s, brother. Some day you shall help to build. You
suppose that I am a terrorist, now--a destructor of what is, But
consider that the true destroyers are they who destroy the spirit of
progress and truth, not the avengers who merely kill the bodies of the
persecutors of human dignity. Men like me are necessary to make room for
self-contained, thinking men like you. Well, we have made the sacrifice
of our lives, but all the same I want to escape if it can be done. It
is not my life I want to save, but my power to do. I won't live idle. Oh
no! Don't make any mistake, Razumov. Men like me are rare. And, besides,
an example like this is more awful to oppressors when the perpetrator
vanishes without a trace. They sit in their offices and palaces and
quake. All I want you to do is to help me to vanish. No great matter
that. Only to go by and by and see Ziemianitch for me at that place
where I went this morning. Just tell him, 'He whom you know wants a
well-horsed sledge to pull up half an hour after midnight at the seventh
lamp-post on the left counting from the upper end of Karabelnaya. If
nobody gets in, the sledge is to run round a block or two, so as to come
back past the same spot in ten minutes' time.'"
Razumov wondered why he had not cut short that talk and told this man to
go away long before. Was it weakness or what?
He concluded that it was a sound instinct. Haldin must have been seen.
It was impossible that some people should not have noticed the face and
appearance of the man who threw the second bomb. Haldin was a noticeable
person. The police in their thousands must have had his description
within the hour. With every moment the danger grew. Sent out to wander
in the streets he could not escape being caught in the end.
The police would very soon find out all about him. They would set about
discovering a conspiracy. Everybody Haldin had ever known would be in
the greatest danger. Unguarded expressions, little facts in themselves
innocent would be counted for crimes. Razumov remembered certain words
he said, the speeches he had listened to, the harmless gatherings he
had attended--it was almost impossible for a student to keep out of that
sort of thing, without becoming suspect to his comrades.
Razumov saw himself shut up in a fortress, worried, badgered, perhaps
ill-used. He saw himself deported by an administrative order, his life
broken, ruined, and robbed of all hope. He saw himself--at best--leading
a m
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