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has not been prepared for them, especially if they are insti-
tutions copied from abroad, do nothing but mischief! The
ancient fire was better. Well, this man, who was condemned
to the quadrillion kilometres, stood still, looked round and
lay down across the road. ‘I won’t go, I refuse on principle!’
Take the soul of an enlightened Russian atheist and mix it
with the soul of the prophet Jonah, who sulked for three
days and nights in the belly of the whale, and you get the
character of that thinker who lay across the road.’
‘What did he lie on there?’
‘Well, I suppose there was something to lie on. You are
not laughing?’
‘Bravo!’ cried Ivan, still with the same strange eagerness.
Now he was listening with an unexpected curiosity. ‘Well,
is he lying there now?’
‘That’s the point, that he isn’t. He lay there almost a thou-
sand years and then he got up and went on.’
‘What an ass!’ cried Ivan, laughing nervously and still
seeming to be pondering something intently. ‘Does it make
any difference whether he lies there for ever or walks the
quadrillion kilometres? It would take a billion years to walk
it?’
‘Much more than that. I haven’t got a pencil and paper
or I could work it out. But he got there long ago, and that’s
where the story begins.’
‘What, he got there? But how did he get the billion years
to do it?’
‘Why, you keep thinking of our present earth! But our
present earth may have been repeated a billion times. Why,

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