to go at all, because they were too poor,
remained after the service as they had been before it.

"Such, you see, is our Christianity, he said. And _he_ had a right
to speak, I can tell you, because he shared his 'superfluity' with
others."

"But still you live in a certain comfort?"

"Yes, in his opinion every one had a right to do so. The man who
recognised that he was called on to sacrifice his comfort also should
do it; but for most educated people comfort was the indispensable
condition of work and help the foundation of happiness. And there was a
charm of beauty about it, too, which is a rare incentive.

"No, what he demanded was that all those who could should support
themselves--hear that, my daughter!--and that those who had superfluity
should employ it in work which should be fruitful for others. He called
that Church cowardly and shameless which did not make that demand
without respect of persons."

"Like Tolstoi, then?"

"No, they were very different. Tolstoi is a Slav by birth, Ivan the
Terrible and Tolstoi both of them; for these contradictions pre-suppose
each other. The one did everything by force, the other resists nothing.
The one had to crush all wills under his own in order to make room for
himself, the other will willingly yield, knowing that a desire, once
satisfied, dies. The Slav impulse towards tyranny, the Slav impulse
towards martyrdom, the same passionate excess in both. Born of the same
people, and under the same conditions.

"All the freedom _we_ in Western Europe enjoy we have attained by
keeping bounds, not for ourselves alone but for others. And also by
resisting. It is weakness that knows no limits: strength ordains limits
and observes them."

"But yet the Bible teaches----"

"Yes, yes, but the Bible is from the East too; the Westerns act _in
opposition to_ the Bible. What I am saying comes from your father."

"Did he know Tolstoi?"

"No, but what I have been saying is older than either the Bible or
Tolstoi."

"Then he was a great orator?"

"That I could hardly venture to call him; he could not be reckoned
among the prophets, but among the seers.

"Now don't interrupt me. He believed that in another hundred years to
live in idleness and superfluity would be looked upon by most people as
now we look upon a life of fraud and crime."

"Oh, mother, how did you feel about it?"

"His voice seemed to surge and vibrate in my ears both day and night. A
storm-cloud seemed to