owning.

"And how can you be an official of the government after that, when you
agree to demolishing churches, and marching on Petersburg armed with
staves, and make it all simply a question of date?"

Lembke was greatly put out at being so crudely caught.

"It's not so, not so at all," he cried, carried away and more and more
mortified in his amour-propre. "You're young, and know nothing of
our aims, and that's why you're mistaken. You see, my dear Pyotr
Stepanovitch, you call us officials of the government, don't you?
Independent officials, don't you? But let me ask you, how are we acting?
Ours is the responsibility, but in the long run we serve the cause of
progress just as you do. We only hold together what you are unsettling,
and what, but for us, would go to pieces in all directions. We are not
your enemies, not a bit of it. We say to you, go forward, progress, you
may even unsettle things, that is, things that are antiquated and in
need of reform. But we will keep you, when need be, within necessary
limits, and so save you from yourselves, for without us you would set
Russia tottering, robbing her of all external decency, while our task is
to preserve external decency. Understand that we are mutually essential
to one another. In England the Whigs and Tories are in the same way
mutually essential to one another. Well, you're Whigs and we're Tories.
That's how I look at it."

Andrey Antonovitch rose to positive eloquence. He had been fond of
talking in a Liberal and intellectual style even in Petersburg, and the
great thing here was that there was no one to play the spy on him.

Pyotr Stepanovitch was silent, and maintained an unusually grave air.
This excited the orator more than ever.

"Do you know that I, the 'person responsible for the province,'" he went
on, walking about the study, "do you know I have so many duties I can't
perform one of them, and, on the other hand, I can say just as truly
that there's nothing for me to do here. The whole secret of it is,
that everything depends upon the views of the government. Suppose the
government were ever to found a republic, from policy, or to pacify
public excitement, and at the same time to increase the power of the
governors, then we governors would swallow up the republic; and not the
republic only. Anything you like we'll swallow up. I, at least, feel
that I am ready. In one word, if the government dictates to me by
telegram, _activite devorante_, I'll sup