nd suddenly it turns
out that you do belong to something."

"Now is that possible? It's a case of yes or no."

"_Cela date de Petersburg_ when she and I were meaning to found a magazine
there. That's what's at the root of it. She gave them the slip then, and
they forgot us, but now they've remembered. _Cher, cher,_ don't you know
me?" he cried hysterically. "And they'll take us, put us in a cart, and
march us off to Siberia for ever, or forget us in prison."

And he suddenly broke into bitter weeping. His tears positively
streamed. He covered his face with his red silk handkerchief and sobbed,
sobbed convulsively for five minutes. It wrung my heart. This was
the man who had been a prophet among us for twenty years, a leader,
a patriarch, the Kukolnik who had borne himself so loftily and
majestically before all of us, before whom we bowed down with genuine
reverence, feeling proud of doing so--and all of a sudden here he was
sobbing, sobbing like a naughty child waiting for the rod which the
teacher is fetching for him. I felt fearfully sorry for him. He believed
in the reality of that "cart" as he believed that I was sitting by his
side, and he expected it that morning, at once, that very minute, and
all this on account of his Herzen and some poem! Such complete, absolute
ignorance of everyday reality was touching and somehow repulsive.

At last he left off crying, got up from the sofa and began walking about
the room again, continuing to talk to me, though he looked out of the
window every minute and listened to every sound in the passage. Our
conversation was still disconnected. All my assurances and attempts
to console him rebounded from him like peas from a wall. He scarcely
listened, but yet what he needed was that I should console him and keep
on talking with that object. I saw that he could not do without me now,
and would not let me go for anything. I remained, and we spent more than
two hours together. In conversation he recalled that Blum had taken with
him two manifestoes he had found.

"Manifestoes!" I said, foolishly frightened. "Do you mean to say
you..."

"Oh, ten were left here," he answered with vexation (he talked to me
at one moment in a vexed and haughty tone and at the next with dreadful
plaintiveness and humiliation), "but I had disposed of eight already,
and Blum only found two." And he suddenly flushed with indignation.
"_Vous me mettez avec ces gens-la!_ Do you suppose I could be working