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    'Because he's not talented enough, in our view, not versatile enough to free himself from the weight of his past. Men of his kind keep to their chosen path. He's no traitor. But he is our enemy. He hates us, as Russian peasants hate city intellectuals. He hates me in particular.'
    'Why you in particular?'
    'Because he has good cause to. Look at it properly. I'm no Russian. I'm a European. I know that I am separated from our comrades much more than most of us intellectuals are from the proletarians. I'm unlucky. I have a western education. Although I'm a radical, I like the centre. Although I prepare for the great uprising, I like moderation. I can't help myself.'
    R. abandoned himself to the gusto of his formulation. And Friedrich copied him. Both began to outdo each other in contradictions. From both at that time one could hear a statement which was startling then and today sounds almost obvious: 'The Tsar is no gentleman, he's a bourgeois. He marks the beginning of the democratic era in Russia, the era of a democracy of small peasants—and you'll see, Savelli's friends will push on with the work. If the Tsar doesn't hang us, they will.'
    It was as if R. had set out systematically to destroy Friedrich's fervour, his romantic enthusiasm for all the trappings of secret conspiracy. In R.'s company, even danger gained a ridiculous aspect. 'It's no lie,' he would say in the halls which stank of beer, pipe tobacco and sweat, 'that it's easier to die for the masses than to live with them.' Then he would step onto the platform, demand stronger support for the Party, threaten the ruling class, shout for blood, and cry: 'Long live the World Revolution!'
    The police inspector would blow his whistle, the officers stormed into the hall, the meeting broke up. R. disappeared in a flash. He did not expose himself to the fists of the police.
    It may well be that Friedrich would have taken another path if he had not become R.'s friend. For ultimately it was R. who instigated Friedrich to go to Russia, who aroused the younger man's ambition, the naïve ambition to demonstrate that one was not a 'fainthearted intellectual'. But there was also another factor.
    I have the suspicion that Friedrich's voluntary journey to Russia, which ended ultimately in a compulsory spell in Siberia, was the foolish outcome of a foolish infatuation which he took for hopeless at the time and whose importance he plainly exaggerated. But we have no right to enquire into the personal motives for an action that Friedrich wanted to carry out in the service of his Idea. We must content ourselves with a description of certain events.

9
    He thought no more of the woman in the carriage—or he imagined that he had forgotten her. But one day, by chance, he saw her again—and he was startled. For it was like an encounter with a picture come to life which had been left in store in a particular room in a particular museum, or an encounter with a forgotten idea which has remained in a deep and hidden region of the memory. He no longer remembered who she was when she asked him in a corridor at the University where Lecture Theatre 24 was. He only recognized her after she had disappeared. Like a distant star, she had occupied a few seconds in impinging on his retina. He followed her. In the darkened room someone was reading aloud about some painter or other, someone was showing various lantern-slides, and the darkness was like a second smaller room within the hall. It enclosed both her and him with equal density.
    He waited. He did not hear a single word or see a single picture. He saw that the door opened, and that she left the hall.
    He followed her at a distance which seemed to be ordained and laid down by adoration. He was afraid that a side-street might swallow her, a carriage bear her away, an acquaintance await her. His tender gaze seized the distant brown shimmer of her profile between the edge of her fur collar and her dark hat. The regular rhythm of her steps