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‘If you care to know, the folks there and ours here are
just alike in their vice. They are swindlers, only there the
scoundrel wears polished boots and here he grovels in filth
and sees no harm in it. The Russian people want thrashing,
as Fyodor Pavlovitch said very truly yesterday, though he is
mad, and all his children.’
‘You said yourself you had such a respect for Ivan Fyodo-
rovitch.’
‘But he said I was a stinking lackey. He thinks that I
might be unruly. He is mistaken there. If I had a certain
sum in my pocket, I would have left here long ago. Dmitri
Fyodorovitch is lower than any lackey in his behaviour, in
his mind, and in his poverty. He doesn’t know how to do
anything, and yet he is respected by everyone. I may be only
a soup-maker, but with luck I could open a cafe restaurant
in Petrovka, in Moscow, for my cookery is something spe-
cial, and there’s no one in Moscow, except the foreigners,
whose cookery is anything special. Dmitri Fyodorovitch
is a beggar, but if he were to challenge the son of the first
count in the country, he’d fight him. Though in what way is
he better than I am? For he is ever so much stupider than I
am. Look at the money he has wasted without any need!’
‘It must be lovely, a duel,’ Marya Kondratyevna observed
suddenly.
‘How so?’
‘It must be so dreadful and so brave, especially when
young officers with pistols in their hands pop at one another
for the sake of some lady. A perfect picture! Ah, if only girls
were allowed to look on, I’d give anything to see one!’