Are you aware that the most artistic
and gifted natures in our villages become horse-thieves and poachers?
What would you have? Life is so meagre, so insipid, so intolerably
dull to eager and high-spirited souls!
"I pass on to inspiration. Gentlemen, doubtless you have had to read
of thefts that were supernatural in design and execution. In the
headlines of the newspapers they are called 'An Amazing Robbery,' or
'An Ingenious Swindle,' or again 'A Clever Ruse of the Gangsters.' In
such cases our bourgeois paterfamilias waves his hands and exclaims:
'What a terrible thing! If only their abilities were turned to
good--their inventiveness, their amazing knowledge of human
psychology, their self-possession, their fearlessness, their
incomparable histrionic powers! What extraordinary benefits they would
bring to the country!' But it is well known that the bourgeois
paterfamilias was specially devised by Heaven to utter commonplaces
and trivialities. I myself sometimes--we thieves are sentimental
people, I confess--I myself sometimes admire a beautiful sunset in
Aleksandra Park or by the sea-shore. And I am always certain
beforehand that some one near me will say with infallible _aplomb_:
'Look at it.
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