man who would like to love. Nu, it is nothing though; it will pass," he would add. And in reality he got over it. Only once, after I had roused his spirits by some of my ridiculous speeches, even in the late fall, he still uttered these words.
The sapient reader, maybe, will guess from this that I know more about Rakhmétof than I am telling him. It may be; I do not dare to contradict him, because he is so sapient. But if I do not know, there are a good many other things that I know which thou, sapient reader, will not know, as long as thou shalt live. But there is one thing that I really do not know. I do not know this: where Rakhmétof is now, and what he is doing, or whether I shall ever see him again. I have no other information or conjectures, beyond what all of his acquaintances have. When three or four months had passed since his disappearance from Moscow, and there was no tidings at all about him, we all supposed that he went travelling over Europe. This conjecture apparently was true. At least, it was confirmed by the following circumstance. In a year after Rakhmétof disappeared, one of Kirsánof's acquaintances met, on a car between Vienna and Munich, a young Russian, who said that he had travelled all over the Slavonic lands. Everywhere he had made friends among all classes; and in every country he had stayed long enough to learn the ideas, habits, style of life, the local customs of self-government, the different degrees of welfare among all the classes of the population; and for this purpose he had lived in the cities and towns, and had gone on foot from one village to another. Then afterwards, in the same way, he had studied the Rumanians and Hungarians. He had travelled over Northern Germany; from there he had again made his way on foot to the South, in the German provinces of Austria. Now he was going to Bavaria, and from there to Switzerland, through Wurtemberg and Baden to France, which he intended to travel and walk through in the same way. From there, with the same purpose in view, he was going to England; and he intended to spend a year in this way. If any time should be left from this year, he would see the Spaniards and Italians. But if no time were left, then be it so, because this is "not so necessary"; but the other lands are necessary. "Why?" "For study."
And after a year it would be "necessary" for him to be, at all events, in the States of North America, to study, which
