“No, I’m not laughing,” I said in a deeply moved voice, “I’m not laughing at all. You’ve shaken my heart with your vision of the golden age, and be assured that I’m beginning to understand you. But most of all I’m glad that you respect yourself so much. I hasten to tell you so. That’s something I never expected of you!”
“I’ve already told you that I like your exclamations, my dear,” he smiled again at my naïve exclamation and, getting up from his armchair, began pacing the room without noticing it. I also got up. He went on speaking in his strange language, but with deeply penetrating thought.
III
“YES, MY BOY, I repeat to you that I can’t help respecting my nobility. Over the centuries we have developed a high cultural type never seen before, which does not exist anywhere else in the world—the type of universal suffering for all. It’s a Russian type, but since it’s taken from the highest cultural stratum of the Russian people, that means I have the honor of belonging to it. It preserves in itself the future of Russia. There are perhaps only a thousand of us—maybe more, maybe less—but the whole of Russia has lived up to now only to produce this thousand. Too few, they’ll say, indignant that so many centuries and so many millions of people have been spent for a thousand men. In my opinion, it’s not too few.”
I listened with strained attention. A conviction was emerging, the tendency of a whole lifetime. This “thousand men” betrayed him in such high relief! I felt that his expansiveness with me came from some external shock. He made all these ardent speeches while loving me; but the reason why he suddenly began speaking, and why he wished to speak this way precisely with me, still remained unknown to me.
“I emigrated,” he went on, “and I didn’t regret anything I left behind. I had served Russia then with all that was in my power, while I lived there; having left, I also continued to serve her, but only expanded the idea. But serving her in that way, I served her far more than if I had been merely a Russian, as a Frenchman then was merely a Frenchman, and a German a German. In Europe that has not yet been understood. Europe created noble types of the Frenchman, the Englishman, the German, but of her future man she still knows almost nothing. And it seems she doesn’t want to know yet. And that’s understandable: they’re not free, and we are free. I, with my Russian yearning, was the only free man in Europe then.
“Make note of a strange thing, my friend: any Frenchman can serve not only his France, but even mankind, solely on condition that he remains most of all a Frenchman; the same applies to the Englishman and the German. Only the Russian, even in our time, that is, long before the general summing up, is capable of becoming most Russian precisely only when he is most European. That is our most essential national distinction from all the rest, and in this respect Russia is like nowhere else. In France I’m a Frenchman, with a German I’m a German, with an ancient Greek a Greek, and by that very fact I’m most Russian. By that very fact I am a real Russian, and I serve Russia most, for I put forward her chief thought. I am a pioneer of that thought. I emigrated then, but did I leave Russia? No, I continued to serve her. Granted, I did nothing in Europe; granted, I went only to wander (and I knew I went only to wander), but it was enough that I went with my thought and my consciousness. I took my Russian yearning there. Oh, it wasn’t only the blood of that time that alarmed me so much, and not even the Tuileries, but all that was bound to follow. They’re doomed to go on fighting for a long time, because they’re still all too German and all too French, and they haven’t finished their work in those roles. But I regret the destruction on the way. For a Russian, Europe is as precious as Russia; for him, every stone in her is dear and beloved. Europe was just as much our fatherland as Russia. Oh, even more! It’s impossible to love Russia more than I do, but I never reproached myself for the fact that Venice, Rome, Paris, the treasures of their science and art, their whole history—are dearer to me than Russia. Oh, Russians cherish those old foreign stones, those wonders of God’s old world, those fragments of holy wonders; and they’re even dearer to us than to them! They have other thoughts and other feelings now, and they’ve ceased to cherish the old stones . . . A conservative there merely struggles for existence; and the pétroleuracts up only over the right to a crust of bread. Russia alone lives not for herself, but for thought, and you must agree, my friend, with the portentous fact that, for almost a hundred years, Russia has lived decidedly not for herself, but for Europe alone! And they? Oh, they are doomed to terrible torments before they reach the Kingdom of God.”
I confess, I listened in great confusion; even the tone of his speech alarmed me, though I couldn’t help being struck by the thoughts. I had a morbid fear of falseness. Suddenly I remarked to him in a stern voice: