in the most
harmless, agreeable, typically Russian, light-hearted liberal chatter.
"The higher liberalism" and the "higher liberal," that is, a liberal
without any definite aim, is only possible in Russia.

Stepan Trofimovitch, like every witty man, needed a listener, and,
besides that, he needed the consciousness that he was fulfilling the
lofty duty of disseminating ideas. And finally he had to have some one
to drink champagne with, and over the wine to exchange light-hearted
views of a certain sort, about Russia and the "Russian spirit," about
God in general, and the "Russian God" in particular, to repeat for the
hundredth time the same Russian scandalous stories that every one knew
and every one repeated. We had no distaste for the gossip of the town
which often, indeed, led us to the most severe and loftily moral
verdicts. We fell into generalising about humanity, made stern
reflections on the future of Europe and mankind in general,
authoritatively predicted that after Caesarism France would at once sink
into the position of a second-rate power, and were firmly convinced that
this might terribly easily and quickly come to pass. We had long ago
predicted that the Pope would play the part of a simple archbishop in
a united Italy, and were firmly convinced that this thousand-year-old
question had, in our age of humanitarianism, industry, and railways,
become a trifling matter. But, of course, "Russian higher liberalism"
could not look at the question in any other way. Stepan Trofimovitch
sometimes talked of art, and very well, though rather abstractly. He
sometimes spoke of the friends of his youth--all names noteworthy in
the history of Russian progress. He talked of them with emotion and
reverence, though sometimes with envy. If we were very much bored, the
Jew, Lyamshin (a little post-office clerk), a wonderful performer on
the piano, sat down to play, and in the intervals would imitate a pig,
a thunderstorm, a confinement with the first cry of the baby, and so on,
and so on; it was only for this that he was invited, indeed. If we had
drunk a great deal--and that did happen sometimes, though not often--we
flew into raptures, and even on one occasion sang the "Marseillaise" in
chorus to the accompaniment of Lyamshin, though I don't know how it
went off. The great day, the nineteenth of February, we welcomed
enthusiastically, and for a long time beforehand drank toasts in its
honour. But that was long ago, before t