“No, it’s not!” replied Yourii vehemently, influenced by his memories of the past and by the dusk that gave a grey look to all things in the room.
“If one speaks of Humanity, of what good are all our efforts in the cause of constitutions or of revolutions if one cannot even approximately estimate what humanity really requires? Perhaps in this liberty of which we dream lie the germs of future degeneracy, and man, having realized his ideal, will go back, walking once more on all fours? Thus, all would have to be recommenced. And if I care for nothing but myself, what then? What do I gain by it? The most I could do would be to get fame by my talents and achievements, intoxicated by the respect of my inferiors, that is to say by the respect of those whom I do not esteem and whose veneration ought to be valueless to me. And then? To go on living, living, until the grave—nothing after that! And the crown of laurels would fit my skull so closely, that I should soon find it irksome!”
“Always about himself!” muttered Novikoff, mockingly.
Yourii did not hear him, being morbidly pleased with his own eloquence. There was a beautiful gloom about his utterances, so he thought; they seemed to ennoble him, to heighten his sense of self-respect.
“At the worst, I should become a genius misjudged, a ridiculous dreamer, a theme for humorous tales, a foolish individual, of no use to anybody!”
“Aha!” cried Novikoff, as he rose from the couch, “Of no use to anybody. You admit that yourself, then?”
“How absurd you are!” exclaimed Yourii, “do you really think that I don’t know for what to live and in what to believe? Possibly I should gladly submit to crucifixion if I believed that my death could save the world. But I don’t believe this; and whatever I did would never alter the course of history; moreover, my help would be so slight, so insignificant, that the world would not have suffered a jot if I had never existed. Yet, for the sake of such infinitesimal help, I am obliged to live, and suffer, and sorrowfully wait for death.”
Yourii did not perceive that he was now talking of something quite different, replying, not to Novikoff, but to his own strange, depressing thoughts. Suddenly he remembered Semenoff, and stopped short. A cold shiver ran down his spine.
“The fact is, I dread the inevitable,” he said in a low tone, as he looked stolidly at the darkening window. “It is natural, I know, and that I can do nothing to avoid it, but yet it is awful—hideous!”
Novikoff, though inwardly horrified at the truth of such a statement, replied: