in
the face. Our grandfather thrashed our father, and our father
thrashed us. What has your distinguished family done for us? What
sort of nerves, what sort of blood, have we inherited? For nearly
three years you've been arguing like an ignorant deacon, and talking
all sorts of nonsense, and now you've written--this slavish drivel
here! While I, while I! Look at me. . . . No elasticity, no boldness,
no strength of will; I tremble over every step I take as though I
should be flogged for it. I am timid before nonentities, idiots,
brutes, who are immeasurably my inferiors mentally and morally; I
am afraid of porters, doorkeepers, policemen, gendarmes. I am afraid
of every one, because I was born of a mother who was terrified, and
because from a child I was beaten and frightened! . . . You and I
will do well to have no children. Oh, God, grant that this distinguished
merchant family may die with us!"

Yulia Sergeyevna came into the study and sat down at the table.

"Are you arguing about something here?" she asked. "Am I interrupting?"

"No, little sister," answered Fyodor. "Our discussion was of
principles. Here, you are abusing the family," he added, turning
to his brother. "That family has created a business worth a million,
though. That stands for something, anyway!"

"A great distinction--a business worth a million! A man with no
particular brains, without abilities, by chance becomes a trader,
and then when he has grown rich he goes on trading from day to day,
with no sort of system, with no aim, without having any particular
greed for money. He trades mechanically, and money comes to him of
itself, without his going to meet it. He sits all his life at his
work, likes it only because he can domineer over his clerks and get
the better of his customers. He's a churchwarden because he can
domineer over the choristers and keep them under his thumb; he's
the patron of a school because he likes to feel the teacher is his
subordinate and enjoys lording it over him. The merchant does not
love trading, he loves dominating, and your warehouse is not so
much a commercial establishment as a torture chamber! And for a
business like yours, you want clerks who have been deprived of
individual character and personal life--and you make them such
by forcing them in childhood to lick the dust for a crust of bread,
and you've trained them from childhood to believe that you are their
benefactors. No fear of your taking a university