me in
slippers and tries to look as if he were doing the Government a
great service by living in the Caucasus. No, Alexandr Daviditch,
don't stick up for him. You are insincere from beginning to end.
If you really loved him and considered him your neighbour, you would
above all not be indifferent to his weaknesses, you would not be
indulgent to them, but for his own sake would try to make him
innocuous."

"That is?"

"Innocuous. Since he is incorrigible, he can only be made innocuous
in one way. . . ." Von Koren passed his finger round his throat.
"Or he might be drowned . . .", he added. "In the interests of
humanity and in their own interests, such people ought to be
destroyed. They certainly ought."

"What are you saying?" muttered Samoylenko, getting up and looking
with amazement at the zoologist's calm, cold face. "Deacon, what
is he saying? Why--are you in your senses?"

"I don't insist on the death penalty," said Von Koren. "If it is
proved that it is pernicious, devise something else. If we can't
destroy Laevsky, why then, isolate him, make him harmless, send him
to hard labour."

"What are you saying!" said Samoylenko in horror. "With pepper,
with pepper," he cried in a voice of despair, seeing that the deacon
was eating stuffed aubergines without pepper. "You with your great
intellect, what are you saying! Send our friend, a proud intellectual
man, to penal servitude!"

"Well, if he is proud and tries to resist, put him in fetters!"

Samoylenko could not utter a word, and only twiddled his fingers;
the deacon looked at his flabbergasted and really absurd face, and
laughed.

"Let us leave off talking of that," said the zoologist. "Only
remember one thing, Alexandr Daviditch: primitive man was preserved
from such as Laevsky by the struggle for existence and by natural
selection; now our civilisation has considerably weakened the
struggle and the selection, and we ought to look after the destruction
of the rotten and worthless for ourselves; otherwise, when the
Laevskys multiply, civilisation will perish and mankind will
degenerate utterly. It will be our fault."

"If it depends on drowning and hanging," said Samoylenko, "damnation
take your civilisation, damnation take your humanity! Damnation
take it! I tell you what: you are a very learned and intelligent
man and the pride of your country, but the Germans have ruined you.
Yes, the Germans! The Germans!"

Since Samoylenko had left Dorpat, where