"Yes, Maxime Sawatjeitsch, that's how it all happened ... that's the way I seem to have been lifted up, and then cruelly dashed down again. I never managed to do anything heroic after all. But I still feel the intense desire to do something out of the common, something extraordinary. I should like to crush everything on earth to dust ... or gather together a band of boon companions, and destroy every Jew in the world--every single one! To do something that would raise me to a higher level than all the rest of mankind ... so that from my heights I could spit down on all of them. Something that would give me the right to say to them all, 'You reptiles, you! what are you living for? And how are you living? You are a set of hypocrites and rogues, and nothing else!' ... After that I should not mind falling head foremost from my heights, even if I got smashed to pieces on the ground!... Hm?.. yes!... Devil take it all!... How dull and flat life is! It has always seemed to me narrow and cramped! Once I had got the weight of Matrona off my shoulders I thought to myself, 'Now, Grischka, the anchor is up, you can sail away freely wherever you like!' But it all turned out different from what I thought it would; my boat got caught in the shallows, and here I am aground!... But, never fear, I shall get off some day, and shall yet make a name for myself ... My wife?... Oh, she is nothing to me now!... Let her goto the devil!... What does a man like me want with a wife?... How can I be tied to a wife when I feel as if I were constantly being attracted towards the four quarters of the earth?... I was born with the spirit of unrest in my heart ... and fate marked me out for a tramp, for a wanderer over the face of the earth.... It's the best life there is after all.... It's free, though it's not without its discomforts.... I have tramped all over the place, and never yet have found comfort for my soul.... I drink, you say.... Well, I sup pose that's true; but what else is there to do?... Vodka is the only thing that really soothes the soul; and there is an inextinguishable flame, which is burning up my soul.... Everything seems in opposition to me; the towns, the villages, people in every condition of life.... I am sick of it all! Would it not have been possible to have invented something better than all this?... Half the world seems to be preying on the other half.... There is nothing for it but to destroy them all! Ah! life, life, what an invention of the devil it is!" The heavy door of the vodka-shop, where Orloff and I sat talking, swung backwards and forwards from time to time with a creaking, suggestive sound. As one glanced at the dark interior it appeared like the huge jaws of a giant, slowly but surely swallowing up, one after the other, these poor wretched Russian souls ... both the restless and the quiet alike.... MALVA CHAPTER I The sea laughed.