“Oh, you’re a ‘moderate liberal,’ ” said Shatov, smiling too. “Do you know,” he went on suddenly, “I may have been talking nonsense about the ‘flunkeyism of thought.’ You will say to me no doubt directly, ‘it’s you who are the son of a flunkey, but I’m not a flunkey.’ ”

“I wasn’t dreaming of such a thing.⁠ ⁠… What are you saying!”

“You need not apologise. I’m not afraid of you. Once I was only the son of a flunkey, but now I’ve become a flunkey myself, like you. Our Russian liberal is a flunkey before everything, and is only looking for someone whose boots he can clean.”

“What boots? What allegory is this?”

“Allegory, indeed! You are laughing, I see.⁠ ⁠… Stepan Trofimovitch said truly that I lie under a stone, crushed but not killed, and do nothing but wriggle. It was a good comparison of his.”