“There’s no doubt our society is still so barbarous (it’s not the same in England) that very many”⁠—and among these were those whose opinion Alexey Alexandrovitch particularly valued⁠—“look favorably on the duel; but what result is attained by it? Suppose I call him out,” Alexey Alexandrovitch went on to himself, and vividly picturing the night he would spend after the challenge, and the pistol aimed at him, he shuddered, and knew that he never would do it⁠—“suppose I call him out. Suppose I am taught,” he went on musing, “to shoot; I press the trigger,” he said to himself, closing his eyes, “and it turns out I have killed him,” Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, and he shook his head as though to dispel such silly ideas. “What sense is there in murdering a man in order to define one’s relation to a guilty wife and son? I should still just as much have to decide what I ought to do with her. But what is more probable and what would doubtless occur⁠—I should be killed or wounded. I, the innocent person, should be the victim⁠—killed or wounded. It’s even more senseless. But apart from that, a challenge to fight would be an act hardly honest on my side.