No, no, I had all my wits about me, and I in reality
saw that horrible lot of little brats; they all had
their faces in their hands, and were crying and squalling,
and then suddenly one of them jumped onto the bed;
all the others followed his example, and the woman
woke up.
And then we stood, while those five pairs of eyes,
without eyebrows or eyelashes, eyes with the dull
color of pewter, and whose pupils had the color of
red water, were steadily fixed on us.
“Let us be off! let us be off!” Ledantec
repeated, leaving go of me, and at that time I paid
attention to what he said, and, after throwing some
small change onto the floor, I followed him, to make
him understand, when he should be quite sober, that
he saw before him a poor Albino prostitute, who had
several brothers and sisters.
They were discussing dynamite, the social revolution,
Nihilism, and even those who cared least about politics,
had something to say. Some were alarmed, others
philosophized, while others again, tried to smile.
“Bah!” N—— said, “when
we are all blown up, we shall see what it is like.
Perhaps, after all, it may be an amusing sensation,
provided one goes high enough.”
“But we shall not be blown up at all,”
G—— the optimist, said, interrupting
him. “It is all a romance.”
“You are mistaken, my dear fellow,” Jules
de C—— replied. “It is
like a romance, but with that confounded Nihilism,
everything seems like one, but it would be a mistake
to trust to it. Thus, I myself, the manner in
which I made Bakounine’s acquaintance ...”
They knew that he was a good narrator, and it was
no secret that his life had been an adventurous one,
so they drew closer to him, and listened religiously.
This is what he told them.
“I met Countess Nioska W——,
that strange woman who was usually called Countess
Satan, in Naples; I immediately attached myself to
her out of curiosity, and I soon fell in love with
her. Not that she was beautiful, for she was
a Russian who had all the bad characteristics of the
Russian type. She was thin and squat, at the
same time, while her face was sallow and puffy, with
high cheek bones and a Cossack’s nose. But
her conversation bewitched every one.
“She was many-sided, learned, a philosopher,
scientifically depraved, satanic. Perhaps the
word is rather pretentious, but it exactly expresses
what I want to say, for in other words, she loved evil
for the sake of evil. She rejoiced in other people’s
vices, and liked to sow the seeds of evil, in order
to see it flourish. And that on a fraud, on an
enormous scale. It was not enough for her to corrupt
individuals; she only did that to keep her hand in;
what she wished to do, was to corrupt the masses.
By slightly altering it after her own fashion, she
might have adopted the famous saying of Caligula.
She also wished that the whole human race had but
one head; but not in order that she might cut it off,
but that she might make the philosophy of Nihility
flourish there.
