[Multignometerm-bugs] piece

[Ingemi S. <vap...@kr...>]

O direct information was vouchsafed by the Russian. Captain Ducie was
left in a great measure to draw his own conclusions. A certain
conversation which he had one day with his host seemed to throw some
light on the matter. Ducie had been asking Platzoff whether he did not
sometimes regret having secluded himself so entirely from the world;
whether he did not long sometimes to be in the great centres of
humanity, in London or Paris, where alone life's full flavour can be
tasted. "Whenever Bon Repos becomes Mal Repos," answered
Platzoff--"whenever a longing such as you speak of comes over me--and it
does come sometimes--then I flee away for a few weeks, to London oftener
than anywhere else--certainly not to Paris: that to me is forbidden
ground. By-and-by I come back to my nest among the hills, vowing there
is no place like it in the world's wide round. But even when I am here,
I am not so shut out from the world and its great interests as you seem
to imagine. I see History enacting itself before my eyes, and I cannot
sit by with averted face. I hear the grand chant of Liberty as the
beautiful goddess comes nearer and nearer and smites down one Oppressor
after another with her red right hand; and I cannot shut my ears. I have
been an actor in the great drama of Revolution ever since a lad of
twelve. I saw my father borne off in chains to Siberia, and heard my
mother with her dying breath curse the tyrant who had sent him there.
Since that day Conspiracy has been the very salt of my life. For it I
have fought and bled; for it I have suffered hunger, thirst,
imprisonment, and dangers unnumbered. Paris, Vienna, St. Petersburg, are
all places that I can never hope to see again. For me to set foot in any
one of the three would be to run the risk of almost certain detection,
and in my case detect