MARKELOV'S guests were still asleep when a messenger with a letter came to him from his sister, Madame Sipiagina.In this letter Valentina Mihailovna spoke about various little domestic details, asked him to return a book he had borrowed, and added, by the way, in a postscript, the very "amusing" piece of news that his old flame Mariana was in love with the tutor Nejdanov and he with her.This was not merely gossip, but she, Valentina Mihailovna, had seen with her own eyes and heard with her own ears.Markelov's face grew blacker than night, but he did not utter a word.He ordered the book to be returned, and when he caught sight of Nejdanov coming downstairs, greeted him just as usual and did not even forget to give him the promised packet of Kisliakov's letters.He did not stay with him however, but went out to see to the farm.
Nejdanov returned to his own room and glanced through the letters.The young propagandist spoke mostly about himself, about his unsparing activity.According to him, during the last month, he had been in no less than eleven provinces, nine towns, twenty-nine villages, fifty-three hamlets,one farmhouse, and seven factories.Sixteen nights he had slept in hay-lofts, one in a stable, another even in a cow-shed (here he wrote, in parenthesis, that fleas did not worry him); he had wheedled himself into mud-huts, workmen's barracks, had preached, taught, distributed pamphlets, and collected information; some things he had made a note of on the spot; others he carried in his memory by the very latest method of mnemonics.He had written fourteen long letters, twenty-eight shorter ones, and eighteen notes, four of which were written in pencil, one in blood, and another in soot and water.All this he had managed to do because he had learned how to divide his time systematically, according to the examples set by men such as Quintin Johnson, Karrelius, Sverlitskov, and other writers and statisticians.Then he went on to talk of himself again, of his guiding star, saying how he had supplemented Fourier's passions by being the first to discover the "fundaments, the root principle," and how he would not go out of this world without leaving some trace behind him; how he was filled with wonder that he, a youth of twenty-four, should have solved all the problems of life and science; that he would turn the whole of Russia up-side-down, that he would "shake her up!""Dixi!!" he added at the end of the paragraph.This word "Dixi"appeared very frequently in Kisliakov's letters, and always with a double exclamation mark.In one of the letters there were some verses with a socialist tendency, written to a certain young lady, beginning with the words-- "Love not me, but the idea!"Nejdanov marvelled inwardly, not so much at Kisliakov's conceit, as at Markelov's honest simplicity."Bother aestheticism! Mr.
Kisliakov may be even useful," he thought to himself instantly.
The three friends gathered together for tea in the dining-room, but last night's conversation was not renewed between them.Not one of them wished to talk, but Solomin was the only one who sat silent peacefully.Both Nejdanov and Markelov seemed inwardly agitated.After tea they set out for the town.Markelov's old servant, who was sitting on the doorstep, accompanied his former master with his habitual dejected glance.
