... Oh, I tell you it's absurd!... It's more than absurd, it's
wicked, it's rotten...."
Poor boy, he was very near tears. He sat down suddenly, staring blankly
in front of him, his hands clenched.
Rozanov answered him, Rozanov flushed, his fat body swollen with food
and drink, a little unsteady on his legs, and the light of the true
mystic in his pig-like eyes. He came forward into the middle of the
circle.
"That's perhaps true what you say," he cried; "it's very English, very
honest, and, if you will forgive me, young man, very simple. You say
that we Russians are conceited. No, we are not conceited, but we see
farther than the rest of the world. Is that our curse? Perhaps it is,
but equally, perhaps, we may save the world by it. Now look at me! Am I
a fine man? No, I am not. Every one knows I am not. No man could look at
my face and say that I am a fine man. I have done disgraceful things all
my life. All present know some of the things I have done, and there are
some worse things which nobody knows save myself. Well, then.... Am I
going to stop doing such things? Am I now, at fifty-five, about to
become instantly a saint? Indeed not.
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