Here the Spaniard assented as though he could guess what Tchernoff was going to say.

“We Russians endure great tyranny.  I know something about that.  I know the hunger and cold of Siberia. . . .  But opposed to our tyranny has always existed a revolutionary protest.  Part of the nation is half-barbarian, but the rest has a superior mentality, a lofty moral spirit which faces danger and sacrifice because of liberty and truth. . . .  And Germany?  Who there has ever raised a protest in order to defend human rights?  What revolutions have ever broken out in Prussia, the land of the great despots?

“Frederick William, the founder of militarism, when he was tired of beating his wife and spitting in his children’s plates, used to sally forth, thong in hand, in order to cowhide those subjects who did not get out of his way in time.  His son, Frederick the Great, declared that he died, bored to death with governing a nation of slaves.  In two centuries of Prussian history, one single revolution—­the barricades of 1848—­a bad Berlinish copy of the Paris revolution, and without any result.  Bismarck corrected with a heavy hand so as to crush completely the last attempts at protest—­if such ever really existed.  And when his friends were threatening him with revolution, the ferocious Junker, merely put his hands on his hips and roared with the most insolent of horse laughs.  A revolution in Prussia! . . .  Nothing at all, as he knew his people!”

Tchernoff was not a patriot.  Many a time Argensola had heard him railing against his country, but now he was indignant in view of the contempt with which Teutonic haughtiness was treating the Russian nation.  Where, in the last forty years of imperial grandeur, was that universal supremacy of which the Germans were everlastingly boasting? . . .

Excellent workers in science; tenacious and short-sighted academicians, each wrapped in his specialty!—­Benedictines of the laboratory who experimented painstakingly and occasionally hit upon something, in spite of enormous blunders given out as truths, because they were their own . . . that was all!  And side by side with such patient laboriosity, really worthy of respect—­what charlatanism!  What great names exploited as a shop sample!  How many sages turned into proprietors of sanatoriums! . . .  A Herr Professor discovers the cure of tuberculosis, and the tubercular keep on dying as before.  Another labels with a number the invincible remedy for the most unconfessable of diseases, and the genital scourge continues afflicting the world.  And all these errors were representing great fortunes, each saving panacea bringing into existence an industrial corporation selling its products at high prices—­as though suffering were a privilege of the rich.  How different from the bluff Pasteur and other clever men of the inferior races who have given their discoveries to the world without stooping to form monopolies!