Page 710 - the-brothers-karamazov

times like him. He’s awfully low, but it’s natural to him, eh?
Don’t you think so? Some people are low from self-interest,
but he’s simply so, from nature. Only fancy, he claims (he
was arguing about it all the way yesterday) that Gogol wrote
Dead Souls about him. Do you remember, there’s a land-
owner called Maximov in it, whom Nozdryov thrashed. He
was charged, do you remember, ‘for inflicting bodily in-
jury with rods on the landowner Maximov in a drunken
condition.’ Would you believe it, he claims that he was that
Maximov and that he was beaten! Now can it be so? Tchit-
chikov made his journey, at the very latest, at the beginning
of the twenties, so that the dates don’t fit. He couldn’t have
been thrashed then, he couldn’t, could he?’
It was diffcult to imagine what Kalgonov was excited
about, but his excitement was genuine. Mitya followed his
lead without protest.
‘Well, but if they did thrash him!’ he cried, laughing.
‘It’s not that they thrashed me exactly, but what I mean is
— ‘ put in Maximov.
‘What do you mean? Either they thrashed you or they
didn’t.’
‘What o’clock is it, panie?’ the Pole, with the pipe, asked
his tall friend, with a bored expression. The other shrugged
his shoulders in reply. Neither of them had a watch.
‘Why not talk? Let other people talk. Mustn’t other peo-
ple talk because you’re bored?’ Grushenka flew at him with
evident intention of finding fault. Something seemed for
the first time to flash upon Mitya’s mind. This time the Pole
answered with unmistakable irritability.

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