4 Tibet and Turkestan
École Polytechnique men—both sons of prominent railway officials. Their culture is wider and deeper than that of young American or English engineers. In observing a given thing they see more of its relations with the rest of the universe than we ordinarily see.
You and I, O Anglo-Saxon spirit-companion, shall find that our forty-year wisdom may learn much from twenty-five-year French intuition, and we shall learn to doubt the meaning of the word "decadence " as applied to the ripest — but not rottenest—people of our European world. A suggestive thing it was to watch Anginieur and these other temperate, complicated, critical, sensitive, intellectual Frenchmen in their amused association with the lusty, simple, strong, confident, physical Russians. What strange secrets hath nature in the mixing of clay to make men ! Some sure bond there undoubtedly is between chemistry and psychology, but alas ! the formula of that bond is the Great Secret which man, I think, shall never know. Thus it was that I could but ruminate and wonder, while listening for hours to the explosive French jargon of a young Russian officer, whose hairy breast heaved, whose bold, kind eyes glistened, whose brow ran wet while he drank at us, jested with us, rattled all the cups of the dining-car, and explained by his sole personality the measureless strength of his people. A mere commentary on this personality seemed the conquered deserts through whose heats we travelled, —whose children we saw quietly gathered at the stations which had been battle-fields whereon the Cossack Christ overcame the Turcoman Mahomet.
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