tiable thirst of contrast, that gloomy background
against which he stands out like a diamond, to use your comparison
again, Pyotr Stepanovitch. And then he meets there a creature
ill-treated by every one, crippled, half insane, and at the same time
perhaps filled with noble feelings."

"H'm.... Yes, perhaps."

"And after that you don't understand that he's not laughing at her like
every one. Oh, you people! You can't understand his defending her from
insult, treating her with respect 'like a marquise' (this Kirillov
must have an exceptionally deep understanding of men, though he didn't
understand Nicolas). It was just this contrast, if you like, that led to
the trouble. If the unhappy creature had been in different surroundings,
perhaps she would never have been brought to entertain such a frantic
delusion. Only a woman can understand it, Pyotr Stepanovitch, only a
woman. How sorry I am that you... not that you're not a woman, but that
you can't be one just for the moment so as to understand."

"You mean in the sense that the worse things are the better it is. I
understand, I understand, Varvara Petrovna. It's rather as it is in
religion; the harder life is for a man or the more crushed and poor the
people are, the more obstinately they dream of compensation in heaven;
and if a hundred thousand priests are at work at it too, inflaming
their delusion, and speculating on it, then... I understand you, Varvara
Petrovna, I assure you."

"That's not quite it; but tell me, ought Nicolas to have laughed at her
and have treated her as the other clerks, in order to extinguish the
delusion in this unhappy organism." (Why Varvara Petrovna used the word
organism I couldn't understand.) "Can you really refuse to recognise
the lofty compassion, the noble tremor of the whole organism with which
Nicolas answered Kirillov: 'I do not laugh at her.' A noble, sacred
answer!"

"Sublime," muttered Stepan Trofimovitch.

"And observe, too, that he is by no means so rich as you suppose. The
money is mine and not his, and he would take next to nothing from me
then."

"I understand, I understand all that, Varvara Petrovna," said Pyotr
Stepanovitch, with a movement of some impatience.

"Oh, it's my character! I recognise myself in Nicolas. I recognise that
youthfulness, that liability to violent, tempestuous impulses. And if
we ever come to be friends, Pyotr Stepanovitch, and, for my part, I
sincerely hope we may, especially as I am so de