“Yes, curse you, they were—but George Sand was no worse than your Zhadovskaya, and she did not drown herself!”
“Platon Karataeff—there’s an acknowledged type of that nation!”
“And why not Yeroshka, why not Lukashka? My good man, if I take a notion to shake up literature I’ll find boots to fit all the gods! Why Karataeff and not Ruzuvaeff and Kolupaeff? why not a bloodsucker spider, an extortioner priest, a venal deacon? some Saltytchikha or other? Why not Karamazoff and Oblomoff, Khlestyakoff and Nozdreff? or, not to go too far afield, why not your good-for-nothing, nasty brother, Tishka Krasoff?”
“Platon Karataeff—”
“The lice have eaten your Karataeff! I don’t see that he’s an ideal!”
“But the Russian martyrs, saints, holy men, the fools-for-Christ’s-sake, the Old Ritualists?”
“Wha‑at’s that? Well, how about the Coliseum, the crusades, the religious wars, the countless sects? And Luther, to wind up? No, nonsense! You can’t beat me down with one blow, like that!”
“Then what, in your opinion, ought to be done?” shouted Kuzma. “Blindfold our eyes and rush to the ends of the world?”
But at this point Balashkin suddenly became extinguished. He closed his eyes, and his huge grey face portrayed advanced, painful old age. For a long time with drooping head he turned over something in his mind, and at last muttered: “What ought to be done? I don’t know: we are ruined. Our last asset was Memoirs of the Fatherland , and that has been knocked in the head! And yet, you fool, you think the only thing that is necessary is to educate oneself.”