ina. It
seems as if he had slipped on something and fallen, and there he lies!"

At dinner Pavel suddenly dropped his spoon and exclaimed:

"That's what I don't understand!"

"What?" asked the Little Russian, who had been sitting at the table
dismal and silent.

"To kill anything living because one wants to eat, that's ugly enough.
To kill a beast--a beast of prey--that I can understand. I think I
myself could kill a man who had turned into a beast preying upon
mankind. But to kill such a disgusting, pitiful creature--I don't
understand how anyone could lift his hand for an act like that!"

The Little Russian raised his shoulders and dropped them again; then
said:

"He was no less noxious than a beast."

"I know."

"We kill a mosquito for sucking just a tiny bit of our blood," the
Little Russian added in a low voice.

"Well, yes, I am not saying anything about that. I only mean to say
it's so disgusting."

"What can you do?" returned Andrey with another shrug of his shoulders.

After a long pause Pavel asked:

"Could you kill a fellow like that?"

The Little Russian regarded him with his round eyes, threw a glance at
the mother, and said sadly, but firmly:

"For myself, I wouldn't touch a living thing. But for comrades, for
the cause, I am capable of everything. I'd even kill. I'd kill my own
son."

"Oh, Andriusha!" the mother exclaimed under her breath.

He smiled and said:

"It can't be helped! Such is our life!"

"Ye-es," Pavel drawled. "Such is our life."

With sudden excitation, as if obeying some impulse from within, Andrey
arose, waved his hands, and said:

"How can a man help it? It so happens that we sometimes must abhor a
certain person in order to hasten the time when it will be possible
only to take delight in one another. You must destroy those who hinder
the progress of life, who sell human beings for money in order to buy
quiet or esteem for themselves. If a Judas stands in the way of honest
people, lying in wait to betray them, I should be a Judas myself if I
did not destroy him. It's sinful, you say? And do they, these masters
of life, do they have the right to keep soldiers and executioners,
public houses and prisons, places of penal servitude, and all that vile
abomination by which they hold themselves in quiet security and in
comfort? If it happens sometimes that I am compelled to take their
stick into my own hands, what am I to do then? Why, I am going to t