Generally his phrases came
to him slowly, after a conscious and painstaking wooing. Some superior
power had inspired him with a flow of masterly argument as certain
converted sinners become overwhelmingly loquacious.
He felt an austere exultation.
"What are the luridly smoky lucubrations of that fellow to the clear
grasp of my intellect?" he thought. "Is not this my country? Have I not
got forty million brothers?" he asked himself, unanswerably victorious
in the silence of his breast. And the fearful thrashing he had given
the inanimate Ziemianitch seemed to him a sign of intimate union, a
pathetically severe necessity of brotherly love. "No! If I must suffer
let me at least suffer for my convictions, not for a crime my reason--my
cool superior reason--rejects."
He ceased to think for a moment. The silence in his breast was complete.
But he felt a suspicious uneasiness, such as we may experience when we
enter an unlighted strange place--the irrational feeling that something
may jump upon us in the dark--the absurd dread of the unseen.
Of course he was far from being a moss-grown reactionary. Everything was
not for the best. Despotic bureaucracy... abuses... corruption...
and so on. Capable men were wanted. Enlightened intelligences. Devoted
hearts. But absolute power should be preserved--the tool ready for the
man--for the great autocrat of the future.
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