But for a long time, altogether unnoticed by his comrades, there had
ripened in his soul a dark contempt for mankind; contempt mingled with
despair and painful, almost deadly fatigue. By nature rather a
mathematician than a poet, he had not known until now any inspiration,
any ecstasy and at times he felt like a madman, looking for the
squaring of a circle in pools of human blood. The enemy against whom
he struggled every day could not inspire him with respect. It was a
dense net of stupidity, treachery and falsehood, vile insults and base
deceptions. The last incident which seemed to have destroyed in him
forever the desire to live, was the murder of the provocateur which he
had committed by order of the organization. He had killed him in cold
blood, but when he saw that dead, deceitful, now calm, and after all
pitiful, human face, he suddenly ceased to respect himself and his
work. Not that he was seized with a feeling of repentance, but he
simply stopped appreciating himself. He became uninteresting to
himself, unimportant, a dull stranger. But being a man of strong,
unbroken will-power, he did not leave the organization. He remained
outwardly the same as before, only there was something cold, yet
painful in his eyes. He never spoke to anyone of this.

He possessed another rare quality: just as there are people who have
never known headaches, so Werner had never known fear. When other
people were afraid, he looked upon them without censure but also
without any particular compassion, just as upon a rather contagious
illness from which, however, he himself had never suffered. He felt
sorry for his comrades, especially for Vasya Kashirin; but that was a
cold, almost official pity, which even some of the judges may have
felt at times.