“I cannot admit that the Russian people⁠ ⁠…” the visitor was saying, “ought to develop on different lines. Before all things liberty is wanted⁠—political liberty⁠—that liberty⁠ ⁠… as all know well, is the greatest liberty⁠ ⁠… without infringing the rights of others.”

He felt that he was getting a little mixed, and that that was not the right way to put it; but he could not quite remember how it should be put.

“That is so,” answered Nicholas Semyónovitch, anxious to express his own thought, with which he was particularly pleased, and not listening to the visitor⁠—“that is so, but it must be reached by other means⁠—not by a majority of votes, but by common consent. Look at the Mir, how it arrives at its decisions!”

“Oh, that Mir!”

“It cannot be denied,” said the doctor, “that the Slavonic nations have an outlook of their own. Take, for instance, the Polish right of veto. I don’t maintain that it is a better way⁠ ⁠…”