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284 any personal feeling, like a historian, who judges coolly, and with no intention of offending, but for the sake of truth; and he is so strange, that it would be ridiculous to take offence, and all I could do was to laugh. "But that is one and the same thing," I said.

"In this case it is not one and the same thing."

"Nu, but maybe I am both at once."

"In this case, to be both is impossible, but one of the two things, surely: either you are thinking and acting not as you speak, and in such a case you are a liar; or, you are thinking and acting as you speak, in which case you must be a villain; one or the other must be so. I take it for granted that it is the first hypothesis."

"Think as you please," I said, still laughing.

"Good by. At all events, understand that I still preserve my trust in you, and I will be ready to renew our conversation whenever you please."

With all the roughness of his behavior, Rakhmétof was entirely right; both in the very fact that he began as he did, because he first learned thoroughly about me, and only then undertook this business with me; and that he ended the conversation as he did. I really did not tell him what I thought, and he really was right in calling me a liar; and this could not be offensive at all; it was even flattering to me, "in the present case," according to his expression, because there was such a case, and because he could preserve his former confidence in me, and possibly even respect.

Yes, with all the savageness of his manners, everybody remained satisfied that Rakhmétof acted as he did, because it was the most simple and common-sense way of acting; and the terrible extremes to which he went, and his horrible reproaches, he spoke in such a way, that no person of common sense could be offended with them; and with all his phenomenal roughnesses, he was at heart very gentle. His preliminary talk was always of this stamp. Every embarrassing explanation he began thus:—

"You know very well that I speak without any personal feeling. If my words prove to be disagreeable, I beg you to excuse them; but I find that there is no need of getting offended when anything is kindly meant, absolutely, without intention of offending, but from necessity. However, as