ages, he gets to
Damascus. Among the workingmen, where chance has taken him, he feels
his heart opening to the truth, which he follows up with the
determination of a real Gorkyan hero. The life of the people appears
to him in its sublime simplicity. And it is in the midst of a
dazzling apotheosis--which reminds one of the most grandiose pages
of Zola's "Lourdes"--that he finally confesses the God of his ideal:
it is the people.

"People! you are my God, creator of all the gods that you have
formed from the beauty of your soul, in your troubled and laborious
search!

"Let there be no other gods on the earth but yourself, for you are
the only God, the creator of miracles!"

* * * * *

"The Spy" is a study of the Russian police. The novel treats of the
terrible Okhrana, whose mysterious affairs have become the
laughing-stock of all the foreign papers.

The principal character, about whom circle the police spies and
secret agents, is a poor orphan, weak and timid, called Evsey
Klimkov, whom his uncle, the forger Piotr, has taken into his house
and brought up with his son, the strong and brutal James. Beaten by
his schoolmates and by his cousin, the child lives in a perpetual
trance. Life seems formidable to him, like a jungle in which men are
the pitiless beasts. Everywhere, brute force or hypocrisy triumph;
everywhere, the weak are oppressed, downtrodden, conquered. And in
his feverish imagination, daily excited by facts which his terror
distorts, Evsey delights in conceiving another existence, all made
of love and goodness, an existence that he unceasingly opposes
against the hard realities of daily life, with the stubborn fervor
of a mystic.

Having entered the service of the old bookseller Raspopov, the young
man does his duty with the faithfulness of a beast of burden. His
home no longer pleases him at all; there, things and people are
still hostile to him; but his uncle Piotr seems enchanted with his
new position. Evsey spends his days in arranging and classifying the
books which his master has bought. A young woman, Raissa Petrovna,
keeps house for the book-dealer, and as every one knows, they live
like man and wife. In this queer environment, the faculties of the
young man become sharpened, and serve him well. It does not take
long for him to find out what they are hiding from him. A few words
addressed by Raspopov to a certain Dorimedonte Loukhine reveal to
Evsey the part th