Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VI).djvu/213

Rh young propagandist talked incessantly of himself, of his feverish activity; according to his own statement, he had during the last month journeyed through eleven districts, been in nine towns, twenty-nine villages, fifty-three hamlets, one farm, and eight factories; sixteen nights he had passed in hay-lofts, one in a stable, one even in a cow-shed (he mentioned, in a parenthetical note, that fleas did not affect him); he had got into mud-huts, into workmen's barracks; everywhere he had taught, preached, distributed pamphlets, and collected information by the way; some facts he had noted on the spot, others he carried in his memory on the latest system of mnemonics; he had written fourteen long letters, twenty-seven short ones, and eighteen notes, four of which were written in pencil, one in blood, one in soot and water; and all this he had managed to do because he had mastered the systematic disposition of his time, taking as his models Quintin Johnson, Karrelius, Sverlitsky, and other writers and statisticians. Then he talked again of himself, his lucky star; and how and with what additions he had completed Fourier's theory of the passions; declared that he was the first to reach the 'bed-rock,' that he should 'not pass from the world without leaving a trace behind,' that he himself wondered that he, a boy of two-and-