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Updated: May 1, 2025
Thrown upon the streets of Paris, without friends, without money, he had not the stuff in him to stand up against the forces that were in operation to drag him down. Which of us can be sure that he would have that stuff? From begging for work whereby to earn money, Kasghine fell to begging for money itself. His pride receiving a thousand wounds, instead of being strengthened by them, was killed.
More than the fragmentary outline of his history we did not know. We knew that he was a Russian; that his name was Kasghine; that he had started in life as an officer in the Russian army; that many years ago, for crimes conjectural, he had fled his country; and that long before our day he had already gravitated to where we found him, the mud of the Boulevard St. Michel. For crimes conjectural.
I knew Kasghine years ago in Russia, when we were both young men, he an officer in the Russian army, I an attaché to the French Embassy. 'His career has been a very sad one. It illustrates many sad truths. 'Sometimes it is trite to say so an act of baseness, a crime of some sort, may be the beginning, the first cause, of a man's salvation. It pulls him up, wakes his conscience.
And one night he got them all safely out, by daybreak they were secure in hiding. Kasghine himself remained behind. Some one would have to be punished. If the guilty man fled, an innocent man would be punished. 'Well, he was tried by Court Martial, and sentenced to be shot.
This sounded plausible; still we felt that if his crimes had been political, they might have regarded him with more indulgence. Of Bibi himself it was equally futile to inquire. There was one subject on which he would never touch his previous condition his past, before he came to be what we saw. 'Yes, I am a gentleman. I am Captain Kasghine.
They had struck no blow, but they had written and talked; and they were to be hanged. 'The fate of these men seemed to Kasghine very unjust, very inhuman. It preyed upon his mind. He took it into his head to rescue them, to contrive their escape. I do not say that this was wise or right; but it was certainly generous. No doubt he had a period of hesitation.
And yet, the same man who may be capable of one sudden immense act of heroism, may be quite incapable of keeping up the prolonged, daily, yearly struggle with adversity which that act may entail upon him. 'It was so with Kasghine. It was a very noble action which drove him, an exile, from his country.
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