered, smiling.
+
+He told her that Makar was a deep Talmudic scholar and talked of the
+Jewish religion, but she offered him no encouragement. She was brimful
+of questions herself. Her inquiries were concerned with the future
+destinies of the human race. With all her practical common sense, she
+had a notion that the era of undimmed equality and universal love would
+dawn almost immediately after the overthrow of Russian tyranny. This, as
+she had been taught by revolutionary publications, was to come as the
+logical continuation of Russia's village communes, once the development
+of this survival of prehistoric communism received free scope. What she
+wanted was a clear and detailed account of life in Future Society.
+
+Her questions and his answers had the character of a theoretical
+discussion. Gradually, however, he mounted to a more animated tone,
+portraying the future with quiet fervour. She listened gravely, her eyes
+full upon his, and this absorbed look spurred him on. But presently her
+mother came in again, this time with a peasant customer, and they went
+out to continue their talk in the open air. There were plenty of
+deserted lanes and bits of open country a short distance off. There was
+a vague gentle understanding between them that it was the golden
+idealism of their talk which had set them yearning for the unhidden sky
+and the aromatic breezes of spring. This upheld their lofty mood while
+they silently trudged through the outskirts of the market place. They
+could not as yet continue their interrupted conversation, and to speak
+of something else would have seemed profanation. At last they emerged on
+a lonely square, formed by an orchard, some houses and barns and the
+ruin of an old barrack. The air was excellent and there was nobody to
+overhear them. Nevertheless when Pavel was about to resume he felt that
+he was not in the mood for it. Nor did she urge him on with any further
+questions.
+
+From the old barracks they passed into a dusty side lane and thence into
+a country road which led to a suburb and ran parallel to the railway
+tracks.
+
+The sun was burning by fits and starts, as it were. In those spots where
+masses of lilacs and fruit blossoms gave way to a broader outlook, the
+road was so flooded with light that Clara had to shield her eyes with
+her hand. Now and again a clump of trees in the distance would fall
+apart to show the snow-crested top of a distant hill and the blueish
+haze of the horizon-line.
+
+Their immediate surroundings were a scrawny, frowzy landscape. The lawns
+in front of the huts they passed, the homes of washerwomen, were
+overspread with drying linen.
+
+"Delightful, isn't it?" Pavel said, inhaling a long draught of the rich,
+animating air and glancing down a ravine choked with nettle. The remark
+was merely a spoken sigh of joy. She made no reply.
+
+They were both hungry, and presently they began to feel tired as well.
+Yet neither of them was disposed to halt or to break silence except by
+an occasional word or two that meant nothing.
+
+At last he said:
+
+"You must be quite fatigued. It's cruel of me."
+
+"I am, but it isn't cruel of you," she answered, stopping short, and
+drawing a deep, smiling breath.
+
+He ran into a washerwoman's hovel, startling a brood of ducklings on his
+way, and soon came back with the information that milk was to be had in
+a trackman's hut beyond a sparse grove to the right.
+
+A few minutes later they sat at a rude table in a miniature garden
+between the shining steel rails of the track and a red-painted cabin. It
+was the fourth track-house from the Miroslav railroad station and was
+generally known as the Fourth Hut. Besides milk and eggs and coarse rye
+bread they found sour soup. They ate heartily, but an echo of their
+exalted dream was still on them. To Pavel this feeling was embodied in
+an atmosphere of femininity that pervaded his consciousness at this
+moment. He was sensible of sitting in front of a pretty, healthy girl
+full of modest courage and undemonstrative inspiration. The lingering
+solemnity of his mood seemed to have something to do with the shimmering
+little hairs which the breeze was stirring on Clara's neck, as she bent
+over her earthen bowl, with the warm colouring of her ear, with the
+elastic firmness of her cheek, with the airiness of her blouse.
+
+A desire stirred in him to speak once more of the part she had
+unconsciously played in his conversion, and at this he felt that if he
+told her the story he would find a peculiar pleasure in exaggerating the
+importance of the effect which her "speech" had produced on his mind.
+But it came over him that Makar was still behind the prison gate and
+that this was not the time to enjoy oneself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+STRAWBERRIES.
+
+
+That walk to the trackman's hut had kindled a new light in Pavel's soul.
+He often found himself craving for a repetition of the experience--not
+merely for Clara's companionship, but for another occasion to walk
+through the fields with her, to sit by her side in the breeze, and,
+above all, for the intimacy of seeing her fatigued and eating heartily.
+She dwelt in his mind as a girl comrade, self-possessed and plucky,
+gifted with grit, tact and spirit; at the same time she lingered in his
+consciousness as a responsive pupil, glowing with restrained enthusiasm
+over his talk, eagerly following him through an ecstasy of lofty dreams.
+These two aspects of her were merged in the sight and odour of healthy,
+magnificently complexioned girlhood between the glint of steel rails and
+the dusty geranium in a trackman's window.
+
+They had another appointment. When he called at the trunkmaker's shop
+Clara greeted him with a hearty handshake. He blushed. His love seemed
+to be gaining on him by leaps and bounds.
+
+"How are things?" he asked.
+
+"First rate, Pavel Vassilyevich. The vegetable man will do it. He's a
+trump, I tell you." She went into details. She was in unusually good
+spirits. They talked business and of the adjustment of things under
+socialism. Pavel, too, was in good humour, yet floating in his mind was
+the same old question: And what if all fails and Makar is removed to St.
+Petersburg?
+
+They met again and again. One day, after they had arrived at certain
+conclusions regarding Makar, Pavel said:
+
+"Shall we take a walk?"
+
+She nodded assent.
+
+"I am again full of questions."
+
+"Again worrying about the future fate of humanity?"
+
+"Yes, I seem to have no end of questions about it. I wonder whether I
+shall remember all those that have occurred to me since I last saw you.
+I ought to have jotted them down."
+
+"You don't want to pump me dry in one day, do you?"
+
+"Well, if the truth must be told, I rather do. You will soon be leaving
+us, I suppose, so I am anxious to strike the iron while it is hot."
+
+The personal question as to the length of his stay sent a little wave of
+warmth through his blood. They set out in the direction of the
+trackman's hut as a matter of course. Instead of following their former
+route, however, they chose, upon a motion from Clara, who was more
+familiar with these suburbs than Pavel, a meandering, hilly course that
+offered them a far better view as well as greater privacy. A stretch of
+rising ground took them to the Beak, a promontory so called for the
+shape of a cliff growing out of its breast. The common people had some
+pretty stories to tell of a gigantic bird of which the rocky beak was a
+part and whose petrified body was now asleep in the bosom of the hill
+that had once been its nest.
+
+Pavel and Clara sat down to rest on the freshly carpeted slope. The town
+clustered before them in a huddle of red, white, green and grey, shot
+with the glitter of a golden-domed cathedral, the river flashing at one
+end like the fragment of an immense sabre. It was warm and quiet. There
+was not a human soul for a considerable distance around. Now and again
+the breeze would gently stir the weeds and the wild-flowers, lingering
+just long enough to scent the hillside with pine odours and then
+withdrawing, on tiptoe, as it were, like a thoughtful friend taking care
+that the two young people were kept supplied with the bracing aroma
+without being disturbed more than was necessary. Once or twice Clara
+held out her chin, sniffing the enchanted air.
+
+"Isn't it delightful!" she said.
+
+"It's a specimen of what life under Society of the Future will feel
+like," Pavel jested, with a wistful smile.
+
+At one point when she addressed him as Pavel Vassilyevich, as she
+usually did, he was tempted to ask her to dispense with his patronymic.
+In the light of the hearty simplicity of manners which prevailed in the
+revolutionary movement they were well enough acquainted to address each
+other by their first names only. Yet when he was about to propose the
+change the courage failed him to do so. Whereupon he said to himself,
+with a deep inward blushing, that the cause of this hesitancy and
+confusion of his was no secret to him.
+
+"Hello there! A strawberry!" she called out, with a childish glee which
+he had not yet seen in her. And flinging herself forward she reached out
+her white girlish hand toward a spot of vivid red. The berry, of that
+tiny oblong delicious variety one saucerful of which would be enough to
+fill a fair-sized room with fragrance, lay ensconced in a bed of sun-lit
+leaves--a pearl of succulent, flaming colour in a setting of green
+gold.
+
+"Oh, I haven't the heart to pick it," she said, staying her hand and
+cooing to the strawberry as she would to a baby: "Won't touch you, berry
+darling. Won't touch you, sweetie."
+
+"Spare its life then," he answered, "I'll see if I can't find others."
+
+And sure enough, after some seeking and peeping and climbing, Pavel came
+upon a spot that was fairly jewelled with strawberries.
+
+"Quite a haul," he shouted down.
+
+She joined him and they went on picking together, each with a thistle
+leaf for a saucer.
+
+"Why, it's literally teeming with them," she said, in a preoccupied
+voice, deeply absorbed in her work. "One, two, three, and four,
+and--seven; why, bless me,--and eight and nine. What a pity we have
+nothing with us. We could get enough to treat the crowd at Orlovsky's."
+
+Pavel made no reply. Whenever he came across a berry that looked
+particularly tempting he would offer it to her silently and resume his
+work. He was oppressively aware of his embarrassment in her presence and
+the consciousness of it made him feel all the more so. He was distinctly
+conscious of a sensation of unrest, both stimulating and numbing, which
+had settled in him since he made her acquaintance. It was at once
+torture and joy, yet when he asked himself which of the two it was, it
+seemed to be neither the one nor the other. Her absence was darkness;
+her presence was light, but pain and pleasure mingled in both. It made
+him feel like a wounded bird, like a mutely suffering child. At this
+moment it blent with the flavour and ruddiness of the berries they were
+both picking, with the pine-breeze that was waiting on them, with the
+subdued lyrics of spring.
+
+And he knew that he was in love.
+
+He had never been touched by more than a first timid whisper of that
+feeling before. It was Sophia, the daughter of the former governor of
+St. Petersburg, whose image had formerly--quite recently, in
+fact--invaded his soul. He had learned immediately that she belonged to
+Zachar and his dawning love had been frightened away. Otherwise his life
+during these five years had been one continuous infatuation of quite
+another kind--the infatuation of moral awakening, of a political
+religion, of the battlefield.
+
+From the Beak they proceeded by the railroad track, now walking over the
+cross-ties, now balancing along the polished top of one rail. She was
+mostly ahead of him, he following her with melting heart. By the time
+they reached the trackman's place, the shadows had grown long and
+solemn. Pavel had no appetite. He ate because Clara did. "Here I am
+watching her eat again," he thought. But the spectacle was devoid of the
+interest he had expected to find in it.
+
+Nevertheless the next morning, upon waking, it burst upon him once more
+that seated within him was something which had not been there about a
+month ago. When he reflected that he had no appointment with Clara for
+these two days, that disquieting force which was both delicious and
+tantalising, the force which enlivened and palsied at once, swelled in
+his throat like a malady. But no, far from having such a bodily quality,
+it had spiritualised his whole being. He seemed unreal to himself, while
+the outside world appeared to him strangely remote, agonisingly
+beautiful, and agonisingly sad--a heart-rending elegy on an unknown
+theme. The disquieting feeling clamoured for the girl's presence--for a
+visit to the scene of their yesterday's berry-picking, at least. He
+struggled, but he had to submit.
+
+To the Beak, then, he betook himself, and for an hour he lay on the
+grass, brooding. Everything around him was in a subdued agitation of
+longing. The welter of gold-cups and clover; the breeze, the fragrance
+and the droning of a nearby grasshopper; the sky overhead and the town
+at his feet--all was dreaming of Clara, yearning for Clara, sighing for
+Clara. Seen in profile the grass and the wild-flowers acquired a new
+charm. When he lay at full length gazing up, the sky seemed perfectly
+flat, like a vast blue ceiling, and the light thin wisps of pearl looked
+like painted cloudlets upon that ceiling. There were moments in this
+reverie of his when the Will of the People was an echo from a dim past,
+when the world's whole struggle, whether for good or for evil, was an
+odd, incomprehensible performance. But then there were others when
+everything was listening for the sound of a heavenly bugle-call; when
+all nature was thirsting for noble deeds and the very stridulation of
+the grasshopper was part of a vast ecstasy.
+
+"That won't do," he said in his heart. "I am making a perfect fool of
+myself, and it may cost us Makar's freedom." As he pictured the Janitor,
+Zachar and his other comrades, and what they would say, if they knew of
+his present frame of mind, he sprang to his feet in a fury of
+determination. "I must get that idiot out of the confounded hole he put
+himself into and get back to work in St. Petersburg. This girl is not
+going to stand in my way any longer." He felt like smashing palaces and
+fortresses. But whatever he was going to do in his freedom from Clara,
+Clara was invariably a looker-on. When he staked his life to liberate
+Makar she was going to be present; after the final blow had been struck
+at despotism, she would read in the newspapers of his prominent part in
+the fight.
+
+The next time he saw her he felt completely in her power.
+
+Clara was in a hurry, but an hour after they had parted he found an
+honest excuse for seeing her again that very day. The appointment was
+made through Mme. Shubeyko, and in the afternoon he called at the trunk
+shop once more.
+
+"We have been ignoring a very important point, Clara Rodionovna," he
+said solicitously. "Since the explosion at the Winter Palace the spies
+have been turning St. Petersburg upside down. They literally don't leave
+a stone unturned. Now, Makar went away before the examinations at the
+Medical Academy and he disappeared from his lodgings without filing
+notice of removal at the police station."
+
+"And if they become curious about his whereabouts the name of the
+Miroslav Province in his papers may put the authorities in mind of their
+Miroslav prisoner," Clara put in, with quick intelligence.
+
+He nodded gloomily and both grew thoughtful.
+
+"They would first send word to Zorki, his native town, though," Pavel
+then said, "to have his people questioned, and I shouldn't be surprised
+if they brought his father over here to be confronted with him."
+
+"That would be the end of it," Clara remarked, in dismay.
+
+The next day Pavel telegraphed it all over to Makar, by means of his
+handkerchief, from the hill which commanded the prisoner's window.
+
+"I have a scheme," Makar's handkerchief flashed back.
+
+"For God's sake don't run away with yourself," Pavel returned. "It's a
+serious matter. Consider it maturely."
+
+"Do you know anybody in Paris or any other foreign city you could write
+to at once?"
+
+"I do. Why?" Pavel replied.
+
+"Get me some foreign paper. I shall write two letters, one to my father
+and one to my wife, both dated at that place. If these letters were sent
+there and that man then sent them to my people at Zorki, it would mean I
+am in Paris. Understand?"
+
+"I do. You are crazy."
+
+"Why? Father will let bygones be bygones. I should tell him the whole
+truth. He is all right."
+
+"He won't fool the gendarmes."
+
+"He will!" the white speck behind the iron bars flicked out vehemently.
+"He'll do it. Provided he is prepared for it."
+
+"You are impossible. If an order came from St. Petersburg your Zorki
+gendarmes would not dare think for themselves. They would just hustle
+him off to Miroslav."
+
+"Then get father away from there."
+
+"They would take your wife, anybody who could identify you."
+
+"Father is better after all. He would look me in the face and say he
+does not know me. He could do it."
+
+"And later go to Siberia for it?"
+
+"You are right. But I don't think the order will be to take him here at
+once. They'll first examine him there. He'll have a chance to fool
+them."
+
+Clara offered to go to Zorki at once, but Makar was for a postponement
+of her "conspiracy trip." Saturday of Comfort was near at hand, and
+then the little Jewish town would be crowded with strangers, so that
+Mlle. Yavner might come and go without attracting attention even in the
+event the local gendarmes had already been put on the case.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+A "CONSPIRACY TRIP."
+
+
+Zorki was in a state of joyous excitement. The "Good Jew" of Gornovo,
+accompanied by a retinue of beadles, secretaries, "reciters,"
+attendants, scribes and hangers on, was pleased to grace the little
+community with his annual visit; so the Pietists had left their
+workshops and places of business to drink in religious ecstasy and to
+scramble for advice, miracles and the blessed leavings from the holy
+man's table. The population of the little town was rapidly increasing by
+an influx of Pietists from neighbouring hamlets.
+
+Clara, with a kerchief round her head, which gave her the appearance of
+an uneducated "daughter of Israel," was watching a group of men and boys
+who stood chattering and joking in front of one of the best houses in
+town, at the edge of the market place. It was in this house where the
+Good Jew made his headquarters every time he came to Zorki and where he
+was now resting from his journey. The sun stood high. A peasant woman
+was nursing her baby in a waggon, patiently waiting for her husband. Two
+elderly peasants in coarse, broad-brimmed straw-hats, one of them with
+an interminable drooping moustache, were leaning against the
+weight-house, smoking silently. For the rest, the market place, enclosed
+by four broken rows of shops, dwellings and two or three government
+offices--squatting one-story frame structures--was almost deserted; but
+one of the two streets bounding it, the one on which we find Clara at
+this minute, was quite alive with people. An opening at one side of the
+square showed a sloping stretch of road and a rectangular section of the
+river, the same as that which gleamed in Miroslav. The knot of men which
+Clara was watching all wore broad flat-topped caps, and, most of them,
+long-skirted coats. A man of fifty-five, short and stocky, with massive
+head and swarthy face, the image of Makar, was the centre of the crowd.
+
+"If you were a Pietist and a decent man," he said, in subdued accents,
+to a red-bearded "oppositionist" with gloomy features, "you would not
+wear that long face of yours. Come, cheer up and don't be a kill-joy!"
+And he slapped him on the back with all his might.
+
+"Stop!" the Oppositionist said, reddening from the blow. "What's got
+into you? What reason have you to be so jolly anyhow?" And addressing
+himself to the bystanders: "He has not had a drop of vodka, yet he will
+make believe he's in his cups."
+
+"What's that?" the swarthy man protested in a soft, mellow basso, "Can't
+a fellow be jolly without filling himself full of vodka? If you were a
+respectable man and a Pietist and not a confounded seek-sorrow of an
+Oppositionist you would not think so. Drink! Why, open the Pentateuch,
+and wherever your eye falls there is drink to make you happy. 'In the
+beginning God created heaven and earth!' Isn't that reason enough for a
+fellow to be jolly?"
+
+The bystanders smiled, some in partisan approbation, others with amused
+superiority, still others with diplomatic ambiguity.
+
+The heavy-set, swarthy man was Makar's father, Yossl Parmet. He bore
+striking resemblance to his son. Clara stood aghast. If he were
+confronted with the Miroslav prisoner, the identity of the Nihilist
+would be betrayed, whether the old man admitted the relationship or not.
+The only way out of it was to avoid such a confrontation by getting
+Yossl away for a few months. But then, once the Miroslav gendarmerie
+learned that a man named Parmet whose home was at Zorki was missing, the
+secret could not last for any length of time. In compliance with Makar's
+wish, Clara decided to take him into her secret. Accordingly, she
+mingled with the men, took part in the joking, and by the time the crowd
+dispersed she and Yossl were talking on terms of partial familiarity.
+Finding an opportune moment, she said to him, with intentional
+mysteriousness:
+
+"There is something I want to speak to you about, Reb Yossl. I have seen
+your son."
+
+The old man gave her a startled, scrutinising glance. Then, his face
+hardening into a preoccupied business-like expression, he said aloud:
+
+"Where are you stopping?"
+
+She named her inn, and the two started thither together. There were so
+many strangers in town, each in quest of an audience with the "Good
+Jew," and Yossl was so close to the holy man, or to those near him, that
+their conversation attracted scarcely any notice.
+
+"It's a very serious matter, Reb Yossl," she said, as they crossed the
+market place. "Nobody is to know anything about it, or it may be bad for
+your son."
+
+"Go ahead," he snarled, turning pale. "Never mind spending time on a
+woman's prefaces. What is up?"
+
+"You know how the educated young people of these days are. There is
+nothing, in fact, the matter. It'll soon be over. But for the present it
+would do him good if the gendarmes knew he was in Paris."
+
+"Why, isn't he in Paris?" Yossl asked morosely. "I received a letter
+from him from there."
+
+"Of course he is. Only, the gendarmes, in case they look for him, and
+they may do so sooner or later, you know, the gendarmes may not believe
+he is there. So it would be a good thing if you could convince them of
+it. Your son would be benefited by it very much."
+
+Yossl took fire.
+
+"On my part let him go to all the black ghosts!" he burst out. "'The
+educated people of these days,' indeed! First he will play with fire and
+then he wants me to fight his battles! Would he have his old father go
+to prison on account of him? He is not in Paris, then? I am as clever as
+you, young woman. I, too, understand a thing or two, though I am not of
+'the educated people of these days!' It is not enough that he has got in
+trouble himself; he wants to drag me in, too. Is that the kind of
+'education' he has got? Is that what he has broken with his wife and
+father for? The ghost take him!"
+
+"Don't be excited, Reb Yossl," Clara pleaded, earnestly. "It's a
+treasure of a son you have and you know it. As to the education he has
+acquired, it is the kind that teaches one to struggle against injustice
+and oppression, things which I know you hate as deeply as your son
+does." A tremour came into her voice, and a slight blush into her
+cheeks, as she added: "Your son is one of those remarkable men who are
+willing to die for the suffering people."
+
+"But who are you?" he asked with a frown, "How did you get here? If you,
+too, are one of those people you had better leave this town at once. I
+don't want to get in trouble on account of you."
+
+They reached the inn, and he paused in front of it, leaning against a
+waggon.
+
+"Never mind who I am," she returned.
+
+"But where is he? Has he been arrested? Good God, what has he been doing
+to himself? What does he want of my old bones? Is he sorry his father is
+still alive?"
+
+"You don't want your son to perish, do you?" she said rather
+pugnaciously. "If you don't, you had better get the gendarmes off his
+track."
+
+She went on arguing with renewed ardour. As he listened, a questioning
+look came into his face. Instead of following her plea he scrutinised
+her suspiciously.
+
+"But why should you pray for him so fervently," he asked significantly.
+"Why should you run risks for his sake? What do you get out of it?"
+
+"Must one get something 'out of it' to do what is right?"
+
+"Ah, may the ghost take the whole lot of you!" Yossl said, with a wave
+of his hand, and walked away. He felt sure that this young woman and his
+son were in love, and he was shocked for the sake of Miriam, Makar's
+divorced wife, as well as for his own.
+
+He made for a slushy narrow lane, but turned back, retracing his steps
+in the direction of the house which was the Good Jew's headquarters, as
+also the home of Miriam. It was the house of her uncle, Arye Weinstein,
+the richest Pietist in Zorki.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Good Jew occupied two expensively furnished rooms which were always
+kept sacred to his use. They were known as "the rabbi's chambers" and
+although the Righteous Man visited Zorki only once a year, nobody was
+ever allowed so much as to sit down in his easy chair. One day, when
+Weinstein caught his little girl playing in the "rabbi's bed room" with
+a skull-cap which the holy man had left there, he flew into one of the
+savage fits of temper for which he was dreaded, and slapped the child's
+face till it bled. The rabbi's chambers were never swept or dusted until
+a day or two before his arrival, and then half a dozen people worked day
+and night to make things worthy of the exalted guest. The "rabbi's
+parlour" opened into a vast room, by far the largest in the house, which
+on Saturdays was usually turned into a synagogue, and was known in town
+as "Weinstein's salon."
+
+Miriam was a very bright, quick-witted little woman, but she was not
+pretty--a pale, sickly, defenceless-looking creature of the kind who
+have no enemies even among their own sex. Her separation from Makar was
+only a nominal affair, in fact, the divorce having been brought about
+against the will of the young couple by her iron-willed uncle, who had
+succeeded in embroiling Yossl with his son as well as with himself soon
+after the true character of Makar's visits to Pani Oginska's house had
+been discovered; but Makar and Miriam had become reconciled, through a
+letter from him, and they had been in secret correspondence ever since.
+Yossl never lost hope of seeing them remarried, and, in order to keep
+the memory of his son fresh in Miriam's mind, he had obeyed the Good Jew
+and made peace with the wealthy Pietist.
+
+Yossl was in charge of the town's weight-house and was commonly known as
+"Yossl the weight-house man." When Feivish (Makar's real first name) was
+old enough to be started on the Talmud, he left the weight-house to his
+wife, devoting himself to the spiritual education of the boy. Every
+time they sat down to the huge book he would pin the edge of Feivish's
+shirt to his collar, leaving the child's back bare to the strap in his
+hand. Whenever his wife protested he would bring her to terms by
+threatening to tell the Good Jew that she would have her son brought up
+as a dunce. He was going to make a "fattened scholar" of him. He was
+going to fatten him on divine Law by main force, even as his wife
+fattened her geese for Passover. He was going to show those
+fish-blooded, sneering Oppositionists that they had no monopoly of the
+Talmud. Often during his lesson a distracted look would come into
+Feivish's dark little eyes, and Yossl's words fell on deaf ears. Then it
+was that the thong would descend on the bare back. Feivish never cried.
+As the blow fell, he would curl himself up with a startled look, that
+haunted Yossl for hours after. Feivish turned out to be a most ardent
+Pietist. Once, for example, in a very cold wintry night, after the Good
+Jew had crossed a snow-covered lawn, Feivish, in a burst of devotion,
+took off his boots and "followed in the foot-steps of the man of
+righteousness" barefoot.
+
+For four years the young couple lived happily, their only woe being the
+death of both children that had been born to them. But the Good Jew said
+"God will have mercy," and Feivish "served his Lord with gladness." But
+this did not last. Feivish was initiated into the world of free thought,
+and gradually the fervent Pietist was transformed into a fervent
+atheist. It was during that period that he first met Pavel and that his
+wife's despotic uncle extorted a divorce from him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While Yossl was twitting the red-headed Oppositionist in front of
+Weinstein's house, Bathsheba, a daughter-in-law of the man of
+substance, a plump, black-eyed beauty of the kind one's mind associates
+with a Turkish harem, beckoned Miriam aside, in one of the rooms within,
+offering her a piece of cake.
+
+"It's from a chunk the Good Jew has tasted," she said, triumphantly.
+"Eat it, and your heart will be lighter."
+
+"It will help me as much as blood-letting helps a dead man," Miriam
+answered with a smile.
+
+"Eat it, I say. You'll get letters more often if you do." For a woman to
+exchange love letters with the man from whom she has been divorced is
+quite a grave sin for a daughter of Israel to commit. The remedy
+Bathsheba recommended was therefore something like the prayer of a thief
+that the Lord may bless his business. But then Miriam questioned the
+power of the rabbi's "leavings" to bring a blessing upon any business.
+She smiled.
+
+"How do you know it is nonsense? Maybe it isn't, after all," Bathsheba
+urged.
+
+"You're a foolish little dear."
+
+"If I were you I should eat it. What can you lose by it?"
+
+Maria, a Gentile servant who had been longer in the house than
+Bathsheba, came in. She spoke Yiddish excellently and was almost like a
+member of the family.
+
+"Take a bite and you will be blessed, Maria," Miriam joked, holding out
+the cake to her. "It's from a piece the Good Jew has tasted."
+
+"If I was a Jewess I would," Maria retorted reproachfully. "It's a sin
+to make mock of a Good Jew."
+
+The other two burst into a laugh.
+
+Left alone, Miriam was about to throw the cake away, but had not the
+heart to do so. She sat eyeing it for some minutes and then, making fun
+of herself, she bit off a morsel. She acted like the Jewess of the
+anecdote, who, to be on the safe side, would kiss the cross and the
+Hebrew prayer book at once.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour later Yossl was flaunting his son's Paris letter and cursing him
+to a new crowd in front of the Good Jew's headquarters.
+
+"The ghost take him!" he said. "Indeed, the ghost is a well-travelled
+fellow. He can get to Paris just as readily as he does to Zorki."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+MAKAR'S FATHER.
+
+
+On Saturday morning Weinstein's salon was crowded with worshippers, all
+married men in their praying shawls and skull-caps. A Good Jew is exempt
+from praying with the congregation, his transports of religious fervour
+being too sacred a proceeding for common mortals to intrude upon.
+Accordingly, the Man of Righteousness was making his devotions in the
+seclusion of the adjoining parlour.
+
+To a stranger unfamiliar with Pietist prayer meetings the crowd here
+gathered would have looked for all the world like the inmates of the
+violent ward in an insane asylum. Most of the worshippers were snapping
+their fingers; the others were clapping their hands, clenching their
+fists with all their might or otherwise gesticulating savagely. They
+were running or jumping about, shrieking, sighing or intoning merrily,
+while here and there a man seemed to be straining every bit of his
+strength to shut his eyes as tightly as possible or to distort his face
+into some painful or grotesque expression. The Gentiles of the province
+called the Pietists Jumping Jacks.
+
+Some of the worshippers gesticulated merely because it was "correct
+form"; others did so from force of habit, or by way of fighting off the
+intrusion of worldly thoughts; still others for the same reason for
+which one yawns when others do. But all these formed a small minority.
+The bulk of the Pietists present, including several people of
+questionable honesty in business matters, were honestly convulsed with a
+contagion of religious rapture. The invisible proximity of the Man of
+Righteousness, the sight of the door that concealed his holy presence,
+keyed them up to the highest pitch of exaltation. Their ears followed
+the "master of prayers" at the Stand, but their minds beheld the Good
+Jew of Gornovo. All hearts converged at the mysterious spot behind that
+door. That which sounded and looked like a pandemonium of voices and
+gestures was in reality a chorus of uplifted souls with the soul of the
+concealed man of God for a "master of prayers."
+
+Weinstein was slapping the wall with both hands. His large figure was
+enveloped in the costliest praying-shawl in the room. All that was seen
+of him were two wrists overgrown with red hair. Now and then he would
+face about and fall to striding up and down meditatively. He was a
+well-fed, ruddy-necked Jew of fifty with a sharp hooked nose sandwiched
+in between two plump florid cheeks, and a small red beard. His
+unbuttoned coat of a rich broadcloth reached down to his heels; his
+trousers were tucked into the tops of well-polished boots. Once or twice
+an unkempt, underfed little man in a tattered shawl and with a figure
+and gait which left no doubt that he was a tailor by trade, barred
+Weinstein's way, snapping his fingers at him; then the two took to
+pacing the room together, shouting and chuckling in rapturous duet as
+they moved along, as is written: "Serve the Lord with gladness, come
+before His presence with singing," or "Because thou servedst not thy God
+with joyfulness and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all
+things; therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies." That the little
+tailor did not enjoy an "abundance of all things" was evident from his
+pinched face and broken shoes. He did not rank high enough in his trade
+to have even Weinstein's clerk for a customer, yet at the Pietist
+gatherings he addressed Weinstein himself by the familiar diminutive of
+his first name and sometimes helped to spank him or to pelt him with
+burrs out of his "gladness of heart."
+
+Yossl Parmet--Makar's father--was tiptoeing about the crowded room,
+smiling and whispering fondly, as though confiding glad news to himself,
+but his heart was not in his prayer. He was thinking of his son and the
+young woman who had come to plead for him. Indeed, Yossl's piety had
+deserted him long since. He clung to the Pietists for the sake of the
+emotional atmosphere that enveloped it and from his sincere admiration
+of the Good Jew's personality rather than from faith. He was fond of
+Miriam and his heart was now torn between jealousy in her behalf and
+anxiety about his son.
+
+The services over, silence fell upon the congregation. The Pietists were
+folding up their shawls, or eyeing the floor expectantly. The minutes
+were passing slowly. The stillness seemed to be growing in intensity.
+Presently a song broke from somebody in a corner. It was a song without
+words, a new tune especially composed for the occasion. Like most
+"Gornovo melodies" it was meant to be gay, and like all of them it was
+pervaded by the mixed sadness of the Exiled People and the brooding,
+far-away plaint of their Slavic neighbours. There is a mingling of fire
+and tears in the Pietist "hop." It isn't without reason that the most
+rabid Oppositionist of Lithuania will sing them on the Rejoicing of the
+Law.
+
+The others in the room had never heard the song before, yet several of
+them fell to at once, seizing the tune by intuition. The rest joined in
+gradually, until the whole assemblage was united in chorus. The import
+of this kind of singing while the Good Jew is in the privacy of his room
+is a plea that he may issue forth and grace the crowd with his presence
+and "some law." They went through the tune again and again, gathering
+zest as they mastered its few simple bars. The melody seemed to be
+climbing up and down, or diving in and out; expostulating with somebody
+as it did so, bewailing somebody or something, appealing in the name of
+some dear event in the past or future. Unable to tell definitely what
+their tune was saying or doing, the singers craved to see the speechless
+song, to make out the words it seemed to be uttering, and because that
+was impossible their hearts were agitated with objectless sympathy and
+longing, and the rabbi was forgotten for awhile. They pitied the unknown
+man who seemed to be climbing or diving all the more because it was in
+their own voices that his incomprehensible words were concealed.
+
+Little by little, however, as the novelty of the air wore off, the
+consciousness that they were beseeching the Man of Righteousness to come
+out to them blent with their yearning sympathy for their melody. They
+ardently believed that the Good Jew's soul had ascended on the wings of
+his ecstasy to the Divine Presence. All eyes were on his door. An
+indescribable ring of solemnity, of awe, of love and of prayer came into
+their voices. Their faces were transfixed with it. The melody was
+pouring out its very heart to the holy man.
+
+Suddenly it all died away. The door flew open and, preceded by a stout
+"supervisor," appeared an elderly man with a flabby-lipped mouth and a
+hooked little nose. He wore a long-skirted coat of black silk with a
+belt of the same material wound several times round his waist, and a
+round cap of sable and velvet. The crowd fell apart in breathless
+excitement. As he advanced through the lane thus formed he was flushed
+and trying to conceal his embarrassment in a look of grief. He seated
+himself at a long table and shut his eyes. Now and then he heaved a
+sigh, swaying his head silently, with absorbed mien. He was supposed to
+be in a trance of lofty meditation, abandoned to thoughts and feelings
+which were to bear his soul to heaven.
+
+The crowd was literally spellbound. Yossl Parmet was pale with unuttered
+sobs. He was perhaps the only man in the room who perceived that the
+holy man was ill at ease, and this gave him a sense of the Good Jew's
+childlike purity which threw him into a veritable frenzy of reverence.
+More than thirty years the master of multitudes and still blushing! When
+Yossl was a young man he had changed his Good Jews several times. He had
+adored them all, but he had not liked them. His soul had found no rest
+until he moved to Zorki and met this Good Jew of Gornovo. Then he felt
+himself in the presence of absolute sincerity, of unsophisticated warmth
+of heart. This Good Jew was a naive man, timid and unassertive. He had
+an unfeigned sense of his own supernatural powers, and was somewhat in
+awe of them. He felt as though there was another, a holier being within
+him and he feared that being in the same way as one possessed fears the
+unholy tenant of his soul.
+
+Finally the Good Jew opened his eyes and began to speak. It was a simple
+sermon on a text taken at random from the Bible before him, but his
+listeners sought a hidden meaning, a mystical allusion, in the plainest
+of his words or gestures. Yossl could have instructed him in every
+branch of holy lore, yet he seized upon the exposition thirstily. In the
+first place, he had seen Good Jews who were even less at home in the Law
+than the Good Jew of Gornovo was, so that he felt grateful to him for
+not being a downright ignoramus. In the second place, he knew that he
+actually believed his own words to be inspired.
+
+A few minutes after the sermon the Good Jew beckoned Yossl to a seat by
+his side. Makar's father accepted the invitation in a quiver of
+obsequious gratitude.
+
+"How are you, Yossl? Any news of Feivish?"
+
+"He's in Paris now," Yossl answered with a gesture of disrelish and
+speaking aloud, so that the entire crowd might hear him. He hated to
+tell the holy man a lie, yet he did so readily, the occasion being his
+best opportunity for giving the story wide circulation.
+
+"In Paris!"
+
+"Yes, he has been there since the beginning of summer. I have letters
+from him."
+
+"Letters from Feivish!"
+
+"He wanted to show off I suppose. Wanted his father to see he's in
+Paris. On my part he may go to perdition."
+
+"What is he doing there? Studying medicine in French?"
+
+"That's what he says in his letter. Yes, he has quite broken with
+Judaism, rabbi, quite a Gentile. All that is required to make the
+transformation complete is that he should extort bribes from Jews for
+allowing them to breathe. One Jew he prevents from breathing
+already"--pointing at himself.
+
+The rabbi swayed his head sympathetically.
+
+"What a misfortune! What a misfortune! Men like him could not be had for
+the picking."
+
+"He has left a wound in my heart and it will not heal, rabbi. If this is
+the kind of doctor he is going to be, he won't make much headway. 'I had
+a vineyard,' rabbi," he went on in a lugubrious sing-song, quoting from
+Isaiah, "'I fenced it and gathered out the stones thereof and planted it
+with the choicest vine. What could have been done more to my vineyard
+that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should
+bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?'"
+
+"Don't grieve, my son, I forbid you, do you hear?" the Good Jew said,
+limply. He was deeply touched. "Better give us a song, boys!"
+
+The song burst forth and was taken up by the glad crowd on the lawn,
+some Gentiles, standing at a respectful distance, listening reverently.
+
+Yossl had uncovered to the rabbi only part of his heart's wound. Since
+his son's compulsory divorce Weinstein had personified the cruelties and
+injustices of the whole world to him. When a couple applies for a writ
+of divorcement it is the duty of the rabbi to persuade them from the
+step. God wants no severance of the marriage bond. "When a man divorces
+his first wife, the altar weeps," says the Talmud. Yet Weinstein, who
+had so brutally extorted such a divorce from Feivish, continued to be
+looked upon as a pillar of the faith. All this had stirred a novel
+feeling, a novel trend of thought in Yossl.
+
+The next morning Weinstein's salon was jammed with people begging for
+admission to the Good Jew, who was in the next room.
+
+The scribes were busy writing applications, praying the rabbi to "awaken
+the great mercy of the Master of Mercies."
+
+"My wife is ill, her name is Sarah, daughter of Tevye," one man
+besought. "Do be so kind. If I don't get in at once it may be too late."
+
+Another applicant, with a crippled boy in his arms, sought a blessing
+for the child and himself. One father, whose son had been declared a
+blockhead by his teachers, wanted the Good Jew to pray that the boy
+might get "a good head." A white-haired man was picking a quarrel with
+two other Pietists who were trying to get in front of him. The old man's
+married daughter was childless and her husband did not care for her, so
+he wanted the rabbi to "give her children and grace in the eyes of her
+spouse." Several others wanted dowries for their marriageable daughters.
+That the Master of Mercies would grant the Good Jew's prayer in their
+daughters' behalf was all the more probable because in cases of this
+sort either the Good Jew himself or some of his well-to-do followers
+usually came to the poor man's assistance.
+
+Yossl sat at the corner of the table watching the scene pensively when
+Clara entered the room. The blood rushed to his face as he recognised
+her, and he hastened to take her out into the road.
+
+"What are you doing in this town so long?" he then asked, in a rage. "I
+thought you had left long since. What do you want of us all? Do you want
+to get everybody in trouble?"
+
+"How will I get you in trouble? Am I the only Jewish woman who has come
+to Zorki these few days? Have I no right to be here like everybody else?
+Besides, it's to bid you good-bye that I want to see you now. I am going
+away."
+
+Her few words, uttered with simple earnestness, had a softening effect
+on him.
+
+"You look like a good girl," he said, frowning at her amicably. "Tell
+me frankly: are you and my son having a love affair?"
+
+Clara coloured literally to the roots of her brown hair. She paused to
+regain her self-possession and then said, with a smile at once
+shamefaced and amused:
+
+"It is not true, Reb Yossl. What is more, your son and I are not even
+acquainted."
+
+"Can that be possible!"
+
+"It's the absolute truth I am telling you, Reb Yossl."
+
+He shrugged his shoulder and proceeded to question her on his son's
+case, on his mode of life before he was arrested, on the meaning of the
+struggle to which he had dedicated himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+FROM CELLAR TO PALACE.
+
+
+Meanwhile Pavel, Mme. Shubeyko, Masha, Mlle. Andronoff and her fiance,
+the near-sighted judge with the fluffy hair, went on with their plot. A
+considerable sum was needed to bribe the warden, the head keeper (a
+bustling little man who was known in the conspiracy as the Sparrow), and
+others. The plotters had five thousand rubles, and in order to obtain
+the rest without delay Pavel went so far as to take his mother into the
+secret. The countess received his story with a thrill of gratitude and
+of a sense of adventure. After a visit to the bank, she handed him ten
+thousand rubles in crisp rainbow-coloured one hundred ruble notes. She
+was pale with emotion as she did so. Her heart was deeper in his
+movement than he supposed. It was as if every barrier standing between
+her and her son had been removed. She was a comrade of his now.
+
+"The only thing that worries me," she said for something to say, "is
+uncle's visits. He has not been here for some time, but if he comes, I
+shan't be able to look him in the face. He is a very good man at heart,
+Pasha."
+
+"Still, you had better make no haste about trying to convert him," Pavel
+answered, with a smile, struggling with the pile of notes.
+
+The bulk of the sum--eight thousand rubles--was to be paid by Mme.
+Shubeyko to the warden, half of it in advance and the other half upon
+the carrying out of the project. Rodkevich pretended to receive the four
+thousand rubles as a loan. He barred all frank discussion of the scheme,
+hinting that he was scarcely a master in his own prison and that all he
+could do was to "overlook things under pressure of business at times."
+As a matter of fact, he scarcely incurred any risks.
+
+Pavel missed Clara keenly. A feverish yearning feeling had settled in
+him, often moving him to tears, but he fought it bravely. Once or twice
+he went to the Beak and indulged in a feast of self-torture, but
+otherwise he worked literally day and night, seeing people,
+deliberating, scheming. The only manifestation of his nervousness was an
+exaggerated air of composure, and as this was lost on his fellow
+plotters, nothing was farther from their thoughts than that he
+experienced a sensation as though his heart were withering within his
+breast and that the cause of it was Clara Yavner.
+
+When he received word of her return he said to himself, in a turmoil of
+joy, terror and impatience, that he could not bear it any longer and
+that he would tell her all the next time they were alone.
+
+He saw her the very next day, at the trunk shop. Both blushed violently.
+The first minutes of their conversation were punctuated with nervous
+pauses, like the first talk of people who have been reconciled after a
+long estrangement. He said to himself: "Now is the time," and vaguely
+felt confident of success, yet he was still in awe of her and all he
+managed to do was to turn the conversation upon his mother.
+
+"I should like you to meet her," he said. "She has heard of you."
+
+"Your mother?" she asked in shamefaced astonishment.
+
+"She is a very good woman," Pavel observed, gravely. "She is in sympathy
+with the movement, you know, although it was only the other day I
+brought her the first few things to read. If it isn't asking too much I
+should like to introduce you to her, Clara Rodionovna. She would be
+delighted."
+
+He paused, but she maintained her air of respectful curiosity, so he
+went on. "She is very enthusiastic. She would like to know some of the
+Miroslav radicals, and I took the liberty of telling her about you. I
+need not tell you that I spoke in a very, very general way about you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One afternoon the Palace, which the trunk-dealer's daughter had known
+all her life as a mysterious, awe-inspiring world whose threshold people
+of her class could never dream of crossing, the Palace threw open its
+imposing doors to her, and she was escorted by Pavel up the immense
+staircase and into the favorite room of Countess Anna Nicolayevna
+Varoff. As it was an unheard-of thing for a Jewish girl to visit the
+Palace, it was agreed, as a safeguard against the inquisitiveness of the
+servants, that she should be known to them by such a typically Russian
+name as Daria Ivanovna Morosoff (Morosova).
+
+Barring the two great statues and an ancient cabinet inlaid with ivory
+and mother-of-pearl, the room was rather below her undefined
+anticipations. Her preconceived notion of the place soon wore off,
+however, under a growing sense of venerable solidity, of a quiet
+magnificence that was a revelation to her.
+
+"I'm awfully glad to know you, Clara Rodionovna, awfully," the countess
+said when the first formalities of greeting were over, and they were
+all seated. This Jewish girl was the first Nihilist she had ever met
+(indeed, Pavel was only "Pasha" after all), and she identified her in
+her mind with every revolutionary assassination and plot she had read
+about. She was flushed with excitement and so put out that she was
+playing with Pavel's fingers as she spoke, as a mother will do with
+those of her little boy. As to Clara, she had an oppressive feeling as
+though the pair of big musty statues, graceful, silent, imposing, were
+haughtily frowning on her presence under this roof. Pavel seemed to be a
+different young man. She scarcely seemed to be acquainted with him. Only
+the sight of Anna Nicolayevna fondling his fingers warmed her heart to
+both. On the other hand, her own smile won the hostess.
+
+The countess released Pavel's hand, moved over to the other end of the
+sofa and huddled herself into the corner, thrusting out her graceful
+elbows and great pile of auburn hair. The presence of Pavel kept her ill
+at ease. Finally she said: "I think you had better leave us two women to
+ourselves, Pasha. We shall understand each other much better then, won't
+we, Clara Rodionovna?"
+
+"I hope so," Clara answered, awkwardly.
+
+Pavel withdrew. In his absence their embarrassment only increased.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next time Clara and Pavel met, in the trunk-shop, he asked her when
+she would call on his mother again.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. The point is I don't know what to do with my hands
+there," she said, with a laugh. "I can't seem to shake off the feeling
+that I am in the house of--in 'the Palace,' don't you know."
+
+It was a hot day, but the air in the basement was quite cool. Motl was
+silently painting a trunk, and Pavel was conscious of the oppressive
+smell of the paint and of the impact of the brush against the wood as he
+answered, with pained stress in his voice.
+
+"But my mother does not feel like a countess. She is above and beyond
+all such things."
+
+"I know she is. Only I somehow don't manage to feel at home there."
+
+"But it's only a matter of habit I am sure. You'll get over it. You
+won't feel that way next time. You must promise me to call to-morrow."
+It was as if Clara's was a superior position in life and as if that
+superiority lay in this, that her home was a squalid trunk-shop, while
+his was a palace.
+
+"If I do, my mind will be in a whirl again," she laughed.
+
+"Oh, it isn't as bad as all that. You must promise me to call on her."
+
+"Can't we put it off--indefinitely?"
+
+"Clara Rodionovna!"
+
+His imploring voice threatened to draw from him the great yearning plea
+that was waiting to be heard, but this same entreating voice of his
+thrilled her so that she hastened to yield.
+
+"Very well," she said.
+
+"Will you come? Oh, it's so kind of you. I am ever so much obliged to
+you--but I declare I am raving like a maniac," he interrupted himself
+with a queer smile that forthwith lapsed into an expression of rage.
+"What I really want to say is that I love you."
+
+The lines of her face hardened. Her rich complexion burst into flame.
+She looked gravely at nothing, as he proceeded:
+
+"It seems to me as though I had felt that way ever since that Pievakin
+episode, Clara Rodionovna. I owe so much to you. If it had not been for
+you I might still be leading the life of a knave and an idiot. What you
+did on that occasion served to open my eyes and showed me the difference
+between light and darkness. And now it seems to me that if you were
+mine, it would infuse great energy and courage into me. I have got so
+used to seeing you, I hate to think of being apart from you for a single
+moment. Oh, you are so dear to me, I am so happy to sit by your side, to
+be allowed to say all this to you."
+
+"You are dear to me, too," she said in great embarrassment.
+
+He grasped her hand in silence, his face a burning amorous red.
+
+On their way to the Beak, after another outburst from him, she spoke in
+measured accents, firm and sad, like the voice of fate.
+
+"I don't know where this will lead us, for either of us or both may be
+arrested at any time, and then this happiness would add so much poison
+to the horrors of prison life. Besides, even if we are not arrested, as
+long as present conditions prevail our love would have to remain hidden
+underground, like our dear movement----"
+
+"My mother will know it. I want her to know it; and if it is possible to
+tell your parents, too----"
+
+"Oh, it would kill them. Theirs is an entirely different world."
+
+"Then, for the present, let them be none the wiser for it. As to my
+mother, she likes you very, very much already and when she hears of it
+she will love you to distraction, Clara Rodionovna. My friends of the
+party will know it, too, of course, and what do we care for the rest of
+this wretched world? But oh, I do wish you could tell your mother, or
+could I speak to her?"
+
+"Oh, that's absolutely impossible," she said in a voice vibrant with a
+suggestion of tears and the music of love at once. "Your mother may
+understand me. We can speak in the same language at least, but my poor
+parents--one might as well tell them I am dead. Well, when the Will of
+the People has scored its great victory and Russia is free, then, if we
+are alive, we shall announce it to my poor parents."
+
+He picked up a stone and flung it with all his might. He was in a fidget
+of suppressed exultation. Now that his suspense was over, they changed
+parts, as it were. The gnawing gloom which had tantalised him during the
+past few weeks had suddenly burst forth in torrents of sunshine; whereas
+in her case the quiet light-hearted happiness which had been the colour
+of her love had given way to an infatuated heart filled with anguish.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He told his mother the news the very next morning. The explanation took
+place in the immense ball-room. It was a windy morning outside, and they
+were marching up and down the parquette of polished light oak, arm in
+arm. Presently they paused at one of the windows facing the garden. They
+could faintly hear the soughing of the wind in the trees. They stood
+gazing at the fluttering leaves, when he said, musingly:
+
+"I have something to tell you, mother. I told Mlle. Yavner I loved her
+and I want you to congratulate me."
+
+"Mlle. Yavner?" she asked, with a look of consternation.
+
+"Yes, Mamma dear, I love her and she loves me and she is the dearest
+woman in the world and you are not going to look upon it in a manner
+unworthy of yourself, are you, dear little mamma mine?" He seized her
+fingers and fell to kissing them and murmuring: "My dear little mamma,
+my dear little mamma." His endearments were too much for her.
+
+"Pasha, Pasha! What are you doing with yourself," she sobbed bitterly.
+
+"Mamma darling! Mamma darling!" he shouted fiercely. "You are not going
+to give way to idiotic, brutal, Asiatic notions that are not really
+yours. Another year or two, perhaps less, and all Russia will be free
+from them and from all her chains, and then one won't have to be shocked
+to hear that a man and a woman who love each other and belong to each
+other are going to marry. Mamma dear, my darling little mamma! You are
+the noblest woman to be found. You are not going to go back on your son
+because he is trying to live like a real human being and not like a
+hypocrite and a brute."
+
+She dared not cry any more.
+
+When Clara came, the countess, turning pale, clasped her vehemently, as
+though pleading for mercy. Clara felt bewildered and terror-stricken,
+and after some perfunctory kisses she loosened her arms, but the Gentile
+woman detained her in an impetuous embrace, as she said: "Be good to me,
+both of you. He is all I have in the world." As she saw an embarrassed
+smile on Clara's beautifully coloured face, she bent forward with a
+sudden impulse and drew her to her bosom again, as though she had just
+made the discovery that the Jewish girl was not unlike other girls after
+all, that there was nothing preternatural about her person or speech.
+Whereupon Clara kissed her passionately and burst into tears.
+
+The countess caressed her, poured out the innermost secrets of her heart
+to her. This Jewish girl whom she had only seen once before heard from
+her the story of her past life, of her childhood, of her two unhappy
+marriages, of her thirst for comradeship with her son, of her
+conversion. The two women became intimate friends, although Clara spoke
+comparatively little.
+
+Nevertheless, that night Anna Nicolayevna vainly courted sleep. Her
+heart was in her mouth. She wished she could implore her son to break
+the engagement, to sever connection with the movement, to abandon all
+his perilous and unconventional pursuits. But she knew that she would
+never have the courage to do so.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+AN UNFORESEEN SUGGESTION.
+
+
+Pavel's prediction concerning Yossl came true, but the identity of the
+province to which the missing medical student belonged and the one in
+which the unknown Nihilist had been arrested escaped the notice of the
+secret service, and the Zorki gendarme officer contented himself with
+appropriating the Paris letter. Chance, however, soon solved the riddle
+for the authorities: a prisoner from Zorki, a drunkard charged with
+petty larceny, recognised Makar in the prison yard.
+
+It was Masha who brought the news to Pavel and Clara.
+
+"The general of gendarmes was there, the assistant procureur, my brother
+and the warden," she said, describing the scene when Parmet was first
+addressed by his name in prison. "It was in the office. When he was
+brought in, my brother says his heart--my brother's heart, I mean--began
+to beat fast. The assistant procureur offered him a chair." She paused,
+with an appealing smile, her hand to her bosom. "My heart, too, is
+beating fearfully at this minute, as I picture the scene. I am too
+imaginative, I am afraid. Well, he pulled up a chair, the assistant
+procureur and said: 'Be seated, Monsieur Parmet.' The prisoner started a
+little, just a little, don't you know, and then he smiled and began to
+rub his eyes, as if he had just been awakened. The general got angry and
+said now there was no use for him to make believe and to keep his mouth
+shut and the assistant procureur said very politely he might as well
+tell them a little more about himself and the people he knew in
+Miroslav, as they were well known to the gendarmes anyhow. They coaxed
+him and coaxed him and coaxed him until he shouted: 'As to myself I have
+the honour of being a member of the Party of the Will of the People. As
+to those I know in Miroslav, I assure you I don't know anybody here.'
+But didn't he tease them! 'I hoped to form some connections here,' he
+said, 'but then you were foolish enough to arrest me without giving me a
+chance. The St. Petersburg gendarmes will laugh at you when they hear of
+the kind of job you have made of it.'"
+
+Pavel roared. He thought Makar's taunting answer would induce the local
+gendarme office to detain him in the hope of discovering his prospective
+"connections."
+
+"Only why should he have said he was a member of the Party of the Will
+of the People? That will aggravate his case," Clara said.
+
+"That was the dream of his life--to say that, and to say it
+triumphantly, to some gendarme officers. At any rate, we have no time to
+lose."
+
+That afternoon Pavel had a talk with Makar from the top of the hill
+overlooking the prison yard.
+
+"Hurrah!" Makar's handkerchief flashed back in answer to his first
+"hello." "They know my name. I had some fun with them."
+
+"It was all right, only for the sake of everything that is noble, don't
+aggravate your case. Otherwise everything looks bright. Answer no more
+of their questions."
+
+"Crazy to wag my tongue. Have not spoken so long. I am trying to make a
+convert of my guard. Pastime."
+
+"Don't, for God's sake don't, or you'll ruin it all. Promise to keep
+silent. Do you?"
+
+"Don't get angry. I can see your handkerchief gnashing its teeth. Only
+one thing more. May I?"
+
+"Hurry up."
+
+"Here, in prison I am openly a citizen of the Social Republic, and the
+Czar is powerless to subdue me. I am in a cell. What more can he do with
+me? But here, in this cell, where his power is most complete, I openly
+defy him, all his gendarmes and army notwithstanding."
+
+Pavel went away, cursing and laughing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Every scheme of the conspirators turned out to be beset with
+insurmountable difficulties. Clara did not tell Pavel all she knew and
+made light of those obstacles with which he was acquainted, but in her
+own heart she was extremely uneasy.
+
+One evening Pavel sat on a bench in front of a public house, smoking a
+cheap pipe. He had a loaded pistol in his pocket and a dagger under his
+vest. The prison was a short distance round the third corner. When one
+of the customers of the public house seated himself by his side Pavel
+engaged him in conversation, talking garrulously in the manner of a
+humble, careworn government clerk.
+
+At last a way had been found for the provision man to take Makar out of
+the prison yard. This was what kept Pavel in this out-of-the-way spot.
+In the near vicinity of the inn stood a droshky. The appearance of the
+provision waggon, full of empty sacks and some barrels, at a corner
+diagonally across the street was to serve as a signal for Pavel to walk
+up to a deserted ditch-bridge, where the runaway was expected to emerge
+from under the sacks and to put on a military cap. Then Makar and
+Boulatoff would gain the droshky, mount it, and be driven to the
+Palace--the best hiding place one could find in all Miroslav.
+
+Pavel was calm, determined, ready to shoot and to be shot at. By degrees
+he grew fidgety. Presently Clara passed along. He rose to his feet and
+went off in the opposite direction, the two meeting in the next street.
+
+"It was a fizzle to-day, but it'll be all right, Pasha," she said in a
+cheery, matter-of-fact voice. "As ill luck would have it, there were
+some people about."
+
+Pavel's brows contracted. "He'll try again, of course."
+
+"Certainly. He will be there in four days."
+
+"Four days! Couldn't he make it sooner?"
+
+"I'll let you know."
+
+"Wait, dearest. Are you sure the people in the prison are not getting
+suspicious about you?" He had asked the question and she had answered it
+more than once before.
+
+"I don't think they are. Mme. Shubeyko and the Sparrow are the only ones
+who know all about it. As to Rodkevitch, he understands it all, of
+course, but he pretends not to. The Sparrow has his 'bosom friend' among
+the keepers, but that man does not know anything about me. I am quite
+sure of it."
+
+"The fewer who know what you are doing there the better, of course.
+Don't be foolhardy, my charming one. Oh, I do wish it was all over.
+Mother wants you to go to the country with her, and I should join you
+two for some time."
+
+With a passionate handshake they parted, Clara directing her steps to
+the prison building. The tremulous solicitude of his warning, his tender
+concern for her safety left a glow of happiness and devotion in her. She
+visioned him with his pistol and dagger and her heart was crushed with
+anxiety. With his hot-blooded temerity he was apt to act rashly, to use
+violence and stake his own life and Makar's before it was necessary.
+Pavel's mode of taking away the prisoner had never appealed to her
+strongly, and now the idea was growing on her of stealing a march on
+Pavel, of bringing about Makar's liberation when her lover was not on
+hand. And the more she thought of thus repaying his loving care for
+herself the keener became her joy in the plan.
+
+Still, the general situation looked so discouraging, that with all her
+thrills of amorous delight, she was in a state of black despair. The
+truth of the matter was that the provision man, who was eager to earn a
+few hundred rubles and to be plucky, had proved to be a most unreliable,
+boastful coward. Clara was cudgelling her brain for some new scheme, for
+some new line of action, when an important suggestion came from an
+unforeseen quarter. Mme. Shubeyko arrived at the prison, all in a
+flutter with a discovery: Father Michail, the prison priest, bore
+considerable resemblance to Makar.
+
+"That's so, but what of it?" Clara said between irritation and agreeable
+surprise.
+
+"What of it! Why,--I have thought it all out, you may be sure of that.
+It all occurred to me only an hour ago. Even less," she said with that
+silly smile of hers which usually so annoyed Pavel and which at this
+moment exasperated Clara even more than it would her quick-tempered
+lover.
+
+"What did occur to you?" Clara asked, with the least bit of venom on the
+"did."
+
+Mme. Shubeyko started to explain, but her listener divined the rest
+herself: Makar might pass out in the disguise of a priest, while Father
+Michail was with the prisoners.
+
+"It's an excellent idea!" she murmured gravely. She could scarcely bring
+herself to believe that the plan had emanated from an absurd brain like
+that of the woman before her.
+
+"Someone could detain Father Michail until it was all safely over," Mme.
+Shubeyko went on. "He's awfully fond of card-playing, and if a pretty
+young lady like yourself was his partner he would never have the heart
+to get up from the table, I know he wouldn't."
+
+The Sparrow, however, overruled the whole plan. Father Michail had been
+connected with the prison for twenty years and the two gatemen knew him
+as they did their own wives. What was more, the day gateman and the
+priest were particularly fond of each other and often exchanged jokes.
+
+Clara's hands dropped to her sides. Then she clenched a fist and said:
+"Oh, nonsense. He'll never know. If Father Michail did not speak to him
+he wouldn't think it strange, would he?"
+
+"No, but the gateman might speak to him. Besides, you'll have to get up
+early to fool him, lady." Every officer in the prison building had his
+nickname, and this vigilant gateman who was a very fat man was known as
+Double Chin. He seemed to be dozing half the time; but the Sparrow
+assured Clara that when his little eyes were shut they saw even better
+than when they were open.
+
+"Nonsense. Your imagination carries you too far. Anyhow, nothing
+venture, nothing have. We must get that man out."
+
+"Ready to serve you, young lady, only if I may say so, I don't like the
+plan at all, young lady."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+VLADIMIR FINDS HIS CAUSE.
+
+
+The next morning, as Clara walked along Kasimir Street, she saw Volodia
+Vigdoroff, her cousin, talking and laughing exuberantly to two elderly
+men in front of the flashy window of a drug store. One of his listeners
+wore a military uniform. It was Dr. Lipnitzky (Jewish physicians had not
+yet been proscribed from the Russian army)--a grey-haired,
+smooth-shaven, pudgy little man with three medals across his breast. It
+was at the Turkish war that he had won these decorations. Clara could
+never look at him without feeling a taste of sickness in her mouth like
+the one she had felt one day shortly after the war, when she was sick in
+bed and the little doctor, bending over, shouted to her to open her
+mouth wider. The best physician in town, he was the terror of his
+uneducated co-religionists. When a Jewish housewife paid him his fee in
+copper instead of silver, or neglected to wrap it up in paper, he would
+make an ugly scene, asking the poor woman at the top of his voice when
+she and others like her would learn to live like human beings.
+Sometimes, when a family failed to pay him altogether, pleading poverty,
+he would call them a lot of prevaricating knaves with a snug little
+hoard in the old woman's stocking, and carry off a copper pan or brass
+candlestick. In every case of this sort, however, the pan or the brass
+candlestick was sure to come back, sometimes with a ruble or two into
+the bargain.
+
+The other man to whom Vigdoroff was speaking was Paul Zundel, the
+musical autocrat of the province. He was as small of stature and as
+irascible as Dr. Lipnitzky--a grey-haired dandy with a Mexican
+complexion and a pair of long black side whiskers tipped with white. He
+was a graduate of a German conservatory and spoke several languages with
+illiterate fluency.
+
+They were both bachelors and both were frequent visitors at the
+governor's house, where they were liked as much for the money they
+usually lost in cards (although in other houses they were known as sharp
+players) as for their professional services. They spent large sums on
+the education of Jewish children and were particularly interested in the
+spread of modern culture among their people. In other words, they
+advocated and worked for the assimilation of their people with the
+"deep-rooted" population. When a Talmud boy was ambitious to give up his
+divine studies for "Gentile books" and his old-fashioned garb for a
+gymnasium uniform, the two eccentric bachelors were his two stars of
+hope.
+
+Vigdoroff overtook Clara as she turned the next corner. They had not met
+since the night when they quarrelled in front of Boyko's court.
+
+"I didn't see you until I happened to turn round," he said.
+
+"He is trying to prove that he is not afraid of being seen in my
+company," she thought to herself, as she said aloud: "I saw you talking
+to Dr. Lipnitzky and Zundel."
+
+They walked in silence a few steps. Then he uttered with a smile:
+
+"Have you taken a vow to give us a wide berth?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"Father and mother are always at me for it. They think I am to blame for
+your sudden estrangement."
+
+"Nobody is to blame, and there is no estrangement. Why use such words?"
+
+"Is it only a matter of words? They are accustomed to look upon you and
+me as brother and sister. Do you deny that our roads have parted?"
+
+"If they have, then, what need is there of writing at the bottom of the
+picture: 'This is a lion?'" she asked testily. "If it's a lion it's a
+lion."
+
+"Would it be better to shut one's eyes to the truth? As for me, common
+ordinary mortal that I am, I try to call a spade a spade."
+
+He spoke with venom, but it was all perfunctory and they were both aware
+of it. Then he described, with exaggerated ardour, the successes
+achieved by the Pupils' Aid Society in which he was now actively
+interested.
+
+Since their talk on the bench in front of Boyko's Court he had been
+longing for some humanitarian cause, for one unassociated with the
+hazards of the revolutionary movement. He would prove to Clara that he
+was no inferior creature. Her taunt that he had seized upon the Jewish
+question, in the course of their debate, merely as a drowning man seizes
+at a straw, and the implication that no phase of the problem of human
+suffering made the slightest appeal to him had left a cruel sting in his
+heart. Since then his thoughts had often turned upon the Jewish
+question, until he found his "cause" in the dissemination of Russian
+culture among his people. Formerly he had been contented with being
+"assimilated" himself. Now he was going to dedicate his best energies to
+the work of lessening that distance between Jew and Gentile, which was,
+so he argued, the source of all the woes of his race. As good luck would
+have it, there was such a thing as difference of opinion. "It is not
+anxiety about my 'precious skin,'" he would picture himself saying to
+Clara, "that keeps me from reading underground prints. Did I believe in
+them I should do as you do. But if you think I live for myself only you
+don't know me. I have another cause, one to which my convictions call me
+and to which I am going to give all that is in me."
+
+"And you?" he asked. "Still planting a paradise on earth?"
+
+She smiled.
+
+"Well, as for me, I content myself with working on such a humble
+beginning as a little bridge across the gap between Jew and Gentile."
+
+He consciously led the way past a Gentile of enormous bulk, who stood in
+the doorway of a furrier's shop. It was Rasgadayeff, the landlord of the
+Vigdoroffs' residence, he himself occupying the inner building on the
+same courtyard. He was a wealthy merchant with the figure of a barrel
+and arms that looked as though they had been hung up to dry, an
+impetuous Great-Russian, illiterate and good-hearted, shrewd in making
+money, but with no sense of its value when it came to spending it. Every
+other week he went off on a hideous spree, and then, besides smashing
+costly mirrors, which is the classical sport of the drunken
+Great-Russian merchant, he would indulge in such pastimes as offering a
+prize to every ten-year-old boy who would drain a tumbler of vodka,
+setting fire to live horses or wrecking the furniture in his own house.
+On such days his wife often sought shelter with the Vigdoroffs for fear
+of being beaten to death. Until a few years ago he had stood at the head
+of the fur trade. Since then a Jewish dealer, who went off on no
+sprees, had been a formidable competitor to him. Rasgadayeff now hated
+Jews in general as he had never done before. The Vigdoroffs were an
+exception. He was sincerely fond of the whole family, and entrusted the
+old man with some of his most important business secrets.
+
+"Our humblest regards to Clara Rodionovna!" he said, with gay suavity,
+taking off his hat. "As also to Vladimir Alexandrovich!"
+
+They returned the salute, and were about to pass on, but he checked
+them.
+
+"A rose of a girl, I tell you that," he went on, addressing himself to
+Vladimir, while he looked at the girl with rather offensive admiration.
+"Young men are fools nowadays. If I were one of them I should take no
+chances with a lassie like that. A plum, a bouquet, a song-bird of a
+mademoiselle. I should propose and get her and waste no time, or--one,
+two, three, and the lovey-dovey may be snapped up by some other fellow."
+
+Clara, who was accustomed to this sort of pleasantry from him, scarcely
+heard what he said. She was smilingly making ready to bow herself away,
+when her cousin asked of the Great-Russian:
+
+"And how is her Illustriousness? Have you seen her lately?"
+
+"She was here yesterday. Quite stuck on you, Vladimir Alexandrovich.
+Sends humblest regards. 'When is your learned young friend going to
+call,' she says. You have a sage of a cousin, Clara Rodionovna, an eagle
+of a fellow, a cabinet minister!"
+
+"All right," Vladimir returned, with an amused smile, yet reddening with
+satisfaction.
+
+Clara remarked to herself that her cousin was flaunting his successes
+with Gentiles before her. When they resumed their walk she inquired
+reluctantly:
+
+"Who is 'her Illustriousness'?"
+
+"Oh, that's that lame tramp of a woman, Princess Chertogoff," he
+rejoined, with gestures of contempt and amusement, yet inwardly tingling
+with vanity at his acquaintance with her impecunious "Illustriousness."
+The wealthy Great-Russian was a large holder of Princess Chertogoff's
+promissory notes, and it was at his house where Vladimir had met her on
+several occasions. The lame noblewoman knew that Rasgadayeff was fond of
+the Vigdoroffs. When she saw the young man last she had, by way of
+currying favour with her creditor, asked the educated son of his
+"favourite Jew" to call on her whenever he was in the mood for it, and
+to "let her hear what was going on among wise men and authors."
+
+Vladimir and Clara passed on. He spoke of Rasgadayeff's latest escapades
+and Clara listened with little bursts of merriment, but their voices did
+not ring true. Presently they exchanged greetings with Ginsburg, the
+notorious money-lender of Miroslav, a small, red-headed man with
+crumpled cheeks and big bulging eyes.
+
+"Here is another treat for you!" Vladimir said, in high spirits.
+"Another specimen of moral perfection. Some gigantic hand must have
+grabbed him by the head, squeezing it like a paper ball till the eyes
+started from their sockets, and then thrown him into a waste basket.
+That's the way he looks." She smiled awkwardly.
+
+He then called her attention to two bewigged old women, both of them
+apparently deaf, who were talking into each other's ear, and then to the
+picturesque figure of a dumpy little shoemaker with a new,
+carefully-shined pair of topboots in his hand. Clara had never been
+interested in things of this sort, but this time, in her eagerness to
+get away, added to a growing sense of awkwardness, his observations
+literally grated on her nerves. At last, when they reached a crossing,
+she stopped, putting out her hand.
+
+"Somebody is waiting for me," she said. "Remember me to uncle and aunt,
+will you?"
+
+"I will. Won't you look in at all?" As she turned to take the side
+street, he added: "Our roads do part, then."
+
+Her appointment was with Orlovsky. She had not attended the gatherings
+of the Circle at his house for a considerable time. He conjectured that
+she was engaged in some revolutionary undertaking of importance. He had
+missed her so abjectly that he had finally decided to avow his love.
+This was what he had made the appointment for. When she came, however,
+he cowed before her rich complexion and intelligent eyes and talked of
+the affairs of the Circle. A similar attempt at a love declaration was
+made that evening by Elkin, with similar results. By way of opening the
+conversation he indulged in a series of virulent taunts upon her long
+absence and the great revolutionary secrets that he said were written on
+her face, after which his efforts to turn the conversation into romantic
+channels proved futile. He came away agonised with jealousy. He was
+jealous of the girl and he was jealous of the mysterious conspiracy in
+which she seemed to be engaged and into which he, her revolutionary
+sponsor, had not been initiated.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As to Vigdoroff, he was seized with a desire to avail himself of
+Princess Chertogoff's invitation, not merely to gratify his personal
+ambition, but also, so he assured himself, as part of his "cause." On
+his way thither he paused once or twice in front of shop windows to
+ascertain whether his face was not strikingly Semitic. "Not offensively
+so, anyhow," he concluded before a mirror at the entrance to a furniture
+store. The mirror reflected a well-made, athletic-looking young man one
+could have told for a college man through a veil. The picturesque
+irregularity of his features, somewhat flat in the middle of the face,
+drew an image of culture, of intellectual interest. He felt on his
+mettle. He would make a favourable impression, and that impression was
+to be another step across the distance not only between Gentile society
+and himself, but between all Jews and all Gentiles. His visit to the
+noblewoman was a mission. He was in an exalted mood.
+
+At the house of Princess Chertogoff he found a cavalry officer and an
+officer of the imperial guards. He was received with patronising
+urbanity. The hostess introduced the two young officers as her sons,
+come from St. Petersburg to take a glimpse at their old mother, and
+Vigdoroff as "one of the brilliant young intellects of our town." This
+was her excuse before her sons for having invited a Jew to the house and
+Vigdoroff was not unaware of it. The cavalryman's face was round and
+stern, while his brother's was oblong and smiling. When they were drunk,
+which happened quite often, their faces would swap expressions. It was
+chiefly owing to their expensive escapades that their mother's fortune
+had passed into the coffers of usurers. The two uniformed men left
+almost immediately, pleading a pressing engagement.
+
+The welcome Vladimir found at this house was one extended by a patroness
+of the fine arts to a devotee of letters. It was not long before
+Vigdoroff found himself fully launched on a favourite subject. Russia's
+supremacy in modern literature and her false modesty became clearer to
+him with every new work of fiction that came from the foreign masters.
+The best models of the German, French or English novel were tainted with
+artificiality. Russia alone produced stories that were absolutely free
+from powder and rouge. He dwelt on Zola's _L'Assommoir_ and Daudet's
+_Nabob_, both of which had appeared a short time before, and each of
+which was looked upon as its author's masterpiece. He saw that his
+hostess neither understood nor cared for these things; that he was
+making a fool of himself; yet, being too ill at ease to stop, he went
+sliding down hill. He spoke by heart as it were, the sound of his own
+voice increasing his embarrassment.
+
+The princess was listening with an air of pompous assent, barely
+following the general drift of his talk. Her majestic crutches terrified
+him.
+
+A man servant brought in a silver samovar and a tray of Little-Russian
+cookies. As Vigdoroff took up his glass of tea the princess said:
+
+"I did not know you were so much of a Russian patriot. Quite an unusual
+thing in an educated young man these days. I certainly agree with you
+that Turgeneff is a good writer. He is perfectly charming."
+
+Later on she asked, with lazy curiosity and in her pampered enunciation:
+
+"Do you really think our novelists greater than the great writers of
+France?"
+
+"I certainly do."
+
+"That's interesting," she said, preparing to get rid of him.
+
+"You see, the average Russian represents a remarkable duality. He is
+simple-hearted and frank, like a child, yet he is possessed of an
+intuitive sense of human nature that would be considered marvellous in
+a sage. In addition, he is the most soulful fellow in the world, and to
+turn his soul inside out, to himself as well as to others, is one of his
+ruling passions. That accounts for the inimitable naturalness and the
+ardent human interest of our literature. Whether Russia knows how to
+construct machinery or not, she certainly knows how to write."
+
+"You do love Russia, and literature, too"--yawning demonstratively. "I
+had an idea Hebrews were only interested in money matters." She smiled,
+an embarrassed smile in which there was as much malice as apology, and
+dismissed him quite unceremoniously.
+
+He got into the street with his face on fire. It was as if he had been
+subjected to some brutal physical indignities. "'I didn't know you were
+so much of a Russian patriot,'" he recalled in his agony. "Of course,
+I'm only a Jew, not a Russian. It makes no difference how many centuries
+my people have lived and suffered here. And I, idiot that I am, make a
+display of my love for Gogol, Turgeneff, Dostoyevski, as if I, 'a mere
+Jew,' had a right to them! She must have thought it was all affectation,
+Jewish cunning. As if a Jew could care for anything but 'money matters.'
+The idea of one of my race caring for books, and for Gentile books,
+too!"
+
+He was as innocent of the world of money as was Clara's father. As to
+the great Russian writers, they were not merely favourite authors with
+him. They were saints, apostles, of a religion of which he was a fervent
+devotee. This, in fact, was the real "cause" which he had mutely served
+for the past six or seven years. Their images, the swing and rhythm of
+their sentences, the flavour of their style, the odour of the pages as
+he had first read them--all this was a sanctuary to him. Yet he had
+always felt as if he had no right to this devotion, as if he were an
+intruder. This was the unspoken tragedy of his life.
+
+Since a boy of ten, when he entered the gymnasium, he had been crying
+out to Russia, his country, to recognise a child in him--not a
+step-child merely. And just because he was looked upon as a step-child
+he loved his native land even more passionately than did his
+fellow-countrymen of Slavic blood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alexander, or Sender, Vigdoroff, Vladimir's father, was known among his
+co-religionists as Sender the Arbitrator. His chief source of income was
+petition-writing and sundry legal business, but the Jews of Miroslav
+often submitted their differences to him. These he settled by the force
+of an imperturbable and magnetic disposition rather than through any
+special gift of judgment and insight. He was full of anecdotes and
+inaggressive humour. It was said of him that people who came to his
+house obdurate and bitter "melted like wax" in his sunny presence. As a
+rule, indeed, it was the contending parties themselves who then found a
+way to an amicable solution of the point at issue, but the credit for it
+was invariably given to Sender the Arbitrator, and his reputation for
+wisdom brought him some Gentile patrons in addition to his Jewish
+clientele. His iron safe always contained large sums in cash or
+valuables entrusted to him by others. When a young couple were engaged
+to be married the girl's marriage-portion was usually deposited with
+Sender the Arbitrator. When security was agreed upon in connection with
+some contract the sum was placed in the hands of Sender the Arbitrator.
+
+His stalwart figure, blond, curling locks and toothless smile; his
+frilled shirt-front, everlasting brown frock-coat and huge meerschaum
+cigar-holder--all this was as familiar to the Jews of Miroslav as the
+public buildings of their town. The business of petition-writing was
+gradually passing into the hands of younger and better educated men,
+graduated lawyers regularly admitted to the bar, and his income was
+dwindling. "I could arbitrate any misunderstanding under the sun except
+the one between Luck and myself," he used to say, smiling toothlessly.
+Still, he made a comfortable income, and money was spent freely not only
+on his household but on all sorts of hangers-on. Vladimir's education
+cost him more than his means warranted. Besides keeping him at the
+gymnasium and then at the university he had hired him private teachers
+of French, German and music. "There are a thousand Gentiles to every
+Jew," was one of his sayings. "That's why every Jew should possess as
+much intelligence as a thousand Gentiles. Else we shall be crushed." He
+was something like a connecting link between the old world and the new.
+He had a large library, mostly made up of German and Hebrew books. His
+house was the haunt of "men of wisdom," that is, people who wrote or
+thought upon modern topics in the language of Isaiah and Jeremiah,
+free-thinkers whose source of inspiration were atheistic ideas expounded
+in the Holy Tongue; yet on Saturday nights his neighbours would gather
+in his drawing room to discuss foreign politics and to chant psalms in
+the dark. He had the head of an agnostic and the heart of an orthodox
+Jew.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when Vladimir reached home. His father was
+in the library, which was also his office, conversing with his
+copyist--a dapper little man whom his employer described as "an artistic
+penman and an artistic fool." The windows were open. The room was
+filled with twilight and with warm air that seemed to be growing softer
+and more genial every minute.
+
+"Is that you, Volodia?" the old man asked.
+
+Volodia only nodded. It was easy to see that he was dejected. His father
+became interested and dismissed the clerk.
+
+"Anything the matter, Volodia?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing is the matter." An answer of this sort usually indicated that
+the young man was burning to unbosom himself of something or other and
+that he needed some coaxing to do so. Intellectually the mutual
+relations of father and son were of a rather peculiar nature. Each
+looked up to the other and courted his approbation without the other
+being aware of it. Their discussions often had the character of an
+epigram-match.
+
+When Volodia had told his father of his experience at the house of the
+lame princess, the old man said:
+
+"I see you are quite excited over it. As for me, that penniless
+spendthrift reminds me of the pig that mistook the nobleman's backyard
+for the interior of his mansion. The backyard was all the pig had seen
+of the place, and money-lenders are the only kind of Jews that lame
+drone has ever had an occasion to know. That she should mistake a
+handful of usurers for the whole Jewish people is the most natural thing
+in the world."
+
+"Oh, but they are all like that, father. Unfortunately the Jewish people
+are just the opposite of women in this respect. Women have a knack of
+flaunting all that is prepossessing and of concealing that which is
+unattractive in them. If the Gentiles see none but the worst Jews there
+are we have ourselves to blame."
+
+"But they don't care to see any other Jews. As a rule, the good Jew has
+no money to lend. They have no use for him. More than half of our
+people are hard-working mechanics on the verge of starvation. Do you
+expect an ornament like your Princess Chertogoff and her precious sons
+to make _their_ acquaintance? Of the rest the great majority are
+starving tradesmen, teachers, Talmudists, dreamers. Would you have a
+Gentile reprobate go to these for a loan?"
+
+Vladimir sat silent awhile, gazing through the open window at the
+thickening dusk. Then he said, listlessly at first, but gathering ardour
+from the relish he took in his own point:
+
+"You are as unjust to the good Gentiles as they are to the good Jews.
+What is needed is more understanding between the two. If the dreamers
+and scholars you refer to could speak Russian and looked less
+antediluvian than they do the prejudice that every Jew is a money-lender
+would gradually disappear. As it is, Jew and Gentile are like two apples
+that come in mutual contact at a point where they are both rotten."
+
+"The Jewish apple was originally sound, Volodia. It's through
+association with their Gentile neighbours that they have been
+demoralised--at the point of contact; our faults are theirs; our virtues
+are our own."
+
+"Oh, this is a very one-sided view to take of it, father," Volodia
+rejoined, resentfully. What he coveted was consolation, not an attack on
+everything that he held dear, that was the soul of his best years and
+ambitions. His father's light-hearted derision of the entire Russian
+people irritated him. "If some Jews become demoralised through contact
+with Gentile knaves, other Jews are uplifted, ennobled, sanctified by
+coming under the influence of the great Russian thinkers, poets, friends
+of the people," he went on, emphasising his words with something like a
+feeling of spite. "Yours is an extremely one-sided view to take,
+father."
+
+The elder Vigdoroff was cowed. He felt himself convicted of
+narrow-mindedness, of retrogression, of fogyism, and by way of
+disproving the charge he put up a defence that was disguised in the form
+of an attack. Vladimir replied bitterly, venting his misery on his
+father. The two found themselves on the verge of one of those feuds
+which sometimes divided them for days without either having the courage
+to take the first step toward a reconciliation, but their discussion was
+broken by the appearance of a servant carrying a lamp. She was followed
+by Vladimir's mother, a mountain of shapeless, trembling flesh with a
+torpid, wide-eyed look. In the yellow light the family likeness between
+father and son came pleasingly into view. Only the face of the one had a
+touch of oriental quaintness in it, while the other's was at once
+mellowed and intensified by the tinge of modern culture. Clara's mother
+was a sister of the elder Vigdoroff, but she resembled him only
+slightly. The girl's features suggested her uncle far more than they did
+her mother.
+
+"Never mind the lamp," the Arbitrator said somewhat irately.
+
+"Never mind the lamp!" his wife said, fixing her torpid eyes on him.
+"Are you crazy? Don't mind him"--to the servant girl. The servant girl
+set the lamp down on the table and withdrew, her big fleshy mistress
+taking a seat by her son's side.
+
+"Go about your business," her husband said, good-naturedly. "You are
+disturbing our discussion. I was just getting started when you came in
+and spoiled the job. Go. There may be some beggar-woman waiting for you
+in the kitchen."
+
+She made a mocking gesture without stirring, and her husband resumed his
+argument.
+
+She was one of a very small number of Jewish women who attended divine
+service on week-days. She was the game of every woman pedlar and beggar
+in town, with whom she usually communed when her husband was out. When
+not thus occupied, buying useless bargains or listening to some poor
+woman's tale of woe, she would spend much of her time in her big easy
+chair, dozing over a portly psalter. Her husband was perpetually
+quizzing her on her piety and her surreptitious bargains. On Fridays,
+when beggars came in troops for their pennies, the Arbitrator would
+sometimes divert himself by encouraging some of them to fall into line
+more than once.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+CLARA BECOMES "ILLEGAL."
+
+
+Late the next afternoon Mme. Shubeyko called at the warden's house with
+a blue silk handkerchief round her face, apparently suffering from a
+swollen cheek or toothache.
+
+An hour or more later, while she and Rodkevich were absorbed in a game
+of cards in the parlour and a solitary star shone out of the
+semi-obscurity of a colorless sky, Makar, clean-shaven and clad as a
+woman, with a blue handkerchief round his face, advanced toward the
+gate. Clara stood in the doorway of the warden's office, watching the
+scene. "Double Chin," the gateman, was still on duty, and as the
+disguised prisoner approached him the impersonation struck her as
+absurdly defective. Another second and all would be lost with a crash.
+Her heart stood still. She shut her eyes with a sick feeling, but the
+next instant she sprang forward, bonnetless, addressing Makar by Mme.
+Shubeyko's name.
+
+"You must not forget to let us know, dear," she said aloud, placing
+herself between him and the gateman and shutting the disguised man from
+view. "A swollen gum is a dangerous thing to neglect, you know. Yes,
+figs and milk. I'll see you down the road, dear."
+
+The heavy key groaned in the lock, the ponderous gate swung open and
+Makar and Clara walked out into the twilight of the street--he with a
+rush of joy, she in a turmoil of triumph and despair. It seemed as if he
+had never vividly hoped to see liberty, and now, suddenly, he had found
+himself breathing the very breath of it; while she who, a minute ago,
+could have walked freely through the streets, was now the quarry of that
+terrible force called government.
+
+As soon as they reached the ditch, a short distance from the prison
+building, Makar pulled off his feminine attire, threw it under the
+little foot-bridge, and put on a government official's cap. Masha, the
+gendarme officer's sister, was to await him round the corner; her house
+was within easy reach from here, and Makar was to be taken there to
+change his disguise and then to be driven to the Palace; but it had all
+come about much sooner than they had expected, and she had not yet
+arrived.
+
+"Never mind. Hire a cab to Cucumber Market," Clara said. "There you can
+cross some streets in the opposite direction and then take another cab
+direct for Theatre Square. A very short walk will bring you to the
+Palace. Don't forget the names: First Cucumber Market and then Theatre
+Square," she repeated, coolly.
+
+He nodded with a reassuring smile, shook her hand warmly, and they
+parted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Double Chin was soon to be relieved. Had he left his post before the
+guards missed Makar, the connection existing between Mme. Shubeyko's
+toothache and Makar's escape would never have been discovered, and Clara
+would have come out uncompromised. But Clara was too slow in returning,
+and the fat gateman was an impressionable, suspicious man, so he
+presently made inquiry. He found that Mme. Shubeyko was still in the
+warden's parlour, nursing her cheek with one hand and holding her cards
+with the other.
+
+In the commotion that followed the discovery Rodkevich wept hysterically
+and beat the gateman, while Mme. Shubeyko went about invoking
+imprecations upon the sly prisoner for stealing her new spring cloak,
+bonnet and parasol.
+
+Meanwhile Clara stood at a point of vantage, watching developments. Had
+Double Chin left the building at the usual hour, without the prison
+betraying any signs of disquiet, she would have returned to her room in
+the warden's house at once, and thus saved her legal existence.
+Otherwise she would have been forced to escape and join the army of the
+"ne-legalny" (illegal), of political outlaws like the majority of
+Pavel's intimate friends in St. Petersburg. About twenty minutes had
+elapsed from the time she had parted from Makar, when she saw human
+figures burst from the prison-gate, accompanied by the violent trill of
+a police whistle. Her heart sank at the sound. From this minute on
+Miroslav would be forbidden ground to her. A _ne-legalny_ is something
+neither dead nor alive, the everlasting prey of gendarmes, policemen,
+spies--of the Czar himself, it seemed; a "cut-off slice;" an outcast
+without the right of being either an outcast or a member of the
+community, a creature without name, home or identity. She was
+appallingly forbidding to herself. But then in the underground world
+_ne-legalny_ is a title of indescribable distinction, and at this moment
+Clara seemed to feel in her own person the sanctity which she had been
+wont to associate with the word.
+
+By ridding herself of her starched collar and ribbon and hastily
+rearranging her hair into a coarse, dishevelled knot she was
+sufficiently transformed to look like a young woman of the masses to
+strangers. She could not go to the Palace without a hat, however, and
+buying one at this hour would have attracted undesirable attention. So
+she first went to the house of Beile, her uneducated sister. Her
+father's address or full name being unknown at the prison, it would be
+some time before the police came to look for her at her sister's.
+
+Beile was a little woman of thirty with glowing dark eyes and a great
+capacity for tears and nagging. She resembled her parents neither in
+looks nor in character, and her mother often wondered "whence she came
+into the family." Her husband, a man learned in the Talmud, was absorbed
+day and night in an effort to build up a small business in hides. As a
+consequence, the space under Beile's bed was usually occupied with raw
+skins and the two-room apartment which they shared with a tailor was
+never free from odours of putrefaction.
+
+Clara entered the room with a smile. The first thing she did was to kiss
+and slap Ruchele, her sister's little girl, and to tickle her baby
+brother under the chin.
+
+"Why, where is your hat?" Beile screamed in amazement.
+
+Her own hat was a matronly bonnet which she never wore except on
+Saturdays, when she would put it on over her wig, tying its two long,
+broad ribbons under her chin.
+
+"It blew off into the river as I was crossing the bridge," Clara
+replied. "That's what brings me here. I want you to get me a hat, Beile,
+but you must do it quickly."
+
+"Are you crazy? Whatever is the matter with you, Clara? Whoever heard of
+a girl taking so little care of her hat that it should drop into the
+water? You don't think you are a daughter of Rothschild, do you? Did you
+ever!"
+
+"That's all right, Beile. We'll talk it all over some other time. Every
+minute is of great value to me."
+
+Beile thought her sister was in a hurry to attend a lesson, so she
+started. As she reached the door, with the baby in her arms, she
+couldn't help facing about again.
+
+"Didn't you go down the bank to look for it?" she asked.
+
+"But I am telling you I have not a moment's time now."
+
+The more irritation she betrayed, the more the other was tempted to nag
+her.
+
+"But somebody must have picked it up. It cost you five rubles and you've
+not worn it ten times."
+
+"Beile! Beile!" Clara groaned.
+
+"Tell me where it is. I'll go and look for it myself. Maybe it is not
+yet too late. Lord of the World, five rubles!"
+
+Clara was left with Ruchele, but she changed her mind.
+
+"I think I'll wait at Motl's house," she said, overtaking her sister,
+with the child by her side. "It's nearer to my lesson."
+
+Motl, the trunk-finisher employed by their mother, lived a considerable
+distance from here. Beile gave her a look full of amazement and dawning
+intelligence.
+
+"At Motl's!" she whispered, sizing up Clara's dishevelled appearance.
+"Where is your collar? A rend into my heart! What have you been doing to
+yourself? Anyhow, go to Motl's. Or, no, go to Feige's. That's much
+better. I'll bring you a hat in ten minutes." Feige was a poor old
+relative of Beile's by marriage.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Clara, in a large shepherdess hat and genteel looking, bade her
+sister a hurried good-bye and made for the open gate, Ruchele ran after
+her, yelling so that her mother had to catch her in her arms and carry
+her gagged indoors. That was the only adventure Clara encountered on her
+way to the Palace.
+
+Makar was not there.
+
+She told Pavel of the rescue in general outline, explaining that an
+unexpected opportunity had presented itself and that there had been no
+time for sending word to him. He flew into a rage. So far from being the
+central figure in the affair for which he had been priming himself these
+many weeks he had been left out of it altogether, left out like a ninny
+caught napping. But this was no time for wounded pride. Clara had
+unexpectedly become a _ne-legalny_ and--what was of more immediate
+concern--what had become of Makar?
+
+"I hope he was not taken in the street," he whispered.
+
+"Masha might know. Could you send Onufri?"
+
+Pavel disliked to use the old hussar for errands of this nature, but in
+the present juncture there seemed to be no way out of it.
+
+Onufri brought back a note in which the words were all but leaping with
+excitement.
+
+"No! No! No!" Masha wrote. "He has not been caught. My brother has not
+yet been home. Everybody is nearly crazy! But I can almost see my
+brother chuckling--in his heart of course! Hurrah! Hurrah! Long live the
+revolution!"
+
+"Thank God!" said Clara, shutting her eyes, in a daze of relief.
+
+"He's a trump, after all. If they haven't caught him so far I don't see
+why he should be caught now. He may come in at any moment. But where can
+he be?"
+
+The next morning, at about ten o'clock, when the countess heard the
+doorbell she declared, with intense agitation, that something told her
+it was the governor, and so it was. Clara went into her room.
+
+"Don't leave me for a moment, Pasha," Anna Nicolayevna entreated her
+son. "I am afraid to face him alone. I should be sure to put my foot in
+it, if I did."
+
+"Just leave uncle to me," said Pavel.
+
+The old man looked wan and haggard, and was blinking harder than ever.
+He began by joking Pasha on the rarity of his visits at the
+gubernatorial mansion, but the young man cut him short.
+
+"By the way, uncle, is it true that that fellow, the Nihilist, has
+escaped?" he asked.
+
+"How did it reach you so soon?" the governor asked. "The town must be
+full of it."
+
+"I heard it from a cab-driver last night. It's awful. But how did he get
+out? Say what you will, they are a clever set, those Nihilists."
+
+"Clever nothing! Our gendarmes are the most stupid lot on God's earth.
+That's where the trouble comes in. There was a governess at the warden's
+house. It was she who seems to have managed the whole affair. Of course,
+the warden is a scoundrel, but what does he know of these things? It's
+for the gendarme office to scent a bird of that variety, but then the
+gendarme office is made up of rogues and blockheads. To clip one's
+wings, that's all they are good for. Wherever one turns, he bumps his
+head against the 'independent power' of the gendarmerie. It's a
+government within a government, that's what it is. Else one would be
+able to show St. Petersburg that Miroslav was not the kind of place for
+Nihilists and all sorts of ragamuffins to play the mischief with. Those
+swaggering gendarmes go around poking their noses everywhere, smelling
+nothing but their own grand epaulets, and yet they are beyond the
+control of civil authorities. The consequence is that when something
+happens somebody else is held responsible, because the prisons,
+forsooth, are under the Department of the Interior! To set an example of
+idleness and stupidity is all they seem to be needed for, the gendarmes;
+that's all, that's all."
+
+Pavel agreed with him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another week passed. The police and the gendarmes were still searching
+for Makar and the governess, as much in the dark as ever.
+
+Yossl Parmet, Makar's father, was brought to Miroslav a prisoner, but he
+was soon discharged. He was proud of his son. He now fully realised that
+his Feivish belonged to a secret society made up of educated people who
+preached economic equality and universal brotherhood as well as
+political liberty, and that they were ready to go to prison for their
+ideas. This made a strong appeal to his imagination and sympathies, and
+the fact that his Feivish had outwitted the authorities and escaped from
+prison inclined him to shouts of triumphant laughter. He searched the
+Talmud for similar sentiments, and he found no stint of passages which
+lent themselves to favourable interpretation. A new vista of thought and
+feeling had opened itself to Yossl.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+ON SACRED GROUND.
+
+
+In 1648, when Chmyelnicki's Cossacks slaughtered 40,000 Jews, Miroslav
+was among the cities that fell into their blood-dripping hands. It was a
+small town then; the Jewish population did not exceed eight hundred, but
+these unanimously decided to be slain rather than abandon their faith.
+Not a man, woman or child was spared. The scene of the slaughter, a
+small square in the vicinity of Cucumber Market, is sacred ground to the
+Jews of Miroslav. The Bloody Spot they call it reverently. A synagogue
+stands there and ten recluses find shelter under its roof, so that the
+Word of God may be heard with unbroken continuity within its walls. If
+this house of prayer and divine study were to fall silent for a single
+minute, say the children of the town, the blood of the slain Jews would
+burst into a roar of sobbing that could be heard for seven miles.
+
+But the ten recluses were not the only Talmudists in the place. The Old
+Synagogue, as it was generally called, was the favourite haunt of
+scholars. It was here where Rabbi Rachmiel, Clara's father, spent every
+day and evening in the week except Saturdays and holidays.
+
+It was about eight o'clock of a warm evening, several days after the
+disappearance of the political prisoner. The Old Synagogue was filled
+with people. The evening service was over. Candles flickered on gaunt,
+tallow-stained reading-desks and blazing oil-lamps dangled from the
+ceiling. The recluses were freely gossiping or snoozing; there were so
+many others to do the holy work--a medley of voices and melodies--from
+the enthusiastic soprano of the schoolboy to the dignified drone of the
+elderly merchant; from the conscious, over-elaborate intonation of the
+newly-married young man to the absorbed murmur of the tattered old
+scholar. As to the Talmudists themselves, they found stimulating harmony
+in this chaos. To them it was as if the synagogue itself were singing in
+a hundred voices, an inspired choir that quickened one's intellectual
+passions and poured fire into one's gesticulations.
+
+One of the younger men in the crowd was Makar. Seated in a snug corner,
+with his reading-desk tilted against his breast, he was sincerely
+absorbed in a passage on the slaying of cattle. The treatise is one of
+the most intricate in the Talmud, and he had taken it up as he might a
+game of chess. The lower part of his face was buried in the sloping
+surface of a huge long book, the handle of a tin candlestick hooked to
+the top of the folio. The flame of a guttering candle threw a stream of
+light upon his dusky high forehead and heavy black eyebrows. Slightly
+rocking the desk, he intoned the Chaldaic text and the Yiddish
+interpretations, listening to his own sing-song as one listens, at some
+distance, to a familiar voice.
+
+Rabbi Rachmiel, Clara's father, was studying quietly in a corner, in
+peaceful ignorance of the mad hunt that was going on for his daughter at
+this moment. That this red-bearded little man was the father of the
+Nihilist girl who had brought about his escape Makar had not the least
+idea.
+
+After bidding Clara good-bye on the evening of his rescue, he had taken
+the first cab he came across, getting off at Cucumber Market, as
+directed. After zig-zagging about for five minutes, he was going to hail
+another cab, but checked himself because the man proved to be the same
+who had brought him to Cucumber Market. A boy stopped to look at him,
+whereupon he made up his mind that the official cap which he wore (and
+which had been expected to give him the appearance of a teacher in a
+government school for Jews) scarcely went well with his face, and that
+it must be this cap of his which had attracted the boy's attention. He
+therefore went to a capmaker's shop and bought an ordinary cap, such as
+is worn by the average old-fashioned Jew, explaining to the artisan that
+it was for his father, who had his size. This part of the town he knew
+well, for it was in the centre of the Jewish quarter, not many minutes'
+walk from his former lodgings. The Old Synagogue was in the same
+neighbourhood, and it flashed upon him to seek temporary refuge in the
+celebrated house of worship and learning. Living in such a place was
+like hiding in the depths of the Fourth Century--the age of the Talmud,
+which was still the soul of the Ghetto, still the fountain-head of the
+spiritual and intellectual life of the orthodox Jew. He would be in his
+native element there, at any rate, and would certainly feel more
+comfortable than amid the imposing interiors of a noblewoman's mansion.
+On his way to the synagogue he twisted the hair at his temples till he
+looked as he used to, before he left Zorki. As to his shave, he prepared
+an explanation: he was subject to a species of skin disease that made
+shaving unavoidable.
+
+The assistant beadle at the Old Synagogue was a man with a luxurious
+white beard. He was not learned in the Talmud himself, but he had served
+in the great "house of study" so long that he was familiar with the
+titles of the various volumes and sections in the same way as an old
+servant at a medical college is familiar with anatomical nomenclature.
+He danced attendance on every diligent scholar, and was the terror of
+every boy who romped or talked "words of daily life" over his holy book.
+He was in charge of the synagogue library and the candle supply. His
+salary was no larger than that of a street labourer, yet he had the
+appearance of a stern, prosperous merchant.
+
+When Makar first applied for a book and a candle the assistant beadle
+cast a knowing look at his smooth-shaven face, and then, handing him the
+volume, said:
+
+"You are in the army, aren't you?"
+
+"How do you know, by my shaved face?" Makar asked, sadly.
+
+The assistant beadle smiled assent. The skin-disease story proved
+unnecessary.
+
+"There is many a Talmudist among soldiers nowadays," the old man said.
+"To think of a Child of Law having to live in military bondage, to wear
+a uniform, to shave and to handle a gun!" He regarded Makar as a martyr.
+When he saw him reading his book in a pleasing, absorbed sing-song, he
+paused and watched him with a look of paternal admiration.
+
+"Do you belong here?" he asked later.
+
+"No." He named the first town that came to his tongue.
+
+"Have you relatives here?"
+
+"No. But I have obtained a furlough and am going home. I am waiting for
+a letter and some money. I have left my uniform with a friend."
+
+The assistant beadle asked Makar for news--whether there were any
+rumours of some new war, or of some fresh legislation affecting the
+condition of Jews. The query was made on the supposition that Makar, as
+a member of the Czar's army and one who saw so many officers, could not
+be unfamiliar with what was going on "up above"; and Makar appeased the
+old man's curiosity with some suitable bits of information. The
+assistant beadle was particularly interested in the story of a certain
+colonel, a bitter anti-Semite, who used to beat the Jews in his regiment
+because a Jewish money-lender had him under his thumb. Now this "Jews'
+enemy" lay in bed, stricken with paralysis--a clear case of divine
+reckoning. Did Makar know him? Makar said he did.
+
+The discussion was interrupted by the appearance of a bewigged woman
+with a pound of candles, in commemoration of the anniversary of a death.
+She wanted to make sure that they were going to be used for diligent
+study and not to be thrown away on loafers, and the assistant beadle
+told her that it would be all right and that she had better go home and
+put the children to bed. Another woman, whose boy was studying in a
+corner, was watching his gesticulations with beaming reverence. She had
+an apple for him and a copper coin for the assistant beadle, and when
+she saw Makar looking at her son, she said, nodding her head blissfully:
+
+"Praised be the Master of the World. It is not in vain that I am
+toiling. The boy will be an adornment to my old age."
+
+Later in the evening a woman burst into the synagogue, lamenting and
+wringing her hands. She besought the recluses to pray for her
+newly-married daughter, who was on her death-bed. Makar was deeply
+touched. He felt like a foreigner amid these scenes that had once been
+his own world, and the consciousness of it filled him with melancholy.
+
+He slept at the synagogue. After the service next morning he sent out a
+boy for some bread, butter and pot cheese, and at two o'clock a devout
+widow brought him, at the assistant beadle's recommendation, a pot of
+soup and boiled meat. He ate his dinner with Talmudistic bashfulness,
+the woman looking on piously, and mutely praying to heaven that her
+dinner might agree with the holy man and give him strength for the study
+of God's laws.
+
+Toward evening he ventured out on a stroll through the spacious
+courtyard which lay between the Old Synagogue and several other houses
+of worship. In this yard was a great octagonal basin, celebrated for its
+excellent tea water, with moss-grown spouts and chained wooden dippers.
+He watched the water-bearers with their pails and the girls with their
+jugs--a scene that seemed to have sprung to life from certain passages
+in the Talmud--until he came within a hair's breadth of being recognised
+by his former landlady.
+
+Rabbi Rachmiel was absent from the synagogue that day. When Makar
+returned to the house of study he noticed signs of excitement. The
+recluses and other students were absorbed in whispered, panic-stricken
+conversation. They dared not discuss the news in groups, some even
+pretending to be engrossed in their books, as much as to say: "In case
+it comes to the knowledge of the police that you people are talking
+about it, I want you to remember that I took no part in your gossip."
+The meaning of Clara's disappearance was not quite clear to them. They
+knew in a very dim way that there were people, for the most part
+educated people, who wanted to do away with czars in general, and now it
+appeared that Rabbi Rachmiel's daughter was one of those mysterious
+persons. Those of the Talmudists who knew Clara were trying to imagine
+her as something weird, preternatural, and when her familiar face came
+back to them they uttered subdued exclamations of amazement.
+
+When the news reached Makar he wondered whether it would not be
+advisable for him to decamp at once. But he was so snugly established in
+his present berth that he was loath to abandon it.
+
+Some of the worshippers who dropped in to read a page or two of an
+evening would gather in groups, bandying gossip or talking foreign
+politics, of which, indeed, they had the most grotesque conceptions.
+Here Makar picked up many a side-splitting story illustrative of the
+corruption, intemperance and childlike ineptitude of government
+officials. His attention seized with special eagerness upon a
+description of the demoralised state of things in the printing shop
+connected with the governor's office. There is not an article of
+merchandise over which the Russian authorities maintain a more rigorous
+control than they do over type, every pound, almost every letter of it,
+used in the empire being registered and supposedly kept track of; yet
+the foreman of that shop often offered some of the Czar's own supply for
+sale, and in default of buyers (the licensed private printers of the
+town being too timid to handle this most dangerous species of stolen
+goods) he had once molten a large quantity of new type and sold it for
+scrap lead. Makar could not help picturing the revolutionists in regular
+communication with this man. Nor did his fancy stop there. Gradually all
+the typesetters under that foreman would be supplanted by
+revolutionists, and the Czar's printing office would print the _Will of
+the People_!
+
+Two days elapsed before Rabbi Rachmiel returned. When he did he scarcely
+spoke to anybody. Naturally a man of few words, he now spent every
+minute reading his book with ferocious absorption.
+
+The next day was Friday. In the evening the turmoil of Talmudic accents
+gave way to an ancient chant, at once light-hearted and solemn--the song
+of welcome to Sabbath the Bride. The brass chandeliers, brightly
+burnished, were filled with blazing candles. About half of the seats
+were occupied by worshippers, freshly bathed and most of them in their
+Sabbath clothes. Rabbi Rachmiel wore a beaming face, "in honour of the
+Sabbath," that was plainly the result of effort. As Maker watched him
+chant his Sabbath-eve psalms, the heart of the escaped Nihilist was
+contracted with sympathy and something like a sense of guilt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile Count Loris-Melikoff had abolished the Third Section,
+transferring the secret service to the Interior Department, and while
+the change had not displaced the Dandy from office, yet it materially
+impaired his usefulness to his party.
+
+When Makar returned to St. Petersburg Pavel met him with kisses and hugs
+and punches. The Janitor, whom he saw the next day, shook his hand
+heartily.
+
+"It's all right," he said, looking Makar over with an amused air.
+
+"What are you smiling at?" Parmet demanded, colouring.
+
+"At you. I can't get myself to believe it was really you who made such a
+neat job of it."
+
+"I!" Makar protested, exultingly. "Any idiot would know how to be
+arrested. It's Clara that carried the scheme through."
+
+"Still, there is better stuff in you than I gave you credit for."
+
+Makar was quivering to know something of the use that had been made of
+his arrest, but conspirators ask no questions. Indeed, to try to know as
+little as possible, to avoid information upon anything except that in
+which one was personally participating was (or was supposed to be) an
+iron law of the movement; and now Makar was more jealous of his
+reputation as a conspirator than ever.
+
+"Well, it's all right," the Janitor said, reading his thoughts.
+"Something has been done and it's all right; only under the new system
+it's rather slow work."
+
+Makar did not understand. The abolition of the Third Section had taken
+place while he was in prison. When he heard of the change he said in
+dismay: "Will that affect my scheme?"
+
+"Your scheme? I don't think it will," the Janitor answered mysteriously.
+"Of course, we'll first have to see how the new system works. We must do
+some sounding and watching and studying before we know how to go about
+things. Can't you wait a month or two?"
+
+Makar was silent, then his face broke into a roguish smile.
+
+"I will if you get me into an underground printing office for the
+interval," he returned.
+
+The Janitor took fire. "What has that got to do with your cursed
+scheme?" he said with a slight stutter. "As if I had printing jobs to
+give away!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+A POSTPONED WEDDING.
+
+
+In June of that year, shortly before Makar escaped from prison, the
+unhappy Empress of Russia died after a long illness that was generally
+ascribed to her many years of jealousy and anguish. The Czar signified
+his intention to enter into morganatic wedlock with Princess Dolgoruki
+at once. His sons and brothers remonstrated with him, pleading for a
+postponement of the marriage until the end of a year's mourning; but he
+was passionately devoted to the princess, with whom he had been on terms
+of intimacy for the past few years; he was determined to have these
+relations legitimatised, and, in view of the unrelenting campaign of the
+Terrorists, he felt that he could not do so too soon. Several members of
+the imperial family then went on a foreign tour, and the wedding was
+quietly solemnised on July 31 in Livadia, Crimea, where the Czar and his
+bride remained for a long honeymoon.
+
+Pavel's and Clara's wedding was to take place in the early part of
+October. The relations of the sexes among the Nihilists were based upon
+the highest ideals of purity, and the marriage bond was sacred in the
+best sense of the word, but they were not given to celebrating their
+weddings. When a couple became man and wife the fact was recognised as
+tacitly as it was made known, the adoption by the bride of her husband's
+name being out of the question in a world in which passports and names
+were apt to be changed every day. Still, there were exceptions, and
+Pavel insisted upon being one of these. In his overflowing bliss he
+often cast the spartanism of the movement to the winds, and now he was
+bent upon indulging himself in the "romanticism" of having his wedding
+proclaimed at a gathering of his most intimate friends. This was to be
+done at the close of an important revolutionary meeting, at the same
+lodgings where we once saw Pavel, Zachar and My Lord at a gathering of
+military officers. A high government official who occupied the first
+floor of the same building was giving an elaborate reception which kept
+the house porters busy and the street in front crowded with carriages
+and idlers; so the central organisation of the Party of the Will of the
+People took advantage of the occasion and held one of its general
+meetings under cover of the excitement. The assemblage, which was made
+up of about sixty or seventy persons of both sexes, comprised nearly
+every member of the Executive Committee in town, and some candidates for
+admission to the Executive who were allowed to participate in its
+deliberations without a vote. Most of the revolutionists present had
+taken part in attempts on the life of the Czar, as also in some of the
+recent assassinations. One man, a southerner, was the hero of the most
+sensational rescue during the past few years, having snatched from the
+Kieff prison, in which he had contrived to obtain the position of head
+keeper, three leaders of an extensive revolutionary plot. This man, the
+Janitor and Purring Cat now constituted the Governing Board (a
+sub-committee clothed with dictatorial powers) of the Terrorists'
+Executive.
+
+The police were hunting for the people here gathered throughout the
+empire. Had the present meeting been discovered by spies the whole
+movement would have been seriously crippled for a considerable time.
+Indeed, the complex conspiracies of the Will of the People were an
+element of fatal weakness as well as a manifestation of fascinating
+strength. The Terror absorbed the best resources of the party,
+necessitating highly centralised organisation, with the threads of a
+scattered national propaganda in the hands of a few "illegals" who were
+liable to be seized at any moment.
+
+The street was full of police, but these had all they could do to salute
+the distinguished guests of the first floor and to take care of the
+carriages and the crowd of curiosity seekers.
+
+Partly through Pavel's influence and partly because she was an "illegal"
+and had produced a very favourable impression, Clara had made the
+acquaintance of many of the revolutionary leaders and been admitted as a
+probationary member of the Executive Committee. The present gathering
+was the first general meeting of the central body she had attended.
+
+"So this is the Executive Committee!" she was saying to herself. This,
+then, was the mysterious force that people were talking about in timid
+whispers; that the Czar dreaded; that was going to make everybody free
+and good and happy. This was it, and she was attending its meeting. She
+could scarcely believe her senses that she actually was there. She knew
+many of the members, but she had never seen several of them together.
+The present meeting almost benumbed her with a feeling of reverence,
+awe, and gratitude. Even those she had met often since her arrival in
+St. Petersburg seemed different beings now, as though spiritualised into
+that mysterious force that seemed mightier than the Czar and holier than
+divinity. An overpowering state of exaltation, of something akin to the
+ecstasy of a woman upon taking the veil, came over her. Pavel was dearer
+than ever to her, but in her present mood their love impressed her as a
+jarring note. Self-sacrifice, not personal happiness, was what appealed
+to her, and by degrees she keyed herself up to a frame of mind in which
+her prospective married life seemed a gross profanation of the sanctuary
+to which she had been admitted.
+
+"Let us postpone it, Pasha dear," she whispered to him, with a thrilling
+sense of sacrificing her happiness to the cause.
+
+"Why?" he demanded in perplexity.
+
+They went into the adjoining room. "What is the trouble? What's the
+trouble?" he demanded, light-heartedly.
+
+"No trouble at all, dearest," she answered affectionately. "You are
+dearer than ever to me, but pray let us postpone it."
+
+"But there must be some reason for it," he said with irritation.
+
+"Don't be vexed, Pashenka. There is really no special reason. I simply
+don't feel like being married--yet. I want to give my life to the
+movement, Pasha. I am enjoying too much happiness as it is." She uttered
+it in grave, measured, matter-of-fact accents, but her hazel eyes
+reflected the uplifted state of her soul.
+
+"Oh!" he exclaimed with a mixed sense of relief and adoration. "If
+that's what you mean, all I can say is that I am not worthy of you,
+Clara; but of course, the question of giving our lives to the cause has
+nothing to do with the question of our belonging to each other. Or,
+rather, it's one and the same thing."
+
+She made no reply. The very discussion of the subject jarred on her.
+
+"You are in a peculiar mood now, and you are an angel, anyhow, but
+to-morrow you'll see the matter in a different light."
+
+"At any rate, let us postpone it, Pashenka." And she led the way back to
+the meeting room.
+
+Many of the company knew of the expected announcement, and when they
+heard that it was not to take place they felt sorely disappointed. When
+the business of the meeting had been disposed of, a Terrorist named
+Sablin waggishly drank the health of Mlle. Yavner and the social
+revolution, to the accompaniment of the rapturous band of the first
+floor, and then he began to improvise burlesque verses on her as a
+newcomer, with allusions to her power over Pavel. This revolutionist was
+one of the "twin poets" of the party, his muse, which had a weakness for
+satire, being the gayer of the two. The "grave bard," whose name was
+Morosoff, was in Switzerland now. The two were great chums. As always,
+Sablin was the great convivial spirit of the company. When he was not
+versifying, he was making jokes, telling anecdotes or trying to speak
+Little-Russian to Purring Cat, who, being from Little Russia, answered
+his questions with smiling passivity. Some of his rhymes related to
+Purring Cat's interminable side-whiskers, Zachar's habit of throwing out
+his chest as he walked, the reticence of the tall man with the Tartarian
+face, and, above all, the Janitor's explosions of wrath when one "was
+not continually leering around for spies."
+
+The Janitor cursed him good-humouredly, without stuttering, and resumed
+his discussion with a man who looked like the conventional image of
+Christ, and with Urie, the tall blond man with typical Great-Russian
+features who had introduced Pavel to the Nihilist world and whom he
+still called "Godfather." The gay poet then took to versifying on the
+"three blond beards" of this trio.
+
+Zachar made the most noise, dancing cossack hops till the floor shook
+under his feet, singing at the top of his lungs, filling the large room
+with deafening guffaws. Baska, the light complexioned "housewife" of the
+dynamite shop, who looked like a peasant woman, was the greatest giggler
+of all the women present. Grisha, her passport husband at that shop, and
+her real husband--a thin man with Teutonic features, known among the
+revolutionists as "the German"--were also there.
+
+Sophia, the daughter of the former governor of St. Petersburg, sat by
+Clara's side, smiling her hearty good wishes upon her. She looked like a
+happy little girl, Sophia, her prominent cheeks aglow, and her clear
+blue self-possessed eyes full of affection and sweet-spirited
+penetration. She was engaged to Zachar, and Pavel's courtship had
+enlisted her tender interest. There were several other women at the
+gathering, two or three of them decidedly good-looking.
+
+There was an unpublished poem, "Virgin Soil," by the "gay bard," which
+Clara had heard him recite and which portrayed, among other things, a
+Nihilist woman becoming a mother in her isolated cell. Her child is
+wrested from her arms to perish, and she goes insane. The episode, which
+is part of a bitter satire on a certain official, is based on fact. As
+Clara now thought of it and beheld the demented woman nursing a rag, a
+shudder passed through her frame.
+
+"Cheer up, Clara! Cheer up!" Zachar thundered. "We don't want any long
+faces to-night."
+
+Clara smiled, a sorry smile, and Zachar went on hopping and laughing.
+But when Sophia stroked her hand, smilingly, Clara buried her face in
+her bosom and gave way to a quick sob.
+
+"What does it mean?" Pavel asked.
+
+"Nothing," Clara answered, gleaming through her tears.
+
+There were four or five Jews in the assemblage, but Makar was not among
+them. His cherished dream had been realised at last. He was working in a
+secret printing office. Establishments of this sort were guarded with
+special solicitude, so in view of his absent-mindedness, Makar never
+left the place for fear of bringing back some spy. The other
+revolutionists who worked in the same printing shop and who were
+registered at the police station as residents of the house had each his
+or her day off. Makar alone was not registered. The porters of the house
+had never seen him, and the composing room was his prison.
+
+The only other Jewess in the room was a dark insignificant looking woman
+named Hessia Helfman. She was touchingly bashful, so that at one time
+Clara had offered to befriend her. She had soon discovered, however,
+that the dark little Jewess was in charge of a most important conspiracy
+station. On closer acquaintance Hessia had proved to be quite talkative
+and of an extremely affectionate nature. Clara's attachment to her had
+become greater still when she had learned that Purring Cat was her
+husband. The great thing was that he was a Gentile and a nobleman,
+although not a prince. Clara had told herself that the equality of Jew
+and Gentile and their intermarriage among socialists was a matter of
+course and that the circumstance attracted no special attention on her
+part, but she knew that it did.
+
+As she now looked at Hessia and her husband, she said to herself, with a
+great sense of relief: "She is as good as I, anyhow. If she could marry
+the man she loves I can."
+
+But her joy in this absolution from her self-imposed injunction soon
+faded away. To sacrifice her happiness seemed to her the highest
+happiness this evening. She would surpass Hessia. If there was a world
+in which platonic relations were called for theirs was that world. The
+image of a demented woman fondling a rag in her prison cell came back to
+her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+A SECOND COURTSHIP.
+
+
+The Czar was still in Livadia with his bride, abandoning himself to his
+second youth with a passion that was tinged with the pathos of imminent
+tragedy, when Count Loris-Melikoff telegraphed to him a plea for the
+lives of two revolutionists who had been sentenced to death, one of
+these being Alexandre, the man in whose lodgings the gendarmes had found
+a diagram of the Imperial dining hall. The distinguished Armenian was
+contemplating reforms which he expected to leave no room for terrorism,
+and it was for the sake of these measures as well as of the Emperor
+himself, that he was averse to having the bitterness of the
+revolutionists quickened by new executions. If they only let the Czar
+live until those projects had been carried out, he thought, their
+conspiracies would lose all reason of existence; at any rate, the
+surreptitious support which they received from men of high social
+position would be withdrawn.
+
+But his despatch was followed by one from the Czarowitz, who, echoing
+the views of the anti-Melikoff party at court, urged his father not to
+show signs of weakness, and the sentence was allowed to stand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At about nine o'clock in the morning of a cold autumn day, a fortnight
+after the meeting of the Executive Committee which Clara attended,
+Pavel stood on a chair nailing a clothes rack to the wall. The room was
+Clara's. It was on the fifth floor of a house near a corner, with
+windows commanding the two intersecting streets, where her window
+signals could be seen at a considerable distance. She rented it
+furnished, with samovar service, but the curtains and some bits of
+bric-a-brac had been bought by Pavel who took more interest in these
+things and was handier about the house than she. He himself lived in the
+house of a distant relative, an elderly widow, who took great pride in
+him and had no doubt that he led the life of the average young man of
+his class, that is to say, he spent his nights and his mamma's rubles on
+an endless crop of wild oats. To Clara's landlady he was known as a
+brother of hers. On the present occasion he had found his fiancee out,
+but a mark on the door had told him that she would soon be back.
+Presently she came in. She wore a tall fur cap and her cheeks gleamed,
+exhaling the freshness of girlish health and of the cold weather of the
+street, but she looked grave. Pavel threw away his hammer and pounced
+down upon her with open arms. She repulsed him gently.
+
+"Stop," she whispered, drearily, unbuttoning her cloak and drawing a
+newspaper from its inner pocket. "There is terrible news this morning."
+
+The execution of Alexandre and the other revolutionist had taken place
+the day before, and the newspapers were allowed to print a very brief
+account of it--how they bade each other good-bye on the scaffold and
+how, when Alexandre saw the death-shroud on his friend, his eyes filled
+with tears. The two condemned men had been great chums for several
+years, Alexandre having once wrested the other from a convoy. Now they
+died together.
+
+As Pavel read the account of the double execution, standing by the
+window, a flush of overpowering despair shot into his chest and diffused
+itself through his legs.
+
+"They have choked them after all," he gasped out.
+
+Clara, who sat at a table watching him, dropped her head on her folded
+arms, in a paroxysm of quick, bitter sobbing.
+
+The few details in the newspaper report gave vividness to the grewsome
+scene. The two executed men had been among Pavel's most intimate
+friends. The image of Alexandre, his arms pinioned, looking on with
+tears while a white shroud was being slipped over his fellow-prisoner,
+was tearing at his heart with cruel insistence.
+
+"Oh, it's terrible, Clarochka!" he moaned, dropping by her side,
+nestling to her, and bursting into tears in her bosom. Then, getting up,
+he took to walking back and forth, vehemently. "They have choked them,
+the blood-drinkers," he muttered. "They have done it after all." He fell
+silent, pacing the floor in despair, and then burst out once again:
+"They have choked them, the vampires."
+
+"But war is war," she said, for something to say to him, her own face
+distorted with her struggle against a flow of tears.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. All I do know is that they have been murdered, that
+they are no more." A minute or two later he turned upon her with a look
+full of ghastly malice. "War did you say? The government can't have
+enough of it, can it? Well, it shall have all the war it wants. The
+party has only shown it the blossoms; the berries are still to come."
+
+The world seemed to be divided into those who had known the two executed
+men personally and those who had not. For the moment there seemed to be
+little in common between him and Clara. She strained him to a seat by
+her side on the sofa again, clasping one of his hands in both of hers,
+and kissed him on the cheek, wetting his temple with her tears.
+
+"Do you know, dearest, I really had a lurking hope they would be
+spared," he said. "I was ashamed to say so, but I did. But no! they
+choked them. They choked them. Idiots that they are. They imagine they
+can hang every honest man in the country."
+
+"Loris-Melikoff is even worse than the Czar. His liberalism is nothing
+but hypocrisy. There can no longer be any question about it."
+
+"He is a rogue of the deepest dye. He is a bungling hypocrite, an
+abominable liar and a mangy coward, that's what he is. But to the devil
+with him! This is not the point. Oh, nothing is the point. Nothing
+except that they have been murdered."
+
+He went to see some of the revolutionists with whom he had shared the
+intimacy of the dead men.
+
+Left alone, Clara began to pace the floor slowly. Not having known
+either Alexandre or the man who had died with him, she was exempt from
+that acute agony of grief which was her lover's; but there was the image
+of two men in death-shrouds, a stirring image of martyrdom, before her
+vision. Pity, the hunger of revenge and a loftier feeling--the thirst of
+self-sacrifice to the cause of liberty--swelled her heart. Back and
+forth she walked, slowly, solemnly, her hands gently clasped behind her,
+her soul in a state of excitement that was coupled with a peculiar state
+of physical tranquillity, her mind apparently seeing things with a
+perspicacity the like of which it had never enjoyed before. Her future,
+her duties, her relation to the rest of the world, her whole life--all
+was wonderfully clear to her, and in spite of her anguish over the death
+of the two men she felt singularly happy. It seemed to be a matter of
+course that her party would now undertake some new plot, one exceeding
+in boldness and magnitude all its predecessors. Many lives would have to
+be staked. She would offer hers. Matrimony was out of the question at a
+time like this. She conjured that image of the insane woman clasping a
+rag to her bosom in support of her position. She longed to be near Pavel
+again. In her mind she embraced him tenderly, argued with him, opened
+her soul to him. It was all so clear. Her mind was so firmly made up.
+She fondly hoped she would make Pavel see it all in the same light.
+
+The explanation took place the next time he called on her, a few days
+later.
+
+"Oh, we shall all have to offer our lives," he replied. "But for God's
+sake love me, Clanya. It will drive me crazy if you don't."
+
+"But I do, I do. I love you with every fibre of my being, Pasha. What
+has put it in your head to doubt it?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. All I do know is that as long as my life is mine I
+cannot exist without you. I am frightfully lonely and that stands in the
+way of my work. Dash it, I feel just as I did last summer before I took
+courage to tell you that I was insanely in love with you."
+
+She drew him to her, with a smile at once of happiness and amusement.
+
+"Poor boy! It's enough to break one's heart. Poor little dear!" she
+joked affectionately.
+
+"I knew you would be making fun of me," he said, yearning upon her.
+"Love me, Clanya, do love me, with all your heart. I cannot live apart
+from you, I cannot, upon my word I cannot," he concluded piteously,
+like a child.
+
+"Do you imagine it's easy for me to be away from you?" she retorted
+earnestly. "I can't be a single hour without you without missing you,
+without feverishly waiting to see you again. As if you did not know it!
+But what can we do? Is this the only sacrifice we are ready to make?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A fortnight had passed. Unknown to her lover, Clara had spoken to the
+Janitor, intimating her readiness to offer her life, and asking for one
+of the most dangerous assignments the Governing Board could give her.
+She was waiting for an answer, when the startling news spread among the
+revolutionists that the Janitor was in the hands of the enemy and that
+the capture of that maniac of caution had been the result of a most
+insane piece of recklessness.
+
+His arrest was one of the heaviest losses the party had yet sustained.
+At the same time the government found a new source of uneasiness in it.
+A large quantity of dynamite and some other things confiscated at his
+lodgings pointed to a vigorous renewal of terroristic activity. Another
+plot on the life of the Emperor seemed to be hatching in the capital,
+yet all efforts of the police and the gendarmes in this connection were
+futile. Indeed, the circumstances of the Janitor's arrest only furnished
+new proof of the ineptitude and shiftlessness of those whose business it
+was to ferret out Nihilism.
+
+A few days before the Janitor was taken the police received word about
+two portraits which had been left for reproduction at a well-known
+photograph gallery and in which the photographer had recognised the two
+Nihilists who had recently been hanged. Instead of a detective being
+detailed, however, to lie in wait for the unknown man, the proprietor of
+the gallery was simply ordered to notify the police when he came for his
+pictures. The unknown man was the Janitor. When he called for the
+photographs, an awkward attempt was made to detain him which aroused his
+suspicion. He pleaded haste and made for the door. When a porter barred
+his way he scared him off by thrusting his hand into an empty
+pistol-pocket. A similar order for photographs of the two executed
+Terrorists had been given by him to another well-known photographer next
+door to the former place, and it was when he called there, a day or two
+after his narrow escape at the adjoining gallery, that he was seized by
+detectives.
+
+When his landlady heard that her "star" lodger, the punctilious
+government official and retired army officer, was neither an official
+nor a retired officer, but a leading Nihilist, she fainted. The
+gendarmes had been hunting for him since he broke away from his captors
+on his way to prison one evening more than two years before. They had
+heard that it was he who subsequently organised the railroad plot near
+Moscow; also that he had been connected with the assassination of the
+chief of gendarmes and with the shooting at the Czar in front of the
+Winter Palace. Yet he had freely moved about the streets of St.
+Petersburg these two years, the busiest agitator and conspirator in the
+city, until, in a moment of morbid foolhardiness, he practically
+surrendered himself to the police.
+
+When Clara heard of his arrest, she clapped her hands together, Yiddish
+fashion. "If the Janitor has been arrested as a result of carelessness,"
+she exclaimed, "then everyone of us ought to hold himself in readiness
+to be taken at any moment."
+
+She repeated the remark the next time she saw Pavel, adding:
+
+"The idea of being a married woman under such conditions!"
+
+"Oh, that's an _idee fixe_ of yours," he said, testily.
+
+She gave him a look and dropped her eyes, resentfully.
+
+The peace-offering came from him.
+
+"Whew, what a cloud!" he said, pointing at her glum face. "Won't there
+be a single rift in it? Not a wee bit of a one for a single ray to come
+through?"
+
+She smiled, heartily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+A HUNTED MONARCH.
+
+
+The ministers were reporting to the Czar who had recently returned from
+Livadia. They were admitted one at a time. As they sat chatting under
+breath in the blue waiting room, with the white reflection of the snow
+that was falling outside, upon their faces, these elderly men, whose
+names were associated in millions of minds with the notion of infinite
+dignity and power, looked like a group of anxious petitioners in the
+vestibule of some official.
+
+An exception was made for Count Loris-Melikoff, who was with the Czar
+during the audiences of all his colleagues. The Supreme Executive
+Commission over which he had presided had been abolished some four
+months before. Nominally he was now simply in charge of the Department
+of the Interior, but in reality he continued to play the part of
+premier, a position he partly owed to Princess Dolgoruki, the Czar's
+young wife, who set great store by his liberal policy. She was said to
+be a woman of a rather progressive turn of mind, but whether she was or
+not, her fate hung on the life of her imperial husband and every measure
+that was calculated to pacify the Nihilists found a ready advocate in
+her. Indeed, she and the Count were united by a community of personal
+interests; for he had as many enemies at court as she, and his position
+depended upon the life of Alexander II. as much as hers.
+
+The Czar was receiving the ministers in a chamber of moderate size,
+finished in sombre colours, with engaged columns of malachite,
+book-cases of ebony and silver, with carvings representing scenes from
+Russian history, and a large writing table to match. Statues of bronze
+and ivory stood between the book-cases and a striking life-size
+watercolour of Nicholas I. hung on the wall to the right of the Czar's
+chair. The falling snow outside was like a great impenetrable veil
+without beginning or end, descending from some unknown source and
+disappearing into some equally mysterious region. The room, whose high
+walls, dismally imposing, were supposed to hold the destinies of a
+hundred millions of human beings, was filled with lustreless wintry
+light. The Emperor, tall, erect, broad-shouldered, the image of easy
+dignity, but pale and with a touch of weariness in his large oval face,
+wore the undress uniform of a general of infantry. He was sixty-two and
+he was beginning to look it. He listened to the ministers with
+constrained attention. He showed exaggerated interest in the affairs of
+their respective departments, but they could see that his heart was not
+in their talk, and with unuttered maledictions for the upstart
+vice-Emperor, they made short work of their errands. They knew that the
+Interior Department was the only one that commanded the Czar's interest
+in those days.
+
+At last the Emperor and his chief adviser were left alone. Both were
+silent. Loris-Melikoff was as strikingly oriental of feature as
+Alexander II. was European. Notwithstanding his splendid military career
+and uniform he had the appearance of a sharp-witted scientist rather
+than of a warrior. His swarthy complexion, shrewd oriental eyes and
+huge energetic oriental nose, flanked by greyer and longer side-whiskers
+than the Czar's, made him look like a representative of some foreign
+power.
+
+There was pathos in both. Alexander II. had that passion for life which
+comes to an old man upon marrying a pretty young woman. Yet foreigners
+who saw him during this period said that he looked like a hunted man. As
+to Count Melikoff, his advance had been so rapid, he was surrounded by
+so many enemies at court, and the changes by which he was trying to save
+the Czar's life and his own power, were beset by so many obstacles, that
+he could not help feeling like the peasant of the story who was made
+king for one day.
+
+Naturally talkative and genially expansive, the Czar's manner toward
+people who were admitted to his intimacy was one of amiable informality.
+The chief pathos of his fate sprang from the discrepancy between the
+Czar and the man in him, between a vindictive ruthlessness born of a
+blind sense of his autocratic honour and an affectionate, emotional
+nature with less grit than pride. Had he been a common mortal he would
+have made far more friends than enemies.
+
+Count Loris-Melikoff had become accustomed to feel at home in his
+presence. At this minute, however, as the Czar was watching the snow
+flakes, with an air of idle curiosity, the Armenian had an overbearing
+sense of the distance between them. He knew that the Czar was anxious to
+talk about the revolutionists and that he hated to do so. His heart
+contracted with common human pity, yet in the silence that divided them
+it came over him that the man in front of him was the Czar, and a
+feeling of awe seized him like the one he used to experience at sight of
+the Emperor long before he was raised to his present position. This
+feeling passed, however, the moment the Czar began to speak.
+
+"Well?" he said, with sudden directness. "Anything new about that
+Michailoff fellow?" Alexandre Michailoff was the real name of the
+Janitor.
+
+"Nothing new so far, your Majesty," Loris-Melikoff answered
+obsequiously, yet with something like triumph, as if the powerlessness
+of the police were only too natural and substantiated his views on the
+general state of things. "He is one of their chief ringleaders."
+
+"And this has been known all along," the Emperor remarked with sad
+irony. "Such a thing would be inconceivable in any other capital in
+Europe."
+
+"Quite so. But I feel that in other countries, the capture of miscreants
+like ours would be due less to the efficiency of the police than to the
+cordial cooperation of the public. The trouble is that our police is
+thrown on its own resources, Sire. It is practically fighting those
+wretches single-handed."
+
+The Czar had a fit of coughing, the result of asthma. When it had
+subsided, he said with an air of suffering:
+
+"Well, that's your theory. But then their public is not ours. The
+average Russian is not wide-awake enough to cooperate with the
+authorities." He had in mind his own address at Moscow in which he had
+appealed to the community at large for this very assistance in ferreting
+out sedition. The Will of the People had come into existence since then.
+
+"Still, if our public were drawn into active cooperation with the
+Government, if it became habituated to a sense of the monarch's
+confidence in itself, it seems reasonable to suppose that the indolence
+of the community would then disappear. No people is capable of greater
+loyalty to the throne than your Majesty's. All that is needed is to
+lend to this devotion tangibility. This and this alone would enable your
+Majesty to cure the evil. What the body politic needs is judicious
+internal treatment. Surgical operations have proven futile. These are my
+sincerest convictions, your Majesty."
+
+"I know they are," the Czar answered musingly.
+
+"And the great point is, that with the intelligent classes actively
+interested in the preservation of law and order, criminal societies of
+any sort would find themselves without any ground to stand upon."
+
+The Czar had another cough, and then he said, flushing:
+
+"There is a simpler way to leave them without ground to stand upon,
+surgical operations or no surgical operations. Call it what you will.
+There is no sense in pampering them, Melikoff. Why, in western Europe
+they execute common murderers. As to a gang of assassins like that,
+death would be regarded a mild punishment." He lighted a cigarette, but
+forthwith extinguished it and went on with emphasis: "We handle them
+with kid gloves, Melikoff. That's why they take chances."
+
+He spoke with subdued anger, citing the republican uprising led by
+aristocratic army officers in 1825, which his father (the man whose
+portrait was on the right wall) quelled by means of field guns.
+Loris-Melikoff demurred to the comparison, tactfully hinting that there
+would be no betrayal of weakness in inviting the public to participate
+in the extermination of crime by showing it signs of increased imperial
+confidence, and the Czar softened again. He felt that the Armenian knew
+how to save him and he willingly submitted to his and Princess
+Dolgoruki's influence. But Fate was bent on tragedy.
+
+Alexander II. lacked anything but courage. Still, this continuous
+living under fire had gradually unnerved him. The soldier on the
+battlefield finds moral support in the presence of thousands of
+comrades, all facing the same fate as he; whereas he was like a lone man
+on top of a dynamite pile. And if his perils were shared by those about
+him, this only added the agonising consciousness that his person carried
+the shadow of destruction with it, endangering the life of every living
+being that came near him. He knew, for example, that when he was at the
+theatre candles were kept ready, in case the lights were blown out by an
+explosion; that many people stayed away from the playhouse on such
+occasions for fear of being destroyed along with their sovereign. His
+pride would not let him feel low-spirited. He very often forced himself
+to disdain caution, to act with reckless courage. Nevertheless he had a
+dreary, jaded look. The notion that he, the most powerful of men, the
+image of grandeur and human omnipotence, should tremble at every sound,
+wounded his common human pride acutely. The consequence was that this
+mightiest monarch in the world, the gigantic man of sixty-two, every bit
+of him an Emperor, was at heart a terror-stricken infant mutely
+imploring for help. He continued to appear in the streets of the
+capital, accompanied by his usual escort and to return the salutes of
+passers-by with his usual air of majestic ease. Now and then he went to
+the theatre, and occasionally even beyond the scenes for a flirtation
+with the actresses. But the public knew that besides his large uniformed
+escort, his carriage was watched by hordes of detectives in citizen's
+clothes, and that every inch of the ground which he was to traverse was
+all but turned inside out for possible signs of danger. And those who
+were admitted to his presence knew that underneath his grand,
+free-and-easy bearing was a sick heart and a crushed spirit. That the
+enemy was an unknown quantity was one of the sources of his growing
+disquiet. The organised movement might be very large and it might be
+ridiculously small, but with a latent half-Nihilist in the heart of
+every subject. He was beginning to realise at last that he knew his
+people scarcely better than he did the French or the English. He was
+anxious to make peace with that invisible enemy of his, provided it did
+not look as if he did.
+
+He was willing to be deceived, and Loris-Melikoff was about to help him
+deceive himself. But destiny was against them both. He was an honest
+man, Loris-Melikoff, serious-minded, public-spirited, one of the few
+able statesmen Russia ever had; but his path was strewn with thorns.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+THE MYSTERY OF A SHOP.
+
+
+A tall man with a reddish beard called at one of the police stations of
+the capital about a cheese store which he was going to open on Little
+Garden Street. He gave his name as Koboseff. When he had gone the
+Captain of the station said to one of his roundsmen:
+
+"That fellow doesn't talk like a tradesman. I asked him a few questions,
+and his answers were rather too polished for a cheese dealer." And
+taking up his pen, he added, with a preoccupied air, "Keep an eye on
+him, will you?"
+
+Little Garden Street was part of a route which the Emperor often took on
+his way to or from his niece's residence, the Michail Palace, and
+received the special attention of the police.
+
+The roundsman spoke to the agent of the house where Koboseff had rented
+a basement for his projected shop and dwelling room; whereupon the agent
+recalled that cheesemonger's handwriting had struck him as being too
+good for a man of his class. Inquiry at the town at which Koboseff's
+passport was dated brought the information that a document corresponding
+in every detail to the one in question had actually been issued by the
+local authorities. Koboseff was thus no invented name, and as the
+description in the passport agreed with the appearance of the man who
+had rented the basement, the St. Petersburg police saw no ground for
+further suspicion.
+
+The cheese shop was opened in the early part of January, Koboseff having
+moved in with a fair-complexioned woman whom he introduced as his wife.
+Some three or four weeks later the head porter of the house notified the
+police that Koboseff had boasted of the flourishing state of his
+business, whereas in reality his shop attracted but very scant custom.
+At the same time it was pointed out that there was a well-established
+and prosperous cheese store close by, that the basement occupied by the
+Koboseffs was scarcely the place one would naturally select for the
+purpose, and that the rent was strikingly too high for the amount of
+business Koboseff could expect to do there. To cap the climax, there was
+some lively gossip among the neighbours about Mme. Koboseff, who had
+been seen smoking cigarettes--a habit quite unusual for a woman of the
+lower classes--and who often stayed out all night.
+
+"Koboseff" was Uric Bogdanovich, Pavel's "Godfather," and "Mme.
+Koboseff" was Baska, formerly "housewife" of the dynamite shop and a
+year previous to that in charge of a house in the south near which
+Zachar and others attempted to blow up an imperial train.
+
+The cheese shop was often visited by Zachar, Purring Cat, the reticent
+stalwart man with the Tartarian features, Pavel and other
+revolutionists. The police kept close watch on the place, but, according
+to all reports, no suspicious persons were ever seen to enter it. Upon
+the whole the Koboseffs seemed to be real tradesmen, and as the
+information concerning their passport was satisfactory, they were not
+disturbed. A slim little man named Kurilloff who had played the part of
+errand boy at the cheese shop had been arrested, but his detention had
+nothing to do with the Koboseffs, and the police of Little Garden
+Street had no idea of the arrest, while the officers who had made it
+were unaware of the prisoner's connection with a suspicious shop.
+
+"If I were you I'd make missus behave," the head porter of the house
+once said to Koboseff, speaking of his "wife."
+
+"Right you are," the cheesemonger replied. "Only my old woman is a tough
+customer to handle, you know. I do tell her she had better mind the
+house and ought to be ashamed of herself to smoke cigarettes, but she
+doesn't care a rap, not she."
+
+"I would teach her if she was _my_ wife."
+
+The cheesemonger made a gesture of despair, and the porter said to
+himself that there was nothing suspicious about him; that he was simply
+a fellow without backbone and a fool, qualities which seemed to account
+for Koboseff's incompetence as a business man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, Clanya," Pavel said to Mlle. Yavner, lazily addressing her in the
+diminutive of his own coining. "I am afraid I shall have to exile you
+for some time."
+
+"Exile me?" she asked absently without lifting her eyes from a heap of
+type she was sorting and putting up in packages. She sat across the
+table from the sofa upon which he was cuddling himself drowsily as a cat
+does before a fireside.
+
+"Yes, that's what I'll have to do--pack you off, put you in a box, nail
+you up tight, stick a label on it and ship you somewhere. 'To places not
+so very distant,'" he added, mocking the official phrase used in
+transporting people to eastern Siberia.
+
+She raised her eyes from her work, her fingers stiff and black with lead
+dust. "What are you driving at, Pasha? Anything up? Or is it merely one
+of those jokes under which one must write in big letters: 'This is a
+joke?'"
+
+"Is _that_ a joke?" he asked, and burst into laughter.
+
+She resumed her work. The type she was sorting was intended for a
+revolutionary printing office, having been sent to St. Petersburg by
+Masha Safonoff, who had bought it of the foreman of the government's
+printing office in Miroslav.
+
+"Oh, to all the diabolical devils with that type of yours, Clanya. Can't
+you sit down by a fellow's side for a minute or two?"
+
+She got up, washed her hands and complied with his wish. As she played
+with his hand she noticed the trace of blisters on his palm. Her face
+darkened; but she asked no questions. After a little she demanded: "What
+did you mean by 'exiling' me?"
+
+"Oh dash it all, Clanya. It's something serious. I'll tell it to you
+some other time. I'm too lazy to be serious." He would have preferred to
+be sprawling like this with her hands in his; luxuriating in the gleam
+of her intelligent blue eyes and in the feminine atmosphere of her
+person; but his excuse that it was "too serious" only sharpened her
+determination to know what it was without delay.
+
+"What is it, Pasha?"
+
+"There you are," he said peevishly. "One can't have a minute's rest from
+business, not a minute's rest."
+
+"Why did you hasten to speak of 'exiling' me, then?" she retorted
+tartly. "Why didn't you keep it to yourself until you were again in a
+mood for 'business'?"
+
+He had not kept it to himself simply because it was not easy for him to
+keep anything from her. He was more apt to fly into a temper with her
+than she with him, but in their mutual relations she was the stronger
+vessel of the two and, in an imperceptible, unformulated way, he was
+considerably under her thumb. When he heard or saw something new,
+received some new impression, his first impulse was to share it with
+her. If an opinion was formed in his mind he wondered, sometimes
+timidly, whether she would concur with it. Timidly, because in many
+instances, when he came bubbling over with enthusiasm over some scheme
+of his own, she had cruelly dampened his fervour by merely extricating
+the vital point of his argument from a surrounding tangle of roseate
+phraseology. His great intellectual feast was to be in her room,
+discussing theories, books, people with her. These discussions, which
+sometimes lasted for hours, often called forth a snappish, bitter tone
+on both sides, but they were at once an expression and a fostering
+agency of that spiritual unity which was one of the chief sources of
+their happiness in one another.
+
+"Well, there is very little to tell about," he said at last. "Something
+is under way, and it has been decided to notify all illegals not in it
+to vacate St. Petersburg until it's all over."
+
+The lines of her fresh-tinted face hardened into an expression of
+extreme gravity and her fingers grew limp in his grasp. She withdrew
+them.
+
+"Look at her!" he squeaked in a burst of merriment.
+
+"There is nothing to look at. I am not going." She dropped her glance.
+She divined that his blisters had something to do with the digging of a
+mine in which he took part.
+
+"Is it all settled?"
+
+"Oh, Pasha! Your jesting is so out of place," she returned sullenly. "I
+am not going."
+
+"But the air is getting hot in St. Petersburg. Whew! The police are
+suspicious, of course; they won't leave a stone unturned."
+
+He took hold of her tender girlish hand, but she withdrew it again, with
+a gesture of impatience.
+
+"There will be something to do for you too later on," he comforted her,
+guiltily. "It's going to be a big thing, the biggest of all. You'll come
+back in a month or so."
+
+She made no answer.
+
+The two intersecting streets outside reeked and creaked and glittered
+with the crispness of a typical St. Petersburg frost. It was about ten
+in the morning, in the early part of January. The little parlour was
+delightfully warm, with a dim consciousness of sleigh-furs, hack drivers
+in absurd winter caps, pedestrians huddling themselves and wriggling and
+grunting for an effeminating background to one's sense of shelter. The
+even heat of the white glazed oven seemed to be gleaming and stirring
+over the surface of the tiles like something animate, giving them an
+effect of creamy mellowness that went to one's heart together with the
+delicious warmth they radiated. Ever and anon a sleigh bell would tinkle
+past and sink into Pavel's mood. There was a rhythm to the warm
+stillness of the room. But Clara's silence tormented him.
+
+"We'll discuss it later on, Clanya. I'm too tired now. My brain won't
+work. Let us play school," he pleaded fawningly, in burlesque Russian,
+mimicking the accent of the Czech who taught Latin at the Miroslav
+gymnasium.
+
+"Stop that, pray."
+
+He made a sorry effort to obey her, and finally she yielded, with a
+smile and a Jewish shrug. He played a gymnasium teacher and she a pupil.
+He made her conjugate his name as she would a verb; made puns on
+Clanya, which is an unfinished Russian word meaning to bow, to greet, to
+convey one's regards; mocked and laughed at her enunciation till his
+eyes watered. Gradually he drifted into an impersonation of old Pievakin
+and flew into a passion because her hearty laughter marred the illusion
+of the performance.
+
+"You do need rest, poor thing," she said, looking at his haggard, worn
+face.
+
+"Well, another few weeks and we shall be able to get all the rest we
+want, if not in a cell, or in a quieter place still, in some foreign
+resort, perhaps. I really feel confident we are going to win this time."
+
+"It's about time the party did."
+
+"It will this time, you may be sure of it. And then--by George, the very
+sky will feel hot. Everything seems ready for a general uprising. All
+that is needed is the signal. I can see the barricades going up in the
+streets." He gnashed his teeth and shook her by the shoulders
+exultantly. "Yes, ma'am. And then, Clanya, why, then we won't have to go
+abroad for our vacation. One will be able to breathe in Russia then.
+Won't we give ourselves a spree, eh? But whether here or abroad, I must
+take you for a rest somewhere. Will you marry your love-lorn Pashka
+then? I dare you to say no."
+
+"But I don't want to say no," she answered radiantly.
+
+They went to dinner together and then they parted. As they shook hands
+he peered into her face with a rush of tenderness, as though trying to
+inhale as deep an impression of her as possible in case either of them
+was arrested before they met again. And, indeed, there was quite an
+eventful day in store for her.
+
+One of the persons she was to see later in the afternoon was a man with
+a Greek name. As she approached the house in which he had his lodgings,
+she recognised in the gas-lit distance the high forehead and the boyish
+face of Sophia, the ex-Governor's daughter. Sophia, or Sonia, as she was
+fondly called, was bearing down upon her at a brisk, preoccupied walk.
+As she swept past Clara, without greeting her, she whispered:
+
+"A trap."
+
+The lodging of the man with the queer name had been raided, then, and
+was now held by officers in the hope of ensnaring some of his friends.
+Clara had been at the place several times and she was afraid that the
+porter of the house, in case he stood at his post in the gateway at this
+minute, might recognise her.
+
+The dim opening of the gate loomed as a sickly quadrangular hole
+exhaling nightmare and ruin. Turning sharply back, however, might have
+attracted notice; so Clara entered the first gate on her way, four or
+five houses this side of her destination, and when she reappeared a
+minute or two later, she took the opposite direction. As she turned the
+next corner she found herself abreast of a man she had noticed in the
+streets before. He was fixed in her mind by his height and carriage.
+Extremely tall and narrow-shouldered, he walked like a man with a sore
+neck, swinging one of his long arms to and fro as he moved stiffly
+along. The look he gave her made a very unpleasant impression on her. He
+let her gain on him a little and then she heard his soft rubber-shod
+footsteps behind her.
+
+It is a terrible experience, this sense of being dogged as you walk
+along. It is tantalising enough when your desire to take a look at the
+man at your heels is only a matter of curiosity which for some reason or
+other you cannot gratify. Imagine, then, the mental condition of an
+"illegal" shadowed by a spy or by a man he suspects of being one. He
+tingles with a desire to quicken pace, yet he must walk on with the same
+even, calm step; every minute or two he is seized with an impulse to
+turn on the fellow behind him, yet he must not show the least sign of
+consciousness as to his existence. It is the highest form of torture,
+yet it was the daily experience of every active man or woman of the
+secret organisation; for if the political detectives were spying upon
+pedestrians right and left, the revolutionists, on their part, were apt
+to be suspicious with equal promiscuity. Small wonder that some of them,
+upon being arrested, hailed their prison cell as a welcome place of
+rest, as a relief from the enervating strain of liberty under the
+harrowing conditions of underground life. As a matter of fact this
+wholesale shadowing seldom results in the arrest of a revolutionist.
+Thousands of innocent people were snuffed to one Nihilist, and the
+Nihilists profited by the triviality of suspicion. Most arrests were the
+result of accident.
+
+At the corner of the next large thoroughfare she paused and looked up
+the street for a tram-car. While doing so Clara glanced around her. The
+tall man had disappeared. A tram-car came along shortly and she was
+about to board it when she heard Sonia's voice once more.
+
+"You're being shadowed. Follow me."
+
+Sonia entered a crowded sausage shop, and led the way to the far end of
+it in the rear of an impatient throng. Pending her turn to be waited on,
+she took off her broad-brimmed hat, asking Clara to hold it for her,
+while she adjusted her hair.
+
+"Put it on, and let me have your fur cap," she gestured.
+
+The homely broad-brimmed hat transformed Clara's appearance
+considerably. It made her look shorter and her face seemed larger and
+older.
+
+"I saw a tall fellow turn you over to one with a ruddy mug. The red man
+is waiting for you outside now, but I don't think he had a good look at
+your face. There is a back door over there."
+
+Clara regained the street through the yard, and sure enough, a man with
+a florid face was leisurely smoking a cigarette at the gate post. He
+only gave her a superficial glance and went on watching the street door
+of the shop. She took a public sleigh, ordered the driver to take her to
+the Liteyny Bridge, changed her destination in the middle of the
+journey, and soon after she got off she took another sleigh for quite
+another section of the city. In short, she was "circling," and when she
+thought her trail completely "swept away," she went home on foot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+A REASSURING SEARCH.
+
+
+The capture of the man with the Greek name proved disastrous to the
+Executive Committee. It was the first link in a chain of most important
+arrests. The trap set at his house caught the very tall man with the
+Tartarian features; this led to the arrest of Purring Cat, and the
+residence of Purring Cat, in its turn, ensnared a pretentiously dressed
+man, in whom the superior gendarme officers were amazed to find their
+own trusted secretary, the man whom Makar knew as "the Dandy." Makar's
+arrest at Miroslav had tended to strengthen the Dandy's position
+somewhat, but now that he was in the hands of the enemy himself,
+it seemed as if the medical student's sweeping system of
+"counter-espionage" had burst like a bubble. Makar was in despair. He
+spoke of new plans, of new sacrifices, until Zachar silenced him.
+
+"All in due time, my dear romanticist," he said to him. "A month or two
+later I shall be delighted to be entertained with the fruit of your rich
+fancy; not now, my boy."
+
+The four arrests were a severe blow to the undertaking of which Zachar
+had been placed in charge. He was overworked, dejected, yet thrilling
+with nervous activity. But his own days were numbered. An air of
+impending doom hung over the Czar and his "internal enemies" alike.
+
+Good fortune seemed to attend the state police. While the gendarmes of
+the capital were celebrating their unexpected haul an intellectual
+looking man was locked up in a frontier town as a "vagrant," that is, as
+a man without a passport, who subsequently proved to be one of the
+active Terrorists the detectives had long been looking for. He was the
+"grave bard," one of the twin poets of the party. Shortly after his
+arrest the Russian government received word from the police of the
+German capital that a prominent Russian Nihilist known among his friends
+as "My Lord," a sobriquet due to his elegance of personal appearance and
+address, had spent some time in Berlin and was now on his way to St.
+Petersburg. A German detective followed the man to the frontier and
+then, shadowed by Russian spies, he was tracked to a house on the Neva
+Prospect, the leading street of St. Petersburg. There it was decided to
+arrest him Friday, March 23.
+
+A little after 4 o'clock of that day Zachar and the ex-Governor's
+daughter left their home, where they were registered as brother and
+sister, and took a sleigh, alighting in front of the Public Library, in
+the very heart of the city. Instead of entering the library, however,
+which the sleigh-driver thought to be their destination, they parted,
+continuing their several journeys on foot.
+
+It was an extremely cold afternoon. The beards of pedestrians and
+sleigh-drivers and the manes of horses were glued with frost; their
+breath came in short painful puffs. It was getting dark. The sky was a
+spotless, almost a warm blue. To look at it you would have wondered
+where this sharp, all-benumbing cold came from. There was an air of
+insincerity about the crimson clearness of the afternoon light.
+
+Zachar wore a tall cap of Persian lamb, flattened at the top, and a
+tight-fitting fur coat. He walked briskly, his chest thrown out, his
+full pointed beard hoary with frost, his cheeks red with the biting
+cold.
+
+Presently he found himself shadowed by a man in civilian clothes whom he
+knew to be a gendarme in disguise. It was evident, however, that the spy
+was following him merely as a suspicious person without having any idea
+what sort of man his quarry was, and Zachar, with whom a hunt of this
+kind was a daily occurrence, had no difficulty in "thrashing his trail."
+He was bound for the cheese shop on Little Garden Street. This was
+within a short walk from the Public Library, yet on this occasion it
+took him an hour's "circling" to reach the place.
+
+About ten minutes after Zachar entered the cheesemonger's basement, the
+head porter of the house met two police officers round the corner. One
+of them was the captain of the precinct and the other, one of his
+roundsmen. The Czar was expected to pass through this street in two
+days, so one could not be too watchful over a suspicious place like
+this.
+
+"There is somebody down there now," the head porter said to the captain,
+with servile eagerness. "A big fellow with a long pointed beard. I have
+seen him go down several times before. He looks like a business man, but
+before he started to go down he stopped to look round."
+
+This stopping to look round was, according to a printed police circular,
+one of the symptoms of Nihilism, so the roundsman was ordered to watch
+until the suspicious man should re-emerge from the cheese shop.
+
+When the captain had gone the roundsman brushed out his icicled
+moustache with his finger nails, and said with an air of authority:
+
+"Well, you take your post at the gate and I'll just go and change my
+uniform for citizen's clothes in case it's necessary to see where that
+fellow is going. Keep a sharp lookout on that cursed basement until I
+get back, will you?"
+
+When he returned, in citizen's clothes, he found that the suspicious man
+had left the store and that the head porter had set out after him,
+leaving his assistant in his place.
+
+"There is another man down there now," the assistant porter whispered.
+Presently the new visitor came out of the basement. As he mounted the
+few steps and then crossed over, through the snow, to a sleigh standing
+near by, he kept mopping his face with a handkerchief, thus preventing
+the two spies from getting a look at his features. Seeing that he
+boarded a hackney-sleigh, the roundsman did the same, ordering the
+driver to follow along as closely as possible, but at this he lost time
+in persuading the hackman that he was a policeman in disguise. The two
+sleighs were flying through the snow as fast as their horses could run.
+The policeman was far in the rear. For some ten minutes his eyes were
+riveted to the suspicious man. Presently, however, the vehicle he was
+shadowing turned a corner, and by the time he reached that point it was
+gone. All sorts of sleighs, their bells jingling, were gliding along in
+every direction, but the one he wanted was not among them.
+
+The head porter, who had started after the first man, in the absence of
+the roundsman, had met with a similar defeat. After awhile the hackman
+who had driven the second suspicious man returned to his stand. In
+answer to inquiry he told how his fare had twice changed his
+destination, finally alighted on a street corner, and turned into a
+narrow alley.
+
+Meanwhile Zachar had called on My Lord. It was about seven o'clock. The
+two revolutionists sat chatting in a cheerful gas-lit room, when the
+host was called out into the corridor. As he was long in coming back,
+Zachar went to the door, prepared for the worst. He found the corridor
+full of gendarmes and police. It was evident that they had fought shy of
+raiding My Lord's apartments for fear of violence, and had been
+patiently waiting until his visitor should come out of his own accord.
+Several of the gendarmes made a dash at Zachar, seizing him by both
+arms. One of these was the spy from whom he had "circled" away near the
+Public Library, soon after he had taken leave from the ex-Governor's
+daughter three hours ago. Zachar's presence here was a surprise to this
+gendarme, but the full importance of the man was still unknown to him.
+The officer in command, however, knew who his prisoner was.
+
+"What is your name?" he addressed himself to Zachar, with the exaltation
+of a man come upon a precious find. He knew but too well how anxious the
+government was to capture him, but he had come here to arrest My Lord
+without the remotest idea of finding this revolutionary giant in the
+place.
+
+"Krasnoff," Zachar answered with dignity, in his deep-chested voice.
+
+"I beg your pardon," the officer returned, with a twinkle in his eye. "I
+once had the pleasure of arresting you. Your name is Andrey Ivanovitch
+Jeliaboff."
+
+"Oh, in that case I am pleased to meet you," the prisoner said with
+playful chivalry.
+
+Jeliaboff's arrest made a joyous stir not only in the gendarmerie, but
+also at court. Apart from the attempt to blow up an imperial train in
+the south, in which he had played the leading part, he had been
+described to the authorities as the most gifted and effective agitator
+in the movement.
+
+The police at Little Garden Street were unaware of all this, but the
+conduct of the two men who had visited the cheese shop that afternoon
+seemed decidedly suspicious and lent a glare of colour to the
+irrelevancies that seemed to enfold the place.
+
+The next morning Pavel called on the Koboseffs. As he entered the cheese
+store he saw that the adjoining room was crowded with police officers.
+In his first shock he was only conscious of the gleam of uniforms, of
+Urie's and somebody else's voice and of his own sick despair. But the
+sick feeling ebbed away, leaving him in a state of desperate, pugnacious
+tranquillity, his mind on the revolver in his pocket.
+
+"Hello there!" he shouted, with the self-satisfied disrespect of a man
+of the better classes addressing one of the lower, and at this he
+surveyed the store with an air of contempt, as much as to say: "What a
+den I did strike!"
+
+"Wife," he heard Urie's voice, "there is a gentleman in the shop."
+
+Baska, who had been calmly emptying a barrel of cheese into some boxes,
+wiped her hands upon her apron and stepped behind the counter.
+
+"Is your Holland cheese any good?" Pavel asked, sniffing. "Are you sure
+you can give me a pound of decent stuff?"
+
+She waited on him, simply, and after some more sniffing, at the wrapping
+paper as well as the cheese, he let her make up the package. As he
+walked toward the door his heart stood still for an instant.
+
+He was allowed to go. Whether he was followed by spies he did not know.
+At all events, when he approached his "legal" residence at the house of
+his high-born relative, after an hour's "circling," he felt perfectly
+free from shadowing. He was greatly perplexed to think of the way Urie
+and Baska had been allowed to continue in their role of a cheesemonger
+couple; but, at all events, even if the true character of their shop had
+not yet been discovered by the police officers he had seen there, it
+seemed to be a matter of minutes when it would be.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the morning of that day, a few hours before Pavel called on the
+Koboseffs, the police captain of the Little Garden Street precinct had
+asked the prefect of St. Petersburg to have the cheese shop examined
+under the guise of a sanitary inspection. He was still uninformed of the
+arrest of the big fellow with the pointed beard, much less of the fact
+that he had proved to be one of the chieftains of the revolutionary
+organisation, but the story of the two suspicious-looking visitors at
+the cheese shop and their "circling" had made him uneasy. The Czar was
+expected to pass through Little Garden Street on Sunday, which was the
+next day, and one could not ascertain the real character of the
+Koboseffs and their business too soon. Nevertheless the prefect was slow
+to appreciate the situation. Indeed, it is quite characteristic of the
+despotic chaos of a regime like Russia's that on the one hand people are
+thrown into jail to perish there on the merest whim of some gendarme,
+and, on the other, action is often prevented by an excess of red tape
+and indolence in cases where there is ground for the gravest suspicion.
+While hundreds of schoolboys and schoolgirls were wasting away in damp,
+solitary cells because they had been suspected of reading some
+revolutionary leaflet, the occupants of this basement, in whose case
+suspicion was associated with the idea of a plot on the life of the
+Czar, had not even been subjected to the summary search and questioning
+to which every resident in Russia is ever liable.
+
+Finally, after considerable pleading on the part of the police captain,
+General Mrovinsky, a civil engineer of the Health Department, an elderly
+man with a kindly, genial face, was assigned to make the feigned
+inspection.
+
+"Your Excellency will please see if they are not digging a mine there,"
+the police captain said to him, respectfully. "The Emperor often passes
+that shop when he goes to the Riding Schools or to the Michail Palace,
+and that cheese dealer and his wife are quite a suspicious-looking
+couple. His Majesty is expected to pass the place to-morrow."
+
+The general entered the cheese shop accompanied by the police captain,
+the captain's lieutenant and the head porter of the house. Koboseff came
+out of the inner rooms to meet them. He turned pale, but this seemed
+natural.
+
+"His Excellency represents the Health Department," said the captain.
+"There is dampness in the next house, and His Excellency wishes to see
+if your place is all right."
+
+"I am sorry to trouble you," said General Mrovinsky, kindly. "But
+dampness is a bad thing to have in one's house, you know."
+
+"There is none here that I know of, sir," Koboseff replied
+deferentially, "but, of course, a fellow must not be too sure, sir."
+
+Baska stood in a corner of the shop, bending over a barrel. While the
+officers talked to Urie she threw a glance at the visitors over her
+shoulder and resumed her work.
+
+The uniformed civil engineer made a close examination of the walls. The
+one facing the street was covered with planking, and Koboseff explained
+that he had had it done as a safeguard against dampness, but that there
+was none.
+
+"But then cheese crumbs are apt to get into the cracks," urged General
+Mrovinsky, taking hold of one of the shelves along that wall. "They
+would decay there, don't you know, and that would be almost as bad as
+dampness, wouldn't it?" He then inspected the two living rooms. In the
+second of these he found a pile of hay.
+
+"It's from our cheese barrels," Koboseff explained; and pointing at
+another pile he added: "And that's coke, sir."
+
+General Mrovinsky picked up a coal, examined it, threw it back and wiped
+his fingers with some of the hay.
+
+"Everything is all right," he said to the police officers, with a look
+of intelligence. He led the way back to the store and then back again to
+the middle room. Here he took a firm hold of the planking that lined the
+wall under the street window. He tried to wrench it off, but it would
+not yield, and he let it go.
+
+"Everything is all right," he said to the captain, seating himself on a
+sofa. A trunk and some pieces of furniture were moved from their places
+and then put back. The general knew a merchant by the name of Koboseff,
+so he asked the cheese dealer if he was a relative of his. Urie said no,
+and after some conversation about the cheese business in general the
+officials went away.
+
+"There is no mine in that place. You can make yourself perfectly easy
+about it," Mrovinsky said to the captain, as they made their way to the
+adjoining basement.
+
+It was while they were conversing leisurely, the old general seated on
+the lounge, that Pavel came in. He was watched narrowly, but he played
+his part well, and as the engineer had already intimated to the police
+officers that there was nothing suspicious about the premises he was not
+even shadowed.
+
+Thus reassured, the police of the locality set to work preparing Little
+Garden Street for the Czar's drive to the Riding School. This included
+an investigation as to the character of the occupants of all the other
+shops and residences facing the street, as well as getting the pavement
+in good repair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+THE RED TERROR.
+
+
+Meanwhile a reform measure which subsequently became known as "the
+constitution of Loris-Melikoff" had been framed and submitted to the
+Czar by the Minister of the Interior. The project called for the
+convocation of a semi-representative assembly to be clothed with
+consultative powers. It was framed in guarded language, great pains
+having been taken to keep out anything like an allusion to parliamentary
+government.
+
+"But it looks like the States-General," the Czar said to Loris-Melikoff.
+The resemblance which the measure bore to the opening chapter in the
+history of the French revolution, where representatives of the three
+estates are convened in consultative parliament, made a disagreeable
+impression on him. Still, the project was ingeniously worded as a
+measure tending to "enhance the confidence of the monarch in his loyal
+subjects"; so, upon a closer reading, the Czar warmed to it, and
+returned the draft to Loris-Melikoff with his hearty approval. This took
+place at 12 o'clock on Sunday, March 13, 1881, one day after the search
+at the cheese store. It was decided to have the document read before the
+cabinet on Wednesday, after which it was to be published over the
+imperial signature in the _Official Messenger_.
+
+The Czar was dressed in the uniform of the Sappers of the Guards, whose
+review he was about to attend at the Michail Riding Schools.
+
+"I pray your Majesty to forego the trip," Loris-Melikoff said,
+solicitously.
+
+The Czar smiled. Princess Dolgoruki had made a similar request, and by
+accentuating his danger they both only succeeded in challenging his
+courage. He felt as if in the light of their appeal staying at home
+would mean hiding. Instead of pleading with him for caution
+Loris-Melikoff should have made an effort to secure a suspension of
+hostilities in the enemy's camp. Had the revolutionists been aware of
+what was coming a truce on their part would have been assured. And then,
+little as the project to be divulged resembled a constitution in the
+western sense of the word, it was yet the first approach to
+representative legislation in the history of modern Russia. The
+Nihilists were pledged to abandon their Terror the moment free speech
+had been granted, and although no reference to questions of this
+character was made in the "constitution," certain liberties in that
+direction might have followed as a matter of course, as an offspring of
+the new spirit which the measure was expected to inaugurate. A
+distinguished revolutionary writer has pointed out how easy it would
+have been for Loris-Melikoff to bring his expectations to the knowledge
+of the Executive Committee of the Nihilists by setting a rumour on foot
+among the professional and intellectual classes, many of whose
+representatives, as the Vice-Emperor knew but too well, were in touch
+with the central organization of the Will of the People. Perhaps this
+method of communicating with the revolutionists had not occurred to
+Loris-Melikoff; perhaps the iron-clad secrecy that enclosed his project
+was a necessary protection against the enemies of reform at court.
+However it may have been, neither the revolutionists nor their liberal
+allies had any inkling as to the document about to be published in the
+_Official Messenger_. Instead, they saw the police and the gendarmerie
+continuing their riot of administrative violence; instead, they heard of
+an order by virtue of which a number of revolutionists who had served
+their term within prison walls at Kara, Siberia, and been admitted to
+partial freedom in the penal colony outside, had suddenly been put in
+irons and thrown back into their cells; whereupon some of them had
+committed suicide rather than return to the tortures of their former
+life. All of which had added gall to the bitterness of the
+revolutionists at large and whetted their distrust of the "crafty
+Armenian," as they called Loris-Melikoff.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Czar's favourite coachman, a stalwart, handsome fellow, with a thick
+blond beard and clear blue eyes, sat on the box of the closed imperial
+carriage, waiting in the vast courtyard of the Winter Palace. An escort
+of six lusty Cossacks, two gendarme officers and one of the several
+chiefs of police of the capital held themselves in readiness near by,
+the Cossacks on their mounts, the other three in their open sleighs.
+Presently a great door flew open and the Emperor appeared, accompanied
+by an adjutant and a sergeant of the page corps. He wore a military
+cape-cloak and a helmet. While the page held the carriage door open, the
+Czar said to the coachman:
+
+"By Songsters' Bridge!"
+
+This was not his habitual route to the Riding Schools. Not that he was
+aware of the suspicions which the cheese shop on Little Garden Street
+had aroused. He had not the least idea of the existence of such a shop.
+He had decided on the new route merely as a matter of general
+precaution, in case there was a mine somewhere. As to pistol shots he
+was sufficiently screened by the walls of his carriage as well as by the
+bodies of his cossacks and their horses.
+
+That calm feeling of reverent affection with which the average
+Englishman hails his sovereign is unknown in Russia. But whether with
+reverence or mute imprecations, the coach of a Czar disseminates thrills
+of fright as it proceeds. The cavalcade of horsemen and sleighs, with
+the great lacquered carriage in the centre, was sailing and galloping
+along like a grim alien force, diffusing an atmosphere of terror. To
+those who saw it approaching the fiery cossacks on their fiery horses
+looked like a ferocious band of invaders, their every fibre spoiling for
+violence, rushing onward on an errand of conquest and bloody reckoning.
+
+It was a cloudy day. The streets were covered with discoloured, brownish
+snow; the snow on the roofs, window-sills, cornices, gate-posts, was of
+immaculate whiteness, apparently devoid of weight, smooth and neat, as
+though trimmed by some instrument. There were few people along the route
+followed by the little procession and most of these were in their Sunday
+clothes. Now a civilian snatched off his cap spasmodically, now a
+soldier drew himself up with all his might, as though trying to lift
+himself off his feet. Here and there a drunken citizen was staggering
+along. Every person the carriage passed was scrutinised by every member
+of the escort, by the cossacks as well as by the chief of police and the
+gendarme officers. The Riding Schools were soon reached.
+
+The Emperor left the building less than an hour later. He was
+accompanied by Grand Duke Michail, his brother, the two going to the
+Michail Palace, where they were to have lunch with the Czar's niece.
+
+Sophia, the ex-governor's daughter, was watching the imperial carriage
+from a point of vantage. Presently she turned into a neighbouring
+street, and passing a fair-complexioned young man in a dark overcoat,
+who held a white package in his hand, she raised her handkerchief to her
+nose. The young man then hurried away toward Catharine Canal. Three
+other men, one of them a gigantic looking fellow, stood at so many
+different points, and at sight of Sophia with her handkerchief to her
+nose, they all started in the same direction as the first man, while the
+young woman walked over to the Neva Prospect from which she crossed a
+bridge to the opposite side of Catharine Canal.
+
+It was half past two when the imperial carriage, surrounded by the six
+cossacks and followed by the gendarme officers and the chief of police,
+set out on their homebound journey. The handsome coachman let out his
+horses. The group was scudding along at top speed. The chief of police
+stood up in his sleigh, one of his gloved hands on the shoulder of his
+driver, as he strained his eyes now to the right now to the left, after
+the manner of the human figure on the face of a certain kind of clocks.
+The carriage turned to the right, passing a detachment of marines who
+saluted the Czar by presenting arms. The carriage was now on one of the
+banks of the Catharine Canal, an iron railing to the right, a row of
+buildings to the left. An employe of a horse-car company, who was
+levelling off a ridge of caked snow at this moment, hastily rested his
+crowbar against the iron railing and bared his head. Some distance in
+front of him a young man in a dark overcoat, and with a white package
+in his hand, was trudging along the canal side of the street. He was
+passed and left in the rear by a man in the uniform of a hospital nurse
+of the guards. On the sidewalk to the left of the Czar, another man,
+also in military uniform, was moving rapidly along, while from the
+opposite direction, in the middle of the snow-covered street, came a boy
+pulling a little sled with a basket of meat on it. Sophia was looking on
+from the other side of the canal.
+
+Colonel Dvorzhitzky (the chief of police) was scanning the sidewalk to
+the left, when a terrific crash went up from under the Czar's carriage.
+It was as if a mass of deafening sound had lain dormant there, in the
+form of a vast closed fan, and the fan had suddenly flown open. The
+colonel's horses reared violently, hurling him over the shoulder of his
+coachman. While he was surveying the left side of the street, the
+employe of the tramway company and several military people, coming up
+alongside the railing, had seen the young man in the dark overcoat lift
+his white package and throw it under the Czar's carriage. The carriage
+came to a sudden halt amid a cloud of smoke and snow dust. A second or
+two passed before any of them could realise what it all meant. The young
+man turned about and broke into a run.
+
+"Catch him! Hold him!" the pedestrians shrieked frantically, dashing
+after the running man.
+
+He had reached a point some thirty feet back of the imperial carriage
+when he was hemmed in. One of the cossacks and the boy lay in the snow
+shrieking. One of the rear corners of the carriage was badly shattered.
+The rest of it was uninjured, but during the first minute or two its
+doors remained closed, so that the bystanders could not tell whether
+the Czar was hurt or not. Then the chief of police rushed up to the
+vehicle and flung the right door open. The Czar was unhurt, but ghastly
+pale. He sat bending slightly forward, his feet on the bearskin covering
+the floor, a gilt ash receiver on a shelf in front of him.
+
+"The guilty man has been caught, your Imperial Majesty!" Colonel
+Dvorzhitzky burst out.
+
+"Has he?" the Emperor asked, in intense agitation.
+
+"He has, your Imperial Majesty. They are holding him. May I offer you to
+finish the journey in my sleigh?"
+
+"Yes, but I first want to see the prisoner."
+
+Pervaded by the conviction that another plot on his life had failed, the
+Czar stepped out of the carriage, and accompanied by a group of
+officers, some from his escort and others from among the passers-by, he
+crossed over to the sidewalk that ran along the canal railing, erect and
+majestic as usual, but extremely pale with excitement, and then turning
+to the right he walked toward where a group of uniformed men were
+holding a fair-complexioned beardless young fellow against the railing.
+People, mostly in military uniforms, came running from every direction.
+
+Somebody asked: "How is the Emperor?"
+
+"Thank God," answered the Czar, "I have escaped, but----" and he pointed
+at the wounded cossack and boy.
+
+"It may be too soon to thank God," said the prisoner.
+
+"Is this the man who did it?" the Czar asked, advancing toward him. "Who
+are you?"
+
+"My name is Glazoff."
+
+The Czar turned back. He had made a few steps, when a man who stood no
+more than three feet from him raised a white object high over his head
+and dashed it to the ground, between the Emperor and himself.
+
+There was another explosion, still more violent and deafening than the
+first. The air was a turmoil of smoke, snow-dust and shreds of uniforms,
+concealing everything else from view. Sophia hurried away.
+
+More than half a minute later, when the chaos had partly cleared away,
+the Czar was seen in a sitting posture on the snow-covered sidewalk,
+leaning against the railing, his large oval head bare, his cape-cloak
+gone. He was breathing hard. His face was in blood, the flesh of his
+bared legs lacerated, the blood gushing from them over the snow. A heap
+of singed, smoking tatters nearby was all that had been left of his
+cloak.
+
+With cries of horror and of overpowering pity the bystanders rushed
+forward. Among them was a man with a bomb under his coat like the two
+which had just exploded. He was one of the four men who had shifted
+their posts when they saw Sophia raising her handkerchief to her nose.
+Had the second bomb failed to do its bloody work, this Terrorist would
+have thrown his missile when the imperial carriage came by his corner.
+As he beheld the Czar on the ground and bleeding, however, he
+instinctively flung himself forward to offer help to the suffering man.
+
+At sight of the prostrated Czar the men who held the author of the first
+explosion, began to shower blows on him.
+
+"Don't," he begged them, shielding his head and face. "I meant the good
+of the people."
+
+Two yards from the Czar lay bleeding the unconscious figure of a
+civilian. Further away were several other prostrated men, in all sorts
+of uniforms.
+
+"Help!" the Czar uttered in a faint voice.
+
+Somebody handed him a handkerchief, which he put to his face, muttering
+"Cold, cold." Several of the marines who had saluted him a few minutes
+ago and two guardsmen placed him on Colonel Dvorzhitzky's sleigh.
+
+When Grand Duke Michail appeared on the scene he found his brother
+rapidly sinking.
+
+"Sasha,[C] do you hear me?" he asked him, with tears in his eyes.
+
+  [C] Diminutive of Alexander.
+
+The bystanders, who had never before heard their Czar addressed in the
+form of affectionate familiarity, were thrilled with a feeling of
+heart-tearing pity and of the most fervent devotion. Most of them had
+sobs in their throats.
+
+"Yes," the Czar answered faintly.
+
+"How do you feel, Sasha?"
+
+"To the Palace--quick," the Czar whispered. And upon hearing somebody's
+suggestion that he be taken to the nearest house for immediate relief,
+he uttered:
+
+"Bear me to the palace--there--die----."
+
+He reclined between two cossacks, with a gendarme officer facing him and
+supporting his legs. This is the way he returned home. Pedestrians met
+him with gestures of horrified perplexity and acute commiseration now.
+
+The crowd at one corner of Catharine Canal was a babel of excitement and
+violence. In their mad rush for the man who threw the second bomb, the
+bystanders were accusing each other, grabbing at each other,
+quarrelling, fighting. As Nihilists were for the most part people of
+education, every man who looked college-bred was in danger of his life.
+Among those who were beaten to a pulp in this wild melee were two
+political spies who had the appearance of university students. A shout
+went up that the thrower of the fatal bomb had vaulted over the fence of
+the Michail gardens nearby, and then the mob broke down part of that
+fence, and ruined the gardens in a wild but vain search for the
+Terrorist. People were seized and hustled off to the station houses by
+the hundred.
+
+The heir apparent, a fair-complexioned Hercules, was on his way to the
+Winter Palace surrounded by a strong escort of mounted men. It was the
+first time he had appeared in the streets so accompanied. The cluster of
+horsemen and sleighs that had left the palace three hours before never
+returned; this one was coming in its place; but the effect of grim
+detachment, of fierce challenge was the same.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour had elapsed. The flag over the Winter Palace which denotes
+Imperial presence was put at half-mast. Church bells were tolling the
+death of Alexander II. and the accession of Alexander III.
+
+The new Czar was by his father's bedside. He was even more powerfully
+built than he, but he lacked his grace and the light of his intelligent
+eyes--a physical giant with a look of obtuse honesty on a fair, bearded
+round face. An English diplomatist who understood him well has said that
+"he had a mind not only commonplace, but incapable of receiving new
+ideas." When he saw his father breathe his last, he exclaimed: "This is
+what we have come to!"--a celebrated ejaculation which an archbishop
+uttered at the funeral of Peter the Great in 1725. This was his first
+utterance as Emperor of Russia. Its puerile lack of originality was
+characteristic of the man.
+
+Princess Dolgoruki fainted, and she had no sooner been brought to than
+the packing of her trunks was ordered by the sons of her dead husband.
+
+The palace was surrounded by a strong cordon of cossacks. Palace Square
+was thronged, the neighbouring streets were tremulous with subdued
+excitement. Some people were sincerely overcome with grief and horror;
+others were struggling to conceal their exultation. There were such as
+wept and cursed the Nihilists by way of displaying their own loyalty,
+and there were such as burst into tears from the sheer solemnity and
+nervousness of the moment. But the great predominating feeling that
+pervaded these crowds, eclipsing every other sentiment or thought, was
+curiosity. "What is going to happen next?"--this was the question that
+was uppermost in the minds of these people in their present fever of
+excitement. Had a republic been proclaimed with the Executive Committee
+of the Nihilists as a provisional government, they would have sworn
+their allegiance to the bomb-throwers as readily as they did, on the
+morrow, to the son of the assassinated Emperor. Had the Terrorists
+succeeded, the same bearded bishops who blessed and sounded the praises
+of the new Czar would have blessed and sounded the praises of those who
+had killed his father.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pavel was in a suburb of the capital, when he first heard the melancholy
+tolling of the church bells.
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked an elderly man who was walking with a
+sleigh-load of bricks, the reins in his hands.
+
+"They say our little father, the Czar, has been killed," the other
+answered, making the sign of the cross with his free hand. "People say
+the Czarowitz is going to cut down the term of military service. Is it
+true, sir?"
+
+"What is true?" Pavel asked. He was literally dazed with excitement.
+
+"A son of mine is in the army, sir," the other explained reverently. "So
+I wonder if the new Czar will be easier on the soldiers, sir."
+
+Pavel hailed the first hackman he came across. He was burning to know
+the details of the assassination and to tell Clara that the first man he
+accosted on the great news of the hour had shown indifference to the
+death of the monarch.
+
+When his sleigh reached the Neva Prospect, he saw the new Czar,
+surrounded by a cohort of officers in dazzling uniform, passing along
+the thoroughfare. The crowds were greeting him with wild cheers. They
+cheered their own emotions at sight of the man whose father had come to
+so tragic a death, and they cheered their own servility to the master of
+the situation.
+
+These shouts filled Pavel with a mixed sense of defeat and triumph. The
+gloomier feeling predominated. The world looked as usual. It did not
+look as if this cheering, servile, stolid mob would ever rise against
+anything.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening placards bearing the name of the Executive Committee
+appeared on the walls of public buildings. They announced the death of
+Alexander II. and admonished his successor to adopt a liberal policy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+THE REVELATION.
+
+
+Every resident in the capital was being scanned and spied after, and
+every house-porter was kept peeking and seeking and reporting at the
+police station of his precinct. The railway stations were teeming with
+spies and a system was introduced by which every hack-driver was
+expected to spy on his fare. The effect of it all was that the great
+majority of St. Petersburg's population was in a state of unspeakable
+terror. Curiosity, pity and everything else had given way to a nervous
+feeling of self-preservation. People walked through the streets hastily.
+The sight of a policeman was enough to send a twinge of fright into the
+heart of the most loyal government clerk; everybody was afraid of
+everybody else. One avoided to utter such words as "Czar," "police,"
+"government." As to the Nihilists, one literally dreaded to think of
+them. People who had never had a liberal thought in their brain were
+tremulous with distrust of their own souls.
+
+And through all this all-pervading panic Clara was busy posting
+revolutionary proclamations in the streets, distributing tracts among
+students and working-people, keeping "business" appointments with her
+"illegal" friends. Pavel, in his turn, had all he could do to attend to
+the needs of some of the out-of-town "circles." The revolutionists
+throughout the country were clamouring for information, for
+proclamations, for speakers; so that the seventy or eighty men and women
+who formed the innermost organisation were as feverishly busy in their
+way as the police and the gendarmes were in theirs.
+
+The authorities were ransacking the capital for Nihilists in general and
+for the cheesemonger couple in particular, but during the first few
+hours following the two explosions their eagerness was centered on the
+man who had thrown the fatal bomb. The search for that man soon proved
+superfluous, however.
+
+The civilian who was picked up unconscious near where the Czar was
+stricken down had been taken to a hospital. Late in the evening he had a
+brief interval of consciousness.
+
+"Who are you?" an officer then asked him.
+
+"I don't know," he answered. He had a relapse from which he never awoke.
+The front of his body, particularly the inner side of one arm, was
+covered with ghastly wounds, from which experts inferred that at the
+time of the explosion he could not have stood more than three feet from
+the Czar. This, according to some eye-witnesses of the catastrophe, was
+the distance between the deceased monarch and the man who threw the
+second bomb. After two days of searching and sniffing the police
+discovered the unknown man's lodging, where they found some
+revolutionary literature and other evidence that pointed to him as the
+author of the fatal explosion. He had stood so close to the Czar that it
+was impossible for him to make a target of his victim without making one
+of himself. His real name still remained unknown.
+
+As to the first bomb-thrower, he proved to be a college student named
+Rysakoff. In the hands of the gendarme officers and the procureur he
+broke down and told all he knew; but it appeared that he knew very
+little. He had been one of a number of volunteers who offered to attack
+the Emperor under the command of Zachar. When Zachar's arrest became
+known to the Executive Committee things had begun to be rushed. Sophia
+Perovskaya, the ex-governor's daughter, had taken his place, and it was
+decided to make the assault without delay. Zachar had been arrested on
+Friday evening. As it was known to Sophia that the Czar would visit the
+Riding Schools on the next Sunday, the attempt was fixed for that
+occasion. The Terrorists immediately connected with the plot held their
+gatherings at a "conspiracy lodgings" kept by a man and woman Rysakoff
+did not know. There the volunteers met Sophia and one of the inventors
+of the self-igniting shell (the man with the priestly face whom we saw
+at the meeting of the Executive Committee at which Clara's wedding was
+to be celebrated). On Sunday morning (the day of the assassination) the
+volunteers--three college men and an artisan--called at the same
+gathering place. They found two finished bombs there and soon Sophia
+arrived with two more. Where the bomb factory was Rysakoff did not know.
+Sophia explained that it took a whole night to make the four portable
+machines and that more than four volunteers could not be accommodated.
+She then drew a rough map of the Czar's expected route, with four dots
+for the posts of the four bomb-throwers. There were two sets of dots on
+the diagram. In case the Czar failed to include Little Garden Street in
+his route, the Terrorists were to shift their positions to Catharine
+Canal and two neighbouring streets.
+
+That afternoon, as Rysakoff stood on his post near Little Garden Street,
+Sophia passed by him, her handkerchief to her nose (the same sort of
+signal which the same young woman had given a year and a half before to
+the man who fired the mine which blew up the imperial train near
+Moscow). That meant that the Czar was not passing through Little Garden
+Street. Accordingly, Rysakoff hastened over to Catherine Canal. There,
+after he had thrown the bomb and while the Czar was speaking to him, he
+saw the three other volunteers each on his post.
+
+The second bomb-thrower was known to Rysakoff under the name of "the
+Kitten." His real name he did not know.
+
+He also gave the police the address of the "conspiracy lodgings," which
+were located on the sixth floor of a house on Waggon Street, and an hour
+or two later, at midnight, two days after the killing of the Czar, the
+procureur, accompanied by gendarmes and police, knocked at one of the
+doors of that apartment.
+
+"Who is there?" a masculine voice asked from within.
+
+"Police and the procureur."
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"Open the door at once or we'll break it down."
+
+While they were raining blows on the door, a succession of pistol shots
+was heard within. Another door flew open, at the end of the corridor,
+and a woman made her appearance.
+
+"We surrender," she said. "Pray send for a doctor. Look out, don't pass
+through this door. There are explosives there."
+
+Inside they found the fresh corpse of a man lying in a pool of blood. It
+was the gay poet; and the woman was Hessia Helfman, the dark little
+Jewess with the frizzled hair who was married to Purring Cat. It was she
+and the man now lying dead from his own pistol shots who had been in
+charge of this "conspiracy lodgings." Among the things found in the
+apartment were the two bombs which had been brought back from the scene
+of the assassination; the rough map made by Sophia on the morning before
+the attack and a large quantity of revolutionary literature.
+
+The former "conspiracy lodgings" were now a police trap, and on the very
+next morning it caught a big burly man whom Rysakoff identified as
+Timothy Michailoff, the one mechanic among the four men who had been
+armed with bombs on the fatal morning. Michailoff's memorandum book
+furnished the police some important addresses, but the great surprise of
+that eventful week did not come until the following day, March 17th, and
+when it did it was anything but a source of self-congratulation to the
+authorities.
+
+About ten o'clock in the morning of that day the porters of the house on
+Little Garden Street where the Koboseffs kept their shop reported to the
+roundsman that the cheese dealer and his wife had not been home since
+the previous evening, and that their shop was still closed. The
+roundsman, who, like every member of the St. Petersburg police during
+those days, was overworked and badly in need of rest, made no reply. An
+hour later the porter accosted him again:
+
+"The shop is still closed. Customers have been around and there is
+nobody in."
+
+"Oh, I have no time to bother about it."
+
+"But I think I saw something in that store, some strange looking tools,"
+pleaded the porter.
+
+"The devil you did," the roundsman said, as much with irritation as with
+amazement.
+
+The statement was reported to the captain, who communicated it to his
+superiors, until finally an order was obtained to raid the shop. A
+search was made, more thorough than the first, and with quite different
+results. The lounge in the living room upon which General Mrovinsky had
+sat while speaking to Koboseff was found to contain a heap of earth, and
+when the planks under the window of the middle room were removed--the
+very ones which General Mrovinsky had made a feeble attempt to detach in
+the presence of Koboseff and the police--a large yawning hole presented
+itself to view. When this part of the wall had been torn down, the
+aperture proved to be the mouth of a subterranean passage enclosed in
+wood. Seven feet from the shop began a charge of a hundred pounds of
+dynamite with an electric battery near by and wires running along the
+gallery back to the middle room. Everything was in complete readiness.
+All that was necessary to explode the mine was to connect the wires.
+
+As was learned subsequently, this mine had been the leading feature of
+the plot, the bombs having been added in case the Czar left Little
+Garden Street out of his route or the mine failed of its deadly purpose
+for some other reason. Of the existence of such a mine Rysakoff had not
+the remotest idea until he heard of it at the trial.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the Friday afternoon immediately preceding the arrest of Jeliaboff
+(Zachar) the porter of the house where he and Sophia were registered as
+brother and sister met them at the gate as they were leaving the house
+together; and later, at 9 o'clock in the evening, he saw Sophia return
+alone. The next morning, after Jeliaboff had spent his first night in
+prison, the police, in their effort to discover his residence, ordered
+every porter in the city to ascertain who of his tenants had been absent
+from home that night. When the porter rang Sophia's bell that morning
+there was no response. He reported it at the police station where he
+was told to try again. At 2 o'clock he saw Sophia.
+
+"I have received some blanks from the police," he said. "Every tenant
+must state his occupation and place of business."
+
+"My brother is working now," Sophia answered. "When he comes home I'll
+tell him about it."
+
+Two hours later she went out again, and in order to avoid passing the
+porter at the gate, she gained the street through a little dry goods
+shop that had a rear door into that yard, buying something for a
+pretext. She came back, by way of the same dry goods shop, at 9 o'clock
+in the evening and that was the last that was ever seen of her in that
+neighbourhood. The next morning the porter reported the disappearance of
+the couple.
+
+When the police searched the deserted apartment they found a number of
+revolutionary publications, several tin boxes like those which formed
+the shells of the two exploding machines seized at the "conspiracy
+house" kept by Hessia and the "gay poet," and several cheeses bearing
+the same trade-mark as those in Koboseff's shop.
+
+Meanwhile Jeliaboff had heard the solemn tolling of the bells in his
+prison cell. In the excitement of the hour a gendarme on duty in the
+prison corridor answered his questions through the peep-hole, in
+violation of regulations. Jeliaboff at once sent word to the procureur,
+assuming responsibility for the entire plot, as an agent of the
+Executive Committee.
+
+Sophia knew through a certain high official all that transpired between
+Jeliaboff and the procureur. She knew that the authorities were turning
+the capital inside out in their search for the woman who had lived with
+Jeliaboff as his sister and for the Koboseff couple, yet in spite of all
+the pressure the Nihilists brought to bear on her, persuading her to
+seek temporary retirement, she, like Urie and Baska, remained in the
+heart of St. Petersburg, in the very thick of her party's activity.
+Clara saw her at a meeting during that week.
+
+"You need rest, Sonia. You look tired."
+
+"Do I?" Sophia answered with a smile. "So do you. Everybody does these
+days."
+
+Her smile was on her lips only. Her blue eyes were inscrutably grave,
+but Clara saw a blend of lofty exaltation and corroding anguish in them.
+She knew how dear Jeliaboff was to her. She had been craving to speak to
+her of him, of Hessia and of the "gay poet," who had committed suicide
+at the time of Hessia's arrest; but at this moment it was Sophia herself
+who filled her mind.
+
+"Sonia!" Clara said, huskily.
+
+"What is it, child?" the other asked, kindly.
+
+For an answer Clara looked her in the face, smiling shame-facedly. She
+did feel like an infant in her presence, although Sophia, with her small
+stature and fresh boyish face, looked the younger of the two. She did
+not know herself what she wanted to say. She was burning to cover her
+with kisses and to break into sobs on her breast, but Sophia was graver
+and more taciturn than usual to-day, so she held herself in check. Her
+passion for tears was subdued. She sat by Sophia's side absorbed in her
+presence without looking her in the face, tingling with something like
+the feeling of people in a graveyard, in a moment of solemn ecstasy.
+
+Clara came away burdened with unvoiced emotion. She said to herself that
+when she saw Pavel she would find relief in telling him how she adored
+Sophia and how thirsty her heart was because she had not unbosomed
+herself of these feelings to her; but when she and Pavel were alone she
+said nothing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The porters of the house from which Sophia had vanished were asked at
+the police station whether they would be able to single her out in a
+street crowd. They had to admit that they were not sure whether they
+would. She had lived under their eye for eight months, but she had
+always managed to pass through the gate, where they were usually on
+duty, so as to leave no clear impression of her features on their minds.
+Finally, on the sixth day, it was discovered that the proprietress of
+the little dry goods store had a clear recollection of her face. This
+woman, accompanied by a police officer, then spent hours driving about
+through the busiest streets, until, with a shout of mixed joy and
+fright, she pointed out Sophia in a public sleigh.
+
+It was not many days before Kibalchich, the man with the Christlike
+face, who was one of the inventors and makers of the four bombs, and
+another revolutionist were arrested in a cafe, through an address found
+in Timothy Michailoff's note-book.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The trial of the six regicides so far captured, Jeliaboff, Sophia,
+Kibalchich, Hessia, Rysakoff, and Timothy Michailoff, was begun by a
+special Court of the Governing Senate for Political Cases, on April 8.
+That Purring Cat and the man with the Tartarian face, both of whom were
+in prison now, had taken part in the digging of the Koboseff mine, was
+still unknown to the police. Nor had the authorities as yet been
+informed of the fact that another "political" in their hands--the
+undersized man who had played the part of shop-boy to the
+cheese-dealer--had had something to do with the same conspiracy.
+
+Complete reports of the trial appeared in the newspapers, and the
+testimony and speeches of the accused were read and read again.
+
+Jeliaboff ("Zachar") declined a lawyer, taking his defence in his own
+hands. His legal battles with the presiding judge, his resource, his
+tact and his eloquence, made him the central figure of the proceedings.
+He began by challenging the court's jurisdiction in the case. "This
+court represents the crown, one of the two parties concerned," he said,
+"and I submit that in a contention between the government and the
+revolutionary party there could be only one judge--the people; the
+people either by means of a popular vote, or through its rightful
+representatives in parliament assembled, or, at least, a jury
+representing public conscience." Declarations of this kind, Kibalchich's
+narrative as to how the blind brutality of the government had
+transformed peaceful social workers into Terrorists, and the effect of
+simple, dignified sincerity which marked the conduct of all the
+prisoners produced such a profound impression, that at the time of the
+next important political trial scarcely any reports were allowed to be
+published.
+
+The six regicides were sentenced to death, the execution of Hessia
+Helfman, who was about to become a mother, being postponed and later
+commuted. When the parents of Kolotkevich (Purring Cat) asked to be
+allowed to bring up their son's child, the request was refused on the
+ground that it was the child of two regicides and should be brought up
+under special care. The result of this special care was that the child,
+like its pardoned mother, soon died.
+
+Sophia and the four condemned men died on the gallows, on a public
+square. They were taken to their death on two "shame waggons," dressed
+in convict clothes, each with a board inscribed with the words "criminal
+of state" across his or her breast. The procession was accompanied by a
+force of military large enough to conquer a country like Belgium. Sophia
+was the first woman executed on Russian soil since 1719.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+THE CZAR TAKES COURAGE.
+
+
+Alexander III. and his court moved to the long-deserted imperial palace
+at Gatchina, a village 28 English miles from St. Petersburg. The young
+Czar and his entourage were in a state of nervous tension. Economically,
+the country was in the throes of hard times. Districts rich in the
+potentialities of industry and prosperity were in the grip of famine.
+Driven by bad crops and extortionate taxes, thousands of village
+families were abandoning their homes to go begging. Cities were crowded
+with such mendicants from surrounding villages, and the industrial
+centres were full of workmen out of employment. Politically, a
+demoralising feeling of suspense hung over the empire. The masses had
+seen one Czar--the ward of a vigilant guardian angel--prostrated. The
+crown's prestige was shaken, and the Czar's seeking refuge in a secluded
+village did anything but retrieve it. The number of _lese majeste_ cases
+had suddenly grown so large that by a special imperial ukase these
+offences were transferred from the publicity of the courts to the
+obscure depths of "justice by administrative order." From several places
+came reports of riots against the police, while the universities
+manifested their hostility to the throne quite openly. Subscription
+lists for a monument to the assassinated Czar were torn to pieces and
+those who circulated them were publicly hissed and insulted. The
+portents of turbulence were in the air.
+
+Loris-Melikoff submitted to the new Czar the "constitution" of which
+Alexander II. had approved an hour before his violent death. Alexander
+III. read it and wrote on the margin of the paper: "Very well
+conceived"; and two days later, after the project had been carried at a
+cabinet meeting by a vote of eight against five, the Czar, while
+conversing with his brother, Grand Duke Vladimir, on the measure to be
+introduced, said, joyfully:
+
+"I feel as though a mountain had rolled off my shoulders."
+
+But the conservative party at court had the support of a new power
+behind the throne. M. Pobiedonostzeff, formerly tutor of the present
+Czar and now his favourite adviser, was a man of much stronger purpose
+than Loris-Melikoff. He fought against the innovation tooth and nail,
+and the publication of it in the _Official Messenger_ was postponed from
+day to day. The leader of the Panslavists was invited from Moscow; every
+conservative influence was brought to bear upon a Czar who was
+absolutely incapable of forming his own opinion. All this was done in
+the strictest secrecy from Loris-Melikoff.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile, during Easter week, seven days after the approval of the
+"constitution" by a majority of the ministers and twelve days subsequent
+to the execution of the regicides, a furious anti-Jewish riot broke out
+in Elisavetgrad, a prosperous city in the south. A frenzied drink-crazed
+mob had possession of the town during two days, demolishing and
+pillaging hundreds of houses and shops, covering whole streets with
+debris and reducing thousands of people to beggary. And neighbouring
+towns and villages followed the example of the larger city.
+
+The Czar took alarm. It looked like the prelude to a popular upheaval.
+
+"It's only an anti-Semitic disturbance, your Imperial Majesty,"
+Pobiedonostzeff reassured him. "There was one like that ten years ago,
+in Odessa."
+
+The Elisavetgrad outbreak was, indeed, a purely local affair, but it
+happened at a time that was highly favourable to occurrences of that
+nature. Originally organised by some high-born profligates, victims of a
+gang of Jewish usurers, it had nothing to do with the general situation
+save in so far as there was in the hungry masses a blind disposition to
+attack somebody; a disposition coupled with a feeling that the usual
+ties of law and order had been loosened. When, in addition, the target
+of assault happened to be the stepchild in Russia's family of peoples,
+the one forever kicked and cuffed by the government itself, the rioters'
+sense of security was complete. Moreover, among the victims of Jewish
+usurers were hundreds of army officers and civil officials who lived
+beyond their means, and from these came a direct hint at impunity. The
+attack had been carefully planned, but the imbruted mob acted on its own
+logic, with the result that thousands of artisans, labourers, poor
+tradesmen, teachers, rabbis, dreamers, were plundered and ill-treated
+while the handful of usurers escaped.
+
+The promise of impunity was fulfilled. Neighbouring towns and villages
+followed the example of Elisavetgrad, and ten days later, May 8-9,
+similar atrocities, but with a far greater display of fury and
+bestiality, occurred in Kieff, where a dozen murders and an enormous
+list of wounded and of outraged women was added to the work of
+devastation and plunder. The Kieff authorities encouraged all this in a
+thousand ways, while individual officers and men took part in the
+pandemonium of havoc and rape.
+
+"Easy, boys," said the governor of the province, with an amused smile,
+as he drove past the busy rioters at the head of a procession of
+fashionable spectators.
+
+Loris-Melikoff was scarcely to be held responsible for these
+occurrences. He had his own cares to worry him. The reins were fast
+slipping out of his hands. Indeed, the attitude of governors, chiefs of
+police, military officers, toward the spreading campaign against the
+Jews was a matter of instinct. The "spirit of the moment," as it had
+become customary to denote the epidemic of anti-Jewish feeling in
+official circles, gleamed forth clear and unequivocal, and local
+authorities acted upon it on their own hook. The real meaning of this
+"spirit of the moment" lay in the idea that if there was a state of
+general unrest threatening the safety of the throne, it was spending
+itself on anti-Semitic ferocity; that if a storm-cloud was gathering
+over the crown, an electric rod had been found in the Chosen People.
+
+The Czar took courage.
+
+Two days after the Kieff riot he promulgated a manifesto, framed by
+Pobiedonostzeff, and proclaiming the continuance of unqualified
+iron-handed absolutism. The "constitution" went into the archives.
+Loris-Melikoff's public career had come to a close. General Ignatyeff, a
+corrupt time-server, was appointed Minister of the Interior and a policy
+of restriction and repression was adopted that brought back the days of
+Nicholas I.
+
+Ignatyeff encouraged the "spirit of the moment" with all the means at
+his command. One of the very first things he did was to order the
+expulsion of thousands of Jews from Kieff. At the trial of some of the
+rioters the state attorney unceremoniously acted as advocate for the
+defendants.
+
+The effect of all this upon the public mind was a foregone conclusion.
+The general inference was that anti-Jewish riots met with the
+government's approval. The outrages passed from Kieff to neighbouring
+cities; from there to Odessa; from Odessa to other sections of the
+south. They were spreading throughout the region in which Miroslav is
+located with the continuity of a regular crusade and with a uniformity
+of detail that was eloquent of a common guiding force.
+
+It was a new phase of White Terrorism.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To Pavel the crusade against Clara's race was a source of mixed
+encouragement and anxiety.
+
+"Hurrah, old fellow," he said to Godfather one morning. "It does look as
+though the Russian people could kick, doesn't it?"
+
+"Yes, if they can attack Jewish usurers, I don't see why they could not
+turn upon the government some day."
+
+"And, while they are at it, upon the land-plundering nobility, upon
+fellows like you and me, eh?" He poked Urie in the ribs gleefully.
+
+In his conversations with Clara, however, the subject was never
+broached, and this gave him a sense of guilt and uneasiness. He could
+not help being aware that instead of usurers the chief target of attack
+in every riot, without a single exception, were Jewish artisans,
+labourers, teachers and the poorest tradesmen. And this, so far as Clara
+was concerned, meant that the common people of Pavel's race, for whose
+sake she was facing the solitary cell and the gallows, that these
+Christian people were brutally assaulting and pillaging, reducing to
+beggary and murdering poor honest, innocent people of her own blood,
+Jews like her father, mother, sister, like herself.
+
+But this bare fact did not fit in with Nihilist theory. That golden halo
+which had been painted about the common Christian people by the
+ecstasies of the anti-serfdom movement of twenty years ago had not yet
+faded. The Gentile masses were still deified by the Nihilists. Whatever
+the peasant or workman of Slavic blood did was still sacred,--an
+instinctive step in the direction of liberty and universal happiness.
+The Russian masses were rioting; could there be a better indication of a
+revolutionary awakening? And if the victims of these riots happened to
+be Jews, then the Jews were evidently enemies of the people.
+
+That the crusade was part and parcel of the "white terror" of the throne
+had not yet dawned upon the revolutionists.
+
+As to Clara, she was so completely abandoned to her grief over the death
+of Sophia and the four men that so far the riots (no unheard-of thing in
+the history of the Jews by any means) had made but a feeble appeal to
+her imagination. Centuries seemed to divide her from her race and her
+past. The outbreaks seemed to be taking place in some strange, distant
+country.
+
+The execution of the five regicides had been described quite fully in
+the _Official Messenger_ and the account had been copied in all other
+newspapers. Clara kept the issue of the _Voice_ containing the report in
+a book, and although she knew its salient passages by heart, she often
+consulted the paper, now for this paragraph, now for that. There was a
+sacred mystery in the letters in which the description was printed.
+
+"The five prisoners approached the priests almost at the same moment and
+kissed the cross; after which they were taken by the hangmen each to his
+or her rope." Clara beheld the ropes dangling and Sophia placed under
+one of them, but her aching heart coveted more vividness. Her
+imagination was making desperate efforts to reproduce the scene with the
+tangibility of life. Each time she read how the hangman, dressed in a
+red shirt, slipped the noose about Sophia's neck amid the roll of drums,
+and how he wrenched the stool from under her feet, so that she plunged
+with a jerk, and how the next instant her body hung motionless in the
+air, each time Clara read this she was smitten with an overpowering pang
+of pity and of helpless, aimless, heart-tearing affection. Sometimes she
+would fancy Sophia and her four comrades rescued from the hangman's
+hands a second before their execution, and carried triumphantly through
+the streets by an army of victorious revolutionists, but the next moment
+it would come back to her that this had not been the case, and then the
+re-awakening to reality was even more painful than the original shock.
+If a rescuing force were now ready to attack the hangman and the
+thousand-bayoneted guard around him, it would be too late. Sophia was
+dead, irretrievably dead; there was nobody to rescue. And Clara's heart
+sank in despair. At such moments she would seek relief in those passages
+of the report where the calmness of the condemned revolutionists was
+depicted. "Jeliaboff whispered to his priest, fervently kissed the
+cross, shook his hair and smiled. Fortitude did not forsake Jeliaboff,
+Sophia and particularly Kibalchich (the man with the face of Christ) to
+the very moment of donning the white-hooded death-gown"--these passages
+gave Clara thrills of religious bliss.
+
+Pavel often talked to her about the execution, raved, cursed the
+government; but Clara usually remained gloomily taciturn. The wound in
+her soul was something too sacred to be talked about. Words seemed to
+her like sacrilege. Their hearts understood each other well enough, why,
+then, allow language to intrude upon their speechless communion? Some of
+his effusions and outbursts jarred on her. On the other hand, her
+silences made him restless.
+
+"You'll go insane if you keep this up," he once said, irascibly.
+
+"I don't care if I do," she answered. "Don't nag me, Pashenka, pray."
+
+"But the thing is becoming an _idee fixe_ in your mind, upon my word it
+is. Can't you try and get back to your senses? What is death after all?
+Absolute freedom from suffering, that's all. There is nothing to go
+crazy over anyhow. There is nothing but a dear, a glorious, a beautiful
+memory of them, and that will live as long as there is such a thing as
+history in the world."
+
+She made no reply. She tried to picture Sophia free from suffering, but
+this only sharpened her pain. Sophia not existing? The formula was even
+more terrible than death. In reality, however, her atheism was powerless
+to obliterate her visions. Sophia existed somewhere, only she was
+solemnly remote, as though estranged from her. Clara could have almost
+cried to her, imploring for recognition.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But this mood of hers could not last forever. Sooner or later she would
+awaken to the full extent of the riots and to the fact that they were
+raging in the vicinity of Miroslav, threatening the safety of her
+nearest relatives. How would she take it then? The question intruded
+upon Pavel's peace of mind again and again.
+
+For the present, however, she was taken up with her thoughts of Sophia,
+Zachar or Hessia. Poor Hessia! They had robbed her of her baby, the
+thugs, even as they had that woman of the "gay bard's" poem. "To lead a
+married life under conditions such as ours is pure madness," she said to
+herself.
+
+One afternoon, as she and her lover sat on the lounge, embracing and
+kissing deliriously, she suddenly sprang to her feet, her cheeks
+burning, kissed Pavel on his forehead and crossed over to the window.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders resentfully.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+A HUNTED PEOPLE.
+
+
+It was Friday night at the Old Synagogue, but the cheery voices of
+Sabbath Eve were not there. The air of having cast one's cares aside was
+missing. Instead of a light-hearted turmoil of melody there was a hushed
+murmur that betrayed suspense and timidity. Ever and anon some
+worshipper would break off his hymn and strain his ears for a fancied
+sound outside. The half hour spent away from home seemed many hours.
+Very few people were present and none of these wore their Sabbath
+clothes. Most of the other synagogues were closed altogether. Rabbi
+Rachmiel, Clara's father, and several others were abandoned to an
+ecstasy of devotion, but their subdued tones had in them the fervent
+plea of Atonement Day, the tearful plea for an enrolment in the Book of
+Life rather than the joyous solemnity that proclaims the advent of the
+Higher Soul. The illumination in honour of Sabbath the Bride was a sorry
+spectacle. The jumble of brass chandeliers hung unburnished and most of
+them were empty. The synagogue had a troubled, a cowed look. It dared
+not shine brightly, nor burst into song merrily lest it should irritate
+the Gentiles. Here and there a man sat at his prayer book weeping
+quietly.
+
+Members of the congregation who had not been on speaking terms for years
+had made peace, as a matter of course. The spreading frenzy of the
+Gentile population impressed them as an impersonal, elemental force.
+They were clinging to each other with the taciturnity of ship-passengers
+when the vessel shudders in the grip of danger. And not only did they
+nestle to each other, but the entire present generation felt drawn to
+all the former generations of their hunted race. The terrors of the
+Inquisition, the massacres, the exiles, the humiliations, of which one
+usually thought as something belonging to the province of books
+exclusively, had suddenly become realities. The Bloody Spot, the site of
+the present synagogue, where 800 Jews had been slain more than two
+centuries ago, gleamed redder than ever in every mind. It was both
+terrifying and a spiritual relief to beseech the souls of those eight
+hundred martyrs to pray for their panic-stricken descendants. The
+Russian Jews of 1881 felt themselves a living continuation of the entire
+tearful history of their people.
+
+When the service was over, at last, the usual "Good Sabbath! Good
+Sabbath!" always so full of festivity, was uttered in lugubrious
+whispers, which really meant: "May God take pity upon us." Nor was there
+a rush for the door. Quick, noisy movements were carefully avoided in
+these days.
+
+Some of the worshippers had slowly filed out, when there was a stir, and
+the crowd scrambled back with terrified faces.
+
+"Two Gentiles are coming, an army officer and a man in civilian
+clothes," said some of those who came running back.
+
+The look of terror gave way to one of eager curiosity. The appearance of
+two refined Gentiles was not the way an anti-Jewish riot was usually
+ushered in.
+
+The "two Gentiles" turned out to be Dr. Lipnitzky and Vladimir
+Vigdoroff, the one in his military uniform, and the other in a summer
+suit of rough duck. When they were recognised they were greeted with
+looks of affection and expectancy. The pious old-fashioned people who
+had hitherto regarded Dr. Lipnitzky despairingly as more Gentile than
+Jew, now thought of him tenderly as an advocate of Israel in the enemy's
+camp.
+
+"Don't be so scared," the little doctor said with friendly acerbity, as
+he paused in the centre of the synagogue. "We are Jews like
+yourselves--the same kind of Jews all of us. We were passing by, so we
+thought we would look in. We saw the synagogue was almost dark, though
+it is still so early. The lights could not yet have gone out. It's
+enough to break one's heart." He was choking with embarrassment and
+emotion and his words produced a profound effect. People of his class
+were not in the habit of attending divine service. The doctor's military
+uniform, in fact, had never been seen in a synagogue before. But the
+great point was that instead of Russian or Germanised Yiddish which he
+habitually affected with uneducated Jews he was now speaking in the
+plain, unembellished vernacular of the Ghetto. His listeners knew that
+he was the son of a poor illiterate brick-maker, a plain "Yiddish Jew"
+like themselves, yet they could scarcely trust their ears. They eyed his
+shoulder-straps and sword-hilt, and it seemed incredible that the man
+who wore these things was the man who was speaking this fluent, robust
+Yiddish. His halo of inaccessible superiority had suddenly faded away.
+Everybody warmed to him.
+
+"We'll be here to-morrow, we'll attend the service. And next Saturday,
+too. Every Saturday. We're Jews." He could not go on. Some of his
+listeners had tears in their eyes. Vladimir was biting his lips
+nervously.
+
+"Still, it is not to see you cry that we have come to you," the doctor
+resumed: but he was interrupted by Clara's father, who, advancing toward
+him with glaring eyes, said, in a voice shrill with rage:
+
+"Now that Jewish blood is flowing in rivers you people come to do
+penance! It is too late. It is the sins of men like yourselves that have
+brought this punishment upon us. A Gentile Jew is even worse than a born
+Gentile." He put up his fists to his temples and gasped: "Better become
+Christians! Better become Christians!"
+
+The crowd had listened with bated breath, but at last somebody said: "Oh
+shut up!" and similar shouts burst from forty or fifty other men.
+
+"We are all Jews, all brethren."
+
+"We'll settle old scores some other time."
+
+"A good heart is as good as piety."
+
+"Yes, but why don't you give the doctor a chance to speak?" Vladimir
+stepped up to his uncle and pleaded with him.
+
+"Who is he?" said Dr. Lipnitzky with a smile. "Is he crazy?" And flying
+into a passion, he was about to address Rabbi Rachmiel, but held himself
+in check. A feeble old man of eighty with a very white beard was arguing
+from the Talmud with Clara's father.
+
+"'The sinner who returns to God may stand upon ground upon which the
+righteous are not allowed to stand,'" he quoted. "Again, 'Through
+penance even one's sins are turned to good deeds.'"
+
+When Rabbi Rachmiel tried to reply, he was shouted down by the crowd.
+They were yelling and gesticulating at him, when somebody mounted a
+bench and fell to swishing his arms violently. "Hush!" he said in a
+ferocious whisper. "Do you want to attract a mob?" His words had an
+immediate effect, and then Rabbi Rachmiel said to his nephew, in much
+milder but deeply grieved accents:
+
+"Do you know what the Talmud says? 'As long as you shall do the will of
+God no strange people shall domineer over you, but if you don't do the
+will of God, God will hand you over to a low people, and not merely to a
+low people, but to the beasts of a low people.'"
+
+"All right, rabbi. This is not the time for argument," the doctor said,
+kindly. "I have some important information for you all, for all of us.
+There won't be any rioting in this town. You may be sure of it. That's
+what my young friend and I have dropped in to tell you. I have seen the
+governor"--his listeners pressed eagerly forward--"there will be plenty
+of protection. The main point is that you should not tempt the Gentiles
+to start a riot by showing them that you dread one. Don't hide, nor keep
+your shops closed, as that would only whet one's appetite for mischief.
+Do you understand what I say to you? This is the governor's opinion and
+mine too. Everybody's."
+
+His auditors nodded vigorous and beaming assent.
+
+"He particularly warns the Jews not to undertake anything in the way of
+self-defence. That would only arouse ill-feeling. Besides, it's against
+the law. It could not be tolerated. Do you understand what I am saying
+or do you not? Every precaution has been taken and there is really no
+danger. Do you understand? There is no danger, and if you go about your
+business and make no fuss it will be all right. I have spoken to several
+officers of my regiment, too. Of course, you wouldn't have to look hard
+to find a Jew-hater among them, but they spoke in a friendly way and
+some of them are really good-natured fellows. They assured me that if
+the troops were called out they would protect our people with all their
+hearts."
+
+Every man in the group looked like a prisoner when the jury announces an
+acquittal. Some, in a flutter of joy, hastened to carry the news to
+their wives and children. The majority hung about the uniformed man, as
+if ready to stay all night in his salutary presence, while one man even
+ventured to say quite familiarly: "May you live long for this, doctor.
+Why, you have put new souls into us." Whereupon he was told by another
+man, through clenched teeth, that it was just like him to push himself
+forward.
+
+Each man had his own tale of woe to tell, his own questions to ask. One
+man, whose appearance and manner indicated that he was a tin-smith, had
+a son at the gymnasium and a Gentile neighbour whose wife became green
+with envy as often as she saw the Jewish boy in his handsome uniform.
+She was much better off than the tin-smith yet her children were
+receiving no education.
+
+"But why should you pay any attention to her?" Dr. Lipnitzky asked.
+
+"I don't, but my wife does. You know how women are, doctor. They take
+everything hard. Last week the Gentile woman said aloud that it was
+impudent on the part of Jews to dress their boys up in gymnasium
+uniforms, as if they were noblemen, and that it was time Miroslav did
+like all God-fearing towns and started a riot against the Jews. So my
+wife is afraid to let the boy wear the uniform, and I think she is
+right, too. Let the eyes of that Gentile woman creep out of their
+sockets without looking at the child's uniform. It is vacation time
+anyhow. But the boy, he cried all day and made a rumpus and said the
+school authorities would punish him if he was seen in the street without
+his uniform. Is it true, doctor? I am only an ignorant workman. What do
+I know?"
+
+"Yes, it is true, and tell your wife not to mind that woman," answered
+Dr. Lipnitzky, exchanging a woebegone look with Vladimir.
+
+"I have some goods lying at the railroad station for me," said a little
+man with a puckered forehead. "It has been there about a month. 'Shall I
+take it to the shop so that the rioters may have some more goods to
+pillage?' I thought to myself. Would you really advise me to receive it,
+doctor?"
+
+Dr. Lipnitzky took fire. "Do you want me to sign a guarantee for it?" he
+said. "Do you want me to be responsible for the goods? You people are an
+awful lot."
+
+"I was merely asking your advice, doctor," the man with the puckered
+forehead answered, wretchedly. "You can't do much business these days,
+anyhow. The best Gentiles won't pay. One has nothing but a book full of
+debts. Besides, when the door flies open one's soul sinks. And when a
+Gentile customer comes in you pray God that he may leave your shop as
+soon as possible. For who knows but his visit may be a put-up job and
+that all he wants is to pick a quarrel as a signal for a lot of other
+rowdies to break in?"
+
+"And the Gentile sees your cowardice," the doctor cut in with an effect
+of continuing the man's story, "and becomes arrogant, and this is the
+way a riot is hatched." By degrees he resumed his superior manner and
+his Germanised Yiddish, but his tone remained warm.
+
+"Arrogant!" said a tall, stooped, neatly-dressed jeweller. "You have
+told us of some honest officers, doctor. Well, the other day an army
+officer came into my place with a lady. He selected a ring for her, and
+when I said it was forty rubles, he made no answer, but sent the lady
+away with the ring, and then--you should have seen him break out at me.
+I had put him to shame before a lady, he said. He was good for forty
+times forty dollars, and all the Jews were a lot of cut-throats and
+blood-suckers; that all we were good for was to ask officers to protect
+us against rioters, and that my shop was made up of ill-gotten wealth
+anyhow. I had never seen the man before and I insisted upon being paid;
+but he made such a noise, I was afraid a crowd might gather. So I let
+him go, but I sent out my salesman after him and he found out his name.
+Then I went before his colonel" (the jeweller named the regiment), "but
+what do you think the colonel said: 'He's a nice fellow. I shall never
+believe it of him. And if he owes you some money, he'll pay you. At a
+time like this you Jews oughtn't to press your claims too hard.' That's
+what the colonel said."
+
+When a shabby cap-maker with thick bloodless lips told how he had let a
+rough-looking Gentile leave his shop in a new cap without paying for it,
+the doctor flew into a passion.
+
+"Why did you? Why did you?" he growled, stamping his feet, just as he
+would when the relatives of a patient neglected to comply with his
+orders. "It is just like you people. I would have you flayed for this."
+
+This only encouraged the cap-maker to go into the humour of the episode.
+
+"I was poking around the market place, with a high pile of caps on
+either hand," he said, "when I saw a Gentile with a face like a carrot
+covered full of warts. 'Aren't you ashamed to wear such a cap?' says I.
+'Aren't you ashamed to spoil a handsome face like yours by that rusty,
+horrid old thing on your head?'"
+
+"Oh, I would have you spanked," the little doctor snarled smilingly.
+Whereupon several of the bystanders also smiled.
+
+"Hold on, doctor. I spanked myself. Well, the Gentile was not hard to
+persuade, though when we got at my place he was rather hard to please.
+He kept me plucking caps from the ceiling until the very pole in my hand
+got tired of the job. At last he was suited. I thought he would ask how
+much. He didn't. He did say something, but that was about anti-Jewish
+riots. 'This cap will do,' he then said, 'Good-bye old man,' and made
+for the door. And when I rushed after him and asked for the money he
+turned on me and stuck the biggest fig[D] you ever saw into my face.
+Since then when I see the good looks of a Gentile spoiled by a horrid
+old cap I try not to take it to heart."
+
+  [D] A sign of contempt and defiance consisting in the thumb being put
+  between the next two fingers.
+
+The doctor laughed. "And you let him go without paying?" he asked.
+
+"I should say I did. I was glad he didn't ask for the change."
+
+Another man confessed to having had an experience of this kind, a
+customer having exacted from him change from a ruble which he had never
+paid him.
+
+"He was a tough looking customer, and he made a rumpus, so I thought to
+myself, 'Is this the first time I have been out of some cash? Let him go
+hang himself.' And the scoundrel, he gave me a laugh, called me accursed
+Jew into the bargain and went his way."
+
+"Did you ask him to call again?" the cap-maker demanded, and noticing
+Clara's father by his side, he added: "This is not the way Rabbi
+Rachmiel's wife does business, is it? She would make him pay her the
+dollar and the change, too."
+
+The doctor burst into laughter, the others echoing it noisily. Only
+Vladimir's face wore a look of restless gravity. It was the restlessness
+of a man who is trying to nerve himself up to a first public speech. His
+heart was full of something which he was aching to say to these people,
+to unburden himself of, but his courage failed him to take the word.
+Presently a man too timid to seek information in the centre of the
+assembly addressed a whispered inquiry to Vladimir and Vladimir's answer
+attracted the attention of two or three bystanders. Gradually a little
+colony branched off from the main body. He was telling them what he knew
+from the newspapers about the latest anti-Jewish outbreaks in various
+towns; and speaking in a very low voice and in the simplest
+conversational accents, he gradually passed to what weighed on his
+heart. He knew Yiddish very well indeed, yet he had considerable
+difficulty in speaking it, his chief impediment lying in his inability
+to render the cultured language in which he thought into primitive
+speech. His Yiddish was full of Russian and German therefore, but some
+of his listeners understood it all, while the rest missed but an
+occasional phrase.
+
+"People like myself--those who have studied at the gymnasia and
+universities"--he went on in a brooding, plaintive undertone, "feel the
+misery of it all the more keenly because we have been foolish enough to
+imagine ourselves Russians, and to keep aloof from our own people. Many
+of us feel like apologising to every poor suffering Jew in Russia, to
+beg his forgiveness, to implore him to take us back. We were ashamed to
+speak Yiddish. We thought we were Russians. We speak the language of
+the Gentiles, and we love it so dearly; we have adopted their ways and
+customs; we love their literature; everything Russian is so dear to us;
+why should it not be? Is not this our birthplace? But the more we love
+it, the more we try to be like Russians, the more they hate us. My
+uncle, Rabbi Rachmiel, says it is too late to do penance. Well, I do
+feel like a man who comes to confess his sins and to do penance. It is
+the blood and the tears of our brothers and sisters that are calling to
+us to return to our people. And now we see how vain our efforts are to
+be Russians. There was a great Jew whose name was Heinrich Heine." (Two
+of the men manifested their acquaintance with the name by a nod.) "He
+was a great writer of poetry. So he once wrote about his mother--how he
+had abandoned her and sought the love of other women. But he failed to
+find love anywhere, until ultimately he came to the conclusion that the
+only woman in whom he was sure of love was his own dear mother. This is
+the way I feel now. I scarcely ever saw the inside of a synagogue
+before, but now I, like the doctor, belong here. It is not a question of
+religion. I am not religious and cannot be. But I am a Jew and we all
+belong together. And when a synagogue happens to stand on a site like
+this----"
+
+He broke off in the middle of the sentence. His allusion to the massacre
+of two centuries before inspired him with an appalling sense of the
+continuity of Jewish suffering. The others stood about gazing solemnly
+at him, until the scholarly old man of eighty with the very white beard
+broke silence. He raised his veined aged little hands over Vladimir's
+head and said in a nervous treble:
+
+"May God bless you, my son. That's all I have to say."
+
+Vladimir was literally electrified by his words.
+
+"But what do they want of us?" asked a man with a blueish complexion.
+"You say they are good-natured. Do you call it good-natured when one
+acts like a wild beast, bathing in the blood of innocent people?"
+
+"Well, this is the Gentile way of being good-natured," somebody put in,
+with a sneer, before Vladimir had time to answer.
+
+"They have been turned into savages," Vigdoroff then said. He maintained
+the low, mournful voice, though he now put a didactic tone into it.
+"They are blind, ignorant people. They are easily made a catspaw of."
+
+The man with the blueish complexion interrupted him. He spoke of Gentile
+cruelty, of the Inquisition, the Crusades, massacres, and almost with
+tears of rage in his eyes he defied Vladimir to tell him that Jews were
+capable of any such brutalities. Vladimir said no, Jews were not capable
+of any bloodshed, and went on defending the Russian people. The man with
+the sneer was beginning to annoy him. He was an insignificant looking
+fellow with very thin lips and a very thin flat blond beard. Even when
+his face was grave it had a sneering effect. He said very little. Only
+occasionally he would utter a word or two of which nobody else took
+notice. Yet it was chiefly to him that Vladimir was addressing himself.
+But the assembly was soon broken up. Rabbi Rachmiel's wife came in at
+the head of several other women who were not afraid to walk through the
+streets after sundown in these days. They had grown uneasy about their
+husbands' delay.
+
+Vladimir saluted his aunt warmly. They exchanged a few words, but
+nothing was said of Clara. An "illegal" person like her could not be
+mentioned in public.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+A PAPER FROM THE CZAR.
+
+
+A large crowd of peasants, in tall straw hats, many of them with their
+whips in their hands, congregated in front of the bailiff's office at
+Zorki. It was a sultry afternoon in August. A single shirt of coarse
+white linen and a pair of trousers of the same material were all the
+clothes the men wore. The trousers were very wide and baggy but drawn
+tight at the bottom by means of strings, so that they dropped at the
+ankles blouse-fashion, and the loose-fitting shirt fell over the
+trousers with a similar effect. Most of the shirts were embroidered in
+red and blue. Sometimes, as a result of special rivalry among the young
+women, one village will affect gaudier embroidery and more of it than
+its neighbours. This could be seen now at one corner of the crowd where
+a group of peasants, all from the same place, defined itself by the
+flaming red on the upper part of their sleeves. There were women, too,
+in the crowd, the girls in wreaths of artificial flowers and all of them
+in ribbons and coral beads, though some of them were barefoot.
+
+A strong smell of primitive toil emanated from their bodies; primitive
+ideas and primitive interests looked out of their eyes. The northern
+moujik--the Great, or "real," Russian--who speaks the language of
+Turgeneff and Tolstoy, has less poetry than the Little-Russian, but he
+also has less cunning and more abandon. To be sure, the cunning of the
+Zorki peasant is as primitive as his whole mind. Very few men in the
+crowd now standing in front of the bailiff's office could have managed
+to add such two numbers as six and nineteen, or to subtract the weight
+of an empty pail from the weight of a pail of honey. Their book-keeping
+consists of notches on the door-jamb, and their armour in the battle of
+life is a cast-iron distrustfulness.
+
+At last the bailiff made his appearance, adjusted the straps of his
+sword across his breast, and asked what they wanted. A tall old fellow
+with a drooping steel-grey moustache came out of the crowd, hat in hand,
+and bowed deeply, as he said:
+
+"It's like this, your nobleness. We wish to know when that paper from
+the Czar about the Jews will be read to us?"
+
+"What paper from the Czar?" the bailiff asked. "What are you talking
+about?" He was a dry-boned man, but ruddy-faced and with very narrow
+almond-shaped eyes. As he now looked at the crowd through the sharp
+afternoon glare his eyes glistened like two tiny strips of burnished
+metal.
+
+"Your nobleness need not be told what paper. It's about beating the Jews
+and taking away their goods."
+
+The scene was being watched by several Jews, plucky fellows who had come
+in the interests of their people at the risk of being the first victims
+of mob fury. Among these was Yossl, Makar's father, at once the most
+intellectual and strongest looking man in the delegation. In the
+meantime the other Jews, stupefied and sick with fear, had closed their
+shops and dwellings and were hiding in cellars and in garrets, in the
+ruins of an old church and in the woods. Two women gave birth to
+stillborn children during the commotion, one of these at the bedside of
+her little boy who was too sick to be moved.
+
+"You are a fool," the bailiff said to the spokesman, with a smile, as he
+raised his narrow eyes in quest of some Gentile with whom he might share
+the fun. "You are a lot of fools. Better go home. There is no such paper
+in the world. Whoever told you there was?"
+
+"Why, everybody says so. In most places they finished the job long ago.
+Only we are a lot of slow coaches, people say. And then, when the higher
+authorities find out about it, who will be fined or put in jail? We,
+poor peasants. As if we did not have troubles enough as it is."
+
+"What will you be put in jail for?" asked the bailiff, chuckling to
+himself.
+
+Here a younger peasant whispered in the spokesman's ear not to let
+himself be bamboozled.
+
+Speaking with unwonted boldness, born of the conviction that the bailiff
+was suppressing a document of the Czar, the tall fellow said:
+
+"You can't fool us, your nobleness. We are only peasants, but what we
+know we know." And he went on to enumerate villages where, according to
+rumour, the paper had already been read and acted upon. "Although
+uneducated, yet we are not such fools as your nobleness takes us for. If
+it is a ukase direct from the Czar we aren't going to take chances, sir.
+Not we, sir. Better read it to us and let's be done with it. We have no
+time to waste, sir."
+
+One of the Jews was going to make a suggestion, but he was shouted down
+and waved aside.
+
+The bailiff made a gesture of amused despair and turned to go back, when
+the peasants stepped forward, and chattering excitedly, they gave him
+to understand that they would not let him go until he had shown them the
+imperial ukase. The purport of their remonstrance was to the effect that
+the Jews had bribed him to suppress the document. The bailiff took it
+all good-naturedly. In his heart of hearts he was looking forward to the
+sport of an anti-Jewish outbreak with delight; but the noise brought the
+local priest upon the scene--a kindly elderly man with the face of a
+whimpering peasant girl. He was a victim of official injustice himself
+and he implored the crowd to listen to reason. His face, at once comic
+and piteous, was the main cause of his failures. He was a well-educated
+priest, yet he was kept in this obscure town. His sacerdotal locks,
+meant to be long and silken, hung in stiff, wretched little clumps.
+Nevertheless, as he now stood in his purple broad-sleeved gown,
+appealing to the multitude of white figures, his cross sparkling in the
+sun, the spectacle was like a scene of the early days of Christianity.
+
+"It is a great sin to circulate wicked falsehoods like that and it is
+just as much of a sin to credit them," he said in a pained heartfelt
+voice. "Ours is a good Czar. He does not command his children to do
+violence to human beings."
+
+"Oh, well, little father," one peasant broke in. "You don't seem to have
+heard of it. That's all. If the Czar has not ordered it, then why do
+they beat the Jews everywhere else and the police and soldiers stand by
+and see to it that they do the work well?"
+
+The bailiff burst into a horse-laugh and slapped his knees violently.
+The priest's face bore a look of despair.
+
+"Can it be that you believe such foolishness?" he said.
+
+"What do we know? We are only common people. All we do know is that
+whatever happens it is our skin that is peeled off. If we can't get the
+paper we'll do our duty without it."
+
+"That's it, without it!" the others chimed in in excited chorus.
+
+Further parleying made it clear that many of them had no inclination to
+do any personal harm to the Jews or to their property. They were on
+friendly terms with their Jewish neighbours, and all they wanted was to
+get rid of a disagreeable duty. The rest, about half of the entire
+crowd, had had their heads turned with stories of lakes of vodka and
+fabulous piles of loot, but even these proved susceptible to argument.
+
+"Here," Yossl shouted at the top of his voice and with great fervour. "I
+have a scheme, and what will you lose by it if you hear me out? If you
+don't like it, I'll take it back and it won't cost you a cent." The
+intensity of his manner took them by storm. He was allowed to finish.
+"My scheme amounts to this: The Jews will sign a paper taking upon
+themselves all responsibility for your failure to smash their shops and
+houses, so that if the authorities call you to account for violating the
+imperial ukase, we will answer and you will come out clear."
+
+First there was perplexed stillness, then a murmur of distrust, and
+finally a tumult of rejection.
+
+"Crafty Jew! There must be some trick in it!" they yelled sneeringly.
+
+The priest was wiping the perspiration from his forehead. Finally he
+shouted huskily:
+
+"Very well, I'll sign such a paper."
+
+After some more arguing, the plan, in its amended form, was adopted. The
+older men flaunted their experience by insisting upon a formal
+"certificate" bearing the priest's official seal and signature, so that
+when the Czar's inspectors arrived the peasants might have something
+tangible to present. When all this had been complied with, there was
+some portentous talk about the Jews sprinkling the bargain with vodka;
+but having followed the "little father's" advice in the main point the
+peasants were now in a yielding mood toward him generally, and the vodka
+shops being closed, he had no difficulty in getting them to go home
+sober.
+
+A large number of them had to cross the river. To occupy their minds
+while they were waiting for the ferry--a small antediluvian affair which
+could only accommodate about one-fifth of the crowd at a time--the
+priest asked them for a song. And then the quiet evening air resounded
+with those pensive, soulful strains which for depth of melancholy have
+scarcely an equal in the entire range of folk-music. Thus the men who
+might now have been frenzied with the work of pillage, devastation and,
+perhaps, murder, stood transfixed with the poetry of anguish and pity.
+Race distinctions and ukases--how alien and unintelligible these things
+were to the world in which their souls dwelt at this minute! The glint
+of the water grew darker every second. The men on the ferry continued
+their singing. Then somebody on the other side joined in and the melody
+spread in all directions. The fresh ringing treble of a peasant girl,
+peculiarly doleful in its high notes, came from across the water. A
+choir of invisible choirs, scattered along both banks, sang to the night
+of the sadness of human existence.
+
+The Jews returned from their hiding-places, but very few of them went to
+bed that night. The tragedy in many houses was intensified by the
+circumstance that the heads of these families were absent from the town,
+having gone to the Good Jew for prayer and advice as to the spreading
+calamity. Weinstein's spacious rooms were full of neighbours and their
+families. The presence of the man whom one had been accustomed to regard
+as a monument of worldly power had a special attraction for the poorer
+Pietists this evening. Besides, one dreaded the hallucinations of
+solitude and in Weinstein's house one was sure to find company. Most of
+them sat in the large prayer room, keeping close to each other,
+conversing in subdued, melancholy voices, comfortable in the community
+of their woe, as though content to remain in this huddle until the end
+of time. Yossl was curling his black side-locks morosely. The other
+people in the room importuned him for details of the scene in front of
+the bailiff's office, but he was not in the mood for speaking. Weinstein
+was snapping his fingers at his own florid neck, as he walked backward
+and forward. Presently Maria, his Gentile servant, who spoke good
+Yiddish, addressed him, with sad, sympathetic mien:
+
+"Master dear," she said in Yiddish. "Will you let me break a couple of
+windows?"
+
+He did not understand.
+
+"You see," she explained bursting into tears. "If they get at me because
+I did not smash things in your house, I'll be able to swear that I did."
+For an instant he stood surveying her, then, in a spasm of rage and
+misery, he shrieked out:
+
+"Why, certainly! Go ahead! Break, smash, everything you set your eye on.
+You are the princess, we are only Jews. Go smash the whole house." And
+in his frenzy he went breaking windows and chairs, shrieking as he did
+so:
+
+"Here! Look and let your heart rejoice."
+
+"Madman," Yossl said calmly, "you'll alarm the town. They'll think it's
+a riot and the Gentiles will join in."
+
+Weinstein sat down pale and panting. "Go and tell your people to come
+and delight in the sight of a Jew's broken windows," he said to the
+Gentile woman.
+
+She put her hands to her face and left the room sobbing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+THE DEFENCE COMMITTEE.
+
+
+The little man who played the part of errand boy at the cheese shop and
+who was arrested before the work on the mine was well advanced had
+ultimately turned state's evidence. Among the revolutionists he betrayed
+was Pavel, but the prince was known to him under a false name. Still,
+the information furnished by his man, added to some addresses found on
+other captured Nihilists, led to a series of new arrests. The ranks of
+the Will of the People were being rapidly decimated. Grisha, the
+dynamiter, and several other members of the innermost circle were seized
+shortly after the killing of the Czar. The few surviving leaders
+withdrew to the provinces, in some cases only immediately to fall into
+the hands of the police there. Thus in April, after a Jewish student
+girl was arrested in Kieff, the "trap" at her lodgings caught a woman
+and a man who proved to be Baska, the "wife" of the "cheesemonger"
+couple, and her real husband, "the German." Urie (the "cheesemonger"),
+Makar and several other active revolutionists were in Moscow.
+
+One late afternoon Clara was slowly pacing the painted floor of her
+room, her hands clasped behind her, while her lover lay on the lounge,
+watching her through the gathering dusk.
+
+"St. Petersburg is too hot now," he said, breaking a long silence.
+"Everybody is going away."
+
+"There is really no use staying here just at present," she assented,
+sadly, without pausing.
+
+They grew silent again. The gloom of the little parlour was thickening
+so rapidly that it seemed as though the outline of Clara's face, as she
+walked back and forth, became vaguer every time she turned in Pavel's
+direction.
+
+Presently, with a burst of amorous tenderness, he got up, saying:
+
+"Clanya! Let us go for a rest somewhere. You know you need it."
+
+"You need it even more than I do, poor boy," she replied, stepping up
+close to him. "I do wish you would go home for a month or two--or
+somewhere else. As to myself, I should first like to see my parents. The
+riots may strike Miroslav at any moment. If any harm came to them, I
+should never forgive myself. I must get them away from there. That's all
+I can think of." There was an obvious blank in her words. She left
+something unsaid, and the consciousness of it made him uncomfortable.
+
+"But that's easily arranged," he urged. "You can send them money and
+invite them to some safe place."
+
+"That's what I have been thinking of. I am so restless I wish I could
+start to-morrow. It couldn't be arranged too soon. There are persistent
+rumors that a riot is coming there. I shan't be gone long, dearest."
+
+He had it at the tip of his tongue to force a discussion of their
+party's attitude toward the riots and to have it out once for all. In
+his imagined debates with her on the subject he had often exclaimed: "I
+happen to belong to a class of land-robbers and profligates; now,
+suppose the revolution breaks out and my class is attacked by the
+people, will that affect me? A nice revolutionist I should be if it
+did!" This and other arguments were all ready; what he lacked, however,
+was the courage to bring up the topic. As to her promise to marry him
+when the great conspiracy was out of the way, her redeeming it now,
+while she was so tremulously absorbed in the question of her parents'
+safety, could not be thought of.
+
+He gathered her to him and kissed her, at once sympathetically and
+appealingly.
+
+"Go home, Pasha," she besought. "But not to Miroslav. You won't rest
+there. Go to some of your mother's country places, or, perhaps some
+other place would be safer for you. Go and take good care of yourself.
+It would be too terrible if I found you arrested when I got back."
+
+"Will you marry me then?" he asked, impersonating a pampered child.
+
+She nodded, in the same playful spirit, and again her reticence brought
+disquiet to his heart. "Something tells me she'll never be mine," he
+thought with a sigh.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While the government was actively fomenting the riots, making an
+electric rod of the Jews, the Nihilists persisted in mistaking them for
+revolutionary kindling wood. While the "Chronicle of Arrests" in the
+revolutionary organ included a large number of Jewish names, several of
+them of persons conspicuous in the movement and noted for their pluck,
+another page of the same issue contained a letter from the riot-ridden
+district that was strongly flavoured with anti-Semitism. Moreover, a
+proclamation, addressed to the peasantry, was printed on an
+"underground" press, naming the Czar, the landlords and the Jews as
+enemies of the people. This proclamation met with a storm of
+disapproval, however, on the part of Gentiles and Jews alike, and was
+withdrawn from circulation. Chaos reigned in the minds of the Nihilists.
+Their party was disorganised, their thinkers for the most part buried,
+dead or alive, the editorial management of their publications in the
+hands of the weakest man on the Executive Committee, of one who several
+years later sent, from Paris, a most servile petition to the Czar,
+abjuring his former views and begging permission to return home as an
+advocate of unqualified absolutism and panslavism.
+
+The attitude of the Nihilists toward the Jewish population in general
+was thus anything but sympathetic; and yet, so far as the higher strata
+of the movement were concerned, the personal relations between Jew and
+Gentile were not affected by this circumstance in the slightest degree.
+The feeling of intimate comradeship and mutual devotion between the two
+elements was left unmarred, as if one's views on the Jewish question
+were purely a matter of abstract reasoning without any bearing on the
+Jew of flesh and blood one happened to know.
+
+More than this, in their blind theorising according to preconceived
+formulas, most of the active Jewish Nihilists shut their eyes to the
+actual state of things and joined their Gentile comrades in applauding
+the riots as an encouraging sign of the times, as "a popular
+revolutionary protest."
+
+Pavel longed to discuss the riots with Makar. When he saw him, however,
+he found him far more interested in the "new revolutionary program" upon
+which he was engaged than in the anti-Semitic crusade.
+
+"As if it was the first time Jewish blood had been shed," he said,
+answering a question from Pavel, half-heartedly. "The entire history of
+the Jews is one continuous riot. Indeed, the present outbreaks are a
+mere flea-bite to what they have undergone before. So, what has
+happened to make one revise one's views on the movement? One might as
+well stay away from the _Will of the People_ because, forsooth, Jews
+were burned by Gentiles in the 15th century. Nonsense."
+
+"Clara doesn't seem to take it quite so easy," Pavel thought to himself.
+
+"Clara has gone to meet her parents," he said, thirsting to talk of her.
+
+"Has she? There may be a riot in Miroslav at any time. I wonder how
+Zorki is getting along. But then my father will be able to take care of
+himself,--and of Miriam, too," he added, lukewarmly. The only thing of
+which he could have spoken with enthusiasm in these days was his
+program.
+
+Pavel came away hankering for more conversation about his fiancee and
+about the riots. Instead of seeking rest and safety, as he had promised
+Clara to do, he coveted a new sort of excitement and danger. He felt
+that there was something wrong about that crusade, and he had a
+sportsmanlike craving to see it for himself. Lacking the courage to
+criticise his party, he accused himself of allowing his revolutionary
+convictions to be affected by the interests of his love; yet he
+continued to pray in his heart that the Jews of Miroslav, at least,
+might be spared. He read all he found in the newspapers about the
+atrocities, and on taking up a paper he would tremble lest it should
+contain news of a riot in his birthplace.
+
+When he read of the Miroslav panic he went there at once.
+
+"If it's really a riot she'll never come back to me," he brooded,
+wretchedly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The rumours of an impending catastrophe were assuming definite outline
+in Miroslav. A date was mentioned and tall Great-Russians in red
+shirts--specialists at the business--were said to have been seen about
+town. Great-Russia is and has always been strictly without the pale of
+Jewish settlement, it being one of the characteristic features of the
+anti-Semitic riots of the period that their leaders were imported from
+the rabble in those districts in which very few people had an idea what
+a Jew looked like.
+
+The Jews of Miroslav sent a snug bribe to Pavel's uncle, but their agent
+came back with the money. The governor had commissioned him to assure
+them that everything would be done to make an outbreak impossible, but
+"gratitude" he would not accept. The Jews took alarm. "If he doesn't eat
+honey," they said, in the phrase of a current proverb, "then it looks
+bad indeed." When a deputation of representative men called on him he
+lost his temper.
+
+"You Jews are too intense, that's what's the trouble with you," he said,
+blinking his eyes. "I have let you know twice that there is no cause for
+alarm, yet it seems that it is not enough for you." When he had softened
+down he talked quite at length, although in a haughty tone of authority
+and immeasurable aloofness, of the steps he had taken. The main point
+was that the Jews should not tempt people to lawlessness by betraying
+anxiety. He delivered quite a lecture on the point. The deputation came
+away greatly encouraged. They knew of the extensive business relations
+which the managers of his estates had with Jewish merchants, and they
+argued, among themselves, that a riot, involving as it usually did the
+wholesale destruction of Jewish property and a general demoralisation of
+business, could not but entail serious financial losses upon himself.
+This was in keeping with declarations made by the boards of trade at
+Moscow, Warsaw and Kharkoff, the three chief centres of Russian
+commerce, regarding the anti-Jewish crusade. These bodies had pointed
+out the importance of the Jews of the south as the prime movers of local
+industry, as almost the exclusive connecting link between the south of
+Russia and the world markets of Germany and England; accordingly, they
+had protested against the anti-Semitic campaign as a source of ruin to
+the economic interests of the whole empire. All this the members of the
+deputation were aware of, so they saw no reason to doubt the sincerity
+of the governor's pledges. His advice not to put the thought of a riot
+in the popular mind by a demonstration of timidity produced a strong
+impression.
+
+The upshot was that the Jews of Miroslav were afraid to be afraid. A
+singular mood took hold of them. Everybody made an effort to act upon
+the presumption that Miroslav was immune, that it was in an exceptional
+position, and at the same time everyone read suspense and mortal fear in
+the eyes of everyone else. It was like walking in one's stocking feet
+with a spectacular effect of making a noise. Jewish women still avoided
+the proximity of Christian men, and a Jewish face that did not look
+Jewish was still eyed enviously as a shield against violence. The only
+tangible manifestation of the spirit advocated by the governor was a
+slight lengthening of business hours. Since the beginning of the panic
+Jewish tradesmen had been closing their shops before it was quite
+dark--three or four hours earlier than usual. Now they compromised on
+keeping them open until the street lamps were lit. Nevertheless those of
+them who depended on Christian trade continued to treat their customers
+with a gentleness and a fawning attention that had nothing to do with
+the ordinary blandishments of the counter. Inveterate rogues among
+Jewish tradesmen became honest men. On the other hand a most respectable
+Gentile often yielded to temptation that amounted to downright robbery,
+while the license of "shady Christian characters" was asserting itself
+more portentously every day.
+
+A queer story came from one of the suburbs. When three Gentiles wearing
+red shirts entered an out-of-the-way house to inquire the road, their
+appearance frightened the two Jewish women they found there out of the
+place, whereupon one of these, in a frenzy of terror, jumped into a well
+and was drowned. Meanwhile the three strangers, finding themselves
+alone, stripped the house of its valuables--a finale which struck the
+fancy of a notorious thief and his gang, who then put on red shirts and
+made a practice of plundering Jewish houses after scaring away their
+occupants. The thief was known as Petroucha Sivoucha, which, foregoing
+the rhyme, may be rendered as Cheap Vodka Pete. When he was arrested at
+last he said, impersonating a simple-minded peasant:
+
+"But it was only Jewish stuff and everybody says a Gentile is welcome to
+it nowadays, that such is the will of our little father, the Czar."
+
+The riots continued to spread, and while they did, General Ignatyeff,
+the new Minister of the Interior, announced measure after measure
+against the Jews. In a country where every official is perpetually
+craning his neck toward the capital, it was only natural that an
+attitude like this on the part of the Minister of the Interior should
+create an atmosphere of anti-Semitic partiality amid which justice to
+the Jew became impossible. Ignatyeff knew of the widespread rumour as to
+the existence of an imperial ukase ordering the peasantry to plunder
+and commit violence upon the Jews. Apart from his official sources of
+information, the newspapers were full of instances showing the effect of
+that rumour, yet he did nothing to stop it or to disabuse the minds of
+the peasantry in that connection. This was interpreted by the officials
+as a sign that the rumour was not meant to be stopped, and it was not.
+
+Governor Boulatoff's encouraging answers to the Jews of his province
+brought to Miroslav hundreds of people from other towns. Some of these
+were victims of former atrocities, left without shelter in their native
+places; others had not yet been through an anti-Semitic outbreak, but
+dreaded one.
+
+While people from other provinces were flocking to Miroslav in quest of
+safety the leading Miroslav families were quietly sending their wives
+and children abroad and taking their valuables to the government bank.
+The offices of Dr. Lipnitzky and of Sender the Arbitrator, Vladimir's
+father, were visited by scores of panic-stricken people daily.
+
+"The rich people put their money and their plate in the bank," said a
+teamster's wife to Vladimir and his father, "but what shall we do with
+our traps?"
+
+"Don't worry, my dear woman, there will be no riot in Miroslav," the
+Arbitrator reassured her.
+
+"It's all very well to say don't worry," the woman retorted sharply.
+"You people can afford to say it, because your house is safe. But if
+they kill my husband's horse and destroy his truck, we'll have to go
+begging. It did not come easy, I can assure you." She burst into tears.
+"The years that it has taken to save it all up, the pinching, the
+scrimping--all in order that a thousand ghosts might have something to
+grab. And what are we going to do with ourselves? Where shall we hide?
+As to my husband and myself, well, all they can do is to kill us, but
+how about the children?" And again she burst into sobs.
+
+When an old woman who had two unmarried daughters, "both as handsome as
+a tree," described her despair concerning them, Vladimir's mother
+invited the girls to stay with her until the storm was over. And then
+scores of other mothers begged her, with heart-breaking lamentations and
+kisses, to take pity on their daughters also; which she could not do for
+sheer lack of room.
+
+The Vigdoroffs felt reasonably safe because Rasgadayeff, their Gentile
+landlord and friend, was sure to keep the marauders away. Indeed, the
+example of all previous outbreaks had shown that in most cases it was
+enough for any Gentile to tell the rioters that he was the proprietor of
+the house and that there were no Jews on his premises for them to pass
+cordially on, and Rasgadayeff was one of the conspicuous and popular
+figures in the Gentile community of the town. It is true that he was
+looking forward to an anti-Semitic upheaval with joy himself, but his
+liking for the Vigdoroffs was sincere.
+
+Vladimir's father went about among his depositors asking to be relieved
+of their money, jewelry or silver spoons. They refused to accept it.
+Finally he moved his iron safe to Rasgadayeff's apartment.
+
+Vladimir was in despair. He felt it quite likely that the panic should
+be father to a catastrophe, as the governor had said. Once when he spoke
+in this strain at his father's table, his mother remarked with light
+irony:
+
+"Look at the brave man. Look at the Cossack of straw."
+
+The retort struck cruelly home. He knew that his heart grew faint every
+time the anti-Semitic mobs pictured themselves vividly in his brain,
+although often, indeed, he had a queer feeling as if it would be
+disappointing to see Miroslav left out of the list of towns that were
+sharing in the tragic notoriety of the year, and visioned himself going
+through the experiences of a most brutal outbreak without facing its
+dangers. The tragedy of his people filled his heart. He watched them in
+their terror, in their misery, in their clinging despairing love of
+their children; he studied their frightened look, their shrinking,
+tremulous attitudes. Every Jewish woman he met struck him as a hunted
+bird, on the alert for the faintest sound, trembling over the fate of
+her nest. He saw many of them packing their things to flee, they did not
+know whither. Indeed, the whole historical life of his race seemed to
+have been spent in packing, in moving, in fleeing without knowing
+whither. "Oh, my poor, my unhappy people!" Vladimir said to himself, in
+a spasm of agony, yet with a glow of pleasure in calling them his
+people. In his heart of hearts he knew that while he told everybody to
+take courage his own mind was barren of conviction as to what was the
+best thing to do. He felt crushed. He lost his head.
+
+One day, as Vladimir walked along the street, his attention was arrested
+by a rough-looking young man who was circling round him, and
+scrutinising him now on this side, now on that. He felt annoyed. He was
+not sure that the young man was a Jew, and as he asked him sternly,
+"What are you looking at?" he was conscious of a little qualm of
+timidity.
+
+"Excuse me, sir," the other answered, in Yiddish. "I saw you at the
+synagogue that Friday night. Do you remember?"
+
+They paused. The young man had the manner of a Jewish horse-driver or
+blacksmith. He was robust and broad-shouldered with small very sparse
+teeth, somewhat bow-legged and somewhat cross-eyed. His coat was
+literally in tatters and gave off a strong smell of herring.
+
+"Well?" asked Vladimir.
+
+"I have been wanting to see you, sir, only I have been too bashful." He
+gave a smile, his tongue showing between his sparse teeth.
+
+Vigdoroff rather liked his manner and invited him to his father's house.
+On their way thither the young man said that his name was Zelig and that
+he was a cooper by trade, making a specialty of herring barrels. When
+they found themselves alone in Vladimir's room, Zelig grew still more
+bashful, and after surveying the room, to make sure that they were not
+overheard, he said:
+
+"I want to belong to the committee."
+
+"What committee?"
+
+"You need not be on the lookout with me, sir; I am no babbler."
+
+It appeared that there was a defence committee in town, with educated
+young men at the head, and that in case of a riot it was expected to
+fight "to the last drop of a fellow's blood," as Zelig phrased it. That
+there should be such a thing in Miroslav without him being so much as
+aware of its existence hurt Vladimir keenly.
+
+"I don't know anything about it," he said, blankly.
+
+"Don't you really?" said Zelig. "I was sure you were in it and that you
+could get me in, too. Why, everybody knows about it. Only the committee
+is strict, because if the police hears of it, they'll all be arrested.
+It's against the law." As he offered him more detail of the matter he
+became patronisingly enthusiastic and confided to him the names of Elkin
+and of several university students now on their vacation as the
+organisers and leaders of the movement. Vladimir knew these young men
+and his pain became sharper still.
+
+"But what good will it do?" he said, drily. "It will only lead to
+trouble."
+
+"Trouble! The idea of an educated man speaking like that! Can there be
+more trouble than the Jews are in now? I don't see why we should sell
+ourselves so cheap. Once we are going to be licked, why act like a lot
+of sticks? Let us pay them for their bother at least. Come what may,
+when they attack us, let us go to work and crack their skulls at
+least--with lumps of iron, clubs or even pistols. Let us fondle them so
+that a ghost may get into every bone of theirs." His words were
+accompanied with mighty swings of his shoulders and arms and these
+gesticulations of his had a peculiar effect on Vladimir. They stirred
+his blood, they hypnotised him. "What is the danger? They'll kill us?
+Let them. As if the life of a Jew were worth living! Besides, aren't
+they killing and maiming us anyhow?"
+
+"But look here," Vigdoroff said seriously. "The governor has promised us
+protection and he is perfectly sincere about it. Now if he learns that
+our people take the law in their own hands, it may do us great harm. It
+is a very serious matter."
+
+"Spit upon him, sir! I'm an uneducated man, but the governor--a ghost
+into his father's father!--may all he wishes the Jews befall his own
+head."
+
+"That's all true enough, but now he has promised us protection, and an
+organisation of that kind is against the law and may lead to trouble,"
+Vigdoroff said with perfunctory irritation.
+
+"And an organisation of rioters is not against the law? And robbing and
+killing innocent people is not against the law? Long life to you, sir;
+you're so wise, so educated and yet you are speaking like a baby. Look
+here, sir! If the governor--a plague take him--is as good as his word,
+and he does not allow the riot to get started, well and good. Then we'll
+call the bargain off. But suppose he proves to be neither better nor
+worse than all governors?"
+
+Zelig knew of a number of other Jewish artisans who were anxious to join
+the "committee," and he urged Vigdoroff to visit their gathering and to
+give them a talk like the one Zelig had heard from him at the Synagogue
+on that Friday night. "Oh, that was sweet as sugar," he said, kissing
+two of his dirty fingers. "You see, when it comes to striking a
+scoundrel's snout such a blow as will set his eyes raining sparks, we
+want no help. That we can manage ourselves, but we are only common
+people, and when a smart man like you says a couple of words, they
+simply go melting in a fellow's bones."
+
+"But I don't know anything about the 'committee.'"
+
+Zelig laughed familiarly. "Sender-the-Arbitrator's son doesn't know! If
+you only had the desire, you could belong to it yourself and introduce
+us fellows, too."
+
+"Very well. I'll consider it. And I should advise you men to do the
+same."
+
+"Consider it! We are only plain uneducated people, but we aren't going
+to do any considering. I have a sister, sir, and if a Gentile lays a
+finger on her he'll be a dead man, I can tell you that. Jewish blood is
+being spilled by the bucket and here you are talking of 'considering.'"
+He insisted that Vladimir should attend the meeting of his informal
+society, and Vladimir, completely in his power, promised to do so.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening, in a spacious barn, half of which was crowded with barrels
+of herring, Vladimir found Zelig and some fifteen chums of his. Zelig
+was playing with a huge iron key. He was employed here and the meeting
+was held by his employer's permission. For more than nine persons to
+assemble without a police permit is a crime; so it gave Vigdoroff
+satisfaction to reflect that he was now incurring risks similar to those
+incurred by Clara and her friends. The gathering seemed to be made up of
+mechanics and labourers exclusively. One of the men present was the
+sneering fellow whom Vigdoroff had seen at the synagogue. Of the others
+Vladimir's attention was attracted by two big burly young butchers with
+dried-up blood about their finger-nails, a chimney-sweep, who looked
+like a jet-black negro, with white teeth and red lips, and three men
+with medals from the late war which they apparently expected to act as
+an amulet against Gentile rowdies. The chimney-sweep sat apart, cracking
+sunflower seeds. Now and again he made as though to throw his sooty arms
+round somebody's neck and then burst into laughter over his own joke.
+All the others looked grave. They showed Vigdoroff much respect and
+attention. Even the sneering man made a favourable impression on him
+to-night. Only he himself was so ill at ease he could scarcely take part
+in the conversation. Other men came. When one of these proved to be
+Motl, the trunk-maker in his aunt's employ, Vigdoroff felt somewhat more
+at home.
+
+One of the retired soldiers took to bragging of the courage he and his
+two comrades had shown at the taking of Plevna, and when one of the
+other two signed to him to stop boasting, he said, with a blush:
+
+"I am saying all this because--because--what good did it do us? Does the
+Czar pat us on the head for it? We risked our lives and many of our
+people died under Plevna, and yet if we tried to settle in Great-Russia
+we would be kicked out neck and crop, wouldn't we?"
+
+"Indeed we would, war record, medal and all," one of the other two
+chimed in.
+
+"And why? Because we are Jews. We were not chased home from the firing
+line because we were Jews, were we?"
+
+"Talk of Great-Russia," somebody put in. "As if in a place like Miroslav
+we were allowed to live in peace."
+
+Another man assented with a sigh, adding: "If a thousandth part of the
+courage shown by the Jews in the war was shown in our self-defence
+against Gentiles, the Gentiles would have more respect for us."
+
+The conversation turned on the subject of pistols, but the proposition
+was overruled.
+
+"Before we get pistols and learn to use them we'll be asleep under a
+quilt of earth," said Zelig. "Why, what ails my cooper's hatchet, or a
+hammer, or a plain crowbar?"
+
+Every time Vigdoroff opened his mouth the faces of the others would
+become tense with expectation. But he had nothing to say except to ask
+an occasional question, and every time Zelig, playing with his enormous
+iron key, pressed him for a speech, he would adjure him, in a flutter of
+embarrassment, to let it go this time.
+
+They talked of the prospective fight in phrases like "forwarding a
+remittance to one's snout" or "pulling up sharp under a fellow's
+peeper," which amused and jarred on him at once. For the rest, there was
+a remarkable flow of common sense, humour and feeling. The gathering
+cast a spell over him. He had come with the partial intention of
+speaking against their scheme, yet now he felt that he could much more
+readily face a gang of armed Gentiles than betray a faint heart to
+these Jewish artisans. Moreover--and this was the great point with him
+at the present moment--he felt that with these men by his side he could
+fling himself into the very thick of the hottest fight. A peculiar sense
+of solemnity and of gratification came over him. He followed their talk
+reverentially. He humbly offered to call on one of the leaders of the
+Defence Committee and to apply for the admission of this group with
+himself as one of its members.
+
+His first dawn of consciousness as he opened his eyes next morning was
+of something exceedingly important and solemn which somehow had the
+flavour of herring. The active participation of a man like Elkin in the
+work of the Defence Committee was a source of disappointment to him. He
+usually kept out of Elkin's way, as much for his venomous pleasantry as
+for his revolutionary affiliations which he divined from his friendship
+with Clara. He wondered whether he meant to give the affair a
+revolutionary character. "He must have warned the other members against
+me as a silk stocking and a coward," Vigdoroff said to himself bitterly.
+"That's probably the way Clara describes me."
+
+The next morning he was surprised by a visit from Elkin himself. The
+revolutionist frowned as he spoke, but this was clearly a disguise for
+his embarrassment.
+
+"Look here, Vigdoroff," he said. "There has not been much love lost
+between you and me, but that's foolish--at a time like this anyhow. We
+must all work together. We are all Jews. I understand you have organised
+a number of good fellows. Let them join the others."
+
+Vigdoroff's heart beat fast, with emotion as well as with a sense of
+flattered pride. He would never have expected Elkin capable of such
+soulful talk. Moreover his speaking of himself as a Jew seemed to imply
+that he had abandoned Nihilism. "So we 'cowards' were not so very wrong
+after all," he thought to himself triumphantly.
+
+"In the first place," he answered, "it wasn't I who organised them. It
+was just the other way, in fact."
+
+"Well, anyhow, let them join the rest."
+
+"Of course we will. Only look here, Elkin. You have been frank with
+me----"
+
+"I know what you mean, but you need not worry. I won't get you in
+trouble," Elkin replied with his usual venom in his lozenge-shaped
+sneer. And then, kindly: "It is not as a Russian revolutionist that I
+have gone into this thing. I am one, as much as ever; I have not changed
+my views a bit, in fact. But that's another matter. All I want to say is
+that in this thing I am as a Jew, as a child of our unhappy, outraged,
+mud-bespattered people."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+THE NIHILISTS' GUARD.
+
+
+Pavel's mother, the countess, had not been in Miroslav since March. She
+lived in retirement on one of her estates in another province, in a
+constant tremour of fear and compunction. The image of Alexander II.
+bleeding in the snow literally haunted her. She took it for granted that
+Pavel had had a hand in the bloody plot, and she felt as though she,
+too, had been a party to it.
+
+To ascertain the situation with regard to the riot rumours Pavel called
+on his uncle, the governor. He found him dozing on a bench in his
+orchard, a stout cane in one hand and a French newspaper in the other.
+The old satrap was dressed in a fresh summer suit of Caucasian silk,
+which somehow emphasised the uncouth fleshiness of his broad nose. He
+was overjoyed to see his nephew, and he plunged into the subject of the
+riots at once and of his own accord. It was evidently one of those
+situations upon which he usually had to unburden his mind to somebody.
+
+"Can you tell me what they are up to in that great city of yours?" he
+said, referring to St. Petersburg and the higher government circles and
+blinking as he spoke. "There is an administration for you! Perhaps you
+younger fellows are smarter than we oldsters. Perhaps, perhaps." He took
+out a golden cigarette case, lit a cigarette and went on blinking,
+sneeringly.
+
+His words implied that Pavel, being one of the younger generation, was,
+morally at least, identified with the administration of the young Czar.
+
+"What do you mean, uncle?" he inquired.
+
+"What do I mean? Why, I mean that they don't want those riots stopped.
+That's plain enough, isn't it?"
+
+This was a slap at the doctrine of Pavel's party concerning the
+outrages, and he resented it as well as he could.
+
+"But you have no evidence for such an accusation, uncle," he said.
+"That's a mere theory of yours."
+
+"I knew you would stick up for your generation. Ha, ha, ha! Quite
+commendable in a young chap, too. Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"But where is your evidence?"
+
+"You want to know too much, Pasha. Too young for that. If they wanted
+the riots stopped, it would be a case of one, two, three, and there she
+goes! That's as much as I can tell you, and if you are really clever you
+can understand the rest yourself."
+
+"He is in league with his fellow fleecers, the Jewish usurers," Pavel
+remarked inwardly. "He simply cannot afford an anti-Jewish
+demonstration, the old bribe-taker."
+
+"Neither can you," a voice retorted from Pavel's heart, "though for
+quite different reasons."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Prince Boulatoff called on Orlovsky, the government clerk in whose house
+the local revolutionists held their meetings. The first thing that
+struck him was Orlovsky's loss of girth.
+
+"Hello, Aliosha," he said heartily, meeting him at the gate.
+
+"Why, Pasha!" The clerk flung himself upon him, and they exchanged three
+prolonged kisses.
+
+"By Jove," Pavel went on, "you are so changed I came near letting you
+pass. Why, what has become of your bulk, old boy? Have you been ill?"
+
+"Not exactly," the other answered, leading the way indoors; then, as his
+face broke into an expression of wan joy, he added: "Been in love, devil
+wrench it. I take these things rather too hard, I suppose, but that's a
+small matter. How have you been? Climbing upward in the service of the
+revolution, aren't you?"
+
+The room was the same. The huge tin samovar stood on the floor.
+
+"Well, and how is your Circle? First-rate fellows all of them," Pavel
+said.
+
+"Yes, indeed. Only we miss Clara now more than ever."
+
+"Anything specially the matter?" Pavel asked, colouring slightly.
+
+"Well, it really used to be a splendid circle--in our humble way, that
+is--but those riots have had a bad effect on us, deuce take it. Remember
+Elkin? It was he who got us together, and now it's he who has brought
+discord into our ranks. He is organising people who want to go to
+America. This is his hobby now."
+
+"Why, have the riots knocked all his socialism out of him?" Pavel asked,
+grimly.
+
+"Oh, no," Orlovsky answered with something like dismay. "I wouldn't say
+that. It's as an organiser of communistic colonies that he is going to
+emigrate. Only he says the Jewish people have a more direct claim upon
+him than Russia."
+
+"There is a revolutionist for you!" Pavel roared, bitterly. "I never did
+attach much importance to that fellow. The sooner he goes the better.
+God speed him."
+
+"You're too hard on him, Pasha. He's a good fellow. If we had Clara here
+she would straighten it all out. We miss her very much. As a matter of
+fact, it was she--indeed, I don't see why I shouldn't tell it to you--it
+was she with whom I was in love."
+
+"Was it?" Pavel asked, colouring.
+
+He paused, in utter confusion, and resumed, without looking at him.
+"Well, you must excuse me, Aliosha, but I fear your frankness goes a bit
+too far. Such things are not meant to be published that way."
+
+"Why? Why? What a funny view you do take of it, Pasha! Suppose a
+fellow's heart is full and he meets an intimate old friend of his, is it
+an indiscretion on his part if he opens his mind to him?"
+
+"I certainly am a friend of yours, and a warm one, too, old boy," Pavel
+replied with a smile. "But still, things of that sort are usually kept
+to oneself."
+
+Several other members came in. The gigantic samovar, the improvised
+sugar bowl, a huge loaf of rye bread, some butter and a lamp made their
+appearance on the table. Elkin dropped in later in the evening. He and
+Pavel had not been conversing five minutes when they quarrelled.
+
+"What you are trying to do is to blend the unblendable--to mix socialism
+with Jewish chauvinism," Boulatoff said in an ill-concealed rage.
+
+"Am I?" the other retorted with one of the most virulent of his sneers.
+"Can socialism be mixed with the welfare of the Russian people
+only?--the welfare of the Russian people with a pailful or two of Jewish
+blood thrown in; in plainer language, socialism can only be mixed with
+anti-Semitism. Is that it?"
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" Pavel hissed. "There are other Jews in the movement,
+lots of them, and one does not hear that kind of stuff from them. They
+have not sickened of the bargain on account of the riots."
+
+"I don't know whom you mean. Perhaps some of them are still under the
+spell of the fact that a Gentile or two will speak to them or even call
+them by their first names."
+
+"Calm down, Elkin," the judge with the fluffy hair and the near-sighted
+eyes interposed. "Come, you won't say that of Clara, for instance?"
+
+"No, not of Clara. But, then, you have not yet heard from her. Sooner or
+later she, too, will open her eyes and come to the conclusion that it is
+wiser to be a socialist for her own people than for those who will
+slaughter and trample upon them. I am sure she will give it all up and
+join the emigration--sooner or later."
+
+"The devil she will," Pavel said quietly, but trembling with fury.
+
+"Yes, she will," Elkin jeered.
+
+Pavel felt like strangling him.
+
+"She is too good a revolutionist to sneak away from the battlefield,"
+snapped Ginsburg, the red-headed son of the usurer, without raising his
+eyes from the table. "Of course, America is a safer place to be a
+socialist in. There are no gendarmes there."
+
+Elkin chuckled. "You had better save your courage for the time the riot
+breaks out in this town," he said. "You know it is coming. It may burst
+out at any moment, and when it does we'll have a chance to see how a
+hero like you behaves himself when the 'revolutionary instincts of the
+people are aroused.'"
+
+"Very well, then, let him go back to the synagogue," Pavel shouted to
+the others, losing all his self-control. "But in that case, what's the
+sense of his hanging around a place like this?"
+
+"Oh, I see, you are afraid I'll send spies to this house, are you? Well,
+there is less danger of that than that you should take a hand in the
+slaughter of Jewish shoemakers, blacksmiths or water-bearers as a bit of
+practical 'equality and fraternity,' I can assure you. But then, after
+all, you may be right. Good-bye, comrades! Don't judge me hard."
+
+Tears stood in Orlovsky's eyes. He, the judge, and Mlle. Andronoff, the
+judge's fiancee, were for running after him, but the others stopped
+them.
+
+Left to themselves, the group of Nihilists began to discuss the coming
+outbreak. Everyone felt, in view of Elkin's charge, that whatever else
+was done, no effort should be spared to keep the mob from attacking the
+Jewish poor. Much was said about "directing the popular fury into
+revolutionary channels," and "setting the masses upon the government,"
+but most of those who said these things knew in their hearts that they
+might as well talk of directing the ocean into revolutionary channels or
+of setting a tornado upon the Russian government. Orlovsky alone took it
+seriously:
+
+"It begins to look something like, by Jove," he said beamingly. "We'll
+go out, and when the mob gets going, when the revolutionary fighting
+blood is up in them, we'll call out to them that Jewish usurers are not
+the only enemies of the toiling people; that the Czar is at the head of
+all the enemies of the nation. And then, by Jove, Miroslav may set the
+pace to all Russia. See if it doesn't."
+
+The son of the usurer called attention to the extreme smallness of their
+number, but he thought it enough to keep the mob from assaulting working
+people. He knew that his own relatives were all safe personally. As to
+his father's property, he said he would be glad if it was all destroyed
+by the "revolutionary conflagration," and he meant it.
+
+Pavel took no hand in the discussion. Instead, he was pacing to and fro
+mopingly.
+
+At last, after some more speeches, including one by the gawky
+seminarist, who came late and who disagreed with everybody else, it was
+decided that in case of a riot every Gentile member of the Circle should
+be out in the streets, "on picket duty," watching the mob, studying its
+mood and "doing everything possible to lend the disturbance a
+revolutionary character."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Eight Jewish women, including three little girls, were brought to the
+Jewish hospital of Miroslav from a neighbouring town, where they had
+been outraged in the course of an anti-Semitic outbreak. The little
+girls and the prettiest of the other five died soon after they arrived.
+The next day the Gentile district bubbled with obscenity. To be sure,
+there were expressions of horror and pity, too, but the bulk of the
+Christian population, including many an educated and tender-hearted
+woman, treated the matter as a joke. Where a Jew was concerned the moral
+and human point of view had become a reeling blur. The joke had an
+appalling effect. While the stories of pillaged shops kindled the
+popular fancy with the image of staved vodka barrels and pavements
+strewn with costly fabrics, the case of the eight Jewish women gave rise
+to a hideous epidemic of lust. There were thousands of Gentiles for whom
+it became no more possible to pass a pretty Jewish woman than to look
+into the display window of a Jewish shop without thinking of an
+anti-Semitic outbreak.
+
+The storm was gathering. The mutterings of an approaching riot were
+becoming louder and louder. Many Jewish shops were closed. Taverns
+serving as stations for stage lines were crowded with people begging to
+be taken away from the city before it was too late.
+
+The Defence Committee did not rest. The volunteers of the several Jewish
+districts were organised into so many sections, and a signal system was
+perfected by which the various sections were to communicate with each
+other. The raiders were sure to be drunk, it was argued, while the
+Defence Guard would be sober and acting according to a well-considered
+plan. The Guard was spoiling for a fight.
+
+The Nihilists "on picket duty" were strolling around the streets.
+
+Troops were held in readiness and placards had been posted forbidding
+people to assemble in the streets. Having ordered this, Governor
+Boulatoff announced himself ill and in need of a fortnight's leave of
+absence. When a delegation implored him to postpone the journey, he
+replied curtly that all had been done to insure order. He was in bad
+spirits and treated them with unusual rudeness.
+
+He left Miroslav in the morning. At about noontime of the same day the
+town was full of sinister rumours. One of these was about the poisoning
+of twelve Christian wells by Jews.
+
+A few yards off a retired government clerk, in dilapidated though
+carefully shined boots and with a red nose, stood in front of one of the
+governor's placards forbidding people to congregate in the streets, with
+a crowd of illiterate Gentiles about him.
+
+"'So by an All High ukase,'" he pretended to read, "'all people of the
+orthodox Christian faith are hereby ordered to attack the Jews, destroy
+their homes and shops, tear their pillows and drink their vodka and
+wine, take from them all they have plundered from Christians and
+administer a drubbing to them.'"
+
+As he proceeded he worked himself up to a tone of maudlin solemnity.
+
+"Aye, the day of reckoning hath come," he went on. "Let not a man of
+that unchristian tribe escape. Let the blood of Jesus and of his
+followers be avenged." Here, however, he spoiled it all by suddenly
+breaking off with a grin of inebriate roguishness.
+
+The revolutionary seminarist was watching this man philosophically.
+
+Similar scenes occurred in other neighbourhoods. When in one instance
+they had led to an attack upon a rabbinical looking old man who was left
+bleeding and unconscious on the pavement, the troops were ordered out.
+Then there was a scramble for rooms in Gentile hotels. Twenty-five
+rubles a day was charged for a ruble room, and there were a dozen
+applicants for each room. Still, those who had money contrived to find
+shelter. Much greater difficulty was encountered in many cases in
+getting a Christian cabman to take a Jew to a place of refuge. Many a
+Gentile rented part of his dwelling to Jews at an enormous price, a
+guarantee of safety being included in the bargain. Then, too, there was
+a considerable number of Gentiles who received some of their prosperous
+Jewish neighbours into their houses without accepting any offer of
+payment. Prosperous, because the poorer Jews for the most part lived
+huddled together in the Ghetto and were far removed from the Gentile
+population. At Pavel's instance Orlovsky went to take Clara's sister and
+her family to the house of a relative of his, but he found their door
+locked. They were taking refuge with the Vigdoroffs.
+
+Toward five o'clock, when the crimson sunlight was playing on the gold
+steeple of the Church of Our Saviour and the dazzling blue and white of
+hussars' uniforms, a small crowd of men and boys came running to the
+square in front of the sacred structure.
+
+"We want to carry out the holy vessels and banners," said a spokesman to
+an officer. "We hear the Jews have decided to set fire to God's temple."
+
+"We won't let them, you may be sure of that," the hussar officer
+answered. "You can safely go home."
+
+The crowd was slowly dispersing, when a man in a red shirt shouted:
+
+"Boys, I know a Jewish cellar where twenty-five Christian corpses are
+kept in empty vodka casks. Come on!"
+
+The officer did not interfere, and the crowd followed the red-shirt
+round the corner to a closed drink-shop. Half an hour later the streets
+in that locality rang with a drunken sing-song: "Death to the Jews!
+Death to the Christ-killers!"
+
+The shop was the property of a Jew, who was hiding with his family
+somewhere, but the street was inhabited by Gentiles. Meanwhile on a
+little square near Nicholas Street, the best street running through the
+Jewish quarter, a mob of five hundred men and boys, mostly from the scum
+of the population, had seemingly dropped from the sky. A savage
+"Hee-hee-hee!" broke loose, scattered itself, died away, and was taken
+up again with redoubled energy. All over the district Jews, men and
+women, most of them with children clasped in their arms, were running
+along the middle of the streets as people run at the sound of a volcano.
+Some were fleeing from their shops to their homes and some from their
+homes to the hiding places which they had prepared for themselves. The
+eyes of most of them had the hollow look of mortal fear. They ran in
+family groups, holding close to each other. Here and there a man, his
+feet giving way under him, sick and dizzy with fright, would slacken
+pace for a minute, as if giving himself up for lost; then, wiping the
+cold sweat from his face, he would break into a fresh run, more
+desperate than before. Some simply walked quickly, a look of grim
+determination on their faces. Here and there an aged man or woman, too
+feeble to run, were making a pitiful effort to keep up with the younger
+members of their families, who were urging them on with a look of
+ghastly impatience. Often a frail little woman with two or three
+children in her arms could be seen running as she might down a steep
+hill.
+
+Christians stood on the sidewalks, jeering and mimicking their fright
+and making jokes.
+
+Pavel watched the spectacle in a singular state of mental agitation. His
+heart leaped at sight of that chaotic mob as it paraded through the
+streets. Visions of the French Revolution floated through his brain,
+quickening his pulse. "So our people are _not_ incapable of rising!" he
+felt like exclaiming. "The idea of a revolution is _not_ incompatible
+with the idea of Russia!" It was as if all the sacrifices he had been
+making during the past few years had finally been indorsed by life
+itself, as if they were once for all insured against proving to be the
+senseless sacrifices of a modern Don Quixote. He could have embraced
+this mass of human dregs. And while his mind was in this state, the
+panic-stricken men, women and children with oriental features who were
+running past him were stranger than ever to him. He simply could not
+rouse himself to a sense of their being human creatures like himself at
+this moment. It was like a scene on a canvas. Clara did not seem to
+belong to these people; and when it came fully home to him that she
+did, and how these scenes were apt to stand between him and her, his
+heart grew faint within him; whereupon he felt like a traitor to his
+cause, and at the same time he was overcome with a sense of his inward
+anarchy and helplessness.
+
+Within the Jewish houses and on their courtyards there was a rush for
+sub-cellars, garrets, barrels. As they ran, clambered, tiptoed,
+scrambled, they smothered the cries of their frightened babies with
+several cases of unconscious infanticide as a result. Christians
+hastened to assert the immunity of their houses by placing the image of
+the Virgin (a Jewess!) in their windows; and so did many a Jew who had
+procured such images for the purpose. Some smashed their own windows and
+piled up fragments of furniture in front of their doors, to give their
+homes or shops the appearance of having already been visited by mob
+fury. Here and there a man was chalking crosses on his gate or shutters.
+
+While this was in progress several hundred Jews burst from gateways on
+and about Nicholas Street and bore down on the enemy with frantic yells
+in Russian and in Yiddish. They were armed with crowbars, axes, hammers,
+brass knuckles, clubs and what-not. As to the rioters they were mostly
+unarmed. Following the established practice of the crusade, they had
+expected to begin with some hardware store and there to arm themselves
+with battering rams and implements of devastation--an intention which
+they had not yet had time to carry out. At sight of this armed
+multitude, therefore, they were taken aback. Resistance was not what
+they had anticipated. Indeed, for some seconds many of them were under
+the impression that the crowd now descending on them was but another
+horde of hoodlums. They wavered. A crowd of Jewish butchers, lumberers,
+blacksmiths, truck-drivers--the advance guard of the Defence--made a
+dash at them, jeering and howling at the top of their lungs, in Yiddish:
+
+"Let's hack them to pieces! Lively boys! Let's drive right into their
+lungs and livers! Let's make carrot-pudding of them! Bravely, fellows,
+they're drunk as swine!"
+
+At this point Orlovsky and the seminarist instinctively joined the
+rioters. Elkin and Vigdoroff were on the other side. Pavel was looking
+on from the sidewalk.
+
+The Defence was mistaken. The rioters were almost as sober as they, for,
+indeed, it was another part of the stereotyped program of anti-Semitic
+riots that drink-shops should be among the very first targets of attack,
+so that the invaders might fit themselves for the real work of the riot
+by filling themselves full of Jewish vodka. But the Jews, as we have
+seen, descended upon them before they had torn down a single door. What
+the outcome would have been had the two opposing crowds been left to
+themselves is unknown, for a troop of hussars whose commander had been
+watching the scene charged on both when they were a few inches apart,
+and dispersed them both. Some fifty arrests were made, more than
+two-thirds of the prisoners being Jews. The arrested Gentiles went to
+police headquarters singing an anti-Semitic refrain and mimicking the
+frightened cry of Jewish women. Bystanders, some of the Nihilist
+"pickets" among them, shouted:
+
+"Don't fear, boys. You'll soon go home." And the answer was:
+
+"Sure we will, and then we'll give them a shaking-up, the scurvy Jews,
+won't we?"
+
+On another business street some boys threw a few tentative stones at a
+shop window. There being no interference on the part of the military, a
+mob of grown men sprang up. Doors were burst in and rolls of silk and
+woollen stuffs came shooting to the pavement.
+
+"Don't, boys; you had better go home," said a handsome young lieutenant,
+affecting the basso of a general.
+
+The raiders did not desist. While some went on emptying the shop into
+the street others were slashing, tearing or biting at the goods. They
+did it without zest and somewhat nervously, as if still in doubt as to
+the attitude of the authorities. A servant girl unrolled a piece of blue
+velvet over a filthy spot on the cobblestones before a lieutenant of the
+hussars, saying:
+
+"Here, sir! Why dirty the dear little feet of your horse? Here is Jewish
+velvet for them."
+
+"Thank you, my dear girl, but you had better go home," the lieutenant
+answered, smiling. A crumpled mass of unrolled fabrics, silk, woollen,
+velvet, satin, cotton, lay in many-coloured heaps on the pavement and in
+the gutter. The rioters, whose movements were still amateurish and
+lacked snap, soon wearied of the job. Several of them then broke into a
+grocery store and brought forth a barrel of kerosene.
+
+"What are you going to do?" asked the lieutenant.
+
+"We'll pour it over the stuff and set fire to it, your high nobleness."
+
+"That you can't do," the officer returned decisively. "You'll have to go
+home now."
+
+The rioters obeyed at once, many of them taking rolls of silk or velvet
+along.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+THE RIOT.
+
+
+The next morning the Police Master, "in order to avoid bloodshed,"
+issued a proclamation forbidding Jews to leave their houses. The order
+was copied from one that had been issued in other riot-ridden towns
+where, as the Miroslav Police Master knew but too well, it meant that
+the Jews were prevented from uniting for their self-defence and forced
+to await the arrival of the mob, each family in its own isolated
+lodgings. At the same time every soldier of the Jewish faith was called
+back to barracks, none of their number being included in the patrol,
+"for fear of embittering the Christian population."
+
+A peculiar air hung about the city, an air at once of festive idleness
+and suppressed bustle. It looked as it might on the eve of some great
+fair. Gentile workmen, staying away from their shops, were parading the
+streets, many of them shouldering axes, sledge-hammers, bores,
+chisels--their tools of useful toil to be turned to weapons of
+demolition and pillage; peasants from neighbouring villages were
+arriving with sacks, pails, tubs, spades, axes, pitchforks, their
+waggons otherwise empty and ready to be laden with booty. Among the
+people in the streets were gangs of trained rioters, come from towns
+where their work was at an end. The Jews were in their hiding places
+where they had passed the night. Pavel went about alone, avoiding
+company, asking himself questions to which his mind had no answer. He
+was filled with the excitement of a sportsman a few minutes before the
+beginning of a great race; with mental chaos and anxiety.
+
+At one corner of Cucumber Market a group of peasants took off their
+coarse straw hats and bowed to two policemen.
+
+"We are only ignorant peasants," they said. "Will your High Nobleness
+tell us when his Excellency the Police Master will give the order to
+start in?"
+
+"There won't be any order to start in," answered one of the policemen.
+"Move along, move along."
+
+The large market place became white with country people. They were
+getting restive. Their sacks and tubs were hungry for the goods of
+"Christ-killers." Four years ago many of these very people, dressed like
+soldiers, had been driven to the Balkans by a force known to them as the
+Czar, to fire at Turks without having the least idea what sort of
+creatures those people called Turks were or what they had done to be
+fired at. Now they had come here, in obedience to the same force, to rob
+and do violence to Jews. Among the out-of-town looters were two tramps
+who had it whispered about that they were two well-known generals in
+disguise, personal emissaries of the Emperor sent to direct the attack
+upon the Jews. These two were soon put in gaol, but that which they
+personified, the idea that the anti-Jewish riots met with the Czar's
+approval, was left at large. It seized upon soldier and civilian alike.
+People who usually kept at a timid distance from everything in the shape
+of a uniform, were now bandying jests with army lieutenants and police
+captains. The question this morning was not whether one wore the Czar's
+uniform or citizen's clothes, but whether one was a Jew or not. An
+unusual feeling of kinship linked them all together, and the source of
+that feeling was the consciousness that they were not Jews.
+
+It was about nine o'clock when a large seedy-looking man with a bloated,
+sodden face, stepped out of a vast crowd on Cucumber Market, and walked
+jauntily up to a deserted fruit stand. Snatching a handful of hickory
+nuts, he flung it high in the air, then thrust his two index fingers
+into his mouth and blew a loud piercing blast, puffing himself up
+violently as he did so. The sound was echoed by similar sounds in many
+parts of the crowded market place.
+
+"Hee-ee-eeee!" came from a thousand frantic throats.
+
+A long stick was raised with a battered hat for a flag, a hundred human
+swarms rushed in all directions, rending the air with their yells, and
+pandemonium was loose.
+
+There was a scramble for hardware shops, vodka shops and places where
+Jewish women were said to be secreted. Another few minutes and the
+streets were streaming with spirits. The air was filled with the odour
+of alcohol, with the din of broken glass, with the clatter of feet, with
+the impact of battering rams against doors; and coming through this
+general clang, thud and crash of destruction, were smothered groans of
+agony, shrieks of horror and despair, the terror-stricken cry of
+children, the jeers of triumph and lust. Here a row of shops, their
+doors burst in, was sending forth a shower of sugar, kerosene, flour,
+spices, coats, bonnets, wigs, dry goods, crockery, cutlery, toys; there
+a bevy of men were tearing up the street, piling up the cobble-stones
+which others were hurling at shop windows. Some men and women were
+carrying away bucketsful of vodka. Others were bending over casks,
+scooping out the liquid with their caps, hands or even boots; others
+were greedily crouching before barrels, their mouths to the bungholes.
+Here and there a man leaning over a broken cask was guzzling at its
+contents in a torpor of drunkenness. One rioter, holding a sealed bottle
+in his hand and too impatient to look for a corkscrew, smashed its neck
+against the sidewalk, while another man, by his side, broke two similar
+bottles against each other, and then cursed the Jews as he licked wine
+mixed with his own blood off his fingers. Nearby a woman carrying a shoe
+full of vodka toward a four-year-old boy who was seated on a pile of
+logs, yelled frantically:
+
+"Here, my darling! Taste it, precious one, so that when you grow up you
+may say you remember the day when the ill-gotten wealth of Jews was
+smashed by people of the True Faith."
+
+Women and children were serving vodka to the soldiers in cans, teapots,
+saucers, ladles, paper boxes.
+
+Orlovsky mounted a cask and began to shout, wildly:
+
+"Don't drink too much, boys! Don't befog your minds! For this is a great
+historical moment! Only why attack Jews alone? Behold, the Czar is at
+the head of all the blood-suckers in the land!"
+
+Scarcely anybody listened to him. The crowd was too deeply absorbed in
+its orgy. His voice was drowned by a thousand other sounds; his flashing
+eyes and his air-pounding fists were part of a nightmare of brutalised
+faces, attitudes of greed, gesticulations of primitive humanity run
+amuck. Presently, however, a group of belated rowdies came along in
+search of drink. They stopped in front of Orlovsky, eyeing the cask
+under his feet hopefully, the appearance of the bung showing that its
+contents were still intact.
+
+"Who are you, anyhow?" one of them said to the speaker. "It must be the
+Jews who sent you here to talk like that to good Christian people."
+
+"It isn't true. You're mistaken, old boy," Orlovsky answered hoarsely
+and breathing hard, but with a kindly, familiar smile on his flushed,
+perspiring face. "I am one of the best friends you and all the people
+ever had, I mean the good of all of you fellows. What's the use
+attacking Jews only, I say. We had better turn upon the authorities, the
+flunkeys of the Czar----"
+
+"Do you hear what he says?" one of his listeners said, in perplexity,
+nudging the fellow by his side.
+
+"He wants to get us in trouble, the sly fox that he is," somebody
+remarked.
+
+"Sure, he does. And it was by the Jews he was hired to come here. I know
+what I am talking about," growled the man who had spoken first. "Down
+with him, boys!"
+
+"Down with him!" the others echoed, thirstily.
+
+Orlovsky was pulled off and the group of belated rioters, re-enforced by
+some others, rushed at the cask savagely.
+
+Pavel was in another section of the same street. An old little Jewess
+whom he saw run out of a gate struck him as the most pathetic figure he
+had seen that day. Her fright gave her pinched little face something
+like a pout, an air of childlike resentment, as it were. A Gentile boy
+snatched off her wig and held it up, jeering to some bystanders,
+whereupon she covered her gray head with her bony hands, her faith
+forbidding her to expose her hair, and ran on with the same childlike
+pout. A sob of pity caught Pavel in the throat. He was about to offer to
+take her to a place of safety, when an elderly rowdy, apparently
+provoked by her outlandish anxiety about her bare hair, struck her a
+vicious blow on the head, accompanying it with profanity.
+
+"Cur!" Pavel shrieked, springing up to him and landing a smart whack in
+his face.
+
+The rioter looked round with surprise, muttered something and joined the
+looters.
+
+"Come with me, don't be afraid of the scoundrels," Pavel said, taking
+her by the hand. His heart was melting with pity for all the Jews at
+this moment. He felt a rush of yearning tenderness for Clara, and he
+wished she could see him taking care of this woman of her race.
+
+When he saw two marauders hand out gold and silver watches--the spoils
+of a raid--to the patrol, his blood was up again.
+
+"Is that what you are here for, thieves, vermin that you are?" he
+shouted.
+
+"Who is that fellow? Run him in!" somebody said.
+
+He fought desperately, cursing the authorities and calling to the mob to
+turn upon the soldiers, but he was overpowered and carried away half
+dead. When his identity was discovered at Police Headquarters, it caused
+a panic among the officials of the place. He was reverently placed in a
+carriage and taken to the Palace.
+
+The Defence Guard gave the rioters fight in two places, and a desperate
+encounter it was, but it was not to last long. Troops fell upon them,
+beat them with the butts of their rifles and hurled execrations at them
+for violating the police ordinance. Every Jew who was armed and every
+Jew who looked educated, Elkin among them, was arrested. The others were
+driven indoors. Vladimir was brought to police headquarters unconscious,
+with blood gushing from his head.
+
+When the first stack of bedding was pitched out on the sidewalk at
+Nicholas Street, from a residence over a tobacco shop, a man with watery
+eyes and a beautiful Great-Russian beard, one of the leaders, selected
+a big, plump, tempting feather-bed, and opened his pocket-knife with
+dignified deliberation. A crowd of about one thousand stood about in
+breathless silence, as though attending a religious ceremony of great
+solemnity. In order to prolong the spell, the man with the golden beard
+played with the feather-bed awhile, kneading, patting, punching it,
+brandishing his knife over it, like a barbaric high priest performing
+some mystic rite over a captive about to be sacrificed. Then, grasping
+it with sudden ferocity, his teeth a-glitter amid his enormous whiskers,
+his watery eyes flashing murder, he cut a quick, long gash, rent the
+pillow-case apart and hurled its snow-white entrails to the breeze.
+
+"Hurrah! Hurrah!" the mob yelled savagely, as the breeze seized the down
+and flung it in a thousand directions. "Hurrah! Hurrah!"
+
+The other feather-beds and pillows were ripped up, disemboweled and
+emptied by some of the other rioters. The summer-baked street seemed to
+be in the grasp of a snow-storm.
+
+It is one of the characteristics of the housewife of the Ghetto that she
+will put up with a poor meal rather than with an uncomfortable bed. The
+destruction of pillows and featherbeds is therefore the most typical
+scene of anti-Semitic riots in Russia. An Anglo-Saxon crowd viewing a
+prize-fight is not thrilled more deeply at sight of "first-blood" than
+were the rioters of Miroslav at sight of the first cloud of Jewish down.
+Now the outbreak was in full swing. Some of the men came out in
+fashionable clothes, their pockets bulging with plunder. The same work
+of devastation and pillage was going on in many places at once. About
+ten thousand raiders, most of them covered with down, were skirmishing
+about in groups of fifty to one hundred, preceded by one or two leaders
+and accompanied, in some cases, with a band of toy-drums and whistles.
+They went from street to street reconnoitering for houses or shops that
+had not yet been visited. Now it looked like a real anti-Jewish riot.
+Hurrah! Hurrah!
+
+After the pillows came the furniture and other household goods, every
+bit of it either shivered to flinders or carried off. While some were
+busy smashing things or throwing them out of the windows, others were
+stripping off their own clothes and arraying themselves in the best
+coats, trousers, dresses, bonnets, the raided houses contained. A frowzy
+drunken scrub-woman emerged in a gorgeous ball dress, a costly fur cap
+on her head, with two gold watches dangling from her neck. One of these
+gangs was led by a man who wore a woman's jacket of brown plush and a
+high hat. Another leader was decked out in a fashionable summer suit and
+a new straw hat, but his feet were bare and encrusted with dirt. A third
+gang was preceded by a flag consisting of the torn skirt of an outraged
+Jewish woman, the flag-bearer celebrating the exploit as he marched
+along.
+
+Following the looters were dense crowds of spectators, many of them well
+dressed and with the stamp of education and refinement on their faces.
+These included some well known families, members of the aristocracy, who
+watched the scenes of the day from their fashionable equipages.
+Officials, merchants, people of the middle class were out in their best
+clothes. Miroslav made a great gala day of it. The aristocracy was in a
+complacent, race-track mood. Occupants of carriages were exchanging
+greetings and pleasantries. Cavaliers were interpreting to their ladies
+the bedlam of sound, odour and colour. The appearance of a drunken jade
+in a ball dress, strutting with her arms akimbo, in besotted imitation
+of a lady, brought forth bursts of facetious applause. The well-dressed
+spectators tried to steer clear of down and feathers, but that was
+almost impossible. Many streets were so thickly covered with it that it
+deadened the sound of traffic. But then to catch some of the Jewish down
+on one's dress or bonnet or coat was part of the carnival. Where the
+street was strewn with jewelry, silverware or knicknacks, costly
+carpets, fabrics, many a noblewoman scanned the ground with the haze of
+temptation in her eye. "Isn't that cameo perfectly lovely!" And in many,
+many instances the cameo, or the silver tray, or the piece of tapestry
+found its way into the lady's carriage. This was during the early stage
+of the riot. Later on, when all restraint had been cast off, phaetons
+with crests on their sides were filled with plunder. The lame princess
+took home one carriage-load and hurried back for more. At every turn one
+saw a cavalier offering his lady some piece of finery as he might a rose
+or a carnation, and in most cases it was accepted, on the cogent ground
+that if left on the pavement it would be destroyed. On the other hand
+many of the rioters themselves disdained to appropriate anything that
+was not theirs. Very often when a Jew offered his assailants all the
+money he had about him as a ransom the paper money was torn to pieces
+and silver or coppers was flung out into the street, whereupon the crowd
+outside would fall over each other in a wild scramble for shreds of the
+paper or the metal. In one place a man offered the mob all he had in the
+world as a ransom for his daughter's honour, but his money was
+destroyed, his daughter assaulted and he himself mortally wounded. When
+a peasant woman was seen carrying an armful of linen and ribbons out of
+a small shop, she was stopped by one of the rioters.
+
+"Drop that, you old hag," he shouted. "We are no robbers, are we?" He
+added a torrent of unprintable Russian and kicked the woman into a swamp
+of syrup, whisky and flour. A short distance from this spot other
+peasant women were stuffing their sacks lustily, whereupon some of them
+preferred loud linen to black silk and cheap spoons to silver ones. In
+several places large sums of money were plundered. As the bank and check
+system was (and still is) in its very infancy in Miroslav, this meant in
+most cases that people of means were literally reduced to beggary. One
+family was saved from personal violence as well as from the loss of its
+fortune by an iron safe which the looters spent the whole day in vainly
+trying to open. But then, while they were at work on the safe, the
+mother of the family went insane with fright.
+
+Marching side by side with the leaders of the various bands were the
+competitors of Jewish tradesmen or mechanics who acted as guides, each
+pointing out the stores or workshops of his rivals. Thus Rasgadayeff,
+after instructing his wife and servants to see to it that no harm was
+done to his tenants, the Vigdoroffs, had gone to the scene of the
+outbreak, where he directed a crowd of rowdies to the store of his most
+formidable business opponent. The place was raided. A wealth of costly
+furs was cut to pieces and flung into the street, where cans of kerosene
+and pails of tar were emptied over the pile, while more than half as
+much again was carried off intact.
+
+"Boys, no stealing," Rasgadayeff said, in a drunken gibberish, when it
+was too late. All he could save from the marauders for the slashers was
+a sable muff over which two women rioters were fighting desperately.
+
+In the meantime Rasgadayeff's tenants and the people who sought shelter
+in their house,--the family of Clara's sister and the two or three
+strangers--had had a narrow escape from coming face to face with an
+infuriated band of hoodlums. Their presence had been indicated by a
+Gentile woman across the street. Mme. Rasgadayeff had tearfully begged
+the rioters to desist and after some parleying it had been agreed that
+the Vigdoroffs and their guests should be allowed to escape to their
+landlord's apartments before the mob invaded their rooms. From an attic
+window commanding the street Vladimir's parents then saw their household
+effects and their celebrated library--the accumulations of thirty
+years--flung out on the pavement where it was hacked, torn, slashed,
+trampled upon, flooded with water, mixed with a stream of preserves,
+brine, kerosene, vinegar, until the contents of eight rooms and cellar,
+all that for the past thirty years had been their home, were turned into
+two mounds of pulp. The Vigdoroffs watched it all with a peculiar sense
+of remoteness, with a sort of lethargic indifference. When old Vigdoroff
+saw the rioters struggling with the locked drawer of his desk, he
+remarked to his wife:
+
+"Idiots! Why don't they knock out the bottom?" When one of the mob hurt
+his fingers trying to rend an old parchment-bound folio, he emitted a
+mock sigh, quoting the Yiddish proverb: "Too much hurry brings nothing
+but evil." Only when Clara's little niece began to shake and cry in a
+paroxysm of childish anguish, upon seeing her doll in the hands of a
+little girl from across the street, did the whole family burst into
+tears.
+
+"I'm going to kill them. Let them kill me!" the old man said, leaping to
+his feet. But his wife and daughters hung to him, and held him back.
+
+Later on, when the rioters had gone, the family returned to their nest.
+The eight rooms were absolutely empty, as though their occupants had
+moved out.
+
+Gradually the various bands of rioters got into the swing of their work
+and did it with the system and method of an established trade. First the
+pavement was torn up, the cobblestones being piled up and then crashed
+into the windows; the padlocks were then knocked off by means of
+crowbars, hammers or axes and the doors battered down or broken in. Next
+the contents of pillows were cast to the wind, after which, the street
+having thus received its baptism of Jewish down, the real business of
+the rioters was begun by the wreckers and the looters. If the shop
+raided was a clothier's and the freebooters had not yet prinked
+themselves they would do so to begin with, some of them returning to the
+streets in two pairs of trousers, two coats and even two hats. After a
+house or a shop had been gutted and its contents wrecked or plundered it
+would be left to children who would then proceed to play riot on its
+ruins. Here and there a committee followed in the wake of some band,
+ascertaining whether some Jewish dwelling or shop had not been passed
+over, or whether a roll of woollen or a piece of furniture had not been
+left undestroyed. Not a chair, not a pound of candles was allowed to
+remain unshattered. Kerosene was poured over sugar, honey was mixed with
+varnish, ink or milk. It was hard, slow work, this slashing and rending,
+smashing and grinding. Some raiders toiled over a single article till
+they panted for breath. A common sight was a man or a woman tearing at a
+piece of stuff with broken finger-nails and bleeding fingers,
+accompanying their efforts with volleys of profanity at the expense of
+the Jews whose wares seemed as hard to destroy as their owners. In one
+place the mob was blaspheming demoniacally because a heap of ground
+pepper from a wrecked grocery store had thrown them into a convulsion of
+sneezing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The most hideous delirium of brutality was visited upon Paradise,--upon
+that district of narrow streets and lanes in the vicinity of Cucumber
+Market which was the seat of the hardest toil and the blackest need, the
+home of the poorest mechanics, labourers and tradesmen. As though
+enraged by the dearth of things worth destroying, the rioters in this
+section took it out of the Jews in the most bestial forms of cruelty and
+fiendishness their besotted minds could invent. The debris here was made
+up of the cheapest articles of furniture and mechanics' tools. It was
+here that several Jewish women were dragged out into the street and
+victimised, while drunken women and children aided their husbands and
+fathers in their crimes. One woman was caught running through a gale of
+feathers and down, her child clasped in her arms. Another woman was
+chuckling aloud in a fit of insanity, as she passed through the district
+in a cab, when she was pulled off the vehicle. A good-looking girl tried
+to elude the rioters by disguising herself as a man, but she was
+recognised and the only thing that saved her was a savage fight among
+her assailants. A middle-aged woman came out of a house with shrieks of
+horror, imploring an intoxicated army officer to go to the rescue of her
+daughter. The officer followed her indoors, but instead of rescuing the
+younger woman the only thing that saved her own honour was his drunken
+condition. One woman who broke away from two invaders and was about to
+jump out of her window, was driven back at the point of the bayonet by
+one of the soldiers in front of the house.
+
+"We are under orders not to allow any Jews to get out," he explained to
+her, good-naturedly.
+
+"Take pity, oh, do take pity," she was pleading, when her voice was
+choked off by somebody within.
+
+Every synagogue in town was sacked, the holy ark in many cases being
+desecrated in the most revolting manner; while the Scrolls of the Law
+were everywhere cut to ribbons, some of which were wound around cats and
+dogs. One woman met her awful fate upon scrolls from the Old Synagogue
+at the hands of a ruffian who had once heard it said that that was the
+way Titus, the Roman emperor, desecrated the Temple upon taking
+Jerusalem. Two strong Jews who risked their lives in an attempt to
+rescue some of the scrolls were seen running through the streets, their
+precious and rather heavy burden hugged to their hearts. The mob gave
+chase.
+
+"'Hear, O Israel!'" one of the two men shrieked, "'God is God. God is
+one.'"
+
+But the verse, which will keep evil spirits at a respectful distance
+from every Jew who utters it, failed to exercise its powers on the
+rioters. The two men were overtaken and beaten black and blue and the
+scrolls were cut to pieces.
+
+A white-haired musician, venturing out of his hiding place, begged the
+mob to spare his violin which he said was older than he; whereupon the
+instrument was shattered against the old man's head. On another street
+in the same section of the city another Jewish fiddler was made to play
+while his tormentors danced, and when they had finished he had to break
+the violin with his own hands. Pillows were wrenched from under invalids
+to be ripped up and thrown into the street. In one tailoring shop a
+consumptive old man, too feeble to be moved, was found with a bottle of
+milk in his trembling hands, his only food until his children should
+find it safe to crawl back to the house.
+
+"You have drunk enough of our milk, you scabby Christ-killer!" yelled a
+rioter as he knocked the bottle out of the tailor's hand and hit his
+head with a flat-iron.
+
+Little Market in front of Boyko's Court, the home of Clara's father and
+mother, glistened with puddles of vodka, in which cats and dogs,
+overcome by the alcoholic evaporations, lay dead or half-dead. Now and
+then a drunken rioter would crouch before one of these puddles, dip up a
+handful of the muddy stuff with his hands and gulp it thirstily, with an
+inebriate smile of apology to the bystanders. The corner of a lane
+nearby was piled with brass dust and with broken candle-stick moulds. A
+horse trough in the rear of the police booth was full of yolks and
+egg-shells. When the goose market next door to Boyko's Court was raided
+some of the fowls were stabbed or had their necks wrung on the spot,
+while others were driven into the vodka ponds on the square. A hundred
+geese and ducks went splashing through the intoxicating liquid,
+fluttering and cackling. A number of rioters formed a cordon preventing
+them from waddling out and then fell to stabbing them with knives and
+pitchforks, till every pool of vodka was red.
+
+"Jewish geese, curse them! Jewish geese, curse them!" they snarled.
+
+Not very far off, hard by a wall, a Jewish woman was giving birth to a
+child. Presently a Gentile woman with a basket half filled with loot
+took pity on the child and took it home, giving the policeman her
+address, while the mother was left bleeding to death.
+
+It was also in this district of toil and squalor where the most
+desperate fighting was done by the Jews. One lane was held by five of
+them against a mob of fifty for more than half an hour until the five
+men were lugged off to jail, and then the remaining inhabitants of the
+lane became the victims of the most atrocious vengeance in the history
+of the day. A mother defended a garret against a crowd of rioters by
+brandishing a heavy crowbar in front of them. The maddened Gentiles then
+scaled the wall and charged the roof with axes and sledge-hammers. Part
+of the roof gave way. The woman continued to swing the crowbar until she
+fell in a swoon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The houses of the richest Jews were closely guarded by the soldiery and,
+barring one exception, rioters were kept at a safe distance from them.
+Even the house of Ginsburg, the most repugnant usurer in town, was taken
+care of. Some army officers, indeed, directed various bands of roughs to
+the place on the chance of having their promissory notes destroyed, but
+the roughs failed to get near it. There was an instinct in official
+circles that the wrecking of wealthy Jewish homes was apt to develop in
+the masses a taste for playing havoc with "seats of the mighty." For
+after all a man like Ginsburg and a titled plunderer of peasant lands
+are not without their bonds of affinity. The great point was that in
+dealing with Jewish magnates Popular Fury was liable to confuse the Jew
+with the magnate, the question of race with the question of class.
+
+As to the Gentile magnates their attitude toward the rioters was one
+which seemed to say: "You fellows and we are brothers, are we not?" And
+their mansions were safe. Members of the gentry openly joined the
+rioters, some out of sheer hatred of the race, others for the sport of
+the thing, still others honestly succumbing to the contagion of
+beastliness. In the horrid saturnalia of pillage, destruction and rapine
+many a peaceful citizen was drawn into the vortex. A man stands looking
+on curiously, perhaps even with some horror, and gradually he becomes
+restless as do the legs of a dancer when the floor creaks under a medley
+of sliding feet. But then there was a large number of Gentiles who acted
+like human beings. Among these were members of the priesthood, although
+there were holy "little fathers" who pointed out the houses of their
+Jewish neighbours to the mob.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The best friend of the Jews during that day of horrors was Vodka. The
+sons of Israel were made a safety valve of by the government and Vodka
+rendered a similar service to the sons of Israel. It saved scores of
+lives and the honour of scores of women. Hundreds of the fiercest
+rioters were so many tottering wrecks before the atrocities were three
+hours old, while by sundown the number of dead and wounded looters was
+as large as the number of murdered and maimed Jews. Two men were found
+drowned in casks of spirits into which they had apparently let their
+heads sink in a daze of intoxication. A handsome young rioter in a
+crimson blouse staggered over the balustrade of a balcony, hugging a
+Jewish vase, and was killed on the spot. One man was killed in a
+struggle over a Jewish woman and several others had simply drunk
+themselves to death, while a countless number were bruised and disabled
+in the general melee, falling, fighting, injuring themselves with their
+own weapons of destruction.
+
+Toward evening some of the streets had the appearance of a battlefield
+after action. Hundreds of men and women, swollen, bleeding, were
+wallowing in the gutters, in puddles, on the sidewalks, between piles of
+debris, in a revolting stupor of inebriety. Some of them slept several
+hours in this condition and then struggled to their feet to resume
+drinking. The trained rioters had thoughtfully seen to it that some
+casks of vodka, as also some accordions, should be reserved for the
+closing scenes of the bacchanalia.
+
+The moon came out. Her soft mysterious light streamed through the rugged
+holes of shattered unlit windows; over muddy pavements carpeted with
+silks, velvets, satins; over rows and rows of debris-mounds on streets
+snowed under with down; over peasants driving home with waggons laden
+with plunder; over the ghastly figures of sprawling drunkards and the
+beautiful uniforms of patrolling hussars. Silence had settled over most
+of the streets. For blocks and blocks, east and west, north and south,
+there was not an unbroken window pane to be seen, not a light to glitter
+in the distance. The Jewish district, the liveliest district in town,
+had been turned into a "city of death." In other places one often saw a
+single illuminated house on a whole street of darkness and ruin. The
+illuminated house was invariably the abode of Christians. Officers on
+horseback were moving about musingly, the hoofs of their horses silenced
+by thick layers of down. Most streets were impassable for the debris.
+Here and there the jaded sounds of revelry were heard, but there were
+some peasants who had come out of the day's rioting in full control of
+their voices.
+
+Seated on empty boxes and barrels, their fingers gripping new
+accordions, their eyes raised to the moon, a company of rioters on
+Little Market were playing and singing a melancholy, doleful tune. The
+Jews were in their hiding places.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+LIGHT OUT OF DARKNESS.
+
+
+Clara was with her parents in a White-Russian town. The inn at which
+they were stopping was entered through a vast yard, partly occupied by
+fruit-barns. It was the height of the fruit season. The barns and part
+of the yard were lined with straw upon which rose great heaps of apples
+and pears of all sizes and colours. Applewomen, armed with baskets, were
+coming and going, squatting by the juicy mounds, sampling them,
+haggling, quarrelling mildly. Now and then a peasant waggon laden with
+fruit would come creaking through the open gate, attracting general
+attention. A secluded corner of the yard was Clara's and her mother's
+favourite spot for their interminable confidences, a pile of large bulky
+logs serving them as a sofa. The people they saw here and in the streets
+were much shabbier and more insignificant-looking than those of their
+native town and the south in general. The Yavners lived here
+unregistered, as did most of the guests at the inn, the local police
+being too lazy and too "friendly" with the proprietor to trouble his
+patrons about having their passports vised at the station house.
+
+The town was a stronghold of Talmudic learning, and Rabbi Rachmiel felt
+as a passionate art student does on his first visit to Italy. When the
+first excitement of the meeting was over the local scholars were of
+more interest to him than his daughter. His joy was marred by his fear
+of being sent to Siberia in case Clara's (to her parents she was still
+Tamara) identity was discovered by the local police; but he had a rather
+muddled idea of the situation and his wife assured him that there was no
+danger. As to Hannah, she was not the woman to flee from her daughter
+for fear of the police. She could not see enough of Clara. She
+catechised her on her political career and her personal life, and Clara,
+completely under the spell of the meeting and in her mother's power,
+told her more than she had a mind to. What she told her was, indeed, as
+foreign to Hannah's brain as it was to her husband's; but then, in her
+practical old-fashioned way, she realised that her daughter was working
+in the interests of the poor and the oppressed, though she never
+listened to Clara's expositions without a sad, patronising smile.
+
+One day, during one of their intimate talks on the wood-pile, the old
+woman demanded:
+
+"Tell me, Clara, are you married?"
+
+"What has put such an idea in your mind?" Clara returned, reddening. "If
+I were I would have told you long ago."
+
+"Tamara, you are a married woman," Hannah insisted, looking hard at her
+daughter.
+
+"I tell you I am not," Clara said testily.
+
+"Then why did you get red in the face when I said you were? People don't
+get red without reason, do they?"
+
+The young woman's will power seemed to have completely deserted her. "I
+am engaged," she said, "but I am not married, and--let me alone, mamma,
+will you?"
+
+"If you are engaged, then why were you afraid to say so? Is it anything
+to be ashamed of to be engaged? Foolish girl that you are, am I a
+stranger to you? Why don't you tell me who he is, what he is?"
+
+"He is a nice man and that's all I can tell you now, and pray don't ask
+me any more questions, mamma darling."
+
+After a pause the old woman gave her daughter a sharp look and said in a
+whisper: "He must be a Christian, then. Else you wouldn't be afraid to
+tell me who he is."
+
+"He is not," Clara answered lamely, her eyes on a heap of yellow apples
+in the distance.
+
+"He _is_ a Christian, then," Hannah said in consternation. "May the
+blackest ill-luck strike you both."
+
+"Don't! Don't!" Clara entreated her, clapping her hand over her mother's
+mouth, childishly.
+
+"What! You _are_ going to marry a Christian? You _are_ a
+convert-Jewess?" Hannah said in a ghastly whisper.
+
+"No, no, mamma! I have not become a Christian, and I never will. I swear
+I won't. As to him, he is the best man in the world. That's all I can
+tell you for the present. Oh, the young generation is so different from
+the old, mamma!" she snuggled to her, nursing her cheek against hers and
+finding intense pleasure in a conscious imitation of the ways of her own
+childhood; but she was soon repulsed.
+
+"Away from my eyes! May the Black Year understand you. I don't," the old
+woman said. Her face wore an expression of horrified curiosity. Had
+Clara faced her fury with a pugnacious front, it might have led to an
+irretrievable rupture; but she did not. While her mother continued to
+curse, she went on fawning and pleading with filial self-abasement,
+although not without an effect of trying to soothe an angry baby.
+Hannah's curses were an accompaniment to further interrogations and
+gradually became few and far between. Her daughter's engagement and her
+whole mysterious life appealed to an old-fashioned sense of romance and
+adventure in the elderly Jewess; also to a vague idea of a higher
+altruism. Her motherly pride sought satisfaction in the fact that her
+daughter was so kind-hearted as to stake her life for the poor and the
+suffering, and so plucky that she braved the Czar and all his soldiers.
+"It's from me she got all that benevolence and grit," Hannah said to
+herself. As to Rabbi Rachmiel, he asked no questions and his wife was
+not going to disturb his peace of mind.
+
+"There is no distinction between Jew and Gentile among us," Clara said
+in the course of her plea.
+
+"No, there is not," her mother returned. "Only the Gentiles tear the
+Jews to pieces." And at this Clara remembered that circumstance which
+lay like a revolting blemish on her conscience--the attitude of the
+revolutionists toward the riots.
+
+However, these matters got but little consideration from her now. She
+was taken up with her parents. The peculiar intonation with which her
+father chanted grace interested her more than all the "politics" of the
+world. She recognised these trifles with little thrills of joy, as
+though she had been away from home a quarter of a century. When her
+mother took out a pair of brass-rimmed spectacles on making ready to
+read her prayers, Clara exclaimed, with a gasp of unfeigned anguish:
+
+"Spectacles! Since when, mamma darling, since when?"
+
+"Since about six months ago. One gets older, foolish girl, not younger.
+When you are of my age you'll have to use spectacles, too, all your
+Gentile wisdom notwithstanding."
+
+Another day or two and her communions with her mother and the odour of
+apples and pears began to pall on her. She missed Pavel. Her mind was
+more frequently given over to musings upon that atmosphere amid which he
+and she were a pair of lovers than to the fascination of being with her
+father and mother again. She felt the centuries that divided her world
+from theirs more keenly every day. Once, after a long muse by the side
+of her mother, who sat darning stockings in her spectacles, she roused
+herself, with surprise, to the fact that Sophia was no more, that she
+had been hanged. It seemed incredible. And then it seemed incredible
+that she, Clara, was by her mother's side at this moment. She took
+solitary walks, she sought seclusion indoors, she was growing fidgety.
+The change that had come over her was not lost upon her mother.
+
+"You have been rather quick to get tired of your father and mother,
+haven't you?" Hannah said to her one day. "Grieving for your Christian
+fellow? A break into your bones, Tamara!"
+
+Clara blushed all over her face. She was more than grieving for Pavel.
+She pictured him in the hands of the gendarmes or shot in a desperate
+fray with them; she imagined him the victim of the ghastliest
+catastrophes known to the movement, her heart was torn by the wildest
+misgivings.
+
+One afternoon, when her mother was speaking to her and she was making
+feeble efforts to disguise her abstraction, Hannah, losing patience,
+flamed out:
+
+"But what's the use talking to a woman whose mind has been bedeviled by
+a Gentile!"
+
+"Don't, then," Clara snapped back, with great irritation.
+
+"The Black Year has asked you to arrange this meeting. Why don't you go
+back to your Gentile? Go at once to him or your heart will burst."
+
+Clara was cut to the quick, but she mastered herself.
+
+When she read in the newspapers and in a letter from her sister accounts
+of the Miroslav outbreak, her agony was far keener than that of her
+father and mother. The most conspicuous circumstance in every report of
+the riot was the bestial ferocity with which the mob had let itself
+loose on the homes of the poorest and hardest working population in
+those districts of Miroslav known as Paradise and Cucumber Market. She
+knew that neighbourhood as she knew herself. She had been born and bred
+in it. The dearest scenes of her childhood were there. Tears of
+homesickness and of a sense of guilt were choking her.
+
+For the first time it came home to her that these thousands of Jewish
+tailors, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, lumber-drivers, capmakers, coopers,
+labourers, who toiled from fourteen to fifteen hours a day and lived
+literally on the verge of starvation, were as much at least entitled to
+that hallowed name, "The People," as the demonised Russians who were now
+committing those unspeakable atrocities upon them. Yet the organ of her
+party had not a word of sympathy for them! Nay, it treated all Jews,
+without distinction, as a race of fleecers, of human leeches! Russian
+literature of the period was teeming with "fists," or village usurers,
+types of the great Russian provinces in which Jews were not allowed to
+dwell. Drunkenness in these districts was far worse than in those in
+which the liquor traffic was in Jewish hands. And the nobility--was it
+not a caste of spongers and land-robbers? Yet who would dare call the
+entire Russian people a people of human sharks, liquor-dealers and
+usurers, as it was customary to do in the case of the Jews? A Russian
+peasant or labourer was part of the People, while a Jewish tailor,
+blacksmith or carpenter was only a Jew, one of a race of profit-mongers,
+sharpers, parasites.
+
+And this "People," for whose sake she was staking her liberty and her
+life, was wreaking havoc on Jews because they were Jews like her father,
+like her mother, like herself.
+
+People at the inn were talking of the large numbers of Jews that were
+going to America. "America or Palestine?" was the great subject of
+discussion in the three Russian weeklies dedicated to Jewish interests.
+One day Hannah said, gravely:
+
+"I tell you what, Tamara. Drop your Gentile and the foolish work you are
+doing and let us all go to America."
+
+Clara smiled.
+
+"Will it be better if you are caught and put in a black hole?"
+
+Clara smiled again. There was temptation in what her mother said. Being
+in Russia she was liable to be arrested at any moment; almost sure to
+perish in a solitary cell or to be transported to the Siberian mines for
+twenty years. And were not the riots enough to acquit her before her own
+conscience in case she chose to retire from a movement that was
+primarily dedicated to the interests of an anti-Semitic people; from a
+movement that rejoiced in the rioters and had not a word of sympathy for
+their victims?
+
+But an excuse for getting out of the perils of underground life was not
+what she wanted. Rather did she wish for a vindication of her conduct in
+remaining in the Party of the Will of the People in spite of all "the
+People" did against her race. She was under the sway of two forces, each
+of them far mightier than any temptation to be free from danger. One of
+these two forces was Pavel. The other was Public Opinion--the public
+opinion of underground Russia. According to the moral standard of that
+Russia every one who did not share in the hazards of the revolutionary
+movement was a "careerist," a self-seeker absorbed exclusively in the
+feathering of his own nest; the Jew who took the special interests of
+his race specially to heart was a narrow-minded nationalist, and the
+Nihilist who withdrew from the movement was a renegade. The power which
+this "underground" public opinion exerted over her was all the greater
+because of the close ties of affection which, owing to the community of
+the dangers they faced, bound the active revolutionists to each other.
+Pavel and Clara were linked by the bonds of love, but she would have
+staked her life for every other member of the inner circle as readily as
+she would for him.
+
+They were all particularly dear to her because they were a handful of
+survivors of an epidemic of arrests that had swept away so many of their
+prominent comrades. The notion of these people thinking of her as a
+renegade was too horrible to be indulged in for a single moment.
+Besides, who would have had the heart to desert the party now that its
+ranks had been so decimated and each member was of so much value? Still
+more revolting was such an idea to Clara when she thought of the
+Nihilists who had died on the scaffold or were dying of consumption or
+scurvy or going insane in solitary confinement. Sophia, strangled on the
+gallows, was in her grave. Would she, Clara, abandon the cause to which
+that noble woman had given her life?
+
+The long and short of it is that it would have required far more
+courage on her part to go to America and be safe from the Russian
+gendarmes than to live under constant fire as an active "illegal" in her
+native country.
+
+This was the kind of thoughts that were occupying her mind at this
+minute. While her mother was urging her to go to America, she exclaimed
+mutely: "No, Sophia, I shan't desert the cause for which they have
+strangled you. I, too, will die for it." It seemed easy and the height
+of happiness to end one's life as Sophia had done. She saw her dead
+friend vividly, and as her mind scanned the mysterious, far-away image,
+the dear, familiar image, her bosom began to heave and her hand clutched
+her mother's arm in a paroxysm of suppressed tears.
+
+"Water! Water!" Hannah cried into the open doorway. When the water had
+been brought and Clara had gulped down a mouthful of it and fixed a
+faint, wistful smile on her mother, Hannah remarked fiercely:
+
+"The ghost knows what she is thinking of while people talk to her."
+
+Clara went out for a long walk over the old macadamised road that ran
+through the White-Russian town on its way to St. Petersburg. She loved
+to watch the peasant wagons, and, early in the morning and late in the
+evening, the incoming and outgoing stage-coaches. She knew that she was
+going to stay in the thick of the struggle, come what might. Yet the
+riots--more definitely the one of Miroslav--lay like a ruthless living
+reproach in her heart. She wanted to be alone with this Reproach, to
+plead with it, to argue with it, to pick it to pieces. She walked
+through the shabby, narrow streets and along the St. Petersburg highway,
+thinking a thousand thoughts, but she neither pleaded with that
+Reproach, nor argued with it, nor tried to pick it to pieces. Her mind
+was full of Pavel and of Sophia and of her other comrades, living or
+dead. "It is all very well for me to think of going to America and be
+free from danger," she said to herself. "But can Sophia go there? or
+Hessia?"
+
+At one moment it flashed through her brain that to be true to the people
+was to work for it in spite of all its injustices, even as a mother did
+for her child, notwithstanding all the cruelties it might heap on her.
+The highest bliss of martyrdom was to be mobbed by the very crowd for
+whose welfare you sacrificed yourself. To be sure, these thoughts were
+merely a reassertion of the conflict which she sought to settle. They
+offered no answer to the question, Why should she, a Jewess, stake her
+life for a people that was given to pillaging and outraging, to
+mutilating and murdering innocent Jews? They merely made a new statement
+of the fact that she was bent upon doing so. Yet she seized upon the new
+formulation of the problem as if it were the solution she was craving
+for. "I shall bear the cross of the Social Revolution even if the
+Russian people trample upon me and everybody who is dear to me," she
+exclaimed in her heart, feeling at peace with the shade of Sophia.
+
+She walked home in a peculiar state of religious beatitude, as though
+she had made a great discovery, found a golden key to the gravest
+problem of her personal life. Then, being in this uplifted frame of
+mind, she saw light breaking about her. Arguments were offering
+themselves in support of her position. When Russia was free and the
+reign of fraternity and equality had been established the maltreatment
+of man by man in any form would be impossible. Surely there would be no
+question of race or faith then. Anti-Jewish riots were now raging? All
+the more reason, then, to work for Russia's liberty. Indeed, was not
+the condition of the Jews better in free countries than in despotic
+ones? And the Russian peasant, would he in his blind fury run amuck the
+way he did if it were not for the misery and darkness in which he was
+kept by his tyrants? Her heart went out to the mob that was so ignorant
+as to attack people who had done them no harm. And then, once the great
+Reproach had been appeased in her mind, the entire Jewish question,
+riots, legal discriminations and all, appeared a mere trifle compared to
+the great Human Question, the solution of which constituted the chief
+problem of her cause.
+
+The next time her mother indulged in an attack upon Gentiles in general
+and Clara's "Gentile friends" in particular the young woman begged her,
+with tears in her voice, to desist:
+
+"Look at her! I have touched the honour of the Impurity," the old woman
+said, sneering.
+
+"Oh, they are not the Impurity, mamma darling," Clara returned ardently.
+"They are saints; they live and die for the happiness of others. If you
+only knew what kind of people they were!"
+
+"She has actually been bedeviled, as true as I am a daughter of Israel.
+Jews are being torn to pieces by the Gentiles; a Jew isn't allowed to
+breathe, yet she----"
+
+"Oh, they are a different kind of Gentiles, mamma. When that for which
+they struggle has been realised the Jew will breathe freely. Our people
+have no trouble in a country like England. Why? Because the whole
+country has more freedom there. Besides, when the demands of my 'Gentile
+friends' have been realised the Christian mobs won't be so uneducated,
+so blind. They will know who is who, and Jew and Gentile will live in
+peace. All will live in peace, like brothers, mamma."
+
+Hannah listened attentively, so that Clara, elated by the apparent
+effect of her plea, went on, going over aloud the answer that she gave
+her own conscience. When she paused, however, Hannah said with a shrug
+of her shoulders and a mournful nod of her head:
+
+"So you are bound to rot away in prison, aren't you?"
+
+"Don't talk like that, mamma, dear, pray."
+
+"Why shouldn't I? Has somebody else given birth to you? Has somebody
+else brought you up?"
+
+"But why should you make yourself uneasy about me? I _won't_ rot away in
+prison, and if I do, better people than I have met with a fate of that
+kind. I wish I were as good as they were and died as they did."
+
+"A rather peculiar taste," Hannah said with another shrug which seemed
+to add: "She has gone clear daft on those Gentile books of hers, as true
+as I live."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Clara remained in the White-Russian town two days longer than her
+parents. At the moment of parting her mother clung to her desperately.
+
+"Will I ever see you again?" Hannah sobbed. "Daughter mine, daughter
+mine! Will my eyes ever see you again?"
+
+The old Talmudist was weeping into a blue bandanna.
+
+As Clara walked back to her lodging alone the streets of the strange
+town gave her an excruciating sense of desolation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+PAVEL BECOMES "ILLEGAL."
+
+
+A month had elapsed. Clara was in a train, bound for Moscow, where her
+lover was awaiting her arrival. The nearer she drew to her destination
+the more vivid grew his features in her mind and the more violent was
+her fidget. "I am madly in love with him," she said to herself, and the
+very sound of these words in her mind were sweet to her. The few weeks
+of separation seemed to have convinced her that the power of his love
+over her was far greater than she had supposed. Things that had preyed
+upon her mind before now glanced off her imagination. She wept over the
+fate of Hessia and her prison-born child, yet she felt that if Pavel
+asked her to marry him at once she would not have the strength to resist
+him. Nay, to marry him was what her heart coveted above all else in the
+world.
+
+Being an "illegal," she had to slip into the big ancient city quietly.
+As she passed through the streets, alone on a droshky, she made a mental
+note of the difference in general pictorial effect between Moscow and
+St. Petersburg, but she was too excited to give her mind to anything in
+particular.
+
+Her first meeting with Pavel took place in a large cafe, built something
+like a theatre, with two tiers of stalls, a gigantic music box sending
+up great waves of subdued sound from the main floor below. He waited
+for her in front of the building. When she came they just shook hands
+smilingly, and he led the way up one flight of stairs to one of the
+stalls--a fair-sized, oblong private room, its walls covered with red
+plush, with upholstered benching to match.
+
+"I am simply crazy, Clanya!" he whispered, pressing her to him
+tremulously.
+
+At first they both experienced a sense of desuetude and awkwardness, so
+that in spite of his stormy demonstrations he could not look her full in
+the face. But this soon wore off. They were overflowing with joy in one
+another.
+
+A waiter, all in white, suave and hearty as only Great-Russian waiters
+know how to be, brought in "a portion of tea," served in attractive
+teapots of silver, with a glass for the man and a cup for the lady, and
+retired, shutting the door behind him, which subdued the metallic melody
+that filled the room still further and added to the sense of mystery
+that came from it. They talked desultorily and brokenly, of her parents
+and of the revolutionists gathered in Moscow. The subject of the
+Miroslav riot was tactfully broached by Clara herself, but she strove to
+give this part of their incoherent conversation the tone in which people
+usually discuss some sad but long-forgotten event, and she passed to
+some other topic as quickly and imperceptibly as she could. That he had
+seen that riot he did not tell her, though he once caught himself on the
+point of blurting it all out.
+
+When she asked him about the general state of the movement he gradually
+warmed up. The outlook was brilliant, he said.
+
+Urie, the tall blond nobleman with the strikingly Great-Russian
+features, who had played the part of cheesemonger on Little Garden
+Street, St. Petersburg, was in Moscow now, mending the shattered
+organisation. He was the centre of a busy group of revolutionists, Jews
+as well as Slavs. Several well-known veterans of both nationalities, who
+had been living in foreign countries during the past year or two, were
+expected to return to Russia. Everybody was bubbling with enthusiasm and
+activity.
+
+"And your fiery imagination is not inclined to view things in a rather
+roseate light, is it?" she asked, beaming amorously.
+
+"Not a bit," he replied irascibly. "Wait till you have seen it all for
+yourself. The reports from the provinces are all of the most cheerful
+character. New men are springing up everywhere. The revolution is a
+hydra-headed giant, Clanya."
+
+"But who says it isn't?" she asked, with a laugh.
+
+She got up, shot out her arms, saying:
+
+"Now for something to do. I feel like turning mountains upside down.
+Indeed, the revolution is a hydra-headed giant, indeed it is. And you
+are a little dear," she added, bending over him and pressing her cheek
+against his.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They had been married less than a month when he learned from a ciphered
+letter from Masha Safonoff that the gendarmes were looking for him.
+
+"Well, Clanya," he said facetiously, as he entered their apartment one
+afternoon, "you are a princess no longer."
+
+Her face fell.
+
+"Look at her! Look at her! She is grieving over the loss of her title."
+
+"Oh, do stop those silly jokes of yours, Pasha. Must you become
+illegal?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am. I am of the same rank as you. That puts a stop to the airs
+you have been giving yourself." It was in the course of the same
+conversation that he told her of his trip to Miroslav and of all that
+had happened to him there.
+
+They were known here as brother and sister, his legal residence being in
+another place, but now both these residences were abandoned, and they
+moved into a new apartment, in another section of the town, which he
+took great pains to put in tasteful shape. Indeed, so elaborately fitted
+up was it that he fought shy of letting any of his fellow Nihilists know
+their new address. A table against one wall was piled with drawings,
+while standing in a conspicuous corner on the floor were a drawing-board
+and a huge portfolio--accessories of the role of a russified German
+artist which he played before the janitor of the house. Before he let
+her see it he had put a vase of fresh roses in the centre of the table.
+
+When he and Clara entered their new home, he said in French, with a
+gallant gesture:
+
+"Madame, permit me to introduce you."
+
+He helped her off with her things and slid into the next room, where he
+busied himself with the samovar. She had with her a fresh copy of the
+_Will of the People_--a sixteen page publication of the size of the
+average weekly printed on fine, smooth paper; so she took it up eagerly.
+Its front page was in mourning for President Garfield. An editorial
+notice signed by the revolutionary executive committee tendered an
+expression of grief and sympathy to the bereaved republic, condemning in
+vigorous language acts of violence in a land "where the free will of the
+people determines not only the law but also the person of the ruler."
+"In such a land," the Nihilist Executive Committee went on to explain,
+"a deed of this sort is a manifestation of that spirit of despotism the
+effacement of which in Russia is the aim of our movement. Violence is
+not to be justified unless it be directed against violence."
+
+The declaration made an exceedingly pleasant impression on Clara.
+
+"Bravo! Bravo!" she called out to her husband, as she peered into the
+inside pages of the paper.
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked her from the next room, distractedly,
+choking with the smoke of his freshly lit samovar.
+
+She made no answer. The same issue of her party's organ devoted several
+columns to the anti-Jewish riots. She began to read these with acute
+misgivings, and, sure enough, they were permeated by a spirit of
+anti-Semitism as puerile as it was heartless. A bitter sense of
+resentment filled her heart. "As long as it does not concern the Jews
+they have all the human sympathy and tact in the world," she thought.
+"The moment there is a Jew in the case they become cruel, short-sighted
+and stupid--everything that is bad and ridiculous."
+
+"What's that you said, Clanya?" Pavel demanded again.
+
+She had difficulty in answering him. "He is a Gentile after all," she
+said to herself. "There is a strain of anti-Semitism in the best of
+them." She was in despair. "What is to be done, then?" she asked
+herself. "Is there no way out of it?" The answer was: "I will bear the
+cross," and once again the formula had a soothing effect on her frame of
+mind. And because it had, the cross gradually ceased to be a cross.
+
+She warmed to her husband with a sense of her own forgiveness, of the
+sacrifices she was making. She felt a new glow of tenderness for him.
+And then, by degrees, things appeared in milder light. Pavel's rapture
+over her was so genuine, his devotion so profound, and the general
+relations between Jew and Gentile in the movement were marked by
+intimacies and attachments so sincere, that the anti-Semitic article
+could not have sprung from any personal taste or sentiment in the
+author. It was evidently a mere matter of revolutionary theory. Justly
+or unjustly, the fact was there: in the popular mind the Jews
+represented the idea of economic oppression. Now, if the masses had
+risen in arms against them, did not that mean that they were beginning
+to attack those they considered their enemies? In the depth of her heart
+there had always lurked some doubt as to whether the submissive, stolid
+Russian masses had it in them ever to rise against anybody. Yet here
+they had! Misguided or not, they had risen against an element of the
+population which they were accustomed to regard as parasites. Was not
+that the sign of revolutionary awakening she had fervently been praying
+for?
+
+She went so far as to charge herself with relapsing into racial
+predilections, with letting her feelings as a Jewess get the better of
+her devotion to the cause of humanity. She was rapidly arguing herself
+into the absurd, inhuman position into which her party had been put by
+the editor of its official organ.
+
+And to prove to herself that her views were deep-rooted and unshakable,
+she said to herself: "If they think in Miroslav I am the only person who
+could restore harmony to their circle, I ought to go there and try to
+persuade Elkin to give up those foolish notions of his." What they were
+saying about her in that town flattered her vanity. The thought of
+appearing in her revolutionary alma mater, in the teeth of the local
+gendarmes and police, an "illegal" known to underground fame, was
+irresistible. Her thirst of adventure in this connection was aroused to
+the highest pitch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At eight o'clock the next morning she sat in a chair, looking at her
+husband, who was still in bed, sleeping peacefully. He had an early
+appointment, but she could not bring herself to wake him. She was going
+to do so a minute or two later, she pleaded with herself, and then they
+would have tea together. The samovar was singing softly in the next
+room. It was of her love and of her happiness it seemed to be singing.
+Her joy in her honeymoon swelled her heart and rose to her throat. "I am
+too happy," she thought. As she remembered her determination to go to
+her native place, she added: "Yes, I am too happy, while Sophia is in
+her grave and Hessia is pining away in her cell. I may be arrested at
+any moment in Miroslav, but I am going to do my duty. I must keep Elkin
+and the others from abandoning the revolution."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+OMINOUS FOOTSTEPS.
+
+
+Clara alighted from the train at a station immediately preceding
+Miroslav. She was met by Olga, the girl with the short hair and sparse
+teeth who was engaged to the judge, the two reaching the city partly on
+a peasant's waggon, partly on foot. At sight of the familiar landscape
+Clara seemed weird to herself. It was her own Miroslav, yet she was
+worse than a stranger in it. She felt like a ghost visiting what was
+once his home. On the other hand, the unmistakable evidences of the
+recent riot contracted her heart with pain and brought back that
+Reproach.
+
+Olga took her to a "conspiracy house." This was a basement in the
+outskirts of the town, whose squatty windows faced the guardhouse of
+military stores and commanded a distant view of the river. The only
+other tenants of that courtyard were three sisters, all of them deaf and
+in a state of semi-idiocy. The basement had been rented soon after
+Clara's flight. It consisted of three rooms, all very meagrely
+furnished. Lying under the sofa of the middle room was a wooden roller,
+which had once been intended for a secret printing office. One of the
+walls was hung with a disorderly pile of clothes of both sexes--the shed
+disguises of passing conspirators.
+
+But very few members were allowed to visit her. Those who were saluted
+her with admiring looks and generally treated her as a heroine, which
+caressed her vanity most pleasantly. With a temerity born of an acquired
+habit of danger, not unmixed with some bravado, Clara was burning to
+visit her parents, her sister and her mother-in-law, and to take a look
+at her native neighbourhood. Her friends made an effort to keep her
+indoors. She would not be restrained, assuring them that she was going
+to take good care of herself, but she finally offered to compromise on a
+meeting with her sister, provided she brought her little girl with her.
+
+"I am crazy to see her," she said, meaning the child.
+
+"See little Ruchele! Why you _are_ crazy, Clara!" Olga declared. "If you
+do all Miroslav will know the very next day that 'Aunt Clara' is in
+town."
+
+"Nonsense. She won't know me. She has not seen me for more than a year.
+Besides, I'll wear my veil. Oh, I must see her; don't oppose me, Olga,
+dear."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The meeting took place on a secluded bit of lawn under a sky suffused
+with the lingering gold of a dying sunset. And sure enough, Ruchele was
+extremely shy of the lady in black. When Clara caught her in her arms
+passionately she set up a scream so loud that her mother wrenched her
+from her aunt's embrace for fear of attracting a crowd from a
+neighboring lane.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A debate between Clara and Elkin was to take place in Orlovsky's house
+the next evening. A few hours before the time set for the gathering
+Clara received an unexpected call from Elkin. This was their first
+meeting since her arrival, and she welcomed him with sincere cordiality.
+She respected him as her first teacher of socialism. As to his love for
+her, which could still be read in his eyes, it flattered her now.
+
+"Well," he said, trying to take a light tone, but betraying agitation.
+"There is some news in town. Clara Yavner has been seen about."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that Clara Yavner has been seen about," he repeated with
+sarcastic articulation. And by way of putting a period to the sentence,
+he opened his lips into a lozenge-shaped sneer and leaned his head
+against the mass of hung-up clothes under which he sat on an oblong
+stool.
+
+She was seated on another tabouret, with her back to the low window. His
+manner exasperated her. "But I have been out only once," she retorted
+calmly, controlling her anger, "and then I was heavily veiled."
+
+"Well, could not some people have recognised you by your figure and
+carriage? I am sure I could. At any rate your cousin, Vigdoroff, was to
+see me a little while ago, for the express purpose of conveying this
+message to you, Clara. The gossips of Cucumber Market are whispering
+about your having been seen in town, 'and in addition to truths no end
+of fibs are being told.' Your mother is quite uneasy about it,
+and--well, Clara, at the risk of having it set down to a desire on my
+part to slip out of the debate, I should suggest that you take no
+further chances and leave Miroslav at once."
+
+"Oh, nonsense. Am I not safe in this basement at least?"
+
+"Yes, I think you are, but if the police should get wind of your
+presence in town, why, they would not leave a stone unturned. They have
+been itching for a chance to tone down their reputation for stupidity
+ever since your disappearance."
+
+She smiled and frowned at once.
+
+"Besides," he went on, leaning back against the clothes and gazing at
+the ceiling, "if that debate is your chief mission here I am willing to
+capitulate in advance. You know I cannot debate with you, Clara. I am
+still in your power. My brain is in a whirl in your presence. It is at
+this moment. If that debate took place I should simply not know what I
+was talking about. You would not wish me to make an exhibition of the
+abject helplessness that comes over me when I see you, would you?"
+
+His words, uttered in monotonous accents, contrasted so sharply with the
+air of mockery that had attended his former attempts at an avowal; they
+sounded so forlornly simple, his spirit was so piteously broken that he
+seemed a changed man. She was touched.
+
+"Don't speak like that," she said kindly. "I'll do as you say. I'll
+leave Miroslav at once."
+
+"Is there absolutely no hope for me, Clara?"
+
+"I am no longer free, Elkin. I am a married woman," she said, flushing
+violently. "Let us change the subject. Tell me something about your
+Americans."
+
+He dropped his eyes, and after a rather long pause he said, blankly:
+
+"Well, pardon me, then. You have my best wishes, Clara. I say it from my
+heart. I shall be your warmest friend as long as I live. I confess I
+dreamed of your joining our party, so that I might be near you, and
+hoped that some day you would become mine."
+
+"The right place for a revolutionist is here, in Russia, Elkin."
+
+"Nobody is going to try to persuade you to leave the movement," he said,
+levelling a meek, longing look at her. "The Russian people act like wild
+beasts toward our poor Jews, Clara; yet they and the Russian revolution
+will ever be dear to our hearts. We appreciate that it is their
+blindness which makes such brutes of them. We shall always think of
+those who are in the fight here; we shall adore you; we shall worship
+you, Clara; and perhaps, too, we shall be able to do something for
+Russian liberty from there. But if you condemn us for joining the
+emigrants, I wish to say this, that if you had been in Miroslav during
+the riot you would perhaps take a more indulgent view of our step. So
+many Jewish revolutionists have sacrificed their lives by 'going to the
+people'--to the Russian people. It's about time some of us at least went
+to our own people. They need us, Clara."
+
+"Look here, Elkin," she said with ardent emphasis, striving to deaden
+the consciousness of his love-lorn look that was breaking her heart,
+"you must not think I am so soulless as to take no interest in the
+victims of those horrors, for I do. I do. I can assure you I do. I have
+been continually discussing this question in my mind. I have studied it.
+My heart is bleeding for our poor Jews, but even if it were solely a
+question of saving the Jews, even then one's duty would be to work for
+the revolution. How many Russian Jews could you transport to America and
+Palestine? Surely not all the five million there are. The great majority
+of them will stay here and be baited, and the only hope of these is a
+liberated Russia. All history tells us that the salvation of the Jews
+lies in liberty and in liberty only. England was the first country to
+grant them the right to breathe because she was the first country where
+the common people wrested rights for themselves. The French revolution
+emancipated the Jews, and so it goes. If there were no parliamentary
+governments in Western Europe, the Jews of Germany, Austria, or Belgium
+would still be treated as they are in Russia. When Russia has some
+freedom at least, her Jews, too, will be treated like human beings."
+
+"But we are not like the Palestinians, Clara. We don't propose to
+estrange ourselves from the revolutionary movement. We shall support it
+with American money, and we hope to fit out expeditions to rescue
+important prisoners from Siberia, and to take them across the Pacific
+Ocean to our commune."
+
+"Dreams!" she said, laughing good-naturedly.
+
+The discussion lasted about an hour longer. He had not the strength to
+get up, and she had not the heart to cut him short. They listened to
+each other's arguments with rapt attention, yet they were both aware of
+the unspoken other discussion--on the pathos of his love--that went on
+between them all the while they talked of the great exodus.
+
+And while she commiserated Elkin and felt flattered by her power over
+him, her heart was full of yearning tenderness for her husband, of joy
+in him and in her honeymoon with him.
+
+When Elkin rose from his seat at last he said:
+
+"By the way, I came near forgetting it--your cousin wants to see you."
+
+"Volodia? Volodia Vigdoroff? I thought he would dread to come near me."
+
+Time being short, the meeting was set for an early hour the very next
+morning. Elkin had made his adieux, but he still lingered. There was an
+extremely awkward stillness which was broken by the appearance of Olga.
+Then he left.
+
+Disclosing the location, or, indeed, the existence, of a "conspiracy
+house" to one uninitiated into underground life was impossible.
+Accordingly, Vladimir was to meet Clara in a scanty pine grove near the
+Nihilists' basement. On his way thither Vladimir was continually looking
+over his shoulder, lest he was being followed by spies. He was flurried
+and the sight of every policeman he met gave him a moment or two of
+abject terror. But the part he had taken in the fight of the Defence
+Guard had left him with a sense of his own potential courage; so he was
+trying to live up to it by keeping this appointment with his "illegal"
+cousin, whom he was so thirsting to see. That she was married he did not
+know. He was going to persuade her to join his American party. At this
+minute, in the high-strung state of his mind, the result of recent
+experiences, he felt as though she were not merely his "second sister,"
+which is Russian for cousin, but a real one. His chief object for
+seeking this interview, however, had been to celebrate his own
+vindication. By her enthusiasm for the revolutionary movement from which
+he stayed away she had formerly made him feel like a coward and a
+nonentity; now, however, that in his judgment the riots plainly meant
+the moral bankruptcy of that movement, so far at least as it concerned
+revolutionists of Jewish blood, he mentally triumphed over her.
+
+The meeting had been fixed for an early hour. The air in the woods was
+cold and piquant with the exhalations of young evergreens. The grass,
+considerably yellowed and strewn with cones, was still beaded with dew,
+save for a small outlet of the clearing which was being rapidly invaded
+by the sun.
+
+They met with warm embraces and kisses.
+
+"Clara, my sister! If you only knew what we have gone through!" he said,
+with the passion of heartfelt tragedy in his subdued voice.
+
+"How is uncle? How is auntie?" she asked with similar emotion.
+
+His kiss and embrace had left an odd sensation in him. He had never had
+an occasion to kiss her before; and now that he had not seen her for
+about a year the contact of his lips with the firm, though somewhat
+faded, cheek of this interesting young woman had revealed to him what
+seemed to be an unnatural and illicit fact that she was not a sister to
+him, but--a woman.
+
+They seated themselves in a sunny spot.
+
+"Are you really going to America, Volodia?" she inquired with a familiar
+smile, carefully hiding her grief.
+
+"I certainly am, and what is more, I want you to come along with us," he
+answered, admiring her figure and the expression of her face as he had
+never done before. "Oh, I am quite in earnest about it, Clara. You see,
+the fist of the rioter has driven it home to me that I am a Jew. I must
+go where my people go. Come, Clara, you have staked your life for the
+Russians long enough, and how have they repaid you? Come and let us do
+something for our own poor unfortunate Jews."
+
+She listened with the attention of one good-naturedly waiving a
+discussion.
+
+"And what has become of that bridge you were building?" she asked.
+
+"And what has become of that gallows, of the martyr's scaffold, which
+you said united Jew and Gentile? Has _that_ done anybody any good? As to
+the bridge I was building across the chasm that divides us from the
+Christians, I admit that it has been wrecked to splinters; wrecked
+unmercifully by that same fist of the rioter. I dreamed of the
+brotherhood of Jew and Gentile and that fist woke me. The only point of
+contact between Jew and Gentile possible to-day is this"--pointing at a
+scar slightly back of his ear, his badge of active service as a member
+of the Defence Committee.
+
+"Why, did you get it in the riot?" she asked with a gesture of horror.
+
+"It's a trifle, of course. Others have been crippled for life, but such
+as this bit of a scar is it will stand me in good stead as a reminder
+that I am a Jew. The fact is now everlastingly engraven on my flesh.
+There is no effacing it now. But joking aside, Clara, I love the Russian
+people as much as I ever did. My heart breaks at the thought of leaving
+Russia. I don't think the Russians themselves are capable of loving
+their people as I do. But it can't be helped. There is an impassable
+chasm between us."
+
+He was conscious of being on his mettle, as though the fiascoes he had
+sustained in his last year's talks with her were being retrieved. As to
+her, there was a look of curiosity and subtle condescension in her eye
+as she listened. But she was thoroughly friendly and warm-hearted, so
+for the moment he saw nothing but encouragement to his flow of
+conversation. From time to time he would be seized with mortal fear lest
+they should be pounced upon by gendarmes, but he never betrayed it.
+
+At one point, when he had put a question to her and paused, she said,
+instead of answering it:
+
+"Really, Volodia, I somehow can't get it into my head that you are
+actually going to America."
+
+"Oh, I am, I am. I am going to that land 'where one's wounded feelings
+are sure of shelter.' Come along, Clara. Haven't you taken risks enough
+in Russia? Come and serve your own people, your poor, trodden people.
+Have not the riots been enough to open your eyes, Clara?"
+
+"As if those were the only riots there were," she returned, pensively.
+"All humanity is in the hands of rioters."
+
+"But our homes are being destroyed, Clara," he urged in an impassioned
+undertone. "Our people are being plundered, maimed, their every feeling
+is outraged, their daughters are assaulted."
+
+"Is there anything new in that?" she asked, in the same pensive tone.
+"Are not the masses robbed of the fruit of their toil? Are they not
+maimed in the workshops or in the army? Are not their daughters reduced
+to dishonour by their own misery and by the lust of the mighty? Are not
+the cities full of human beings without a home? All Russia is
+riot-ridden. The whole world, for that matter. The riots that you are
+dwelling upon are only a detail. Do away with _the_ riot and all the
+others will disappear of themselves."
+
+A note of animation came into her melancholy voice.
+
+"What you 'Americans' propose to do," she continued, "is to clasp a
+handful of victims in your arms and to flee to America with them. Well,
+I have no fault to find with you, Volodia. I wish you and your party
+success. But the great, great bulk of victims, Gentiles as well as Jews,
+remain here, and the rioters--the throne, the bureaucracy, the
+drones--remain with them."
+
+She struck him as amazingly beautiful this morning and she seemed to
+speak as one inspired. He listened to her with a feeling of reverence.
+
+"But you have done enough, Clara," he said when she finished. "You have
+faced dangers enough. Sooner or later you will be taken, and then--" (he
+threw up his hands sadly). "You have a perfect right to save your life
+and liberty now."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"You are a wonderful woman, Clara. By George, you are! Therefore, if you
+are arrested, it will be a great loss not only to your relatives, but to
+all the Jews. Haven't the Gentiles robbed us enough?"
+
+"Would you have them rob us of our sacred principles, too?" she
+retorted, with a faint smile. "Indeed, the right to die for liberty is
+the only right the government cannot take away from the Jew."
+
+"Come to America, Clara."
+
+"Oh, that's utterly impossible, Volodia," she answered, gazing at the
+cones.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The discovery that Prince Boulatoff was prominently connected with the
+underground movement, which originated in the confession of one of his
+revolutionary pupils, had created considerable excitement in St.
+Petersburg. The secret service had no difficulty in securing his
+photograph, and when it was shown to the little man who had acted as an
+errand boy at the celebrated cheese-shop he at once identified him as
+one of those who dug the mine. That Pavel had recently been in Miroslav
+was known to the whole town. Accordingly, the central political
+detective office at St. Petersburg despatched several picked men there
+to scent for his underground trail. These practically took the matter
+out of the hands of the local gendarmes, whom they treated with
+professional contempt. They gradually learned that Pavel had been a
+frequent visitor at Orlovsky's house, and then they took to shadowing
+Orlovsky and those in whose company he was seen. They made discovery
+after discovery.
+
+One of these imported spies was the fellow who once shadowed Clara in
+St. Petersburg--the tall man with the swinging arm and the stiff-looking
+neck whom she met on the day when the revolutionist with the Greek name
+was arrested.
+
+It was about 8 o'clock in the evening, some ten minutes before train
+time, when this spy saw an uneducated Jewish woman in blue spectacles
+crossing the square in front of the station. She seemed familiar to him,
+yet not enough so to attract serious attention.
+
+It was Clara. Her disguise, in addition to the blue spectacles,
+consisted of a heavy Jewish wig, partly covered by a black kerchief, and
+an old-fashioned cloak. To spare her the risk of facing the gendarmes of
+the station, her ticket had been bought for her by somebody else, her
+intention being to slip into her car at the last moment. Having reached
+the place too early, however, she was now trying to kill the interval by
+sauntering about. This time the spy escaped her notice, but a little
+later, less than a minute before the third bell was sounded and while
+she was scurrying through the third class restaurant, she caught sight
+of him, as he stood half leaning against the counter drowsily.
+
+Here he had a much better look at her. She certainly was familiar to
+him, but he was still unable to locate her, and before he knew his own
+mind he let her pass. It was not until the train had pulled out, and its
+rear lights were rapidly sinking into the vast gloom of the night, that
+it dawned upon him that she looked like the girl he used to spy upon in
+St. Petersburg. Blue spectacles as a means of concealing one's identity
+are quite a commonplace article, so he called himself names for not
+having thought of it in time and hastened to telegraph to the gendarmes
+at the next station to arrest the young woman, giving a description of
+Clara's disguise and general appearance.
+
+Some three quarters of an hour later an answer came from the next
+station that the train had been detained for a careful search, but that
+no such woman could be found on it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While that search was in progress Clara, her disguise removed, entered
+the "conspiracy house," where Olga had been waiting for her, in case she
+should have found it inconvenient to board the train.
+
+"There you are!" Olga said, in despair, as she beheld her friend's
+smiling face in the doorway. "What has happened?"
+
+"It's a fizzle, that's all. But it might have been worse than that.
+There is a St. Petersburg fellow at the station. He knows me."
+
+"Did he see you?" Olga demanded breathlessly.
+
+"I should say he did," Clara replied with another smile. "Well, I
+thought it was all up. Gracious! didn't my feet grow weak under me. But
+my star has not gone back on me yet, it seems. I got into one of the
+cars just as the third bell was heard. I was sure he was close behind
+me, but, when I turned around, looking for a seat, I saw he was not
+there. He must have gone to another car for the moment, or something.
+Anyhow, I tried to get out again. I thought I had nothing to lose,
+and--here I am. But look here, Olya[E], are you sure there is nobody
+outside?"
+
+  [E] Diminutive of Olga.
+
+"I think I am," Olga answered firmly. "Why?"
+
+"I thought I saw a queer looking individual as I turned into this
+street. I must have been mistaken. Still, I confess, the presence of
+that fellow in this town is anything but a pleasant surprise to me. I
+don't like it at all. I wonder why we have not heard from Masha about
+him."
+
+The reason they had not heard from her was simply this, that the
+invasion of the St. Petersburg detectives had had such an overbearing
+effect on everybody in the local gendarmerie that her brother had become
+unusually reticent on the affairs of his office even at home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two or three hours had passed, when Clara and Olga heard an ominous
+confusion of footsteps in the vestibule. The next moment the room was
+crowded with men, some in uniforms, others in citizens' clothes. One of
+the St. Petersburg officers rushed to a window where a blue medicine
+bottle--Clara's "window signal"--stood on the sill, to prevent either of
+the two Nihilist girls from removing it by way of warning to their
+friends.
+
+"You here!" the tall, baronial-looking procureur, Princess Chertogoff's
+son-in-law, said to Olga, in amazement. He bowed to her most
+chivalrously, but she turned away from him with a contemptuous gesture.
+
+"And may I ask for _your_ name, Miss," a gendarme officer accosted
+Clara.
+
+"I decline to answer," she returned, simply. Her eyes were on a pistol
+which she saw in the hand of one of the gendarmes.
+
+"You live in Miroslav, don't you?"
+
+Instead of answering this question she sprang at the man who held the
+pistol, seized it from him and began firing at the wall. This was her
+substitute for a removal of the safety signal from the window.
+
+The weapon was instantly knocked out of her hand by a blow with the flat
+of a gleaming sword, and she was forced into a seat, two men holding her
+tightly by the arms, while a third was tying a handkerchief around her
+bleeding hand.
+
+"I merely wanted to alarm the neighbourhood," she said calmly. "But, of
+course, you people will turn it into a case of armed resistance."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Orlovsky learned of Clara's and Olga's arrest, one of his first
+thoughts was about notifying Pavel, of whose relations toward Clara he
+had by this time been informed. It appeared that the only man he knew
+who had "underground" connections in the two capitals and was in a
+position to communicate with Boulatoff was the former leader of the
+Miroslav Circle, Elkin. This, however, did not stop Orlovsky. To Elkin
+he went and explained the situation to him.
+
+"Elkin, darling, you know you are a soul of a fellow," he implored him.
+"Pavel is either in St. Petersburg or in Moscow, and you are the only
+man who could get at him."
+
+Elkin stood, thinking glumly, at the window for a few minutes, and then
+said:
+
+"Very well, I am going."
+
+He started on the same day, accompanied by a spy. That evening Orlovsky,
+the judge and several other members of the Miroslav Circle, were
+arrested at Orlovsky's house, and a few days later news came from Moscow
+that Pavel and Elkin had been taken in a cafe, while Makar had fallen
+into a "trap" at the house of an old friend of Elkin's, who had been
+seized several hours before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+A MESSAGE THROUGH THE WALL.
+
+
+Months had passed. Spring was three or four weeks old, but cell No. --
+on the first floor of the Trubetzkoy Bastion, Fortress of Peter and
+Paul, had not yet tasted its caressing breath. It was a rather spacious,
+high-ceiled vault, but being quite close to the stone fence outside, it
+was practically without the range of sunshine and breeze. Its window,
+which was high overhead, at the top of a sloping stretch of sill, sent
+down twilight at noonday and left it in the grip of night two or three
+hours after. The chill, damp air was laden with a stifling odour of
+must. The lower part of the walls was covered with a thick layer of
+mould which looked like a broad band of heavy tapestry of a
+dark-greenish hue.
+
+The solitary inmate of this pit was walking back and forth diagonally,
+from corner to corner. He wore a loose, shapeless cloak of coarse but
+flimsy material, which he was continually wrapping about his slim,
+emaciated figure. He was shivering. As he walked to and fro, his head
+was for the most part thrown back, his eyes raised to the window, whose
+sloping sill he could have scarcely touched with the tips of his
+fingers. Now and then he paused and turned toward one of the walls, as
+though listening for some sounds, and then, with an air of nerveless
+disappointment, he would resume his walk.
+
+It was Pavel.
+
+The spy who accompanied Elkin from Miroslav to Moscow had shadowed him
+in the ancient city until he saw him with Prince Boulatoff and then with
+Makar and a university student, in whose room the four revolutionists
+were arrested, shortly after, in the course of a heated debate between
+Makar and Elkin on the riots and the question of emigration to America.
+
+During the first few weeks of Pavel's stay in the fortress the guards,
+who had been converted to revolutionary sympathies by a celebrated
+political prisoner named Nechayeff, had carried communications not only
+from prisoner to prisoner, but also from them to the revolutionists at
+large; so that the _Will of the People_ was at one time partly edited
+from this fortress, and a bold plot was even planned by Nechayeff to
+have the Czar locked up in a cell while he visited its cathedral. But
+these relations between the guards and the revolutionists, which lasted
+about a year, had finally been disclosed, and since then Pavel and the
+inmates of the other cells had been treated with brutal stringency.
+
+Pavel's trial was not likely to take place for another year or two,
+but his fate was clear to him: death, probably commuted to
+life-imprisonment, which actually amounted to slow death in a spacious
+grave like this vault, or in the mines of Siberia, was the usual doom of
+men charged with "crimes" like his. His future yawned before him in the
+form of a black, boundless cavern charged with dull, gnawing pain, like
+the pain that was choking him at this moment. The worst part of his
+torture was his solitude. The most inhuman physical suffering seemed
+easier to bear than this speechless, endless, excruciatingly monotonous
+solitude of his. "Oath-men" as the sworn-in attendants of the prison
+were called (under-sized, comical looking fellows, most of them) came
+into his cell three or four times a day--with food, or to put things to
+rights hastily--but neither they nor the gendarmes who invariably
+accompanied them ever answered his questions. One morning, in an excess
+of self-commiseration and resentment at their stolid taciturnity, he had
+spat in the face of a gendarme. He had done so, at the peril of being
+flogged, in the hope of hearing him curse, at least; but the gendarme
+merely wiped his bewhiskered face and went on watching the "oath-man"
+silently.
+
+Whenever Pavel was taken out for his 15-minute walk in a secluded little
+yard, which was once in two days, the sentinels he met would turn their
+backs on him, lest he should see more faces than was absolutely
+necessary. The warden and the prison doctor were the only human beings
+whose voices he could hear, and these were brutally laconic and brutally
+rude or ironical with him. To be taken to the prison office for an
+examination by the procureur was the one diversion which the near future
+held out to him; but then his near future might be a matter of weeks and
+might be a matter of months.
+
+Back and forth he walked, at a spiritless, even pace, as monotonous as
+his days of gloom and misery, as that dull pain which was ceaselessly
+choking his throat and gnawing at his heart. At one moment he paused and
+felt his gums with his fingers. Were they swollen? Was he developing
+scurvy? Or was it mere imagination? He also passed his hand over his
+cheeks, and it seemed to him that they were sunken a little more than
+they had been the day before. But the great subject of his thoughts
+to-day was his mother, and tantalising, heart-crushing thoughts they
+were. Where was she? How was she? Was she alive at all? He pictured her
+committing suicide because of his doom, and the cruel vision persisted.
+And if she was not dead, her life was little better than death. He tried
+to think of something else, but no, the appealing, reproachful image of
+his mother, of his poor dear mother who had scarcely had a day of
+happiness since she married, would not leave his mind. As a matter of
+fact, his efforts to think of something else were scarcely sincere. He
+would not shake that image out of his brain if he could. It was tearing
+his heart to pieces, yet he would rather stand all these tortures than
+shut his mother out of his thoughts. To talk to somebody was the only
+thing that could have saved him from the terrible pang that was
+harrowing him at this moment; but the chimes of the cathedral, which
+played the quarter-hours as well as the hours, and the crash of iron
+bolts at the opening of cells at meal-time were the only sounds that he
+could expect to hear to-day. His heart was writhing within him.
+Something was clutching at his brain. He seemed to feel himself going
+mad. He was tempted to cry at the top of his voice; to cry like a wild
+beast; but, of course, he was not going to give such satisfaction to the
+enemy.
+
+He gazed at the sloping window-sill. For the thousandth time a desire
+took hold of him to mount it and take a look through the glass; and for
+the thousandth time he cast a hopeless glance at his bed, at the table,
+the chair, the wash-stand: they were all nailed to the floor, a large
+earthen water-cup and a salt-cellar made of lead being the only movable
+things in his room.
+
+Four months ago there had been a prisoner in the adjoining cell with
+whom he carried on long conversations by rapping out his words on the
+wall, but one day their talk had been interrupted in the middle of a
+sentence, after which that man had been removed. The cell had long
+remained empty, as could be inferred from the fact that Pavel never
+heard its door opened at meal-time. Since a week ago it had been
+tenanted again, but all his attempts at conversation with his new
+neighbour had so far been futile. His taps on the wall had been left
+unanswered.
+
+Suddenly, as he was now pacing his floor, his heart melting with
+homesickness and anguish at the thought of his mother, he heard a rapid
+succession of fine, dry sounds on the right wall. He started, and,
+breathless and flushed with excitement, he listened. "Who are you?" the
+mould-grown wall demanded.
+
+Pavel cast a look at the peephole in the heavy door, and seeing no eye
+in it, he took a turn or two up and down the room and stopped hard by
+the wall, upon which he rapped out his reply:
+
+"Boulatoff. Who are you?"
+
+"The Emperor of all Africa," came the answer.
+
+"What?" Pavel asked in perplexity. "You have not finished your sentence,
+what were you saying?"
+
+"Begone!" the wall returned. "How dare you doubt my title? I am the
+Emperor of all Africa. How dare you speak to me? Away with you!"
+
+Pavel's heart sank. It was apparently some political prisoner who had
+gone insane in a damp, cold, isolated cell.
+
+"Dear friend, dear comrade!" he implored. "Can't you try and remember
+your name?"
+
+"Begone, or I'll order your arrest, mean slave that you are!" This was
+followed by some incoherencies. Pavel went away from the wall with tears
+in his eyes.
+
+In the afternoon of the third day he was striding to and fro, in
+excellent spirits. He had been in this mood since he opened his eyes
+that morning. Nothing but the most encouraging moments in the history of
+his connection with the movement would come to his mind to-day. He felt
+as though he and all his revolutionary friends were looking at each
+other, and conversing mentally, all as cheerful and happy as he was now.
+Everything pointed toward the speedy triumph of their cause. He beheld
+barricades in the streets of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa; he saw the
+red flag waving; he heard the Marseillaise. He recalled Makar's vision
+of the time when victorious revolutionists would break into the fortress
+of Peter and Paul and take its prisoners out to celebrate the advent of
+liberty with the people. He thought of Clara, and his heart went out to
+her and to their interrupted honeymoon; he imagined her on his arm
+marching with others, he did not know whither, and whispering words of
+love and exultation to her, and once more his heart leaped with joy. He
+recalled jokes, comical situations. He felt like bursting into a roar of
+merriment, when there came a shower of taps on the wall.
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"Boulatoff," Pavel answered, with sadness in his heart. He expected
+other absurdities from his insane neighbour. "And you?"
+
+"Bieliayeff. I am not well. But I feel much better to-day. My lucid
+interval, perhaps. I remember everything."
+
+Pavel had met him two years before. They talked of themselves, of their
+mutual friends, of the last news that had reached Bieliayeff through his
+other wall. It appeared that Bieliayeff's neighbour on that side of his
+cell was Elkin.
+
+Pavel received the information with a thrill of pleasure. He was going
+to ask Bieliayeff to convey a message to his fellow townsman; but at
+this he had an instinctive feeling that there was an eye at the peephole
+and he dropped his hand to his side, pretending to be absorbed in
+thought.
+
+They resumed their conversation a quarter of an hour later.
+
+"Tell Elkin I love him; he is dear to me," Pavel tapped out. "I feel
+guilty and miserable. If it were not for me he would be in America now.
+Besides, I have been unjust to him. This oppresses me more than anything
+else."
+
+These communications through the wall are the most precious things life
+has to offer in living graves like those of the fortress of Peter and
+Paul. The inmate of such a grave will listen to the messages of his
+neighbours with the most strenuous attention, with every faculty in his
+possession, with every fibre of his being; and he will convey every word
+of a long message as if reading it from a written memorandum.
+
+After a lapse of five or ten minutes Bieliayeff came back with Elkin's
+answer.
+
+"He says he loves you," the tap-tap said, "and that it is he who ought
+to apologise. It was he who was unjust. As to his American scheme, he is
+happy to be here. It is sweet to be suffering for liberty, he says."
+
+Makar was at the other end of the same corridor, and a message from him
+reached Pavel by way of a dozen walls.
+
+"Hello, old boy!" it said. "At last I have completed the revolutionary
+programme I have been so long engaged upon. It's a dandy! It is not the
+same I spoke to you about in Moscow. It covers every point beautifully.
+It would save the party from every mistake it has ever made or is liable
+to make."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day Pavel learned that Clara had arrived in the fortress, after a
+long confinement and no end of examinations in Miroslav. She was in
+another part of the building and communicating with her was impossible.
+Pavel scarcely ever thought of anything else. Could it be true that she
+was in the building and he would not even have a chance to see her? He
+was fidgeting and writhing like a bird in a cage.
+
+At last, on a morning, the wall brought him a message from her. It had
+come through walls, floors and ceilings.
+
+"Clanya sends her love," it ran, "and tells him to keep away from the
+damp walls as much as possible."
+
+"Tell Clanya I think of her day and night," he rapped back.
+
+Then a footstep sounded at his door, and with a heart swelling with
+emotion he threw himself upon his bed and buried his face in his hands.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
+
+
+Most inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation found in the original
+text were retained, including:
+
+             "assistant procureur" and "assistant-procureur"
+             "ball-room" and "ball room"
+             "bedroom" and "bed-room"
+             "candlestick" and "candle-stick"
+             "capmaker" and "cap-maker"
+             "Catherine" and "Catharine"
+             "Chernishevsky" and "Chernyshevsky"
+             "cobblestones" and "cobble-stones"
+             "colour" and "color"
+             "drily" and "dryly"
+             "favourite" and "favorite"
+             "featherbeds" and "feather-beds"
+             "fiascos" and "fiascoes"
+             "footsteps" and "foot-steps"
+             "grey" and "gray"
+             "heartfelt" and "heart-felt"
+             "homebound" and "home-bound"
+             "laborer" and "labourer"
+             "market place" and "market-place"
+             "neighbour" and "neighbor"
+             "odour" and "odor"
+             "parlour" and "parlor"
+             "pedlar" and "peddlar"
+             "peephole" and "peep-hole"
+             "realise" and "realize"
+             "regime" and "regime"
+             "reverie" and "revery"
+             "Rodkevitch" and "Rodkevich"
+             "rumour" and "rumor"
+             "side whiskers" and "side-whiskers"
+             "stepchild" and "step-child"
+             "topboots" and "top-boots"
+             "tramcar" and "tram-car"
+             "trunkmaker" and "trunk-maker"
+             "undersized" and "under-sized"
+             "Vice-Emperor" and "vice-Emperor"
+             "wagons" and "waggons"
+             "waiting room" and "waiting-room"
+             "woolen" and "woollen"
+
+
+The following corrections were made to the text:
+
+  Page 5:    "ma chere" changed to "ma chere"
+             (Don't take it ill, _ma chere_." She)
+  Page 8:    "Czarowitch" changed to "Czarowitz"
+             (the present Czar, then still Czarowitz,)
+  Page 15:   "waistcoast" changed to "waistcoat"
+             (pulling at his waistcoat as though)
+  Page 16:   "ecstacy" changed to "ecstasy"
+             (and in his ecstasy over)
+  Page 23:   "Medicis" changed to "Medici"
+             (Venus de Medici--and the)
+  Page 34:   added missing end quote
+             (essence?" For the)
+  Page 36:   "Alexander" changed to "Alexandre"
+             (who saw Alexandre Alexandrovich off)
+  Page 44:   "myterious" changed to "mysterious"
+             (mysterious air of the "radicals")
+  Page 44:   added missing exclamation mark
+             (number of _Forward!_ and another)
+  Page 47:   added missing period
+             (nunnish face. She made quite)
+  Page 65:   "idotic" changed to "idiotic"
+             (restrain the "idiotic breadth" of his)
+  Page 68:   "a la" changed to "a la"
+             (trimmed whiskers a la Alexander II.,)
+  Page 95:   "Alexandre" changed to "Alexander"
+             (on the part of Alexander II.)
+  Page 104:  missing word "the" added
+             (beaming at the sight)
+  Page 104:  "cosversation" changed to "conversation"
+             (in turning the conversation)
+  Page 114:  "Vassilyevitch" changed to "Vassilyevich"
+             (Pavel Vassilyevich. Everything)
+  Page 130:  "Paval" changed to "Pavel"
+             ("Exactly," Pavel assented,)
+  Page 137:  added missing hyphen
+             (three-fourths of them)
+  Page 145:  added missing end quote
+             (view of it." At this)
+  Page 146:  "Judge" changed to "judge"
+             (Olga, the judge, and the )
+  Page 151:  "tete-a-tete" changed to "tete-a-tete"
+             (house for _tete-a-tete_ purposes.)
+  Page 163:  removed extraneous comma
+             (imprisoned army officer slipped away)
+  Page 166:  "surrounding" changed to "surroundings"
+             (Their immediate surroundings were)
+  Page 167:  "minature" changed to "miniature"
+             (miniature garden between)
+  Page 186:  added missing period
+             (well-travelled fellow. He can)
+  Page 215:  extra quote mark deleted
+             (she says. You have a)
+  Page 219:  "L'Assomoir" changed to "L'Assommoir"
+             (dwelt on Zola's _L'Assommoir_ and)
+  Page 231:  "bood-bye" changed to "good-bye"
+             (a hurried good-bye and made for)
+  Page 242:  added missing hyphen
+             (Meanwhile Count Loris-Melikoff had)
+  Page 248:  "Littlie" changed to "Little"
+             (speak Little-Russian to Purring Cat,)
+  Page 248:  "Littlie" changed to "Little"
+             (from Little Russia, answered)
+  Page 249:  repeated word "the" deleted
+             (by the "gay bard," which Clara)
+  Page 252:  "Lavadia" changed to "Livadia"
+             (still in Livadia with his bride,)
+  Page 254:  "insistance" changed to "insistence"
+             (his heart with cruel insistence.)
+  Page 267:  "Michail" changed to "Michail"
+             (residence, the Michail Palace,)
+  Page 275:  added missing comma
+             (your fur cap," she gestured.)
+  Page 283:  "street" changed to "Street"
+             (the Little Garden Street precinct had)
+  Page 286:  "street" changed to "Street"
+             (Garden Street for the Czar's drive)
+  Page 288:  "distinquished" changed to "distinguished"
+             (A distinguished revolutionary writer)
+  Page 289:  "street" changed to "Street"
+             (cheese shop on Little Garden Street)
+  Page 294:  added missing comma
+             ("Don't," he begged them,)
+  Page 305:  removed extraneous comma
+             (the prison corridor answered his)
+  Page 326:  changed end double quote to single quote
+             (such a cap?' says I.)
+  Page 333:  "spokeman's" changed to "spokesman's"
+             (whispered in the spokesman's ear)
+  Page 335:  changed period to colon
+             (Finally he shouted huskily:)
+  Page 366:  "street" changed to "Street"
+             (near Nicholas Street, the best street)
+  Page 368:  "street" changed to "Street"
+             (and about Nicholas Street and bore down)
+  Page 373:  "market" changed to "Market"
+             (crowd on Cucumber Market,)
+  Page 374:  "ran" changed to "run"
+             (of primitive humanity run)
+  Page 376:  "street" changed to "Street"
+             (Nicholas Street, from a residence over)
+  Page 380:  "maurauders" changed to "marauders"
+             (the marauders for the slashers)
+  Page 382:  "banners" changed to "hammers"
+             (crowbars, hammers or axes)
+  Page 387:  "stupour" changed to "stupor"
+             (revolting stupor of inebriety.)
+  Page 391:  "sooth" changed to "soothe"
+             (trying to soothe an angry baby.)
+  Page 395:  changed period to colon
+             (Hannah said, gravely:)
+  Page 403:  "street" changed to "Street"
+             (Street, St. Petersburg, was in Moscow)
+  Page 415:  added missing period
+             (in a sunny spot.)
+  Page 420:  added missing period
+             (There is a St. Petersburg)
+  Page 425:  "access" changed to "excess"
+             (One morning in an excess)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The White Terror and The Red, by Abraham Cahan
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE TERROR AND THE RED ***
+
+***** This file should be named 39166.txt or 39166.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/9/1/6/39166/
+
+Produced by Rosanna Murphy, Suzanne Shell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/39166.zip b/39166.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4a51468
--- /dev/null
+++ b/39166.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3c15c3a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #39166 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39166)