give an explanation."

"Hang your explanation, and who the devil am I bound to?" said Shatov.
He showed them out and fastened the door with the latch.

"Snipes!" he said, looking at me, with a sort of wry smile.

His face looked angry, and it seemed strange to me that he spoke first.
When I had been to see him before (which was not often) it had usually
happened that he sat scowling in a corner, answered ill-humouredly
and only completely thawed and began to talk with pleasure after a
considerable time. Even so, when he was saying good-bye he always
scowled, and let one out as though he were getting rid of a personal
enemy.

"I had tea yesterday with that Alexey Nilitch," I observed. "I think
he's mad on atheism."

"Russian atheism has never gone further than making a joke," growled
Shatov, putting up a new candle in place of an end that had burnt out.

"No, this one doesn't seem to me a joker, I think he doesn't know how to
talk, let alone trying to make jokes."

"Men made of paper! It all comes from flunkeyism of thought," Shatov
observed calmly, sitting down on a chair in the corner, and pressing the
palms of both hands on his knees.

"There's hatred in it, too," he went on, after a minute's pause.
"They'd be the first to be terribly unhappy if Russia could be suddenly
reformed, even to suit their own ideas, and became extraordinarily
prosperous and happy. They'd have no one to hate then, no one to curse,
nothing to find fault with. There is nothing in it but an immense animal
hatred for Russia which has eaten into their organism.... And it isn't
a case of tears unseen by the world under cover of a smile! There has
never been a falser word said in Russia than about those unseen tears,"
he cried, almost with fury.

"Goodness only knows what you're saying," I laughed.

"Oh, you're a 'moderate liberal,'" said Shatov, smiling too. "Do you
know," he went on suddenly, "I may have been talking nonsense about the
'flunkeyism of thought.' You will say to me no doubt directly, 'it's you
who are the son of a flunkey, but I'm not a flunkey.'"

"I wasn't dreaming of such a thing.... What are you saying!"

"You need not apologise. I'm not afraid of you. Once I was only the
son of a flunkey, but now I've become a flunkey myself, like you. Our
Russian liberal is a flunkey before everything, and is only looking for
some one whose boots he can clean."

"What boots? What allegory is this?"

"Allegory, indeed! You are l