d you shall possess me.'

"Of course I accepted, for it was too fantastically strange to refuse.
Don't you think so? What an adventure! What luck! A number of letters
between the Countess and Bakounine prepared the way; I was introduced
to him at his house, and they discussed me there. I became a sort of
Western prophet, a mystic charmer who was ready to nihilize the Latin
races, the Saint Paul of the new religion of nothingness, and at last a
day was fixed for us to meet in London. He lived in a small,
one-storied house in Pimlico, with a tiny garden in front, and nothing
noticeable about it.

"We were first of all shown into the commonplace parlor of all English
homes, and then upstairs. The room where the Countess and I were left
was small, and very badly furnished. It had a square table with writing
materials on it, in the center of the room. This was his sanctuary. The
deity soon appeared, and I saw him in flesh and bone--especially in
flesh, for he was enormously stout. His broad face, with prominent
cheek-bones, in spite of fat; a nose like a double funnel; and small,
sharp eyes, which had a magnetic lock, proclaimed the Tartar, the old
Turanian blood which produced the Attilas, the Genghis-Khans, the
Tamerlanes. The obesity which is characteristic of nomad races, who are
always on horseback or driving, added to his Asiatic look. The man was
certainly not a European, a slave, a descendant of the deistic Aryans,
but a scion of the atheistic hordes who had several times already
almost overrun Europe, and who, instead of ideas of progress, have
Nihilism buried in their hearts.

"I was astonished, for I had not expected that the majesty of a whole
race could be thus revived in a man, and my stupefaction increased
after an hour's conversation. I could quite understand why such a
Colossus had not wished for the Countess as his Egeria; she was a silly
child to have dreamed of acting such a part to such a thinker. She had
not felt the profoundness of that horrible, philosophy which was hidden
under his material activity, nor had she seen the prophet under this
hero of the barricades. Perhaps he had not thought it advisable to
reveal himself to her; but he revealed himself to me, and inspired me
with terror.

"A prophet? Oh! yes. He thought himself an Attila, and foresaw the
consequences of his revolution; it was not only from instinct but also
from theory that he urged a nation on to Nihilism. The phrase is not
his,