The table itself was flooded with
light--the rest of the room was dusk. I wondered as I looked about me
why the Wilderlings had taken Lawrence as a paying guest. Before my
visit I had imagined that they were poor, as so many of the better-class
Russians were, but here were no signs of poverty. I decided that.
Our dinner was good, and the wine was excellent. We talked, of course,
politics, and the Baron was admirably frank.
"I won't disguise from you, M. Durward," he said, "that some of us watch
your English effort at winning the heart of this country with sympathy,
but also, if I am not offending you, with some humour. I'm not speaking
only of your propaganda efforts. You've got, I know, one or two literary
gentlemen here--a novelist, I think, and a professor and a journalist.
Well, soon you'll find them inefficient, and decide that you must have
some commercial gentlemen, and then, disappointed with them, you'll
decide for the military... and still the great heart of Russia will
remain untouched."
"Yes," I said, "because your class are determined that the peasant shall
remain uneducated, and until he is educated he will be unable to
approach any of us.
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