its dimly lighted length, rose
quietly, lowered the glass a few inches, and flung out on the great
plain of snow a small brown-paper parcel. Then he sat down again muffled
up and motionless. "For the people," he thought, staring out of the
window. The great white desert of frozen, hard earth glided past his
eyes without a sign of human habitation.

That had been a waking act; and then the dream had him again: Prussia,
Saxony, Wurtemberg, faces, sights, words--all a dream, observed with
an angry, compelled attention. Zurich, Geneva--still a dream, minutely
followed, wearing one into harsh laughter, to fury, to death--with the
fear of awakening at the end.

II

"Perhaps life is just that," reflected Razumov, pacing to and fro under
the trees of the little island, all alone with the bronze statue of
Rousseau. "A dream and a fear." The dusk deepened. The pages written
over and torn out of his notebook were the first-fruit of his "mission."
No dream that. They contained the assurance that he was on the eve of
real discoveries. "I think there is no longer anything in the way of my
being completely accepted."

He had resumed his impressions in those pages, some of the
conversations. He even went so far as to write: "By the by, I have
discovered the personality of that terrible N.N. A horrible, paunchy
brute. If I hear anything of his future movements I shall send a
warning."

The futility of all this overcame him like a curse. Even then he could
not believe in the reality of his mission. He looked round despairingly,
as if for some way to redeem his existence from that unconquerable
feeling. He crushed angrily in his hand the pages of the notebook. "This
must be posted," he thought.

He gained the bridge and returned to the north shore, where he
remembered having seen in one of the narrower streets a little obscure
shop stocked with cheap wood carvings, its walls lined with extremely
dirty cardboard-bound volumes of a small circulating library. They
sold stationery there, too. A morose, shabby old man dozed behind
the counter. A thin woman in black, with a sickly face, produced the
envelope he had asked for without even looking at him. Razumov thought
that these people were safe to deal with because they no longer cared
for anything in the world. He addressed the envelope on the counter with
the German name of a certain person living in Vienna. But Razumov knew
that this, his first communication for Councillor Miku