Is it my people? Are _those_ bad creatures--our men who fought in the snows of Hungary armed with fists and patriotism,--for the munitions were yet the subject of speculations; did these men cross the scorched plains of Persia, sent there clad in uniforms prepared for Archangel? _Did they_ make efforts to save small mutilated nations? Is the history of Russia--these pages of blood and sacrifices--_made by them_? Did Russia take _from them_ Pushkin, Chaikovsky, Mechnikov, Tolstoi and the brilliant web of savants, musicians, soldiers, explorers and poets?... I am from this same bulk that centuries ago came from Asia and settled here. They--and I are the same. But I can't understand them! In France, in England, in Germany, I could understand the crowd better. But these men and women are so far from my conception.... And they all pay me back with the same coin: they not only misunderstand me and my kin,--but they mistrust me. I can deceive a bolshevik commissary, or the Princess G.; these--with their psychology never would let me come closer. I am an intruder to their caste. Before--in Petrograd--we all have had this very same fear of our select caste for a newcomer, just as these have. In our midst the man who tried to break in would be caught right away. Now I understand this little, mean, reptile impulse of catering to the one whom you seek, this feeling that the parvenu must have felt, this sensation of the necessity of flattering, for which one blushes in the nights, for which one can't sleep and turns endlessly in warm cushions. The parvenu! Pushkin said: ... and an exchange of silent glance Forever took away his chance.... It was enough for us to look at each other--and the parvenu would not come near us any more. Here--instead of the poetical form of Pushkin I must recollect the words of the Tumen cook: "You liar! Hate your face of a gentry!" Isn't it a correct translation from my Russian into theirs? Well,--I'd rather stop my scratchings: Tobolsk. 40 "Do not write too much," said a walking corpse clad in rags, seating himself near me on a soft pack of his baggage. "It is better to forget all about it. Why do you do it? What _is_ the use?" His suffering face was not at all familiar to me,--so, when he asked me, "Haven't we met before?"--I said No. He looked to me like one of those Siberian peasants. Then, under the coat of dirt, under his rags and an old Orenburg shawl, I really saw something familiar. "Perhaps we met," I said. "Petrograd?"