The Brothers Karamazov
her hair was like a mat on her head, and that she was short
of five foot by a wee bit. Why talk of a wee bit while she
might have said ‘a little bit,’ like everyone else? She wanted
to make it touching, a regular peasant’s feeling. Can a Rus-
sian peasant be said to feel, in comparison with an educated
man? He can’t be said to have feeling at all, in his ignorance.
From my childhood up when I hear ‘a wee bit,’ I am ready to
burst with rage. I hate all Russia, Marya Kondratyevna.’
‘If you’d been a cadet in the army, or a young hussar, you
wouldn’t have talked like that, but would have drawn your
sabre to defend all Russia.’
‘I don’t want to be a hussar, Marya Kondratyevna, and,
what’s more, I should like to abolish all soldiers.’
‘And when an enemy comes, who is going to defend us?’
‘There’s no need of defence. In 1812 there was a great in-
vasion of Russia by Napoleon, first Emperor of the French,
father of the present one, and it would have been a good
thing if they had conquered us. A clever nation would have
conquered a very stupid one and annexed it. We should
have had quite different institutions.’
‘Are they so much better in their own country than we
are? I wouldn’t change a dandy I know of for three young
englishmen,’ observed Marya Kondratyevna tenderly,
doubtless accompanying her words with a most languish-
ing glance.
‘That’s as one prefers.’
‘But you are just like a foreigner — just like a most gen-
tlemanly foreigner. I tell you that, though it makes me
bashful.’