“Perhaps he does... Mojet bweet...  You may be right.  I don’t know—­I don’t know what I feel about him at all.  Sometimes he seems to me very kind; sometimes I’m frightened of him, sometimes”—­here he dropped his voice—­“he makes me very angry, so angry that I lose control of myself—­a despicable thing... a despicable thing... just as I used to feel about the old man to whom I was secretary.  I nearly murdered him once.  In the middle of the night I thought suddenly of his stomach, all round and white and shining.  It was an irresistible temptation to plunge a knife into it.  I was awake for hours thinking of it.  Every man has such hours....  At the same time Alexei can be very kind.”

“How do you mean—­kind?” I asked.

“For instance he has some very good wine—­fifty bottles at least—­he has given it all to us.  Then he insists on paying us for his food.  He is a generous-spirited man.  Money is nothing to us—­”

“Don’t you drink his wine,” I said.

Nicholas was instantly offended.

“What do you mean, Ivan Andreievitch?  Not drink his wine?  Am I an infant?  Can I not look after myself?—­Blagadaryoo Vas....  I am more than ten years old.”  He took his hand away from my arm.

“No, I didn’t mean that at all,” I assured him.  “Of course not—­only you told me not long ago that you had given up wine altogether.  That’s why I said what I did.”

“So I have!  So I have!” he eagerly assured me.  “But Easter’s a time for rejoicing...  Rejoicing!”—­his voice rose suddenly shrill and scornful—­“rejoicing with the world in the state that it is.  Truly, Ivan Andreievitch, I don’t wonder at Alexei’s cynicism.  I don’t indeed.  The world is a sad spectacle for an observant man.”  He suddenly put his hand through my arm, so close to me now that I could feel his beating heart.  “But you believe, don’t you, Ivan Andreievitch, that Russia now has found herself?” His voice became desperately urgent and beseeching.  “You must believe that.  You don’t agree with those fools who don’t believe that she will make the best of all this?  Fools?  Scoundrels!  Scoundrels!  That’s what they are.  I must believe in Russia now or I shall die.  And so with all of us.  If she does not rise now as one great country and lead the world, she will never do so.  Our hearts must break.  But she will... she will!  No one who is watching events can doubt it.  Only cynics like Alexei doubt—­he doubts everything.  And he cannot leave anything alone.  He must smear everything with his dirty finger.  But he must leave Russia alone...  I tell him....”

He broke off.  “If Russia fails now,” he spoke very quietly, “my life is over.  I have nothing left.  I will die.”

“Come, Nicolai Leontievitch,” I said, “you mustn’t let yourself go like that.  Life isn’t over because one is disappointed in one’s country.  And even though one is disappointed one does not love the less.  What’s friendship worth if every disappointment chills one’s affection?  One loves one’s country because she is one’s country, not because she’s disappointing....”  And so I went on with a number of amiable platitudes, struggling to comfort him somewhere, and knowing that I was not even beginning to touch the trouble of his soul.