of an immense country, obliterating the landmarks, the accidents of
the ground, levelling everything under its uniform whiteness, like a
monstrous blank page awaiting the record of an inconceivable history.
It covered the passive land with its lives of countless people like
Ziemianitch and its handful of agitators like this Haldin--murdering
foolishly.

It was a sort of sacred inertia. Razumov felt a respect for it. A
voice seemed to cry within him, "Don't touch it." It was a guarantee of
duration, of safety, while the travail of maturing destiny went on--a
work not of revolutions with their passionate levity of action and their
shifting impulses--but of peace. What it needed was not the conflicting
aspirations of a people, but a will strong and one: it wanted not the
babble of many voices, but a man--strong and one!

Razumov stood on the point of conversion. He was fascinated by its
approach, by its overpowering logic. For a train of thought is never
false. The falsehood lies deep in the necessities of existence, in
secret fears and half-formed ambitions, in the secret confidence
combined with a secret mistrust of ourselves, in the love of hope and
the dread of uncertain days.

In Russia, the land of spectral ideas and disembodied aspirations, many
brave minds have turned away at last from the vain and endless conflict
to the one great historical fact of the land. They turned to autocracy
for the peace of their patriotic conscience as a weary unbeliever,
touched by grace, turns to the faith of his fathers for the blessing
of spiritual rest. Like other Russians before him, Razumov, in conflict
with himself, felt the touch of grace upon his forehead.