Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/68

56 on high seas. I will prove then what I know and how I can live. No one has yet seen such a life as I shall show them!"

My astonishment increased. Whence came to this son of the Urals this craving for knowledge and for the intelligence to enjoy life to the full?

"Do you seek real learning only to enable you to lead an extravagant, gay life?" I asked him, curious as to what he would reply.

"Yes," he answered without hesitation. "In my childhood I gazed into the palaces of our Ural industrial magnates, where I might not enter, and in those early days I took an oath that I should one day myself have a palace even more magnificent than any of theirs; for its owner and builder would be myself, a workman's son! But, with thinking, I came to realize that, as a labourer, I should never be rich and, even if I might by chance acquire wealth, I should not know how to profit by it. I consequently decided to study and become a man of the highest culture."

During this speech of Kazik I framed the thought that intellect alone would not be enough for the full enjoyment of life, about which this minor railway official in the forest at Udzimi dreamed at dreams. Besides knowledge one must possess in addition innate comprehension of the beautiful for which the greatest efforts and learning cannot compensate. But I did not give expression to the thought, because I did not wish in any way to rob this young man of his enthusiasm for work and progress toward perfection, and as I was of the opinion that, with time, wisdom and life itself might direct his dreams into other channels not so wholly egoistic.

While Kazik was pronouncing to us this confession, my attention was drawn to the fact that Madame Vera