"You ought to make it up with Von Koren too. You are both such
splendid, clever fellows, and you glare at each other like wolves."

"Yes, he's a fine, very intelligent fellow," Laevsky assented, ready
now to praise and forgive every one. "He's a remarkable man, but
it's impossible for me to get on with him. No! Our natures are too
different. I'm an indolent, weak, submissive nature. Perhaps in a
good minute I might hold out my hand to him, but he would turn away
from me . . . with contempt."

Laevsky took a sip of wine, walked from corner to corner and went
on, standing in the middle of the room:

"I understand Von Koren very well. His is a resolute, strong,
despotic nature. You have heard him continually talking of 'the
expedition,' and it's not mere talk. He wants the wilderness, the
moonlit night: all around in little tents, under the open sky, lie
sleeping his sick and hungry Cossacks, guides, porters, doctor,
priest, all exhausted with their weary marches, while only he is
awake, sitting like Stanley on a camp-stool, feeling himself the
monarch of the desert and the master of these men. He goes on and
on and on, his men groan and die, one after another, and he goes
on and on, and in the end perishes himself, but still is monarch
and ruler of the desert, since the cross upon his tomb can be seen
by the caravans for thirty or forty miles over the desert. I am
sorry the man is not in the army. He would have made a splendid
military genius. He would not have hesitated to drown his cavalry
in the river and make a bridge out of dead bodies. And such hardihood
is more needed in war than any kind of fortification or strategy.