and had married an adjutant─also a German Markelov began hating adjutants too. He used to try to write articles on the defects of our artillery, but he had not the slightest faculty of exposition; not a single article could he ever work out to the end, and yet he continued to cover large sheets of grey paper with his sprawling, illegible, childish handwriting. Markelov was a man, obstinate and dauntless to desperation, who could neither forgive nor forget, for ever resenting his own wrongs and the wrongs of all the oppressed, and ready for anything. His limited intellect went for one point only; what he did not understand, for him did not exist; but he scorned and hated treachery and falseness. With people of the higher class, with the 'reacs', as he expressed it, he was short, and even rude; with the poor he was simple; with a peasant as friendly as with a brother. He managed his estate fairly well; his head was in a whirl of socialistic plans, which he could no more carry out than he could finish his articles on the defects of the artillery. As a rule, he did not succeed─at any time, or in anything; in the regiment he had been nicknamed 'the unsuccessful.' Sincere, upright, a passionate and unhappy nature, he was capable at any moment of appearing merciless, bloodthirsty, of deserving to be called a monster,
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