ctions, not for a crime my reason--my
cool superior reason--rejects."

He ceased to think for a moment. The silence in his breast was complete.
But he felt a suspicious uneasiness, such as we may experience when we
enter an unlighted strange place--the irrational feeling that something
may jump upon us in the dark--the absurd dread of the unseen.

Of course he was far from being a moss-grown reactionary. Everything was
not for the best. Despotic bureaucracy... abuses... corruption...
and so on. Capable men were wanted. Enlightened intelligences. Devoted
hearts. But absolute power should be preserved--the tool ready for the
man--for the great autocrat of the future. Razumov believed in him. The
logic of history made him unavoidable. The state of the people demanded
him, "What else?" he asked himself ardently, "could move all that mass
in one direction? Nothing could. Nothing but a single will."

He was persuaded that he was sacrificing his personal longings of
liberalism--rejecting the attractive error for the stern Russian truth.
"That's patriotism," he observed mentally, and added, "There's no
stopping midway on that road," and then remarked to himself, "I am not a
coward."

And again there was a dead silence in Razumov's breast. He walked with
lowered head, making room for no one. He walked slowly and his thoughts
returning spoke within him with solemn slowness.

"What is this Haldin? And what am I? Only two grains of sand. But a
great mountain is made up of just such insignificant grains. And the
death of a man or of many men is an insignificant thing. Yet we combat
a contagious pestilence. Do I want his death? No! I would save him if I
could--but no one can do that--he is the withered member which must be
cut off. If I must perish through him, let me at least not perish
with him, and associated against my will with his sombre folly that
understands nothing either of men or things. Why should I leave a false
memory?"

It passed through his mind that there was no one in the world who
cared what sort of memory he left behind him. He exclaimed to himself
instantly, "Perish vainly for a falsehood!... What a miserable fate!"

He was now in a more animated part of the town. He did not remark the
crash of two colliding sledges close to the curb. The driver of one
bellowed tearfully at his fellow--

"Oh, thou vile wretch!"

This hoarse yell, let out nearly in his ear, disturbed Razumov. He shook
his head impatient