Even the
comfort of the bottle might conceivably fail him in this supreme
crisis. At such an age nothing but a halter could cure the pangs of
an unquenchable passion. And, besides, there was the wild exasperation
aroused by the unjust aspersions and the contumely of the house, with
the maddening impossibility to account for that mysterious thrashing,
added to these simple and bitter sorrows. "Devil, eh?" Razumov
exclaimed, with mental excitement, as if he had made an interesting
discovery. "Ziemianitch ended by falling into mysticism. So many of our
true Russian souls end in that way! Very characteristic." He felt pity
for Ziemianitch, a large neutral pity, such as one may feel for an
unconscious multitude, a great people seen from above--like a community
of crawling ants working out its destiny. It was as if this Ziemianitch
could not possibly have done anything else. And Sophia Antonovna's
cocksure and contemptuous "some police-hound" was characteristically
Russian in another way. But there was no tragedy there. This was a
comedy of errors. It was as if the devil himself were playing a game
with all of them in turn. First with him, then with Ziemianitch,
then with those revolutionists. The devil's own game this.... He
interrupted his earnest mental soliloquy with a jocular thought at his
own expense.
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