“Heavens!” cried Peter Ivanovitch.  “What are you talking about?  What reason can you have to...?”

The great exile flung up his arms as if words had failed him in sober truth.  Razumov was satisfied.  Yet he was moved to continue in the same vein.

“I am talking of the poisonous plants which flourish in the world of conspirators, like evil mushrooms in a dark cellar.”

“You are casting aspersions,” remonstrated Peter Ivanovitch, “which as far as you are concerned—­”

“No!” Razumov interrupted without heat.  “Indeed, I don’t want to cast aspersions, but it’s just as well to have no illusions.”

Peter Ivanovitch gave him an inscrutable glance of his dark spectacles, accompanied by a faint smile.

“The man who says that he has no illusions has at least that one,” he said, in a very friendly tone.  “But I see how it is, Kirylo Sidorovitch.  You aim at stoicism.”

“Stoicism!  That’s a pose of the Greeks and the Romans.  Let’s leave it to them.  We are Russians, that is—­children; that is—­sincere; that is—­cynical, if you like.  But that’s not a pose.”

A long silence ensued.  They strolled slowly under the lime-trees.  Peter Ivanovitch had put his hands behind his back.  Razumov felt the ungravelled ground of the deeply shaded walk damp and as if slippery under his feet.  He asked himself, with uneasiness, if he were saying the right things.  The direction of the conversation ought to have been more under his control, he reflected.  The great man appeared to be reflecting on his side too.  He cleared his throat slightly, and Razumov felt at once a painful reawakening of scorn and fear.

“I am astonished,” began Peter Ivanovitch gently.  “Supposing you are right in your indictment, how can you raise any question of calumny or gossip, in your case?  It is unreasonable.  The fact is, Kirylo Sidorovitch, there is not enough known of you to give hold to gossip or even calumny.  Just now you are a man associated with a great deed, which had been hoped for, and tried for too, without success.  People have perished for attempting that which you and Haldin have done at last.  You come to us out of Russia, with that prestige.  But you cannot deny that you have not been communicative, Kirylo Sidorovitch.  People you have met imparted their impressions to me; one wrote this, another that, but I form my own opinions.  I waited to see you first.  You are a man out of the common.  That’s positively so.  You are close, very close.  This taciturnity, this severe brow, this something inflexible and secret in you, inspires hopes and a little wonder as to what you may mean.  There is something of a Brutus....”

“Pray spare me those classical allusions!” burst out Razumov nervously.  “What comes Junius Brutus to do here?  It is ridiculous!  Do you mean to say,” he added sarcastically, but lowering his voice, “that the Russian revolutionists are all patricians and that I am an aristocrat?”