lway stations,
urging to haste, glittering snows of the distant North, mountains
towering on the boundary between two parts of the world, rivers
cutting through uninhabited regions, horizons marked with the
gloomy lines of Siberian forests, solitary since the beginning of
ages. Then, as a change: noise, glitter, throngs, the brilliancy
of capitals, and in those capitals a multitude of doors, some of
which open with freedom, while others are closed hermetically;
before doors of the second sort the pliancy of the cat's paw is
needed; this finds a hole where the broad way is impossible.

He was forced to be absent from his family for long months,
sometimes for whole years, and even when living under the same
roof with the members of it he was a rare guest, never a real
confiding companion. For permanence, intimacy, tender feeling in
relations, with even those who were nearest him, Darvid had not
the time, just as he had not the time to concentrate his thoughts
on any subject whatever unless it was connected with his lines,
dates, and figures, or with the meshes of that net in which he
enclosed his thoughts and his iron labor.

As to amusements and delights of life, they were at intervals
love-affairs, flashing up on a sudden, transient, fleeting,
vanishing with the smoke of the locomotive which rushed forward,
at times luxuries of the table peculiar to various climates, or
majestic scenery which forced itself on the eye by its grandeur
and disappeared quickly, or some hours of animated card-playing;
but, above all, relations with social magnates, who were on the
one hand of use, and on the other an immensely great honor to his
vanity. Money and significance, these were the two poles around
which all Darvid's thoughts, desires, and feelings circled; or,
at least, it might seem all, for who can be certain that nothing
exists in a man save that which is manifest in his actions?
Surely no one, not the man himself even.

After three years' absence, Darvid had returned only a few months
before to his native city, and to his own house, where he was as
ever a rare and inattentive guest. Pie was laboring again. In the
first week, on the first day almost, he discovered a new field;
he was very anxious to seize this field, and begin his Herculean
efforts on it. But the seizure depended on a certain very highly
placed personage to whom, up to that time, he had not been able
to gain admittance.

The cat's paw had played about a