Chapter XXXI

"Dickens said a very clever thing: 'Life is given to us on the definite understanding that we boldly defend it to the last.' On the whole, he was a sentimental, loquacious, and not very clever writer, but he knew how to construct a novel as no one else could, certainly better than Balzac. Someone has said: 'Many are possessed by the passion for writing books, but few are ashamed of them afterwards.' Balzac was not ashamed, nor was Dickens, and both of them wrote quite a number of bad books. Still, Balzac is a genius. Or at any rate the thing which you can only call genius...."

XXXIA

[Someone brought Leo Tikhomirov's book, _Why I Ceased to be a Revolutionary_: Leo Nicolayevitch took the book from the table, waved it in the air, and said: "What he says here about political murder is good, that there is no clear idea in that method. The idea, says a frenzied murderer, can only be anarchical sovereignty of the individual and contempt for society and for mankind. That is true, but 'anarchical sovereignty 'is a slip of the pen, it should have been 'monarchical.' That is a good and true idea; all the terrorists will trip up over it--I mean the honest ones. The man who naturally loves killing won't trip up. There is nothing for him to trip up over. He's just a plain murderer, and has only accidentally become a terrorist."]