kov's letters. He did
not stay with him however, but went out to see to the farm.

Nejdanov returned to his own room and glanced through the letters.
The young propagandist spoke mostly about himself, about his unsparing
activity. According to him, during the last month, he had been in
no less than eleven provinces, nine towns, twenty-nine villages,
fifty-three hamlets, one farmhouse, and seven factories. Sixteen nights
he had slept in hay-lofts, one in a stable, another even in a cow-shed
(here he wrote, in parenthesis, that fleas did not worry him); he
had wheedled himself into mud-huts, workmen's barracks, had preached,
taught, distributed pamphlets, and collected information; some things he
had made a note of on the spot; others he carried in his memory by the
very latest method of mnemonics. He had written fourteen long letters,
twenty-eight shorter ones, and eighteen notes, four of which were
written in pencil, one in blood, and another in soot and water. All
this he had managed to do because he had learned how to divide his time
systematically, according to the examples set by men such as Quintin
Johnson, Karrelius, Sverlitskov, and other writers and statisticians.
Then he went on to talk of himself again, of his guiding star, saying
how he had supplemented Fourier's passions by being the first to
discover the "fundaments, the root principle," and how he would not
go out of this world without leaving some trace behind him; how he was
filled with wonder that he, a youth of twenty-four, should have solved
all the problems of life and science; that he would turn the whole of
Russia up-side-down, that he would "shake her up!" "Dixi!!" he added at
the end of the paragraph. This word "Dixi" appeared very frequently in
Kisliakov's letters, and always with a double exclamation mark. In one
of the letters there were some verses with a socialist tendency, written
to a certain young lady, beginning with the words--"Love not me, but the
idea!"

Nejdanov marvelled inwardly, not so much at Kisliakov's conceit, as at
Markelov's honest simplicity. "Bother aestheticism! Mr. Kisliakov may be
even useful," he thought to himself instantly.

The three friends gathered together for tea in the dining-room, but
last night's conversation was not renewed between them. Not one of them
wished to talk, but Solomin was the only one who sat silent peacefully.
Both Nejdanov and Markelov seemed inwardly agitated. After tea they
set out for th