This conviction I communicated to my host, but he did not agree with me.
"No, I think not," he replied; "in fact, I am sure he is a peasant, and I strongly suspect he was at some time a soldier.

He has not much learning, but he has a wonderful gift of talking; never have I heard any one speak like him.

He would have talked over the whole village, had it not been for an old man who was more than a match for him.

And then he went to Orloff-Hai and there he did talk the people over." What he really did in this latter place I never could clearly ascertain.

Report said that he founded a communistic association, of which he was himself president and treasurer, and converted the members to an extraordinary theory of prophetic succession, invented apparently for his own sensual gratification.