t seems to be merely a matter of crazy nerves or a morbid conscience.

One of the most sympathetic of my critics tried to account for certain
characteristics of my work by the fact of my being, in his own words,
"the son of a Revolutionist." No epithet could be more inapplicable to a
man with such a strong sense of responsibility in the region of ideas
and action and so indifferent to the promptings of personal ambition as
my father. Why the description "revolutionary" should have been applied
all through Europe to the Polish risings of 1831 and 1863 I really
cannot understand. These risings were purely revolts against foreign
domination. The Russians themselves called them "rebellions," which,
from their point of view, was the exact truth. Amongst the men concerned
in the preliminaries of the 1863 movement my father was no more
revolutionary than the others, in the sense of working for the
subversion of any social or political scheme of existence. He was simply
a patriot in the sense of a man who believing in the spirituality of a
national existence could not bear to see that spirit enslaved.

Called out publicly in a kindly attempt to justify the work of the son,
that figure of my past cannot be dismissed without a few more words. As
a child of course I knew very little of my father's activities, for I
was not quite twelve when he died. What I saw with my own eyes was the
public funeral, the cleared streets, the hushed crowds; but I understood
perfectly well that this was a manifestation of the national spirit
seizing a worthy occasion. That bareheaded mass of work people, youths
of the University, women at the windows, school-boys on the pavement,
could have known nothing positive about him except the fame of his
fidelity to the one guiding emotion in their hearts. I had nothing but
that knowledge myself; and this great silent demonstration seemed to me
the most natural tribute in the world--not to the man but to the Idea.

What had impressed me much more intimately was the burning of his
manuscripts a fortnight or so before his death. It was done under his
own superintendence. I happened to go into his room a little earlier
than usual that evening, and remaining unnoticed stayed to watch the
nursing-sister feeding the blaze in the fireplace. My father sat in a
deep armchair propped up with pillows. This is the last time I saw him
out of bed. His aspect was to me not so much that of a man desperately
ill, as mortall