Apparently satisfied with the applause of his audience, in which he seemed to delight and revel, Litvinoff turned from the present and the past, and invited his hearers to look with him into the future, 'not only of Russia, but of mankind,' he said; 'what the world might be--what it would be.' Then were done into rhetorical English the concluding pages of that famous Russian pamphlet, 'A Prophetic Vision'--the pamphlet for whose sake Russian peasants had braved the spydom of the police, and to hear which read aloud by some of their fellows who _could_ read, they had crowded together at nights in outhouses and sheds, by the dim light of tallow candles--the pamphlet for whose possession St Petersburg and Moscow students had quarrelled and almost fought, knowing all the time that the mere fact of its being found upon their persons or among their belongings meant certain imprisonment, and possible death--the pamphlet, in short, the discovery of whose authorship three years back had sent Count Litvinoff and his luckless secretary flying for the Austrian frontier. It was certainly a pleasant vision this of the Russian noble, whether it was prophetic or no, a dream of a time when men would no longer sow for other men to reap, when the fruits of the earth would be the inheritance of all the earth's children, and not only of her priests and her rulers; when, in fact, rulers would be no more, for all would rule and each would obey; when every man would do as he liked, and every man would like to do well. All this seemed very high-flown and remote to the young university critics on the front seats, though even they were moved for a moment or two, by the vibrating tones of the speaker, out of the attitude of English stolidity which they had carefully kept up during the evening. But those behind them were less reserved, and perhaps more credulous--more given to believing in visions; and when Litvinoff sat down, the walls of the Agora rang again and again with the cheers of a sympathetic and delighted audience. When the chairman had announced that 'Mr' Litvinoff would be happy to answer any questions that might be suggested by the lecture, there was a moment or two of that awkward silence which always occurs on these occasions, when everyone feels that there are at least half-a-dozen questions he would like to ask, but experiences the greatest possible difficulty in putting even one into an intelligible shape.