" The universal aspiration with all its
profound and melancholy meaning assailed heavily Razumov, who, amongst
eighty millions of his kith and kin, had no heart to which he could open
himself.
The attorney was not to be thought of. He despised the little agent of
chicane too much. One could not go and lay one's conscience before the
policeman at the corner. Neither was Razumov anxious to go to the chief
of his district's police--a common-looking person whom he used to see
sometimes in the street in a shabby uniform and with a smouldering
cigarette stuck to his lower lip. "He would begin by locking me up most
probably. At any rate, he is certain to get excited and create an awful
commotion," thought Razumov practically.
An act of conscience must be done with outward dignity.
Razumov longed desperately for a word of advice, for moral support. Who
knows what true loneliness is--not the conventional word, but the naked
terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable
outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. Now and then a fatal
conjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instant
only. No human being could bear a steady view of moral solitude without
going mad.
Razumov had reached that point of vision. To escape from it he embraced
for a whole minute the delirious purpose of rushing to his lodgings
and flinging himself on his knees by the side of the bed with the dark
figure stretched on it; to pour out a full confession in passionate
words that would stir the whole being of that man to its innermost
depths; that would end in embraces and tears; in an incredible
fellowship of souls--such as the world had never seen.
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