happiness or love. All that he felt before I came is not worthy of being called happiness; it was only a momentary excitement. And woman! how pitiful woman was before I appeared! She was then an abject, servile person. She was in fear; until I came, she knew too little what love is. Where there is fear there can be no love.
"Therefore, if you want to express in one word what I am, this word is "Equal Rights."[1] Without it enjoyment of the body, delight in beauty, are tedious, gloomy, wretched; without it there is no purity of heart; there is fallacious purity of body. From it, as from equality, originates my freedom, without which I were not.
"I have told all things to thee, and thou canst tell them to others, all things that I am now. But my kingdom now is small. I must guard those who are under my allegiance from the slander of those who do not know me; I cannot yet express all my will to all people, to all men. I shall express it to all, when my kingdom shall embrace all men, when all men shall be beautiful in body and pure in heart. Then I shall show them all my beauty. But thou! thy fate is specially fortunate. I shall not disturb thee, I shall not harm thee, by telling thee what I shall be when not a few, as now, but all, shall be worthy of recognizing me as their tsaritsa. To thee alone I shall tell the secrets of my fortune. Swear that thou will be silent, and listen."
7.[2]
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8.
"Oh, my love! now I know all thy will. I know that it will come to pass, but how will it come to pass? How will people live then?
"I by myself cannot tell thee that. For this I must have the aid of my older sister, the one who appeared to thee long
- ↑ In Russian, ravnapravnost.
- ↑ It is probable that Tchernuishevsky hesitated about revealing the secret of the radiant one, not from the fear of shocking the public so much as from the danger of the censor's red pencil. The sky which so soon was covered with black clouds, from which flashed the bolt that deprived the world of a genius, was just at this time comparatively clear, but still there were ominous mutterings of thunder. The theory which Tchernuishevsky hints at, and which is regarded with such terror, proves, when regarded fairly in the face, to be like one of the lions bound, which frightened Bunyan's Christian.
