“There are evil moments in every life. A false suggestion enters one’s
brain, and then fear is born--fear of oneself, fear for oneself. Or else
a false courage--who knows? Well, call it what you like; but tell me,
how many of them would deliver themselves up deliberately to perdition
(as he himself says in that book) rather than go on living, secretly
debased in their own eyes? How many?... And please mark this--he
was safe when he did it. It was just when he believed himself safe
and more--infinitely more--when the possibility of being loved by
that admirable girl first dawned upon him, that he discovered that his
bitterest railings, the worst wickedness, the devil work of his hate and
pride, could never cover up the ignominy of the existence before him.
There’s character in such a discovery.”
I accepted her conclusion in silence. Who would care to question the
grounds of forgiveness or compassion? However, it appeared later on,
that there was some compunction, too, in the charity extended by the
revolutionary world to Razumov the betrayer. Sophia Antonovna continued
uneasily--
“And then, you know, he was the victim of an outrage. It was not
authorized. Nothing was decided as to what was to be done with him. He
had confessed voluntarily. And that Nikita who burst the drums of his
ears purposely, out on the landing, you know, as if carried away by
indignation--well, he has turned out to be a scoundrel of the worst
kind--a traitor himself, a betrayer--a spy! Razumov told me he had
charged him with it by a sort of inspiration....”
“I had a glimpse of that brute,” I said. “How any of you could have been
deceived for half a day passes my comprehension!”
She interrupted me.
“There! There! Don’t talk of it. The first time I saw him, I, too, was
appalled. They cried me down. We were always telling each other, ‘Oh!
you mustn’t mind his appearance.’ And then he was always ready to kill.
There was no doubt of it. He killed--yes! in both camps. The fiend....”
Then Sophia Antonovna, after mastering the angry trembling of her lips,
told me a very queer tale. It went that Councillor Mikulin, travelling
in Germany (shortly after Razumov’s disappearance from Geneva), happened
to meet Peter Ivanovitch in a railway carriage. Being alone in the
compartment, these two talked together half the night, and it was then
that Mikulin the Police Chief gave a hint to the Arch-Revolutionist
as to the true character of the arch-slayer of gendarmes. It looks as
though Mikulin had wanted to get rid of that particular agent of his
own! He might have grown tired of him, or frightened of him. It must
also be said that Mikulin had inherited the sinister Nikita from his
predecessor in office.
And this story, too, I received without comment in my character of a
mute witness of things Russian, unrolling their Eastern logic under my
Western eyes. But I permitted myself a question--
“Tell me, please, Sophia Antonovna, did Madame de S-- leave all her
fortune to Peter Ivanovitch?”
“Not a bit of it.” The woman revolutionist shrugged her shoulders in
disgust. “She died without making a will. A lot of nephews and nieces
came down from St. Petersburg, like a flock of vultures, and fought
for her money amongst themselves. All beastly Kammerherrs and Maids of
Honour--abominable court flunkeys. Tfui!”
“One does not hear much of Peter Ivanovitch now,” I remarked, after a
pause.
“Peter Ivanovitch,” said Sophia Antonovna gravely, “has united himself
to a peasant girl.”