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. Some of us believed them to have been
political, and fancied that we had in Bibi a specimen of the decayed
Nihilist. In view of the fact that he often proclaimed himself a
socialist, this seemed to bear some colour of probability; but against
it argued the circumstance that of the members of that little clan of
Russian refugees which inhabits the southern borderland of the Latin
Quarter, not one would have aught to say to Bibi. They gave him the
widest of wide berths, and when questioned as to their motives, would
only shrug their shoulders, and answer that he was a disgraceful old
person, a drunken reprobate, whom, the wonder was not that they
avoided, but that any decent people could tolerate. 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.
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