the utterly hopeless.  I suppose you understand what I mean?  I mean the people who have nowhere to go and nothing to look forward to in this life.  Do you understand how frightful that is—­nothing to look forward to!  Sometimes I think that it is only in Russia that there are such people and such a depth of misery can be reached.  Well, I plunged into it, and—­do you know—­there isn’t much that one can do in there.  No, indeed—­at least as long as there are Ministries of Finances and such like grotesque horrors to stand in the way.  I suppose I would have gone mad there just trying to fight the vermin, if it had not been for a man.  It was my old friend and teacher, the poor saintly apple-woman, who discovered him for me, quite accidentally.  She came to fetch me late one evening in her quiet way.  I followed her where she would lead; that part of my life was in her hands altogether, and without her my spirit would have perished miserably.  The man was a young workman, a lithographer by trade, and he had got into trouble in connexion with that affair of temperance tracts—­you remember.  There was a lot of people put in prison for that.  The Ministry of Finances again!  What would become of it if the poor folk ceased making beasts of themselves with drink?  Upon my word, I would think that finances and all the rest of it are an invention of the devil; only that a belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.  Finances indeed!”

Hatred and contempt hissed in her utterance of the word “finances,” but at the very moment she gently stroked the cat reposing in her arms.  She even raised them slightly, and inclining her head rubbed her cheek against the fur of the animal, which received this caress with the complete detachment so characteristic of its kind.  Then looking at Miss Haldin she excused herself once more for not taking her upstairs to Madame S—­ The interview could not be interrupted.  Presently the journalist would be seen coming down the stairs.  The best thing was to remain in the hall; and besides, all these rooms (she glanced all round at the many doors), all these rooms on the ground floor were unfurnished.

“Positively there is no chair down here to offer you,” she continued.  “But if you prefer your own thoughts to my chatter, I will sit down on the bottom step here and keep silent.”

Miss Haldin hastened to assure her that, on the contrary, she was very much interested in the story of the journeyman lithographer.  He was a revolutionist, of course.

“A martyr, a simple man,” said the dame de compangnie, with a faint sigh, and gazing through the open front door dreamily.  She turned her misty brown eyes on Miss Haldin.

“I lived with him for four months.  It was like a nightmare.”