He cried out at the club that more troops were needed, that they ought to be telegraphed for from another province; he rushed off to the governor to protest that he had no hand in it, begged him not to allow his name on account of old associations to be brought into it, and offered to write about his protest to the proper quarter in Petersburg.
Fortunately it all passed over quickly and ended in nothing, but I was surprised at Stepan Trofimovitch at the time.
Three years later, as every one knows, people were beginning to talk of nationalism, and "public opinion" first came upon the scene.

Stepan Trofimovitch laughed a great deal.
"My friends," he instructed us, "if our nationalism has 'dawned' as they keep repeating in the papers--it's still at school, at some German 'Peterschule,' sitting over a German book and repeating its everlasting German lesson, and its German teacher will make it go down on its knees when he thinks fit.

I think highly of the German teacher.

But nothing has happened and nothing of the kind has dawned and everything is going on in the old way, that is, as ordained by God.

To my thinking that should be enough for Russia, _pour notre Sainte Russie_.