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 CHAPTER XXXIV

THE FETTERS CUT

GAIN I went to Professor Zaleski. Human nature is very strange. When I lived with Professor Zaleski before, I was always invited by him to luncheon and dinner and accepted his invitations without scruple, as I knew that I was able to extend the same courtesies to my old friend and patron. But after my return from Kieff, with very little hope of improving my situation and almost destitute,—as those seven roubles were not sufficient capital to insure me against the morrow,—I became very touchy and felt that I was then a burden for Zaleski, an intruder into his quiet home; that I was exploiting him and that to accept his hospitality under these circumstances was shameless and unwarrantable.

Consequently I changed my whole mode of living. I never have been what one would call rich, yet I have always possessed enough to permit me to lead the life of a cultured man, as I have worked since I was twelve years old and, therefore, both know how to work and am inured to it. But, after the blot of this prison term on my existence, I found the tools of life knocked from my hands and myself left weak, without the ability to help by my own conscientious effort. It was the revenge of the Tsar's Government and the pusillanimity of those who could have helped me by giving me work but who were afraid of the police that killed the hope in me. 349