part in it. He recognized that the newspapers made many useless and exaggerated statements, in order to attract attention to themselves, and belittle their rivals. He saw that in this common impulse of society, upstarts put themselves forward, and outdid one another in making a noise,—commanders-in-chief without an army, ministers without a ministry, journalists without a journal, party-leaders without partizans. He saw much that was childish and absurd; but he also saw and admired the enthusiasm which united all classes, and which it was impossible not to share.
The massacre of the Serbians, who professed the same faith, and spoke almost the same language, aroused sympathy for their sufferings, and indignation against their persecutors; and the heroism of the Serbs and Montenegrins, who were fighting for a great cause, aroused a universal desire to help their brethren, not only in word, but in deed.
But there was another phenomenon which delighted Sergyeï Ivanovitch especially. This was the manifestation of public opinion. Society actually spoke out its desires. "The national soul received expression," as Sergyeï Ivanovitch expressed it; and the more he studied this movement as a whole, the more evidently it seemed to him that it was destined to grow to enormous proportions and to constitute an epoch.
He devoted himself to the service of this great cause, and forgot to think about his book.
All his time was now so occupied that he could scarcely reply to the letters and demands made upon him.
He had worked all the spring and a part of the summer, and only in the month of July could he tear himself away to go to his brother in the country.
He went for a fortnight's vacation, and rejoiced to find even in the depths of the country, in the very holy of holies of the peasantry, the same awakening of the national spirit in which he himself and all the inhabitants of the capital and the large cities of the empire firmly believed.
