And remembering that when they met he had corrected the young man about something he had said that betrayed ignorance, Sergei Ivanovich found the explanation for the trend of the article.

This article was followed by a deadly silence about the book both in the press and in conversation, and Sergei Ivanovich saw that his six years' task, toiled at with such love and labor, had gone, leaving no trace.

Sergei Ivanovich's position was still more difficult from the fact that, since he had finished his book, he had had more literary work to do, such as had hitherto occupied the greater part of his time.

Sergei Ivanovich was clever, cultivated healthy and energetic, and he did not know what use to make of his energy. Conversations in drawing rooms, in meetings, assemblies, and committees - everywhere where talk was possible - took up part of his time. But being used for years to town life, he did not waste all his energies in talk, as his less experienced younger brother did, when he was in Moscow. He had a great deal of leisure and intellectual energy still to dispose of.

Fortunately for him, at this period so difficult for him because of the failure of his book, the various public questions of the dissenting sects, of the American Friends, of the Samara famine, of exhibition, and of spiritualism, were definitely replaced in public interest by the Slavonic question, which had hitherto rather languidly interested society, and Sergei Ivanovich, who had been one of the first to raise this subject, threw himself into it heart and soul.

In the circle to which Sergei Ivanovich belonged, nothing was talked of or written about just now but the Servian war. Everything that the idle crowd usually does to kill time was done now for the benefit of the Slavonic peoples. Balls, concerts, dinners, speeches, ladies' dresses, beer, taverns - everything testified to sympathy with the Slavonic peoples.

From much of what was spoken and written on the subject, Sergei Ivanovich differed on various points. He saw that the Slavonic question had become one of those fashionable distractions which succeed one another in providing society with an object and an occupation. He saw, too, that a great many people were taking up the subject from motives of self-interest and self-advertisement. He recognized that the newspapers published a great deal that was superfluous and exaggerated, with the sole aim of attracting attention and talking one another down. He saw that in this general movement those who thrust themselves most forward and shouted the loudest were men who had failed and were smarting under a sense of injury - generals without armies, ministers not in the ministry, journalists not on any paper, party leaders without followers. He saw that there was a great deal in it that was frivolous and absurd. But he saw and recognized an unmistakable growing enthusiasm, uniting all classes, with which it was impossible not to sympathize. The massacre of men who were fellow Christians, and of the same Slavonic race, excited sympathy for the sufferers and indignation against the oppressors. And the heroism of the Servians and Montenegrins struggling for a great cause begot in the whole people a longing to help their brothers not in word but in deed.

But in this there was another aspect that made Sergei Ivanovich rejoice. That was the manifestation of public opinion. The public had definitely expressed its desire. The soul of the people had, as Sergei Ivanovich said, found expression. And the more he worked in this cause, the more incontestable it seemed to him that it was a cause destined to assume vast dimensions, to create an epoch.

He threw himself heart and soul into the service of this great cause, and forgot to think about his book.

His whole time now was engrossed by it, so that he could scarcely manage to answer all the letters and appeals addressed to him.

He worked the whole spring and part of the summer, and it was only in July that he prepared to go away to his brother's country place.