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

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

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

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

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

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