itself a criminal
sentiment; to prefer the will of one to the will of many does not argue
the possession of a black heart or prove congenital idiocy. Councillor
Mikulin was not only a clever but also a faithful official. Privately he
was a bachelor with a love of comfort, living alone in an apartment of
five rooms luxuriously furnished; and was known by his intimates to be
an enlightened patron of the art of female dancing. Later on the larger
world first heard of him in the very hour of his downfall, during one of
those State trials which astonish and puzzle the average plain man who
reads the newspapers, by a glimpse of unsuspected intrigues. And in
the stir of vaguely seen monstrosities, in that momentary, mysterious
disturbance of muddy waters, Councillor Mikulin went under, dignified,
with only a calm, emphatic protest of his innocence--nothing more. No
disclosures damaging to a harassed autocracy, complete fidelity to the
secrets of the miserable _arcana imperii_ deposited in his patriotic
breast, a display of bureaucratic stoicism in a Russian official's
ineradicable, almost sublime contempt for truth; stoicism of silence
understood only by the very few of the initiated, and not without a
certain cynical grandeur of self-sacrifice on the part of a sybarite.
For the terribly heavy sentence turned Councillor Mikulin civilly into a
corpse, and actually into something very much like a common convict.

It seems that the savage autocracy, no more than the divine democracy,
does not limit its diet exclusively to the bodies of its enemies. It
devours its friends and servants as well. The downfall of His Excellency
Gregory Gregorievitch Mikulin (which did not occur till some years
later) completes all that is known of the man. But at the time of M. de
P---'s murder (or execution) Councillor Mikulin, under the modest style
of Head of Department at the General Secretariat, exercised a wide
influence as the confidant and right-hand man of his former schoolfellow
and lifelong friend, General T---. One can imagine them talking over the
case of Mr. Razumov, with the full sense of their unbounded power
over all the lives in Russia, with cursory disdain, like two Olympians
glancing at a worm. The relationship with Prince K--- was enough to save
Razumov from some carelessly arbitrary proceeding, and it is also very
probable that after the interview at the Secretariat he would have been
left alone. Councillor Mikulin would not have