Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 11‘I believe it, since you say so, but confound you, and your
brother Ivan with you. Don’t you understand that one might
very well dislike him, apart from Katerina Ivanovna. And
why the devil should I like him? He condescends to abuse
me, you know. Why haven’t I a right to abuse him?’
‘I never heard of his saying anything about you, good or
bad. He doesn’t speak of you at all.’
‘But I heard that the day before yesterday at Katerina
Ivanovna’s he was abusing me for all he was worth — you
see what an interest he takes in your humble servant. And
which is the jealous one after that, brother, I can’t say. He
was so good as to express the opinion that, if I don’t go in
for the career of an archimandrite in the immediate future
and don’t become a monk, I shall be sure to go to Peters-
burg and get on to some solid magazine as a reviewer, that
I shall write for the next ten years, and in the end become
the owner of the magazine, and bring it out on the liberal
and atheistic side, with a socialistic tinge, with a tiny gloss
of socialism, but keeping a sharp lookout all the time, that
is, keeping in with both sides and hoodwinking the fools.
According to your brother’s account, the tinge of socialism
won’t hinder me from laying by the proceeds and invest-
ing them under the guidance of some Jew, till at the end
of my career I build a great house in Petersburg and move
my publishing offices to it, and let out the upper stories to
lodgers. He has even chosen the place for it, near the new
stone bridge across the Neva, which they say is to be built
in Petersburg.’
‘Ah, Misha, that’s just what will really happen, every