Peter Ivanovitch escorted the visitor without opening his lips.  Even when they had reached the head of the stairs Peter Ivanovitch did not break the silence.  Razumov’s impulse to continue down the flight and out of the house without as much as a nod abandoned him suddenly.  He stopped on the first step and leaned his back against the wall.  Below him the great hall with its chequered floor of black and white seemed absurdly large and like some public place where a great power of resonance awaits the provocation of footfalls and voices.  As if afraid of awakening the loud echoes of that empty house, Razumov adopted a low tone.

“I really have no mind to turn into a dilettante spiritualist.”

Peter Ivanovitch shook his head slightly, very serious.

“Or spend my time in spiritual ecstasies or sublime meditations upon the gospel of feminism,” continued Razumov.  “I made my way here for my share of action—­action, most respected Peter Ivanovitch!  It was not the great European writer who attracted me, here, to this odious town of liberty.  It was somebody much greater.  It was the idea of the chief which attracted me.  There are starving young men in Russia who believe in you so much that it seems the only thing that keeps them alive in their misery.  Think of that, Peter Ivanovitch!  No!  But only think of that!”

The great man, thus entreated, perfectly motionless and silent, was the very image of patient, placid respectability.

“Of course I don’t speak of the people.  They are brutes,” added Razumov, in the same subdued but forcible tone.  At this, a protesting murmur issued from the “heroic fugitive’s” beard.  A murmur of authority.

“Say—­children.”

“No!  Brutes!” Razumov insisted bluntly.

“But they are sound, they are innocent,” the great man pleaded in a whisper.

“As far as that goes, a brute is sound enough.”  Razumov raised his voice at last.  “And you can’t deny the natural innocence of a brute.  But what’s the use of disputing about names?  You just try to give these children the power and stature of men and see what they will be like.  You just give it to them and see....  But never mind.  I tell you, Peter Ivanovitch, that half a dozen young men do not come together nowadays in a shabby student’s room without your name being whispered, not as a leader of thought, but as a centre of revolutionary energies—­the centre of action.  What else has drawn me near you, do you think?  It is not what all the world knows of you, surely.  It’s precisely what the world at large does not know.  I was irresistibly drawn-let us say impelled, yes, impelled; or, rather, compelled, driven—­driven,” repented Razumov loudly, and ceased, as if startled by the hollow reverberation of the word “driven” along two bare corridors and in the great empty hall.

Peter Ivanovitch did not seem startled in the least.  The young man could not control a dry, uneasy laugh.  The great revolutionist remained unmoved with an effect of commonplace, homely superiority.