They say that at Sevastopol, soon after Alma, the clever people were in a terrible fright that the enemy would attack openly and take Sevastopol at once.
But when they saw that the enemy preferred a regular siege, they were delighted, I am told and reassured, for the thing would drag on for two months at least.
You’re laughing, you don’t believe me again? Of course, you’re right, too. You’re right, you’re right.
These are special cases, I admit. But you must observe this, my dear Rodion Romanovitch, the general case, the case for which all legal forms and rules are intended, for which they are calculated and laid down in books, does not exist at all, for the reason that every case, every crime, for instance, so soon as it actually occurs, at once becomes a thoroughly special case and sometimes a case unlike any that’s gone before.
Very comic cases of that sort sometimes occur.
If I leave one man quite alone, if I don’t touch him and don’t worry him, but let him know or at least suspect every moment that I know all about it and am watching him day and night, and if he is in continual suspicion and terror, he’ll be bound to lose his head. He’ll come of himself, or maybe do something which will make it as plain as twice two are four—it’s delightful. It may be so with a simple peasant, but with one of our sort, an intelligent man cultivated on a certain side, it’s a dead certainty. For, my dear fellow, it’s a very important matter to know on what side a man is cultivated. And then there are nerves, there are nerves, you have overlooked them! Why, they are all sick, nervous and irritable! … And then how they all suffer from spleen! That I assure you is a regular goldmine for us.