“I didn’t mean Shigalov when I said it was rot,” Verhovensky mumbled. “You see, gentlemen,”⁠—he raised his eyes a trifle⁠—“to my mind all these books, Fourier, Cabet, all this talk about the right to work, and Shigalov’s theories⁠—are all like novels of which one can write a hundred thousand⁠—an aesthetic entertainment. I can understand that in this little town you are bored, so you rush to ink and paper.”

“Excuse me,” said the lame man, wriggling on his chair, “though we are provincials and of course objects of commiseration on that ground, yet we know that so far nothing has happened in the world new enough to be worth our weeping at having missed it. It is suggested to us in various pamphlets made abroad and secretly distributed that we should unite and form groups with the sole object of bringing about universal destruction. It’s urged that, however much you tinker with the world, you can’t make a good job of it, but that by cutting off a hundred million heads and so lightening one’s burden, one can jump over the ditch more safely. A fine idea, no doubt, but quite as impracticable as Shigalov’s theories, which you referred to just now so contemptuously.”