e, in disregard of a fairly warm
day, a corner flung over the shoulder.

"And how is Herr Razumov?" sounded the greeting in German, by that alone
made more odious to the object of the affable recognition. At closer
quarters the diminutive personage looked like a reduction of an
ordinary-sized man, with a lofty brow bared for a moment by the raising
of the hat, the great pepper-and salt full beard spread over the
proportionally broad chest. A fine bold nose jutted over a thin mouth
hidden in the mass of fine hair. All this, accented features, strong
limbs in their relative smallness, appeared delicate without the
slightest sign of debility. The eyes alone, almond-shaped and brown,
were too big, with the whites slightly bloodshot by much pen labour
under a lamp. The obscure celebrity of the tiny man was well known to
Razumov. Polyglot, of unknown parentage, of indefinite nationality,
anarchist, with a pedantic and ferocious temperament, and an amazingly
inflammatory capacity for invective, he was a power in the background,
this violent pamphleteer clamouring for revolutionary justice, this
Julius Laspara, editor of the _Living Word_, confidant of conspirators,
inditer of sanguinary menaces and manifestos, suspected of being in the
secret of every plot. Laspara lived in the old town in a sombre,
narrow house presented to him by a naive middle-class admirer of his
humanitarian eloquence. With him lived his two daughters, who overtopped
him head and shoulders, and a pasty-faced, lean boy of six, languishing
in the dark rooms in blue cotton overalls and clumsy boots, who might
have belonged to either one of them or to neither. No stranger could
tell. Julius Laspara no doubt knew which of his girls it was who, after
casually vanishing for a few years, had as casually returned to him
possessed of that child; but, with admirable pedantry, he had refrained
from asking her for details--no, not so much as the name of the father,
because maternity should be an anarchist function. Razumov had been
admitted twice to that suite of several small dark rooms on the top
floor: dusty window-panes, litter of all sorts of sweepings all over
the place, half-full glasses of tea forgotten on every table, the two
Laspara daughters prowling about enigmatically silent, sleepy-eyed,
corsetless, and generally, in their want of shape and the disorder
of their rumpled attire, resembling old dolls; the great but obscure
Julius, his feet twisted round hi