persuading one of the sympathizers among the intelligentsia of the town to submit to the unpleasantness of a house-search, then Popov was carefully informed that in the flat of the sympathizer, in the sofa of his study, was concealed something to great interest for the police. An hour later the police came to search the flat of the sympathizer, and, going through it in a cursory way, cut up and turned out the sofa very thoroughly. They found nothing, of course.

I was almost alone in the town apart from a small group of young workmen and a mentally unbalanced comrade who lived twenty kilometers away, on the farm of a Cossack friend of ours. I decided to settle with him immediately and single-handed.

Popov lived in the outskirts, in the attic of a house owned by a fruit-grower. He seemed depressed, one was aware of an inner disarray in him; he knew, of course, of the result of the search and probably realized that he was caught. He showed no pleasure in seeing me and declared he had been invited to some celebration at his landlord’s—true, from below came the sound of the accordion, shouts and stamping.

In that attic of Popov’s I spent the worst three or four hours of my life.

I asked him:

“How long have you been working for the police?”

Popov swayed, dropped some cigarettes, bent down under the table to pick them up, and from there said, stammering in a strange voice:

“S-silly k-kind of joke.…” But glancing up at me he slid from the chair to the floor and kneeling on one knee laughed hysterically, sniffling like a woman:

“Leave that.…Stop it.…” he muttered, watching the revolver in my hand. His mustache bristled, his face twitched, his eyes blinked, the one remained half closed, the other was motionless like a blind man’s. I lifted him by his hair, made him sit down, and suggested that he tell the story of his exploits. And I saw opposite me a man who literally had no face left: the face was replaced by a gray mass of jelly and in that jelly trembled two horribly staring eyes. The underlip hung like a bloodless piece of flesh, the chin twitched, wrinkles ran up the cheeks—it seemed that the whole head was decomposing, rotting and about to pour down the chest in a stream of gray mud. And as if to strengthen this impression Popov pressed his hands to his temples, shut his ears.

He told a rather common tale. He had been in the party since 1903, twice in prison, participated in an armed revolt in 1908, had been arrested in the street. He hiccoughed as he went on with the story:

“I really participated, I even fired, killed somebody, I swear it. I am certain of it, he fell. I was threatened with the gallows. But—one wants to live, doesn’t one? We’re there—to live, a man is there to live, isn’t he? Think of it only: life is there for me—not I for life—isn’t that so?”

He whispered all this very convincingly, whispered, and asked:

“Yes, yes, isn’t that so?”

With one hand he kept scratching his knee, with the other crumpling a bit of paper. I snatched it away from him and read my own name on it, Sasha’s and the following sentence: “It would be premature to liquidate Karazin, more useful and convenient to do it in Ekaterinoslav, where he will soon be going.”

I was aware that Popov’s story did not shock me, what shocked me was his philosophy. And the devil himself seemed to prompt him to absurd words which instantly hardened my heart.

“Did your conscience never disturb you?” I asked.