uld they be? In Kiev they think always about
women and do not pretend otherwise ... and so on. We have, of course,
no sense of time, nor method, nor system. If we were to think of these
things we would be compelled to use restraint and that would bother
us. We may lose the most important treasure in the world by not
keeping an appointment ... on the other hand we have kept our freedom.
We care for ideas for which you care nothing in England but we have a
sure suspicion of all conclusions. We are pessimists, one and all.
Life cannot be good. We ironically survey those who think that it
can.... We give way always to life but when things are at their worst
then we are relieved and even happy. Here at any rate we are on safe
ground. We have much sentiment, but it may, at any moment, give way to
some other emotion. We are therefore never to be relied upon, as
friends, as enemies, as anything you please. Except this--that in the
heart of every Russian there is a passionate love of goodness. We are
tolerant to all evil, to all weakness because we ourselves are weak.
We confess our weakness to any one because that permits us to indulge
in it--but when we see in another goodness, strength, virtue, we
worship it. You may bind us to you with bands of iron by your
virtues--never, as all foreigners think, by your vices. In this, too,
we are sentimentalists. We may not believe in God but we have an
intense curiosity about Him--a curiosity that with many of us never
leaves us alone, compels us to fill our lives, to fill our lives....
We love Russia.... But that is another thing.... Never forget too that
behind every Russian's simplicity there is always his Ideal--his
secret Ideal, perhaps, that he keeps like an ikon sacred in his heart.
Yes, of every Russian, even of the worst of us, that is true. And it
complicates our lives, delivers us to our enemies, defeats all our
worldly aims, renders us helpless at the moment when we should be most
strong. But it is good, before God, that it should be so...."

He suddenly sprang up and stood before me. "To-morrow I shall think
otherwise--and yet this is part of the truth that I have told you....
And your Englishman? I like him ... I like him. That girl will treat
him badly, of course. How can she do otherwise? He sees her like
Turgenev's Liza. Well, she is not that. No girl in Russia to-day is
like Turgenev's Liza. And it's a good thing." He smiled--that strange,
happy, confident mysterious sm