it I should not have thought of it
again. A word could not set the place on fire."

"You are like a man who should be surprised that a tiny spark could blow
a whole powder magazine into the air."

"I spoke in a whisper in his ear, in a corner; how could you have heard
of it?"

Tolkatchenko reflected suddenly.

"I was sitting there under the table. Don't disturb yourselves,
gentlemen; I know every step you take. You smile sarcastically, Mr.
Liputin? But I know, for instance, that you pinched your wife black and
blue at midnight, three days ago, in your bedroom as you were going to
bed."

Liputin's mouth fell open and he turned pale. (It was afterwards found
out that he knew of this exploit of Liputin's from Agafya, Liputin's
servant, whom he had paid from the beginning to spy on him; this only
came out later.)

"May I state a fact?" said Shigalov, getting up.

"State it."

Shigalov sat down and pulled himself together.

"So far as I understand--and it's impossible not to understand it--you
yourself at first and a second time later, drew with great eloquence,
but too theoretically, a picture of Russia covered with an endless
network of knots. Each of these centres of activity, proselytising
and ramifying endlessly, aims by systematic denunciation to injure the
prestige of local authority, to reduce the villages to confusion,
to spread cynicism and scandals, together with complete disbelief in
everything and an eagerness for something better, and finally, by means
of fires, as a pre-eminently national method, to reduce the country at
a given moment, if need be, to desperation. Are those your words which
I tried to remember accurately? Is that the programme you gave us as the
authorised representative of the central committee, which is to this day
utterly unknown to us and almost like a myth?"

"It's correct, only you are very tedious."

"Every one has a right to express himself in his own way. Giving us
to understand that the separate knots of the general network already
covering Russia number by now several hundred, and propounding the
theory that if every one does his work successfully, all Russia at a
given moment, at a signal..."

"Ah, damn it all, I have enough to do without you!" cried Pyotr
Stepanovitch, twisting in his chair.

"Very well, I'll cut it short and I'll end simply by asking if we've
seen the disorderly scenes, we've seen the discontent of the people,
we've seen and taken part in the d