I am afraid I cannot say as much for his younger brother Nikolai, who lives with him.  Nikolai Ivan’itch is a tall, slender man, about sixty years of age, with emaciated face, bilious complexion and long black hair—­evidently a person of excitable, nervous temperament.  When he speaks he articulates rapidly, and uses more gesticulation than is common among his countrymen.  His favourite subject of conversation, or rather of discourse, for he more frequently preaches than talks, is the lamentable state of the country and the worthlessness of the Government.  Against the Government he has a great many causes for complaint, and one or two of a personal kind.  In 1861 he was a student in the University of St. Petersburg.  At that time there was a great deal of public excitement all over Russia, and especially in the capital.  The serfs had just been emancipated, and other important reforms had been undertaken.  There was a general conviction among the young generation—­and it must be added among many older men—­that the autocratic, paternal system of government was at an end, and that Russia was about to be reorganised according to the most advanced principles of political and social science.  The students, sharing this conviction, wished to be freed from all academical authority, and to organise a kind of academic self-government.  They desired especially the right of holding public meetings for the discussion of their common affairs.  The authorities would not allow this, and issued a list of rules prohibiting meetings and raising the class-fees, so as practically to exclude many of the poorer students.  This was felt to be a wanton insult to the spirit of the new era.  In spite of the prohibition, indignation meetings were held, and fiery speeches made by male and female orators, first in the class-rooms, and afterwards in the courtyard of the University.  On one occasion a long procession marched through the principal streets to the house of the Curator.  Never had such a spectacle been seen before in St. Petersburg.  Timid people feared that it was the commencement of a revolution, and dreamed about barricades.  At last the authorities took energetic measures; about three hundred students were arrested, and of these, thirty-two were expelled from the University.

Among those who were expelled was Nicolai Ivan’itch.  All his hopes of becoming a professor, as he had intended, were thereby shipwrecked, and he had to look out for some other profession.  A literary career now seemed the most promising, and certainly the most congenial to his tastes.  It would enable him to gratify his ambition of being a public man, and give him opportunities of attacking and annoying his persecutors.  He had already written occasionally for one of the leading periodicals, and now he became a regular contributor.  His stock of positive knowledge was not very large, but he had the power of writing fluently and of making his readers believe that he had an unlimited store