He was of those who are born wise and he was full of unbridled passion in his indictment of social lies. He trembled from head to foot with anger, disclosing life to us—like the victim of a burglar who after capturing the criminal goes through his pockets.

I was a jolly youth and did not like listening to his talk. I was reasonably satisfied with life, not envious, not acquisitive, earned a decent living, and saw the path in front of me running like a clear stream. And suddenly this Jewish boy came and troubled my waters. It vexed me that I, a healthy Russian lad, should prove to be sillier than this contemptible little foreigner who instructed and irritated me as though rubbing salt into my skin. I could not contradict him, besides it was clear that what Leopold said was true. And yet I wanted to argue against him very much. But how is one to speak?

“All this is true. But I have no need for that sort of truth. I’ve got my own kind.”

Now I understand: had I told him that—all my life would have taken another course. I made a mistake, I did not. Maybe the reason why I kept back my words was precisely because it was too annoying to see four fine sturdy lads sitting around, all of them sillier than such a puny little jackdaw.

Almost all the trade in our town was in the hands of the Jews and therefore they were not at all popular. I had no reason to feel more kindly to him than everybody else did. When Leopold left, I began to jeer at my friends’ choice of a teacher. But Zotov, the saddler, who had started the whole business, shut me up angrily and so did the other boys. It was not the first time they had been listening to Leopold and there was a close bond between them.

Having thought things over I resolved to surrender to the propagandist, but my secret aim was to humiliate Leopold in some way in the eyes of the others—that was not only because he was a Jew, but because it was hard for me to get reconciled to the idea that truth should live in such a frail little body. That was not aestheticism but the organic mistrust of a healthy creature who fears contamination.

This was the game in which I got entangled and lost. After two or three talks the truth of socialism became as clear and near to me as though I had myself discovered it. Now, looking back, I believe that in my youthful enthusiasm I overlooked a subtle and dangerous point. It has been proved by the theories on the essence of reason that thoughts are born from facts. With my reason I accepted the socialistic idea as a truth, but the facts which had given birth to that thought, did not arouse any emotion in me and inequality seemed a natural and legitimate factor. I thought of myself as being better than Leopold, cleverer than my other friends. Already as a child I had been used to command; it was an easy job for me to make others obey and altogether I lacked an attribute indispensable to a socialist—what should one call it?—love for mankind, or what? I don’t know. To put it simply—socialism did not fit me—it was narrow in some places—wide in others. I have seen many a socialist like that, to whom socialism is something quite alien. They are like adding machines—they don’t care what figures they add up, the total is always correct, but there is no soul in them, it’s just bare arithmetic. By “soul” I mean an idea sublimated to insanity, so to say a believing idea, which is forever and inextricably linked with the will. I expect that what was wrong in my life was that I had no soul like that and was not aware of it.

I was brighter than the other boys, found my way better among the various pamphlets, questioned Leopold oftener than they did. My hostility to him helped me a lot: in my desire to find him out, to reveal that his knowledge did not cover all the ground and was wrong at times, I wanted to learn more than he knew. This ambition enabled me to advance so rapidly that very soon I became the chief person in our group and could see that Leopold was proud of me as a creature of his brain. I would be almost willing to say that he was fond of me.

“You are a real, a profound revolutionary, Peter,” he would say to me.

There was nothing that the boy had not read, he had such a remarkable brain, too. He suffered from a chronic cold and cough. Lean and dark as a burning log, he emitted corrosive smoke, shot out words