Текст книги "Demons"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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"You did it on purpose!" I said, indignantly seizing him by the arm.
"By God, I had no idea," he cowered, immediately starting to lie and pretend to be miserable, "the verses were just brought, and I thought as a merry joke..."
"You never thought any such thing. Can you possibly find that giftless trash a merry joke?"
"Yes, sir, I do."
"You're simply lying, and it wasn't just brought to you. You wrote it yourself, together with Lebyadkin, maybe yesterday, to cause a scandal. The last line is certainly yours, and the part about the beadle as well. Why did he come out in a tailcoat? It means you were preparing to have him read, if he hadn't gotten drunk?"
Liputin looked at me coldly and caustically.
"What business is it of yours?" he asked suddenly, with a strange calm.
"What? You're wearing one of these bows, too... Where is Pyotr Stepanovich?"
"I don't know, somewhere around. Why?"
"Because I see through it now. This is simply a conspiracy against Yulia Mikhailovna, to disgrace the day..."
Liputin again looked askance at me.
"And what is that to you?" he grinned, shrugged, and walked off.
I felt as if stricken. All my suspicions were justified. And I had still hoped I was mistaken! What was I to do? I thought of discussing it with Stepan Trofimovich, but he was standing in front of the mirror, trying on various smiles, and constantly consulting a piece of paper on which he had made some notes. He was to go on right after Karmazinov and was no longer in any condition to talk with me. Should I run to Yulia Mikhailovna? But it was too soon for her: she needed a much harsher lesson to cure her of the conviction of her "surround-edness" and the general "fanatical devotion." She would not believe me and would regard me as a dreamer. And how could she be of help? "Eh," I thought, "really, what business is it of mine? I'll take the bow off and go home, once it starts.”I actually said "once it starts," I remember that.
But I had to go and listen to Karmazinov. Taking a last look around backstage, I noticed that there were quite a few outsiders, and even women, darting about, coming and going. This "backstage" was quite a narrow space, totally screened off from the public by a curtain and connected through a corridor in back with other rooms. Here our readers waited their turns. But I was particularly struck at that moment by the lecturer who was to follow Stepan Trofimovich. He, too, was some sort of professor (even now I do not know exactly what he was), who had voluntarily retired from some institution after some student incident and had turned up in our town for one reason or another just a few days earlier. He, too, had been recommended to Yulia Mikhailovna, and she had received him with reverence. I know now that he had visited her only on one evening prior to the reading, had spent the whole evening in silence, had smiled ambiguously at the jokes and tone of the company that surrounded Yulia Mikhailovna, and had made an unpleasant impression on everyone by his air—arrogant and at the same time touchy to the point of timorousness. It was Yulia Mikhailovna herself who had recruited him to read. Now he was pacing from corner to corner and, like Stepan Trofimovich, was whispering to himself as well, but looking at the ground, not in the mirror. He did not try on any smiles, though he smiled frequently and carnivorously. Clearly it was not possible to talk with him, either. He was short, looked about forty, was bald front and back, had a grayish little beard, and dressed decently. But most interesting was that at each turn he raised his right fist high, shook it in the air above his head, and suddenly brought it down as if crushing some adversary to dust. He repeated this trick every moment. It gave me an eerie feeling. I ran quickly to listen to Karmazinov.
III
Again something wrong was hovering in the hall. I declare beforehand: I bow down to the greatness of genius; but why is it that at the end of their illustrious years these gentlemen geniuses of ours sometimes act just like little boys? So what if he is Karmazinov and comes out with all the bearing of five court chamberlains? Is it possible to hold a public like ours for an entire hour with one article? Generally, I have observed that at a light, public literary reading, even the biggest genius cannot occupy the public with himself for more than twenty minutes with impunity. True, the entrance of the great genius was met with the utmost respect. Even the sternest old men expressed approval and curiosity, and the ladies even a certain rapture. The applause, however, was a bit brief, somehow not general, disconcerted. Yet there was not a single escapade from the back rows until Mr. Karmazinov actually began to speak, and even then it was nothing so especially bad, just a misunderstanding, as it were. I have already mentioned that his voice was rather shrill, even somewhat feminine, and with a genuine, highborn, aristocratic lisp besides. He had uttered no more than a few words when someone suddenly permitted himself to laugh loudly—probably some inexperienced little fool, who had never seen anything of the world and, besides, was naturally given to laughter. But there was nothing in the least demonstrative in it; on the contrary, the fool was hissed and he obliterated himself. But then Mr. Karmazinov, mincing and preening, announced that "he had flatly refused to read at first" (much he needed to announce that!). "There are lines," he said, "which so sing themselves from a man's heart as cannot be told, [169]and such a sacred thing simply cannot be laid before the public" (why was he laying it, then?); "but as he had been prevailed upon, so he was laying it, and as he was, moreover, putting down his pen forever, and had sworn never to write again for anything, then, so be it, he had written this last thing; and as he had sworn never, for anything in the world, to read anything in public, then, so be it, he would read this last article to the public," etc., etc., all in the same vein. But all this would still have been nothing, and who does not know what authors' prefaces are like? Though I will note that, given the scanty education of our public and the irritability of the back rows, all this might have had an influence. So, would it not have been better to read a little tale, a tiny story, of the sort he once used to write—that is, polished, mincing, but occasionally witty? That would have saved everything. But no, sir, nothing doing! An oration commenced! [170]God, what wasn't in it! I will say positively that even a metropolitan public would have been reduced to stupor, not only ours. Imagine some thirty printed pages of the most mincing and useless babble; what's more, the gentleman was reading somehow superciliously, ruefully, as if for a favor, so that it even came out offensive to our public. The theme... But, who could make out the theme? It was some sort of account of some sort of impressions, some sort of recollections. But of what? But what about? No matter how furrowed our provincial brows were through the first half of the reading, they could get none of it, so that they listened through the second half only out of courtesy. True, much was said about love, about the genius's love for some person, but I confess it came out rather awkwardly. The short, fattish little figure of the writer of genius somehow did not go very well, in my opinion, with the story of his first kiss... And, which again was offensive, these kisses occurred somehow not as with the rest of mankind. Here the inevitable furze is growing all around (it is inevitably furze or some such plant, which has to be looked up in botany). At the same time there is inevitably some violet hue in the sky which, of course, no mortal has ever noticed—that is, everyone has seen it, but failed to notice it, "while I," he says, "I looked and am now describing it to you fools as a most ordinary thing." The tree under which the interesting couple sits is inevitably of some orange color. They are sitting somewhere in Germany. Suddenly they see Pompey or Cassius on the eve of battle, [171]and both are pierced by the chill of ecstasy. Some mermaid peeps in the bushes. Gluck begins playing a fiddle among the reeds. [172]The piece he plays is named en toutes lettres, [cxliii] but is not known to anyone, so it has to be looked up in a musical dictionary. Then mist comes billowing, billowing and billowing, more like a million pillows than any mist. And suddenly it all disappears, and the great genius is crossing the Volga in winter, during a thaw. Two and a half pages on the crossing, and he falls through a hole in the ice anyway. The genius is drowning—do you think he drowns? It never occurred to him; all this was so that when he was already quite drowned and choking, there should flash before him a piece of ice, a piece of ice tiny as a pea, but pure and transparent "like a frozen tear," and in this tear Germany was reflected, or, better say, the sky of Germany, and with its iridescent play the reflection reminded him of that same tear which, "remember, rolled from your eye, as we sat beneath the emerald tree, and you exclaimed joyfully: 'There is no crime!' 'Yes,' said I through my tears, 'but, if so, there are also no righteous men.' We wept and parted forever." She somewhere to the seacoast, he to some caves; and so he descends, and descends, for three years he descends beneath the Sukharev Tower in Moscow, and suddenly in the very depths of the earth he finds, in a cave, an icon lamp, and before the icon lamp—a monk. The monk is praying. The genius bends to a tiny barred window and suddenly hears a sigh. You think it was the monk who sighed? Much need he has for your monk! No, sir, it is simply that this sigh "reminded him of her first sigh, thirty-seven years ago," when, "remember, in Germany, we were sitting under the agate tree, and you said to me: 'Why love? Look, ochre is growing all around, and I am in love, but the ochre will stop growing, and I will cease to love.’” Here again mist billowed, Hoffmann appeared, the mermaid whistled something from Chopin, and suddenly, out of the mist, wearing a laurel wreath, over the roofs of Rome appeared Ancus Marcius. [173]"The chill of ecstasy ran down our spines, and we parted forever," etc., etc. In short, I may not be telling it right and perhaps cannot, but the sense of the blather was precisely of that sort. And, finally, what is this disgraceful passion of our great minds for punning in a higher sense! The great European philosopher, the great scholar, the inventor, the laborer and martyr– all these who labor and are heavy-laden [174]—are for our Russian great genius decidedly like cooks in his kitchen. He is the master and they come to him, chef's hat in hand, waiting for orders. True, he also smiles haughtily at Russia, and he likes nothing better than to proclaim Russia's bankruptcy in all respects before the great minds of Europe, but as regards himself—no, sir, he has already risen above these great minds of Europe; they are all only material for his puns. He takes another man's idea, weaves its own antithesis into it, and the pun is ready. There is crime, there is no crime; there is no right, there are no righteous men; atheism, Darwinism, Moscow bells ... But, alas, he no longer believes in Moscow bells; Rome, laurels ... but he does not even believe in laurels ... Then comes a conventional fit of Byronic anguish, a grimace from Heine, something from Pechorin, [175]and—off it goes, off it goes, the engine whistling ... "But praise me anyway, praise me, I do love it terribly; I'm just saying that I'm putting down my pen; wait, I'll wear you out three hundred times over, you'll get tired of reading it..."
Of course, the end was none too good; but the bad thing was that everything started with it. Long since there had begun the shuffling, nose-blowing, coughing, and all else that occurs at a literary reading when the writer, whoever he may be, keeps the public longer than twenty minutes. But the writer of genius did not notice any of it. He went on lisping and mumbling, totally oblivious of the public, so that everyone began to be perplexed. Then suddenly, in the back rows, a lonely but loud voice was heard:
"Lord, what rubbish!"
This popped out inadvertently and, I am sure, without any demonstrativeness. The man simply got tired. But Mr. Karmazinov paused, looked mockingly at the public, and suddenly lisped with the bearing of an offended court chamberlain:
"It seems, ladies and gentlemen, that you are rather bored with me?"
And here is where he was at fault, in having spoken first; for in thus provoking a response, he gave all sorts of scum an opportunity to speak as well, and even legitimately, as it were, while if he had refrained, they would have blown their noses a little longer, and it would all have gone over somehow... Perhaps he expected applause in response to his question; but there was no applause; on the contrary, everyone became as if frightened, shrank down, and kept still.
"You never saw any Ancus Marcius, that's all just style," came one irritated, even as if pained, voice.
"Precisely," another voice picked up at once, "there are no ghosts nowadays, only natural science. Look it up in natural science."
"Ladies and gentlemen, such objections were the last thing I expected," Karmazinov was terribly surprised. The great genius had grown totally unaccustomed to his fatherland in Karlsruhe.
"In our age it's shameful to read that the world stands on three fishes," a young girl suddenly rattled out. "You couldn't have gone down to some hermit in a cave, Karmazinov. Who even talks about hermits nowadays?"
"What surprises me most, ladies and gentlemen, is that it's all so serious. However... however, you are perfectly right. No one respects real truth more than I do..."
Though he was smiling ironically, all the same he was greatly struck. His face simply said: "I'm not the way you think, I'm for you, only praise me, praise me more, as much as possible, I like it terribly..."
"Ladies and gentlemen," he cried at last, now completely wounded, "I see that my poor little poem got to the wrong place. And I think I myself got to the wrong place."
"Aimed at a crow and got a cow," some fool, undoubtedly drunk, shouted at the top of his lungs, and of course he ought to have been ignored. True, there was irreverent laughter.
"A cow, you say?" Karmazinov picked up at once. His voice was becoming more and more shrill. "Concerning crows and cows, ladies and gentlemen, I shall allow myself to refrain. I have too much respect even for any sort of public to allow myself comparisons, however innocent; but I thought..."
"Anyhow, dear sir, you'd better not be so..." someone shouted from the back rows.
"But I supposed that, as I was putting down my pen and saying farewell to the reader, I would be heard..."
"No, no, we want to listen, we do," several voices, emboldened at last, came from the front row.
"Read, read!" several rapturous ladies' voices picked up, and at last some applause broke through, though scant and thin, it's true. Karmazinov smiled wryly and rose from his place.
"Believe me, Karmazinov, everyone even regards it as an honor..." even the marshal's wife could not restrain herself.
"Mr. Karmazinov," a fresh, youthful voice suddenly came from the depths of the hall. It was the voice of a very young teacher from the district high school, an excellent young man, quiet and noble, still a recent arrival in town. He even rose slightly from his place. "Mr. Karmazinov, if I had the good fortune to love as you have described to us, I really wouldn't put anything about my love into an article intended for public reading..."
He even blushed all over...
"Ladies and gentlemen," Karmazinov cried, "I have ended. I omit the ending and I withdraw. But permit me to read just the six concluding lines.
"Yes, friend and reader, farewell!" he began at once from the manuscript and now without sitting down in his chair. "Farewell, reader; I do not even much insist that we should part friends: why, indeed, trouble you? Abuse me even, oh, abuse me as much as you like, if it gives you any pleasure. But it will be best of all if we forget each other forever. And if all of you, readers, should suddenly be so good as to fall on your knees and entreat me with tears: 'Write, oh, write for us, Karmazinov—for the fatherland, for posterity, for the wreaths of laurel—even then I would answer you, having thanked you, of course, with all courtesy: 'Ah, no, we have had enough of bothering each other, my dear compatriots, merci! It is time we parted ways! Merci, merci, merci.‘“
Karmazinov bowed ceremoniously and, all red as though he had been boiled, made for backstage.
"Nobody's going down on his knees—a wild fancy."
"What conceit!"
"It's just humor!" someone a bit more sensible corrected.
"No, spare us your humor!"
"This is impudence, anyhow, gentlemen."
"He's finished now, at least."
"What a heap of boredom!"
But all these ignorant exclamations from the back rows (though not only from the back rows) were drowned by the applause of the other part of the public. Karmazinov was called back. Several ladies, Yulia Mikhailovna and the marshal's wife at their head, crowded up to the platform. In Yulia Mikhailovna's hands there appeared a magnificent wreath of laurel, on a white velvet cushion, inside another wreath of live roses.
"Laurels!" Karmazinov said with a subtle and somewhat caustic grin. "I am moved, of course, and accept this wreath, prepared beforehand but as yet unwithered, with lively emotion; but I assure you, mesdames,I have suddenly become so much of a realist that I consider laurels in our age rather more fitting in the hands of a skillful cook than in mine..."
"Except that cooks are more useful," cried that same seminarian who had attended the "meeting" at Virginsky's. The order was somewhat disrupted. People from many rows jumped up to see the ceremony with the laurel wreath.
"I'd add three more roubles for a cook," another voice picked up loudly, even too loudly, insistently loudly.
"So would I."
"So would I."
"But do they really have no buffet here?"
"Gentlemen, it's sheer deception..."
However, it must be admitted that all these unbridled gentlemen were still very afraid of our dignitaries, and also of the police officer who was there in the hall. After about ten minutes everyone settled down again anyhow, but the former order was not restored. And it was into this burgeoning chaos that poor Stepan Trofimovich stepped...
IV
I ran to him backstage one last time, however, and managed to warn him, beside myself as I was, that in my opinion it had all blown up and he had better not come out at all, but go home at once, excusing himself with his cholerine if need be, and that I, too, would tear off my bow and come with him. At this moment he was already heading for the platform, suddenly stopped, haughtily looked me up and down, and solemnly pronounced:
"Why, my dear sir, do you consider me capable of such baseness?"
I stepped back. I was as sure as two times two that he would not get out of there without a catastrophe. As I was standing in utter dejection, there again flashed before me the figure of the visiting professor, whose turn it was to go out after Stepan Trofimovich, and who earlier kept raising his fist and bringing it down with all his might. He was still pacing back and forth in the same way, absorbed in himself and muttering something under his nose with a wily but triumphant smile. Somehow almost without intending to (what on earth possessed me?), I went up to him as well.
"You know," I said, "based on many examples, if a reader keeps the public longer than twenty minutes, they cease to listen. Even a celebrity can't hold out for half an hour..."
He suddenly stopped and even seemed to tremble all over at the offense. A boundless haughtiness showed in his face.
"Don't worry," he muttered contemptuously, and walked by. At that moment came the sound of Stepan Trofimovich's voice in the hall.
"Eh, confound you all!" I thought, and ran to the hall.
Stepan Trofimovich sat down in the chair amid the still lingering disorder. He apparently met with ill-disposed looks from the front rows. (They had somehow stopped liking him in the club of late, and respected him much less than before.) However, it was good enough that they did not hiss. I had had this strange idea ever since yesterday: I kept thinking he would be hissed off at once, as soon as he appeared. Yet he was not even noticed right away, owing to the lingering disorder. And what could the man hope for, if even Karmazinov was treated in such a way? He was pale; it was ten years since he had appeared before the public. By his agitation and by all that I knew only too well in him, it was clear to me that he himself regarded his present appearance on the platform as the deciding of his fate, or something of the sort. That was what I was afraid of. So dear the man was to me. And what I felt when he opened his mouth and I heard his first phrase!
"Ladies and gentlemen!" he said suddenly, as if venturing all, and at the same time in an almost breaking voice. "Ladies and gentlemen! Only this morning there lay before me one of those lawless papers recently distributed here, and for the hundredth time I was asking myself the question: 'What is its mystery?’“
The entire hall instantly became hushed, all eyes turned to him, some in fear. Yes, indeed, he knew how to get their interest from the first word. Heads were even stuck out from backstage; Liputin and Lyamshin listened greedily. Yulia Mikhailovna waved her hand to me again:
"Stop him, at any cost, stop him!" she whispered in alarm. I merely shrugged; how was it possible to stop a man who has ventured all?Alas, I understood Stepan Trofimovich.
"Aha, it's about the tracts!" was whispered among the public; the whole hall stirred.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I have solved the whole mystery. The whole mystery of their effect lies—in their stupidity!" (His eyes began to flash.) "Yes, ladies and gentlemen, were it an intentional stupidity, counterfeited out of calculation—oh, that would even be a stroke of genius! But we must do them full justice: they have not counterfeited anything. This is the shortest, the barest, the most simplehearted stupidity– c'est la bêtise dans son essence la plus pure, quelque chose comme un simple chimique. [cxliv] Were it just a drop more intelligently expressed, everyone would see at once all the poverty of this short stupidity. But now everyone stands perplexed: no one believes it can be so elementally stupid. 'It can't be that there's nothing more to it,' everyone says to himself, and looks for a secret, sees a mystery, tries to read between the lines—the effect is achieved! Oh, never before has stupidity received so grand a reward, though it has so often deserved it... For, en parenthèse,stupidity, like the loftiest genius, is equally useful in the destinies of mankind..."
"Puns from the forties!" came someone's, incidentally quite modest, voice, but after it everything seemed to break loose; there was loud talking and squawking.
"Hurrah, ladies and gentlemen! I propose a toast to stupidity!" Stepan Trofimovich cried, now in a perfect frenzy, defying the hall.
I ran to him as if on the pretext of pouring him some water.
"Stepan Trofimovich, leave off, Yulia Mikhailovna begs..."
"No, you leave off with me, idle young man!" he fell upon me at the top of his voice. I ran away. "Messieurs!"he went on, "why the excitement, why the shouts of indignation that I hear? I have come with an olive branch. I have brought you the last word, for in this matter the last word is mine—and then we shall make peace."
"Away!" shouted some.
"Quiet, let him speak, let him have his say," another part yelled. Especially excited was the young teacher, who, having once dared to speak, seemed no longer able to stop.
"Messieurs,the last word in this matter is all-forgiveness. I, an obsolete old man, I solemnly declare that the spirit of life blows as ever and the life force is not exhausted in the younger generation. The enthusiasm of modern youth is as pure and bright as in our time. Only one thing has happened: the displacing of purposes, the replacing of one beauty by another! The whole perplexity lies in just what is more beautiful: Shakespeare or boots, Raphael or petroleum?" [176]
"Is he an informer?" grumbled some.
"Compromising questions!"
"Agent provocateur!"
"And I proclaim," Stepan Trofimovich shrieked, in the last extremity of passion, "and I proclaim that Shakespeare and Raphael are higher than the emancipation of the serfs, higher than nationality, higher than socialism, higher than the younger generation, higher than chemistry, higher than almost all mankind, for they are already the fruit, the real fruit of all mankind, and maybe the highest fruit there ever may be! A form of beauty already achieved, without the achievement of which I might not even consent to live... Oh, God!" he clasped his hands, "ten years ago I cried out in the same way from a platform in Petersburg, exactly the same things and in the same words, and in exactly the same way they understood nothing, they laughed and hissed, as now; short people, what more do you need in order to understand? And do you know, do you know that mankind can live without the Englishman, it can live without Germany, it can live only too well without the Russian man, it can live without science, without bread, and it only cannot live without beauty, for then there would be nothing at all to do in the world! The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here! Science itself would not stand for a minute without beauty—are you aware of that, you who are laughing?—it would turn into boorishness, you couldn't invent the nail! ... I will not yield!" he cried absurdly in conclusion, and banged his fist on the table with all his might.
But while he was shrieking without sense or order, the order in the hall was also breaking up. Many jumped from their places, some surged forward, closer to the platform. Generally, it all happened much more quickly than I am describing, and there was no time to take measures. Perhaps there was no wish to, either.
"It's fine for you, with everything provided, spoiled brats!" the same seminarian bellowed, right by the platform, gleefully baring his teeth at Stepan Trofimovich. He noticed it and leaped up to the very edge:
"Was it not I, was it not I who just declared that the enthusiasm of the younger generation is as pure and bright as it ever was, and that it is perishing only for being mistaken about the forms of the beautiful? Is that not enough for you? And if you take it that this was proclaimed by a crushed, insulted father, how then—oh, you short ones—how then is it possible to stand higher in impartiality and tranquillity of vision?... Ungrateful... unjust... why, why do you not want to make peace! ..."
And he suddenly burst into hysterical sobs. He wiped away the flood of tears with his fingers. His shoulders and chest were shaking with sobs... He forgot everything in the world.
The public was decidedly seized with fright, almost everyone rose from their places. Yulia Mikhailovna also jumped up quickly, seized her husband's arm, and pulled him from the chair... The scandal was going beyond bounds.
"Stepan Trofimovich!" the seminarian bellowed joyfully. "Here in town and in the vicinity we've now got Fedka the Convict, an escaped convict, wandering around. He robs people, and just recently committed a new murder. Allow me to ask: if you had not sent him to the army fifteen years ago to pay off a debt at cards—that is, if you had not quite simply lost him in a card game—tell me, would he have wound up at hard labor? Would he go around putting a knife in people, as he does now, in his struggle for existence? What have you got to say, mister aesthete?"
I refuse to describe the ensuing scene. First, there was furious applause. Not everyone applauded, only some fifth part of the hall, but they applauded furiously. The rest of the public surged towards the exit, but since the applauding part of the public was still crowding towards the platform, there was general confusion. Ladies cried out, some young girls started weeping and begged to be taken home. Lembke, standing by his seat, kept glancing around wildly and quickly. Yulia Mikhailovna was quite lost—for the first time during her career among us. As for Stepan Trofimovich, for the first moment he was, it seemed, literally crushed by the seminarian's words; but suddenly he raised both arms, as if stretching them out over the public, and screamed:
"I shake off the dust from my feet [177]and curse you... The end... the end..."
And, turning, he ran backstage, waving and threatening with his arms.
"He has insulted society! ... Verkhovensky!" the furious ones bellowed. They even wanted to rush in pursuit of him. To calm them was impossible, at least for the moment, and—suddenly the final catastrophe crashed down like a bomb on the gathering, and exploded in its midst: the third reader, that maniac who kept waving his fist backstage, suddenly ran out on the platform.
He looked utterly mad. With a broad, triumphant smile, full of boundless self-confidence, he gazed around the agitated hall and, it seemed, was glad of the disorder. He was not embarrassed in the least at having to read in such turmoil, on the contrary, he was visibly glad. This was so obvious that it attracted attention at once.
"What on earth is this?" questions were heard, "who on earth is this? Shh! What does he want to say?"
"Ladies and gentlemen!" the maniac shouted with all his might, standing at the very edge of the platform, and in almost the same shrilly feminine voice as Karmazinov, only without the aristocratic lisp. "Ladies and gentlemen! Twenty years ago, on the eve of war with half of Europe, Russia stood as an ideal in the eyes of all state and privy councillors. Literature served in the censorship; the universities taught military drill; [178]the army turned into a ballet, and the people paid taxes and kept silent under the knout of serfdom. Patriotism turned into the gouging of bribes from the living and the dead. Those who did not take bribes were considered rebels, for they disrupted the harmony. Whole birch groves were destroyed to maintain order. Europe trembled... But never, in all the thousand witless years of her life, did Russia reach such disgrace ..."
