es.

What is the general condition of the people: the children are
half-starving and degenerate; the houses are full of vermin; an
everlasting dull round of labour, of submission, and of sadness. On the
other hand: ministers, governors of provinces, covetous, ambitious, full
of vanity, and anxious to inspire fear.

"But where are men with human feelings?"

"I will show you where they are."

Here is the cell of a woman in solitary confinement at Schlusselburg.
She is going mad. Here is another woman--a girl--indisposed, violated
by soldiers. A man in exile, alone, embittered, half-dead. A prison for
convicts condemned to hard labour, and women flogged. They are many.

Tens of thousands of the best people. Some shut up in prisons, others
ruined by false education, by the vain desire to bring them up as we
wish. But not succeeding in this, whatever might have been is ruined
as well, for it is made impossible. It is as if we were trying to make
buckwheat out of corn sprouts by splitting the ears. One may spoil the
corn, but one could never change it to buckwheat. Thus all the youth of
the world, the entire younger generation, is being ruined.

But woe to those who destroy one of these little ones, woe to you if you
destroy even one of them. On your soul, however, are hosts of them,
who have been ruined in your name, all of those over whom your power
extends.

"But what can I do?" exclaimed the Tsar in despair. "I do not wish to
torture, to flog, to corrupt, to kill any one! I only want the welfare
of all. Just as I yearn for happiness myself, so I want the world to be
happy as well. Am I actually responsible for everything that is done
in my name? What can I do? What am I to do to rid myself of such a
responsibility? What can I do? I do not admit that the responsibility
for all this is mine. If I felt myself responsible for one-hundredth
part of it, I would shoot myself on the spot. It would not be possible
to live if that were true. But how can I put an end, to all this evil?
It is bound up with the very existence of the State. I am the head of
the State! What am I to do? Kill myself? Or abdicate? But that would
mean renouncing my duty. O God, O God, God, help me!" He burst into
tears and awoke.

"How glad I am that it was only a dream," was his first thought. But
when he began to recollect what he had seen in his dream, and to compare
it with actuality, he realised that the problem propounded to him in
dream rem