one of certain little blood-sucking animals which eat their way most obstinately into the surface of a foreign body in proportion as it is decomposed." Nasanski stopped and spat with withering contempt. "Go on, go on," exclaimed Romashov eagerly. "But other times are coming, indeed have come. Yes, tremendous surprises and changes are about to take place. You remember my saying on one occasion that for a thousand years there has existed a genius of humanity that seldom reveals itself, but whose laws are as inexorable as they are ruthless; but the wiser men become, so much more deeply do they penetrate the spirit of those laws. And I am convinced that, sooner or later, everything in this world must be brought into equilibrium in accordance with these immutable laws. Justice will then be dispensed. The longer and more cruel the slavery has been, so much more terrible will be the day of reckoning for tyrants. The greater the violence, injustice, and brutality, so much more bloody will be the retribution. Oh, I am firmly convinced that the day will dawn when we 'superior officers,' we 'almighty swells,' darlings of the women, drones and brainless swaggerers, will have our ears boxed with impunity in streets and lanes, in vestibules and corridors, when women will turn their backs on us in contempt, and when our own affectionate soldiers will cease to obey us. And all this will happen, not because we have brutally ill-treated men deprived of every possibility of self-defence; not because we have, for the 'honour' of the uniform, insulted women; not because we have committed, when in a state of intoxication, scandalous acts in public-houses and public places; and not even because we, the privileged lick-spittles of the State, have, in innumerable battlefields and in pretty nearly every country, covered our standards with shame, and been driven by our own soldiers out of the maize-fields in which we had taken shelter. Well, of course, we shall also be punished for that. No, our most monstrous and unpardonable sin consists in our being blind and deaf to everything. For long, long periods past--and, naturally, far away from our polluted garrisons--people have discerned the dawn of a new life resplendent with light and freedom. Far-seeing, high-minded, and noble spirits, free from prejudices and human fear, have arisen to sow among the nations burning words of liberation and enlightenment. These heroes remind one of the last scene in a melodrama, when the dark castles and prison towers of tyranny fall down and are buried, in order, as it were, by magic, to be succeeded by freedom's dazzling light and hailed by exultant throngs. We alone--crass idiots, irredeemable victims of pride and blindness--still stick up our tail-feathers, like angry turkey-cocks, and yell in savage wrath, 'What? Where? Silence! Obey! Shoot!' etc., etc. And it's just this turkey-cock's contempt for the fight for freedom by awakening humanity that shall never, never be forgiven us."