Page:Chernyshevsky.whatistobedone.djvu/321

Rh duty and still be happy in life. Now people do not try to entertain me any more, and I do not have to waste my time by refusing invitations. But that you may the more easily imagine me nothing else than a gloomy monster, it will be necessary to continue the inquisition of your crimes."

"But why do you want to find more? You have already found two: heartlessness toward Masha and heartlessness towards the shop; I confess it."

"Indifference to Masha is only a error, not a great crime. Masha has not been lost by rubbing her sleepy eyes an hour longer; on the contrary, she did it with the pleasant consciousness of fulfilling her duty; but for the shop, I really want to torture you."

"Yes, but you have already tortured me."

"Not entirely; I want to finish it. How could you dare to give it out at the risk of its destruction?"

"But I have confessed already that I have not given out; Mertsálof promised to take my place."

"We have already said that your intention of putting her in your place was not a sufficient excuse, but by this remark you have only pleaded guilty to a new crime." Rakhmétof again gradually assumed a serious, though not a gloomy, tone. "You say that she takes your place; is that decided?"

"Yes," said Viéra Pavlovna, without her former jocular tone, anticipating that something really bad might result from this.

"Just look here. By whom was the matter decided? by you and by her, without any inquiry whether those fifty people would consent to the change or not, or whether they wanted somebody else, or might not find somebody else better? This is despotism, Viéra Pavlovna. So here are two great crimes on your part: heartlessness and despotism! but the third one is still more cruel. The establishment which, to a greater or less degree, corresponded with sound ideas of managing life, which should serve as a more or less important corroboration of their practicability—but practical proofs are so few, and every one of them is so valuable—this establishment you have subjected to the risk of going to destruction, of bringing it from a practical proof into an affidavit of impracticability; a refutation of your convictions, a means of showing the uselessness of ideas, which