y of Germany, and its iridescent sparkle recalled to his mind the
very tear which "dost thou remember, fell from thine eyes when we were
sitting under that emerald tree, and thou didst cry out joyfully: 'There
is no crime!' 'No,' I said through my tears, 'but if that is so, there
are no righteous either.' We sobbed and parted for ever." She went off
somewhere to the sea coast, while he went to visit some caves, and then
he descends and descends and descends for three years under Suharev
Tower in Moscow, and suddenly in the very bowels of the earth, he finds
in a cave a lamp, and before the lamp a hermit. The hermit is praying.
The genius leans against a little barred window, and suddenly hears a
sigh. Do you suppose it was the hermit sighing? Much he cares about the
hermit! Not a bit of it, this sigh simply reminds him of her first sigh,
thirty-seven years before, "in Germany, when, dost thou remember, we sat
under an agate tree and thou didst say to me, 'Why love? See ochra is
growing all around and I love thee; but the ochra will cease to grow,
and I shall cease to love.'" Then the fog comes on again, Hoffman
appears on the scene, the wood-nymph whistles a tune from Chopin, and
suddenly out of the fog appears Ancus Marcius over the roofs of Rome,
wearing a laurel wreath. "A chill of ecstasy ran down our backs and we
parted for ever"--and so on and so on.

Perhaps I am not reporting it quite right and don't know how to report
it, but the drift of the babble was something of that sort. And after
all, how disgraceful this passion of our great intellects for jesting in
a superior way really is! The great European philosopher, the great man
of science, the inventor, the martyr--all these who labour and are heavy
laden, are to the great Russian genius no more than so many cooks in his
kitchen. He is the master and they come to him, cap in hand, awaiting
orders. It is true he jeers superciliously at Russia too, and there
is nothing he likes better than exhibiting the bankruptcy of Russia in
every relation before the great minds of Europe, but as regards himself,
no, he is at a higher level than all the great minds of Europe; they are
only material for his jests. He takes another man's idea, tacks on to it
its antithesis, and the epigram is made. There is such a thing as crime,
there is no such thing as crime; there is no such thing as justice,
there are no just men; atheism, Darwinism, the Moscow bells.... But
alas, he no lon