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Then Sophia Antonovna, after mastering the angry trembling of her lips, told me a very queer tale. It went that Councillor Mikulin, travelling in Germany (shortly after Razumov's disappearance from Geneva), happened to meet Peter Ivanovitch in a railway carriage. Being alone in the compartment, these two talked together half the night, and it was then that Mikulin the Police Chief gave a hint to the Arch-Revolutionist as to the true character of the arch-slayer of gendarmes. It looks as though Mikulin had wanted to get rid of that particular agent of his own! He might have grown tired of him, or frightened of him. It must also be said that Mikulin had inherited the sinister Nikita from his predecessor in office.
And this story, too, I received without comment in my character of a mute witness of things Russian, unrolling their Eastern logic under my Western eyes. But I permitted myself a question--
"Tell me, please, Sophia Antonovna, did Madame de S-- leave all her fortune to Peter Ivanovitch?"
"Not a bit of it." The woman revolutionist shrugged her shoulders in disgust. "She died without making a will. A lot of nephews and nieces came down from St. Petersburg, like a flock of vultures, and fought for her money amongst themselves. All beastly Kammerherrs and Maids of Honour--abominable court flunkeys. Tfui!"
"One does not hear much of Peter Ivanovitch now," I remarked, after a pause.
"Peter Ivanovitch," said Sophia Antonovna gravely, "has united himself to a peasant girl."
I was truly astonished.
"What! On the Riviera?"
"What nonsense! Of course not."
Sophia Antonovna's tone was slightly tart.
"Is he, then, living actually in Russia? It's a tremendous risk--isn't it?" I cried. "And all for the sake of a peasant girl. Don't you think it's very wrong of him?"
Sophia Antonovna preserved a mysterious silence for a while, then made a statement. "He just simply adores her."
"Does he? Well, then, I hope that she won't hesitate to beat him."
Sophia Antonovna got up and wished me good-bye, as though she had not heard a word of my impious hope; but, in the very doorway, where I attended her, she turned round for an instant, and declared in a firm voice--
"Peter Ivanovitch is an inspired man."
