“I attach some importance to it also,” said Razumov quietly.  “I won’t even deny that it may have some importance for you too,” he continued, after a slight pause and with a touch of grimness of which he was himself aware, with some annoyance.  He hoped it had escaped the perception of Peter Ivanovitch.  “But suppose we talk no more about it?”

“Well, we shall not—­not after this one time, Kirylo Sidorovitch,” persisted the noble arch-priest of Revolution.  “This shall be the last occasion.  You cannot believe for a moment that I had the slightest idea of wounding your feelings.  You are clearly a superior nature—­that’s how I read you.  Quite above the common—­h’m—­susceptibilities.  But the fact is, Kirylo Sidorovitch, I don’t know your susceptibilities.  Nobody, out of Russia, knows much of you—­as yet!”

“You have been watching me?” suggested Razumov.

“Yes.”

The great man had spoken in a tone of perfect frankness, but as they turned their faces to each other Razumov felt baffled by the dark spectacles.  Under their cover, Peter Ivanovitch hinted that he had felt for some time the need of meeting a man of energy and character, in view of a certain project.  He said nothing more precise, however; and after some critical remarks upon the personalities of the various members of the committee of revolutionary action in Stuttgart, he let the conversation lapse for quite a long while.  They paced the alley from end to end.  Razumov, silent too, raised his eyes from time to time to cast a glance at the back of the house.  It offered no sign of being inhabited.  With its grimy, weather-stained walls and all the windows shuttered from top to bottom, it looked damp and gloomy and deserted.  It might very well have been haunted in traditional style by some doleful, groaning, futile ghost of a middle-class order.  The shades evoked, as worldly rumour had it, by Madame de S—­ to meet statesmen, diplomatists, deputies of various European Parliaments, must have been of another sort.  Razumov had never seen Madame de S—­ but in the carriage.

Peter Ivanovitch came out of his abstraction.

“Two things I may say to you at once.  I believe, first, that neither a leader nor any decisive action can come out of the dregs of a people.  Now, if you ask me what are the dregs of a people—­h’m—­it would take too long to tell.  You would be surprised at the variety of ingredients that for me go to the making up of these dregs—­of that which ought, must remain at the bottom.  Moreover, such a statement might be subject to discussion.  But I can tell you what is not the dregs.  On that it is impossible for us to disagree.  The peasantry of a people is not the dregs; neither is its highest class—­well—­the nobility.  Reflect on that, Kirylo Sidorovitch!  I believe you are well fitted for reflection.  Everything in a people that is not genuine, not its own by origin or development, is—­well—­dirt!  Intelligence in the wrong place is that.  Foreign-bred doctrines are that.  Dirt!  Dregs!  The second thing I would offer to your meditation is this:  that for us at this moment there yawns a chasm between the past and the future.  It can never be bridged by foreign liberalism.  All attempts at it are either folly or cheating.  Bridged it can never be!  It has to be filled up.”