Before—­in Petrograd—­we all have had this very same fear of our select caste for a newcomer, just as these have.  In our midst the man who tried to break in would be caught right away.  Now I understand this little, mean, reptile impulse of catering to the one whom you seek, this feeling that the parvenu must have felt, this sensation of the necessity of flattering, for which one blushes in the nights, for which one can’t sleep and turns endlessly in warm cushions.  The parvenu!  Pushkin said: 

  ... and an exchange of silent glance
  Forever took away his chance....

It was enough for us to look at each other—­and the parvenu would not come near us any more.  Here—­instead of the poetical form of Pushkin I must recollect the words of the Tumen cook: 

“You liar!  Hate your face of a gentry!”

Isn’t it a correct translation from my Russian into theirs?

Well,—­I’d rather stop my scratchings:  Tobolsk.

40

“Do not write too much,” said a walking corpse clad in rags, seating himself near me on a soft pack of his baggage.  “It is better to forget all about it.  Why do you do it?  What is the use?” His suffering face was not at all familiar to me,—­so, when he asked me, “Haven’t we met before?”—­I said No.  He looked to me like one of those Siberian peasants.  Then, under the coat of dirt, under his rags and an old Orenburg shawl, I really saw something familiar.

“Perhaps we met,” I said.  “Petrograd?”

“Yes, indeed,” he bowed his old head and sighed.  “I used to go very often to the French Theatre.  You remember ‘L’Aiglon?’ Can I chat with you a bit?  This silence is simply killing me.  Four months of silence!  Don’t you think, mister writer, of what a sweet, what a wonderful word ‘revenge’ is?  If you write—­do write about it!  Revenge for having cleaned the streets, for having been thrown out of every Embassy, every Legation, every Consulate—­whose three sons are sleeping there, on the Prussian Frontier—­forever?—­when I begged them to help me and let me go to Paris only to die near my wife?  Revenge!  Just to see England—­torn to pieces, France—­robbed, Japan—­licking our feet,—­to see them separately doing what we suffer combinedly.  They all betrayed us, they sold us, they mock at us!  We are paying for our readiness to save Serbia.  We are dying for it—­and I do not regret it.  I know that from our dead body, from our bier—­poisonous flowers are growing; their fragrancy will send pestilence and destruction to our lucky Allies, and ruin them, and ruin them....  If I only could help it....  If only I could live long enough to witness it.”

The man looked crazy to me.  He evidently is one of those whose minds gave way.  His eyes were sparkling flames—­while his greenish face with a sluttish beard remained immovable and serious.  From away—­we both were talking of our village affairs.

He continued: