He certainly had no great opinion of myself. "You
think yourself very clever, Ivan Andreievitch. Yes, you think you're
watching all of us and studying all our characters. And I suppose
there'll be a book one day, another of those books by Englishmen about
poor Russians--and you'll flatter yourself that now at last one true
picture has been given ... but let me tell you that you'll never know
anything really about us so long as you're a sentimentalist!"
Yes, there were moments when I hated him, but those moments never
continued for long. For one thing one could not hate so magnificent, so
honest, so uncompromising, so efficient a worker! He was worthy of some
very high position in the army, and he could certainly have attained any
height had he chosen. He had a genius for compelling other men to obey
him, he was never perturbed by unexpected mischance, he paid no
attention at all to what other people thought of him, and he seemed
incapable of fatigue. I often wondered what he was doing here, why he
had chosen so small an Otriad as ours in which to work, why he stayed
with us when he, so openly, despised us all.
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