reat ability to take some picayune trifle, an
insignificant, paltry little stroke, and then will result a dreadful
truth, from which the reader, aghast, will forget that his mouth is
agape. People seek the terrible in words, in cries, in gestures. Well,
now, for example, I am reading a description of some pogrom or of a
slaughter in jail, or of a riot being put down. Of course, the
policemen are described, these servants of arbitrariness, these
lifeguards of contemporaneousness, striding up to their knees in blood,
or how else do they write in such cases? Of course, it is revolting and
it hurts, and is disgusting, but all this is felt by the mind, and not
the heart. But here I am walking along Lebyazhia Street, and see that a
crowd has collected, a girl of five years in the centre--she has lagged
behind the mother and has strayed, or it may be that the mother had
abandoned her. And before the girl, squatting down on his heels, is a
roundsman. He is interrogating her, how she is called, and where is she
from, and how do they call papa, and how do they call mamma. He has
broken out into sweat, the poor fellow, from the effort, the cap is at
the back of his neck, the whiskered face is such a kindly and woeful
and helpless one, while the voice is gentle, so gentle. At last, what
do you think? As the girl has become all excited, and has already grown
hoarse from tears, and is shy of everybody--he, this same 'roundsman on
the beat,' stretches out two of his black, calloused fingers, the index
and the little, and begins to imitate a nanny goat for the girl and
reciting an appropriate nursery rhyme! ... And so, when I looked upon
this charming scene and thought that half an hour later at the station
house this same patrolman will be beating with his feet the face and
chest of a man whom he had not till that time seen once, and whose
crime he is entirely ignorant of--then--you understand!--I began to
feel inexpressibly eerie and sad. Not with the mind, but the heart.
Such a devilish muddle is this life. Shall we drink some cognac,
Lichonin?"

"What do you say to calling each other thou?" suddenly proposed
Lichonin.

"All right. Only, really, without any of this business of kissing, now.
Here's to your health, old man ... Or here is another instance ... I
read a certain French classic, describing the thoughts and sensations
of a man condemned to capital punishment. He describes it all
sonorously, powerfully, brilliantly, but I