Of the serf-owner . . .

"No, my dear, I've never taken part in any conspiracy. But how your eyes sparkle; I like your exclamations, my dear. No, I simply went away then from a sudden attack of melancholy. It was the typical melancholy of the Russian nobleman, I really don't know how to describe it better. The melancholy of our upper class, and nothing else." "Of the serf-owner . . . the emancipation of the serfs," I was beginning to mutter, breathless. "Serf-owner? You think I was grieving for the loss of it? That I could not endure the emancipation of the serfs. Oh no, my boy; why, we were all for the emancipation. I emigrated with no resentful feeling. I had only just been a mediator, and exerted myself to the utmost, I exerted myself disinterestedly, and I did not even go away because I got very little for my liberalism. We none of us got anything in those days, that is to say again, not those that were like me. I went away more in pride than in penitence, and, believe me, I was far from imagining that the time had come for me to end my life as a modest shoemaker. Je suis gentilhomme avant tout et je mourrai gentilhomme! Yet all the same I was sad. There are, perhaps, a thousand of my sort in Russia, no more perhaps really, but you know that is quite enough to keep the idea alive. We are the bearers of the idea, my dear boy! . . . I am talking, my darling, in the strange hope that you may understand this rigmarole. I've brought you here acting on a caprice of the heart: I've long been dreaming of how I might tell you something . . . you, and no one else. However . . . however . . ." "No, tell me," I cried: "I see the look of sincerity in your face again. . . . Tell me, did Europe bring you back to life again? And what do you mean by the 'melancholy of the nobleman!' Forgive me, darling, I don't understand yet." "Europe bring me back to life? Why, I went to bury Europe!" "To bury?" I repeated in surprise.