They openly unmask what is false and prove that there is nothing to lay hold of among us, and nothing to lean upon.
They speak aloud while all is silent.
What is most effective about them (in spite of their style) is the incredible boldness with which they look the truth straight in the face.
To look facts straight in the face is only possible to Russians of this generation.
No, in Europe they are not yet so bold; it is a realm of stone, there there is still something to lean upon.
So far as I see and am able to judge, the whole essence of the Russian revolutionary idea lies in the negation of honour.
I like its being so boldly and fearlessly expressed.
No, in Europe they wouldn't understand it yet, but that's just what we shall clutch at.
For a Russian a sense of honour is only a superfluous burden, and it always has been a burden through all his history.
The open 'right to dishonour' will attract him more than anything.
I belong to the older generation and, I must confess, still cling to honour, but only from habit.
It is only that I prefer the old forms, granted it's from timidity; you see one must live somehow what's left of one's life."
He suddenly stopped.
"I am talking," he thought, "while he holds his tongue and watches me.
He has come to make me ask him a direct question.
And I shall ask him."
"Yulia Mihailovna asked me by some stratagem to find out from you what the surprise is that you are preparing for the ball to-morrow," Pyotr Stepanovitch asked suddenly.
"Yes, there really will be a surprise and I certainly shall astonish..." said Karmazinov with increased dignity. "But I won't tell you what the secret is."
Pyotr Stepanovitch did not insist.
"There is a young man here called Shatov," observed the great writer. "Would you believe it, I haven't seen him."
"A very nice person.
What about him?"
"Oh, nothing. He talks about something.
Isn't he the person who gave Stavrogin that slap in the face?"
"Yes."
"And what's your opinion of Stavrogin?"
"I don't know; he is such a flirt."
Karmazinov detested Stavrogin because it was the latter's habit not to take any notice of him.
"That flirt," he said, chuckling, "if what is advocated in your manifestoes ever comes to pass, will be the first to be hanged."
"Perhaps before," Pyotr Stepanovitch said suddenly.
"Quite right too," Karmazinov assented, not laughing, and with pronounced gravity.
"You have said so once before, and, do you know, I repeated it to him."
"What, you surely didn't repeat it?" Karmazinov laughed again.
"He said that if he were to be hanged it would be enough for you to be flogged, not simply as a complement but to hurt, as they flog the peasants."
Pyotr Stepanovitch took his hat and got up from his seat.
Karmazinov held out both hands to him at parting.
"And what if all that you are... plotting for is destined to come to pass..." he piped suddenly, in a honeyed voice with a peculiar intonation, still holding his hands in his. "How soon could it come about?"
"How could I tell?" Pyotr Stepanovitch answered rather roughly.
They looked intently into each other's eyes.
"At a guess? Approximately?" Karmazinov piped still more sweetly.
"You'll have time to sell your estate and time to clear out too," Pyotr Stepanovitch muttered still more roughly.
They looked at one another even more intently.
There was a minute of silence.
"It will begin early next May and will be over by October," Pyotr Stepanovitch said suddenly.
"I thank you sincerely," Karmazinov pronounced in a voice saturated with feeling, pressing his hands.
"You will have time to get out of the ship, you rat," Pyotr Stepanovitch was thinking as he went out into the street.
"Well, if that 'imperial intellect' inquires so confidently of the day and the hour and thanks me so respectfully for the information I have given, we mustn't doubt of ourselves. [He grinned.] H'm! But he really isn't stupid... and he is simply a rat escaping; men like that don't tell tales!"
He ran to Filipov's house in Bogoyavlensky Street.
VI
Pyotr Stepanovitch went first to Kirillov's.