Page 372 - the-brothers-karamazov

If but my dear one be in health?
Lord have mercy
On her and on me!
On her and on me!
On her and on me!
‘It was even better last time,’ observed the woman’s voice.
‘You sang ‘If my darling be in health’; it sounded more ten-
der. I suppose you’ve forgotten to-day.’
‘Poetry is rubbish!’ said Smerdyakov curtly.
‘Oh, no! I am very fond of poetry.’
‘So far as it’s poetry, it’s essential rubbish. Consider your-
self, who ever talks in rhyme? And if we were all to talk
in rhyme, even though it were decreed by government, we
shouldn’t say much, should we? Poetry is no good, Marya
Kondratyevna.’
‘How clever you are! How is it you’ve gone so deep into
everything?’ The woman’s voice was more and more insinu-
ating.
‘I could have done better than that. I could have known
more than that, if it had not been for my destiny from my
childhood up. I would have shot a man in a duel if he called
me names because I am descended from a filthy beggar and
have no father. And they used to throw it in my teeth in
Moscow. It had reached them from here, thanks to Grigory
Vassilyevitch. Grigory Vassilyevitch blames me for rebelling
against my birth, but I would have sanctioned their killing
me before I was born that I might not have come into the
world at all. They used to say in the market, and your mam-
ma too, with great lack of delicacy, set off telling me that

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