The farthest villages in Siberia,
the remotest hut beyond Archangel, from the shops in the Sadovaya to the
Lavra at Kieff, from the little villages on the bank of the Volga to the
woods round Tarnopol--all, all one country, one people, one world within
a world. The old man to whom I was secretary discovered this secret hope
of mine. I talked one night when I was drunk and told him everything. I
mentioned even the Enchanter and the Sleeping Beauty! How he laughed at
me! He would never leave me alone. 'Nicolai Leontievitch believes in
Holy Russia!' he would say. 'Not so much Holy, you understand, as
Bewitched. A Fairy Garden, ladies, with a sleeping beauty in the middle
of it. Dear me, Nicolai Leontievitch, no wonder you are heart-free!'
"How I hated him and his yellow face and his ugly stomach! I would have
stamped on it with delight. But that made me shy. I was afraid to speak
of it to any one, and I kept to myself. Then Vera came and she didn't
laugh at me. The two ideas grew together in my head. Vera and Russia!
The two things in my life by which I stood--because man must have
something in life round which he may nestle as a cat curls up by the
fire.
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