hen passing before the house he had just left he
flourished his fist at the sombre refuge of misery and crime rearing its
sinister bulk on the white ground. It had an air of brooding. He let his
arm fall by his side--discouraged.

Ziemianitch's passionate surrender to sorrow and consolation had baffled
him. That was the people. A true Russian man! Razumov was glad he had
beaten that brute--the "bright soul" of the other. Here they were: the
people and the enthusiast.

Between the two he was done for. Between the drunkenness of the peasant
incapable of action and the dream-intoxication of the idealist incapable
of perceiving the reason of things, and the true character of men. It
was a sort of terrible childishness. But children had their masters.
"Ah! the stick, the stick, the stern hand," thought Razumov, longing for
power to hurt and destroy.

He was glad he had thrashed that brute. The physical exertion had left
his body in a comfortable glow. His mental agitation too was clarified
as if all the feverishness had gone out of him in a fit of outward
violence. Together with the persisting sense of terrible danger he was
conscious now of a tranquil, unquenchable hate.

He walked slower and slower. And indeed, considering the guest he had
in his rooms, it was no wonder he lingered on the way. It was like
harbouring a pestilential disease that would not perhaps take your life,
but would take from you all that made life worth living--a subtle pest
that would convert earth into a hell.

What was he doing now? Lying on the bed as if dead, with the back of his
hands over his eyes? Razumov had a morbidly vivid vision of Haldin on
his bed--the white pillow hollowed by the head, the legs in long boots,
the upturned feet. And in his abhorrence he said to himself, "I'll kill
him when I get home." But he knew very well that that was of no use.
The corpse hanging round his neck would be nearly as fatal as the living
man. Nothing short of complete annihilation would do. And that was
impossible. What then? Must one kill oneself to escape this visitation?

Razumov's despair was too profoundly tinged with hate to accept that
issue.

And yet it was despair--nothing less--at the thought of having to live
with Haldin for an indefinite number of days in mortal alarm at every
sound. But perhaps when he heard that this "bright soul" of Ziemianitch
suffered from a drunken eclipse the fellow would take his infernal
resignation somewhere