Another observation of Mme. Hoffmann’s concerning the Russian people. It is inherently incapable of leading a strict and methodical existence, of being punctual even. It would seem as if the Russian did not suffer much in consequence of his own improvidence, for he makes no great effort to free himself from it. And if I may be permitted to seek an excuse for the lack of order in my causeries, I shall find it in the very confusion of Dostoevsky’s ideas, in their extreme entanglement and in the peculiar difficulties experienced in trying to hold them to a plan which satisfies our Western logic. This wavering and indecision Mme. Hoffmann ascribes partly to the weakening of time sense due to the endless summer days and interminable winter nights, when the rhythm of the passing hours is lost. In a short address delivered at the _Vieux Colombier_ I already quoted Mme. Hoffmann’s illustration of the Russian who met reproaches on account of his unpunctuality with “Yes, life is difficult! There are moments which must be lived well, and this is more important than the punctual keeping of any engagement!”--a sentence full of significance, for it reveals at the same time the strange consciousness a Russian has of his inner life, more important to him than all social connections. I should like to point out, with Mme. Hoffmann, the propensity to pity and suffering, _Leiden und Mitleiden_, to compassion extending even to the criminal. In Russia there exists but one word to designate the poor and the criminal, but one to cover actual crime and ordinary offences. Add to this an almost religious contrition and we shall the better understand the Russian’s ineradicable mistrustfulness in all his relations with strangers, with foreigners in particular. Westerners often complain of this mistrustfulness, which proceeds, so Mme. Hoffmann maintains, from the uneasy consciousness of his own insufficiency and proneness to sin, rather than from any feeling that other people are of no account: it is a mistrust that springs from humility of spirit. Nothing could better throw light on this strange religiosity of the Russian, which persists even when belief is long since dead, than the four conversations of Prince Myshkin, the hero of _The Idiot_. These I shall now read to you.