“I simply mean to say that those rights that touch me⁠ ⁠… my interest, I shall always defend to the best of my ability; that when they made raids on us students, and the police read our letters, I was ready to defend those rights to the utmost, to defend my rights to education and freedom. I can understand compulsory military service, which affects my children, my brothers, and myself, I am ready to deliberate on what concerns me; but deliberating on how to spend forty thousand roubles of district council money, or judging the half-witted Alioshka⁠—I don’t understand, and I can’t do it.”

Konstantin Levin spoke as though the floodgates of his speech had burst open. Sergey Ivanovitch smiled.

“But tomorrow it’ll be your turn to be tried; would it have suited your tastes better to be tried in the old criminal tribunal?”