“What harm is there in comfort and luxury to any extent,” I asked, “provided that all enjoy it?”

“Luxury is all wrong,” he answered severely.  “You perceive the sinful luxury in which I live,” waving his hand toward the excessively plain furniture, and animadverting with special bitterness on the silver forks and spoons.  “It is all a fallacy that we can raise those below us by remaining above them.  We must descend to their level in habits, intelligence, and life; then all will rise together.”

“Even bread must have yeast; and if we all make ourselves exactly alike, who is to act as yeast?  Are we to adopt all vices of the lower classes?  That would be the speediest way of putting ourselves on a complete equality with them.  But if some of us do not remain yeast, we shall all turn out the flattest sort of dough.”

“We certainly cannot change the position of a thing unless we go close enough to grasp it, unless we are on the same plane with it.”

“Perhaps not; but being on the same plane does not always answer.  Did you ever see an acrobat try that trick?  He puts one leg on the table, then tries to lift his whole body by grasping the other leg and putting it on a level to begin with.  Logically, it ought to succeed and carry the body with it, if your theory is correct.  However, it remains merely a curious and amusing experiment, likely to result in a broken neck to any one not skilled in gymnastics, and certain to end in a tumble even for the one who is thus skilled.”

He reiterated his arguments.  I retorted that human beings were not moral kangaroos, who could proceed by leaps, and that even the kangaroo is obliged to allow the tip of his tail to follow his paws.  I said that in the moral as well as in the physical world it is simply a choice between standing still and putting one foot before the other; that one cannot get upstairs by remaining on the bottom step; one member of the body must rise first.

We were obliged to agree to disagree, as usual, but I fancy that he may have changed to my opinion of the book and the subject by this time.  I have already noted that he is open to influence.

One evening, as we sat on the steps of the uncovered terrace outside his study, the conversation fell on the book which he was then engaged upon, and which the countess had shown us that she was copying for the fourth time.  He had been busy on it for two years.  Neither of them went into details nor mentioned the plot, but I had heard on my arrival in Russia, twenty months previously, that it related to the murder of a woman by her husband, and had a railway scene in it.  I did not interrogate them, and when the count said that he hoped I would translate the book when it should be finished I accepted the proposal with alacrity.  I inquired whether I was to read it then.

“You may if you wish,” was the reply, “but I shall probably make some changes, and I should prefer that you would wait; but that shall be as you please.”