to
a throne and by suppressed paternal affection, was a revelation to Mr.
Razumov of something within his own breast.

"So that was it!" he exclaimed to himself. A sort of contemptuous
tenderness softened the young man's grim view of his position as
he reflected upon that agitated interview with Prince K---. This
simpleminded, worldly ex-Guardsman and senator whose soft grey official
whiskers had brushed against his cheek, his aristocratic and convinced
father, was he a whit less estimable or more absurd than that
famine-stricken, fanatical revolutionist, the red-nosed student?

And there was some pressure, too, besides the persuasiveness. Mr.
Razumov was always being made to feel that he had committed himself.
There was no getting away from that feeling, from that soft,
unanswerable, "Where to?" of Councillor Mikulin. But no susceptibilities
were ever hurt. It was to be a dangerous mission to Geneva for
obtaining, at a critical moment, absolutely reliable information from a
very inaccessible quarter of the inner revolutionary circle. There were
indications that a very serious plot was being matured.... The repose
indispensable to a great country was at stake.... A great scheme of
orderly reforms would be endangered.... The highest personages in the
land were patriotically uneasy, and so on. In short, Councillor Mikulin
knew what to say. This skill is to be inferred clearly from the mental
and psychological self-confession, self-analysis of Mr. Razumov's
written journal--the pitiful resource of a young man who had near him no
trusted intimacy, no natural affection to turn to.

How all this preliminary work was concealed from observation need not
be recorded. The expedient of the oculist gives a sufficient instance.
Councillor Mikulin was resourceful, and the task not very difficult. Any
fellow-student, even the red-nosed one, was perfectly welcome to see Mr.
Razumov entering a private house to consult an oculist. Ultimate success
depended solely on the revolutionary self-delusion which credited
Razumov with a mysterious complicity in the Haldin affair. To be
compromised in it was credit enough-and it was their own doing. It was
precisely _that_ which stamped Mr. Razumov as a providential man, wide
as poles apart from the usual type of agent for "European supervision."

And it was _that_ which the Secretariat set itself the task to foster by
a course of calculated and false indiscretions.

It came at last to this,