“I am a Liberal, and do my best to spread Liberal ideas; but since the failure of the revolution this has been even more difficult.  The revolutionists committed many acts contrary to the pure principles of humanitarianism, with which indeed, owing to the scarcity of books, they were ill acquainted.  I did not approve of these cruel acts, though provoked by the tyranny of the government; but now there is a tendency to reproach all Intelligents with the memory of them.  This is very unfortunate for Intelligents.

“It was when the railway strike was almost over, and a few trains came through at long intervals, that I stood one day watching a train that had come in.  Only one person got out of the train, far away up at the other end of it, for it was a very long train.  It was evening, with a cold, greenish sky.  A little snow had fallen, but not enough to whiten the plain, which stretched away a sort of sad purple in all directions, save where the flat tops of some distant tablelands caught the evening light like lakes.  As the solitary man came stamping along on the thin snow by the train he grew larger and larger; I thought I had never seen so large a man.  But he looked even taller than he was, I think, because his shoulders were very big and his head comparatively little.  From the big shoulders hung a tattered old jacket, striped dull red and dirty white, very thin for the winter, and one hand rested on a huge pole such as peasants rake in weeds with to burn them.

“Before he had traversed the full length of the train he was entangled in one of those knots of rowdies that were the embers of the extinct revolution, though they mostly disgraced themselves upon the government side.  I was just moving to his assistance, when he whirled up his rake and laid out right and left with such energy that he came through them without scathe and strode right up to me, leaving them staggered and really astonished.

“Yet when he reached me, after so abrupt an assertion of his aim, he could only say rather dubiously in French that he wanted a house.

“`There are not many houses to be had round here,’ I answered in the same language, `the district has been very disturbed.  A revolution, as you know, has recently been suppressed.  Any further building—­’

“`Oh!  I don’t mean that,’ he cried; `I mean a real house—­a live house.  It really is a live house, for it runs away from me.’

“`I am ashamed to say that something in his phrase or gesture moved me profoundly.  We Russians are brought up in an atmosphere of folk-lore, and its unfortunate effects can still be seen in the bright colours of the children’s dolls and of the ikons.  For an instant the idea of a house running away from a man gave me pleasure, for the enlightenment of man moves slowly.

“`Have you no other house of your own?’ I asked.

“`I have left it,’ he said very sadly. `It was not the house that grew dull, but I that grew dull in it.  My wife was better than all women, and yet I could not feel it.’