u will defend it,
you will save it, you will prove that there are men to watch over it, that
it is in good hands!"

Chapter XIV. The Peasants Stand Firm

This was how Fetyukovitch concluded his speech, and the enthusiasm of the
audience burst like an irresistible storm. It was out of the question to
stop it: the women wept, many of the men wept too, even two important
personages shed tears. The President submitted, and even postponed ringing
his bell. The suppression of such an enthusiasm would be the suppression
of something sacred, as the ladies cried afterwards. The orator himself
was genuinely touched.

And it was at this moment that Ippolit Kirillovitch got up to make certain
objections. People looked at him with hatred. "What? What's the meaning of
it? He positively dares to make objections," the ladies babbled. But if
the whole world of ladies, including his wife, had protested he could not
have been stopped at that moment. He was pale, he was shaking with
emotion, his first phrases were even unintelligible, he gasped for breath,
could hardly speak clearly, lost the thread. But he soon recovered
himself. Of this new speech of his I will quote only a few sentences.

"... I am reproached with having woven a romance. But what is this defense
if not one romance on the top of another? All that was lacking was poetry.
Fyodor Pavlovitch, while waiting for his mistress, tears open the envelope
and throws it on the floor. We are even told what he said while engaged in
this strange act. Is not this a flight of fancy? And what proof have we
that he had taken out the money? Who heard what he said? The weak-minded
idiot, Smerdyakov, transformed into a Byronic hero, avenging society for
his illegitimate birth--isn't this a romance in the Byronic style? And the
son who breaks into his father's house and murders him without murdering
him is not even a romance--this is a sphinx setting us a riddle which he
cannot solve himself. If he murdered him, he murdered him, and what's the
meaning of his murdering him without having murdered him--who can make head
or tail of this?

"Then we are admonished that our tribune is a tribune of true and sound
ideas and from this tribune of 'sound ideas' is heard a solemn declaration
that to call the murder of a father 'parricide' is nothing but a
prejudice! But if parricide is a prejudice, and if every child is to ask
his father why he is to love him, what will become of us? What will be