Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/67

Rh covered the homemade chairs and benches, while gaudy bamboo and glass bead curtains, a contrastingly white tablecloth with a shining samovar and a Chinese vase filled with wildflowers combined to work the miracle of changing mud-plastered rooms into a home.

I spent a pleasant evening in these neat quarters of the Samsonoffs, chatting over many matters, local and distant. My evening's pleasure would have been much greater, had it not been disturbed by the impressions forced in upon me through my involuntary observations of the three people seated before me—three, because in the course of the evening we had been joined by the broad-shouldered Kazik.

As I told them something of my travels across Europe and Asia, as well as of some of the unusual characters I had met in my wanderings, I saw how the eyes of Kazik gleamed and how his lips tightened with something between determination and obstinacy, until finally he burst out:

"How fortunate you are! You travel and you are trained to know what is worth observing. You learn more and more and afterwards you use all this knowledge to improve your position in society; while we? We, the children of peasants and workmen, are obliged to gain unaided, as best we can, knowledge and respect among men. This is a social injustice!"

"How could you know and say that knowledge has come easily to me?" I asked, surprised and astonished at this outburst.

"I do not know this," he answered, "and I did not mean you personally; but I was speaking of the whole noble and educated class. I respect it but, at the same time, I envy and hate it. I will gain everything which this class, born to intelligence, possesses and I will sail