an ironical
finger. To have a Julius Laspara put in my way as if expressly to remind
me of my purpose is--Write, he had said. I must write--I must, indeed!
I shall write--never fear. Certainly. That's why I am here. And for the
future I shall have something to write about."

He was exciting himself by this mental soliloquy. But the idea of
writing evoked the thought of a place to write in, of shelter, of
privacy, and naturally of his lodgings, mingled with a distaste for the
necessary exertion of getting there, with a mistrust as of some hostile
influence awaiting him within those odious four walls.

"Suppose one of these revolutionists," he asked himself, "were to take
a fancy to call on me while I am writing?" The mere prospect of such
an interruption made him shudder. One could lock one's door, or ask
the tobacconist downstairs (some sort of a refugee himself) to tell
inquirers that one was not in. Not very good precautions those. The
manner of his life, he felt, must be kept clear of every cause for
suspicion or even occasion for wonder, down to such trifling occurrences
as a delay in opening a locked door. "I wish I were in the middle of
some field miles away from everywhere," he thought.

He had unconsciously turned to the left once more and now was aware of
being on a bridge again. This one was much narrower than the other, and
instead of being straight, made a sort of elbow or angle. At the point
of that angle a short arm joined it to a hexagonal islet with a soil of
gravel and its shores faced with dressed stone, a perfection of puerile
neatness. A couple of tall poplars and a few other trees stood grouped
on the clean, dark gravel, and under them a few garden benches and a
bronze effigy of Jean Jacques Rousseau seated on its pedestal.

On setting his foot on it Razumov became aware that, except for the
woman in charge of the refreshment chalet, he would be alone on the
island. There was something of naive, odious, and inane simplicity about
that unfrequented tiny crumb of earth named after Jean Jacques Rousseau.
Something pretentious and shabby, too. He asked for a glass of milk,
which he drank standing, at one draught (nothing but tea had passed his
lips since the morning), and was going away with a weary, lagging step
when a thought stopped him short. He had found precisely what he needed.
If solitude could ever be secured in the open air in the middle of a
town, he would have it there on this absurd isl