creeping under its point is no other word than "cynicism."

For that is the mark of Russian autocracy and of Russian revolt. In its
pride of numbers, in its strange pretensions of sanctity, and in the
secret readiness to abase itself in suffering, the spirit of Russia is
the spirit of cynicism. It informs the declarations of her statesmen,
the theories of her revolutionists, and the mystic vaticinations of
prophets to the point of making freedom look like a form of debauch, and
the Christian virtues themselves appear actually indecent.... But I
must apologize for the digression. It proceeds from the consideration
of the course taken by the story of Mr. Razumov after his conservative
convictions, diluted in a vague liberalism natural to the ardour of his
age, had become crystallized by the shock of his contact with Haldin.

Razumov woke up for the tenth time perhaps with a heavy shiver. Seeing
the light of day in his window, he resisted the inclination to lay
himself down again. He did not remember anything, but he did not think
it strange to find himself on the sofa in his cloak and chilled to the
bone. The light coming through the window seemed strangely cheerless,
containing no promise as the light of each new day should for a young
man. It was the awakening of a man mortally ill, or of a man ninety
years old. He looked at the lamp which had burnt itself out. It stood
there, the extinguished beacon of his labours, a cold object of brass
and porcelain, amongst the scattered pages of his notes and small
piles of books--a mere litter of blackened paper--dead matter--without
significance or interest.

He got on his feet, and divesting himself of his cloak hung it on the
peg, going through all the motions mechanically. An incredible dullness,
a ditch-water stagnation was sensible to his perceptions as though life