Piotr and Rameyev arrived at Trirodov’s together. Rameyev more than once said to Piotr that he had been very rude to Trirodov, and that he ought to smooth out matters somehow. Piotr agreed very unwillingly.

Once more they talked about the war.34 Trirodov asked Rameyev:

“I think you see only a political significance in this war.”

“And do you disagree with me?” asked Rameyev.

“No,” said Trirodov, “I admit that. But, in my opinion, aside from the stupid and criminal actions of these or other individuals, there are more general causes. History has its own dialectic. Whether or not a war had taken place is all the same: there would have been a fated collision in any case, in one or another form; there would have begun the decisive struggle between two worlds, two comprehensions of the world, two moralities, Buddha and Christ.”

“The teachings of Buddhism resemble those of Christianity considerably,” said Piotr. “That is its only value.”

“Yes,” said Trirodov. “There appears to be a great resemblance at the first glance; but actually these two systems are as opposite as the poles. They are the affirmation and the denial of life, its Yes and its No, its irony and its lyricism. The affirmation, Yes, is Christianity; the denial, No, is Buddhism.”

“That seems to me to be too much of a generalization,” said Rameyev.

Trirodov continued:

“I generalize for the sake of clearness. The present moment in history is especially convenient. It is history’s zenith hour. Now that Christianity has revealed the eternal contradiction of the world, we are passing through the poignant struggle of those two world conceptions.”

“And not the struggle of the classes?” asked Rameyev.

“Yes,” said Trirodov, “there is also the struggle of the classes, to whatever degree two inimical factors enter into the struggle—social justice and the real relation of forces—a common morality, which is always static, and a common dynamism. The Christian element is in morality, the Buddhistic in dynamism. Indeed, the weakness of Europe consists in that its life has already for a long time nourished itself on a substance Buddhistic in origin.”

Piotr said confidently, in the voice of a young prophet:

“In this duel Christianity will triumph—not the historic Christianity, of course, and not the present, but the Christianity of St. John and the Apocalypse. And it will triumph only then when everything will appear lost, and the world will be in the power of the yellow Antichrist.”

“I don’t think that will happen,” said Trirodov quietly.

“I suppose you think Buddha will triumph,” said Piotr in vexation.

“No,” replied Trirodov calmly.

“The devil, perhaps!” exclaimed Piotr.

“Petya!” exclaimed Rameyev reproachfully.

Trirodov lowered his head slightly, as if he were confused, and said tranquilly:

“We see two currents, equally powerful. It would be strange that either one of them should conquer. That is impossible. It is impossible to destroy half of the whole historical energy.”

“However,” said Piotr, “if neither Christ nor Buddha conquers, what awaits us? Or is that fool Guyau right when he speaks of the irreligiousness of future generations?"35

“There will be a synthesis,” replied Trirodov. “You will accept it for the devil.”

“This contradictory mixture is worse than forty devils!” exclaimed Piotr.

The visitors soon left.

Kirsha came without being called—confused and agitated by an indefinable something. He was silent, and his dark eyes flamed with sadness and fear. He walked up to the window, looked out in an attitude of expectancy. He seemed to see something in the distance. There was a look of apprehension in his dark, wide-open eyes, as if they were fixed on a strange distant vision. Thus people look during a hallucination.

Kirsha turned to his father and, growing pale, said quietly:

“Father, a visitor has come to you from quite afar. How strange that he has come in a simple carriage and in ordinary clothes! I wonder why he has come?”

They could hear the crunching sound of the sand under the iron hoops of the wheels of the calash which had just entered the gates. Kirsha’s face wore a gloomy expression. It was difficult to comprehend what was in his soul—was it a reproach?—astonishment?—fear?

Trirodov went to the window. A man of about forty, impressive for his appearance of calm and self-assurance, stepped out of the calash. Trirodov recognized his visitor at the first glance, though he had never met him before in society. He knew him well, but only from portraits he had seen of him, from his literary works, and from the stories of his admirers and articles about him. In his youth Trirodov had had some slight relations with him through friends, but this was interrupted. He had not even met him.

Trirodov suddenly felt both cheerful and sad. He reflected:

“Why has he come to me? What does he want of me? And why should he suddenly think of me? Our roads have diverged so much, we have become such strangers to one another.”

There was his disturbing curiosity:

“I’ll see and hear him for the first time.”

And the mutinous protest:

“His words are a lie! His preachings the ravings of despair. There was no miracle, there is none, and there will not be!”

Kirsha, very agitated, ran out of the room. The sensitive and painful feeling of aloneness seized Trirodov as in a sticky net, entangled his legs, and obstructed his glances with grey.

A quiet boy entered, smiling, and handed him a card, on which, under a princely crown, was the lithographed inscription:

In a voice dark and deep with suppressed excitement Trirodov said to the boy:

“Ask him to come in.”

The provoking and unanswerable question persisted in his mind:

“Why, why has he come? What does he want of me?”

With an avidly curious glance he looked at the door, and did not take his eyes away. He heard the measured, unhastening footsteps, nearer and nearer—as if his fate were approaching.

The door opened, admitting the visitor—Prince Immanuel Osipovitch Davidov, celebrated as author and preacher, a man of a distinguished family and democratic views, a man beloved of many and possessed of the mystery of extraordinary fascination, attracting to him many hearts.

His face was very smooth, quite un-Russian in type. His lips, slightly descending at the corners, were marked with sorrow. His beard was reddish, short, and cut to a point. His red-gold, slightly wavy hair was cut quite short. This astonished Trirodov, who had always seen the Prince in portraits wearing his hair rather long, like the poet Nadson. His eyes were black, flaming and deep. Deeply hidden in his eyes was an expression of great weariness and suffering, which the inattentive observer might have interpreted as an expression of fatigued tranquillity and indifference. Everything about the visitor—his face and his ways—betrayed his habit of speaking in a large company, even in a crowd.

He walked up tranquilly to Trirodov and said, as he stretched out his hand:

“I wanted to see you. I have observed you for some time, and at last have come to you.”

Trirodov, making an effort to control his agitation and his deep irritation, said with an affectedly amiable voice:

“I’m very pleased to greet you in my house. I’ve heard much about you from the Pirozhkovskys. Of course you know that they have a great admiration and affection for you.”

Prince Davidov looked at him piercingly but calmly, perhaps too calmly. It seemed strange that he answered nothing to the remark about the Pirozhkovskys—as if Trirodov’s words passed by him like momentary shadows, without so much as touching anything in his soul. On the other hand, the Pirozhkovskys have always talked about Prince Davidov as of an intimate acquaintance. “Yesterday we dined at the Prince’s”; “The Prince is finishing a new poem”—by simply “the Prince” they gave one to understand that their remark concerned their friend, Prince Davidov. Trirodov recalled that the Prince had many acquaintances, and that there were always large gatherings in his house.

“Permit me to offer you some refreshment,” said Trirodov. “Will you have wine?”

“I’d rather have tea, if you don’t mind,” said Prince Davidov.

Trirodov pressed the button of the electric bell. Prince Davidov continued in his tranquil, too tranquil, voice:

“My fiancÉe lives in this town. I’ve come to see her, and have taken advantage of this opportunity to have a chat with you. There are many things I should like to discuss with you but I shall not have the time. We must limit ourselves to the more important matters.”

And he began to talk, and did not wait for answers or refutations. His flaming speech poured itself out—about faith, miracles, about the likely and inevitable transfiguration of the world by means of a miracle, about our triumph over the fetters of time and over death itself.

The quiet boy Grisha brought tea and cakes, and with measured movements put them on the table, pausing now and then to look at the visitor with his blue, quiet eyes.

Prince Davidov looked reproachfully at Trirodov. A repressed smile trembled on Trirodov’s lips and an obstinate challenge gleamed in his eyes. The visitor affectionately drew Grisha to him and stroked him gently. The quiet boy stood calmly there—and Trirodov was gloomy. He said to his visitor: “You love children. I can understand that. They are angelic beings, though unbearable sometimes. It is only a pity that they die too often upon this accursed earth. They are born in order to die.”

Prince Davidov, with a tranquil movement, pushed Grisha away from him. He put his hand on the boy’s head as if in blessing, then suddenly became grave and stern, and asked quietly:

“Why do you do this?”

He asked the question with a great exertion of the will, like one who wished to exercise power. Trirodov smiled:

“You do not like it?” he asked. “Well, what of it—you with your extensive connexions could easily hinder me.”

The tone in which he uttered his words expressed proud irony. Thus Satan would have spoken, tempting a famished one in the desert.

Prince Davidov frowned. His black eyes flared up. He asked again:

“Why have you done all this? The body of the malefactor and the soul of an innocent—why should you have it all?”

Trirodov, looking angrily at his visitor, said resolutely:

“My design has been daring and difficult—but have I alone suffered from despondency, suffered until I perspired with blood? Do I alone bear within me a dual soul, and unite in me two worlds? Am I alone worn out by nightmares as heavy as the burdens of the world? Have I alone in a tragic moment felt myself lonely and forsaken?”

The visitor smiled a strange, sad, tranquil smile. Trirodov continued:

“You had better know that I will never be with you, that I will not accept your comforting theories. All your literary and preaching activity is a complete mistake. I don’t believe anything of what you say so eloquently, enticing the weak. I simply don’t believe it.”

The visitor was silent.

“Leave me alone!” said Trirodov decisively. “There is no miracle. There was no resurrection. No one has conquered death. The establishment of a single will over the inert, amorphous world is a deed not yet accomplished.”

Prince Davidov rose and said sorrowfully:

“I will leave you alone, if you wish it. But you will regret that you have rejected the path I have shown you—the only path.”

Trirodov said proudly:

“I know the true path—my path.”

“Good-bye,” said Prince Davidov simply and calmly.

He left—and in a little while it seemed that he had not been there. Lost in painful reflections, Trirodov did not hear the noise of the departing carriage; the unexpected call of the dark-faced, fascinating visitor, with his flaming speech and his fiery eyes, stirred his memory like a midday dream, like an abrupt hallucination.

“Who is his fiancÉe, and why is she here?” Trirodov asked himself.

A strange, impossible idea came into his head. Did not Elisaveta once speak about him with rapture? Perhaps the unexpected visitor would take Elisaveta away from him, as he had taken her from Piotr.

This misgiving tormented him. But Trirodov looked into the clearness of her eyes on the portrait taken recently and at the grace and loveliness of her body and suddenly consoled himself. He thought:

“She is mine.”

But Elisaveta, musing and burning, was experiencing passionate dreams; and she felt the tediousness of the grey monotony of her dull life. The strange vision suddenly appearing to her in those terrible moments in the wood repeated itself persistently—and it seemed to her that it was not another but she herself who was experiencing a parallel life, that she was passing the exultantly bright, joyous, and sad way of Queen Ortruda.

THE END