seeing what he had done with the guard over the general.

"Ah," cried Athanase Georgevitch, in a stage-struck voice, "Ah, it
was not imprudence! It was contempt of death! Yes, it was contempt
of death that killed him! Even as the contempt of death keeps us,
at this moment, in perfect health. To you, ladies and gentlemen!
Do you know anything lovelier, grander, in the world than contempt
of death? Gaze on Feodor Feodorovitch and answer me. Superb! My
word, superb! To you all! The revolutionaries who are not of the
police are of the same mind regarding our heroes. They may curse
the tchinownicks who execute the terrible orders given them by
those higher up, but those who are not of the police (there are
some, I believe) - these surely recognize that men like the Chief
of the Surete our dead friend, are brave."

"Certainly," endorsed the general. "Counting all things, they need
more heroism for a promenade in a salon than a soldier on a
battle-field."

"I have met some of these men," continued Athanase in exalted vein.
"I have found in all their homes the same - imprudence, as our young
French friend calls it. A few days after the assassination of the
Chief of Police in Moscow I was received by his successor in the
same place where the assassination had occurred. He did not take
the slightest precaution with me, whom he did not know at all, nor
with men of the middle class who came to present their petitions,
in spite of the fact that it was under precisely identical
conditions that his predecessor had been slain. Before I left I
looked over to where on the floor there had so recently occurred
such agony. They had placed a rug there and on the rug a table,