you wrote it. But that's your business.'
'I want to publish it in pamphlet form.'
'That's your affair.'
They were silent for a minute. Fyodor sighed and said:
'It's an immense regret to me, dear brother, that we think differently. Oh, Alyosha, Alyosha, my darling brother! You and I are true Russians, true believers, men of broad nature; all of these German and Jewish crochets are not for us. You and I are not wretched upstarts, you know, but representatives of a distinguished merchant family.'
'What do you mean by a distinguished family?' said Laptev, restraining his irritation. 'A distinguished family! The landowners beat our grandfather and every low little government clerk punched him in the face. Our grandfather thrashed our father, and our father thrashed us. What has your distinguished family done for us? What sort of nerves, what sort of blood, have we inherited? For nearly three years you've been arguing like an ignorant deacon, and talking all sorts of nonsense, and now you've written -- this slavish drivel here! While I, while I! Look at me. . . . No elasticity, no boldness, no strength of will; I tremble over every step I take as though I should be flogged for it. I am timid before nonentities, idiots, brutes, who are immeasurably my inferiors mentally and morally; I am afraid of porters, doorkeepers, policemen, gendarmes. I am afraid of every one, because I was born of a mother who was terrified, and because from a child I was beaten and frightened! . . . You and I will do well to have no children. Oh, God, grant that this distinguished merchant family may die with us!'
Yulia Sergeyevna came into the study and sat down at the table.
'Are you arguing about something here?' she asked. 'Am I interrupting?'
'No, little sister,' answered Fyodor. 'Our discussion was of principles. Here, you are abusing the family,' he added, turning to his brother. 'That family has created a business worth a million, though. That stands for something, anyway!'
'A great distinction -- a business worth a million! A man with no particular brains, without abilities, by chance becomes a trader, and then when he has grown rich he goes on trading from day to day, with no sort of system, with no aim, without having any particular greed for money. He trades mechanically, and money comes to him of itself, without his going to meet it. He sits all his life at his work, likes it only because he can domineer over his clerks and get the better of his customers. He's a churchwarden because he can domineer over the choristers and keep them under his thumb; he's the patron of a school because he likes to feel the teacher is his subordinate and enjoys lording it over him. The merchant does not love trading, he loves dominating, and your warehouse is not so much a commercial establishment as a torture chamber! And for a business like yours, you want clerks who have been deprived of individual character and personal life -- and you make them such by forcing them in childhood to lick the dust for a crust of bread, and you've trained them from childhood to believe that you are their benefactors. No fear of your taking a university man into your warehouse!'
'University men are not suitable for our business.'
'That's not true,' cried Laptev. 'It's a lie!'
'Excuse me, it seems to me you spit into the well from which you drink yourself,' said Fyodor, and he got up. 'Our business is hateful to you, yet you make use of the income from it.'
'Aha! We've spoken our minds,' said Laptev, and he laughed, looking angrily at his brother. 'Yes, if I didn't belong to your distinguished family -- if I had an ounce of will and courage, I should long ago have flung away that income, and have gone to work for my living. But in your warehouse you've destroyed all character in me from a child! I'm your product.'
Fyodor looked at the clock and began hurriedly saying good-bye. He kissed Yulia's hand and went out, but instead of going into the hall, walked into the drawing-room, then into the bedroom.
'I've forgotten how the rooms go,' he said in extreme confusion. 'It's a strange house. Isn't it a strange house!'
He seemed utterly overcome as he put on his coat, and there was a look of pain on his face. Laptev felt no more anger; he was frightened, and at the same time felt sorry for Fyodor, and the warm, true love for his brother, which seemed to have died down in his heart during those three years, awoke, and he felt an intense desire to express that love.
'Come to dinner with us to-morrow, Fyodor,' he said, and stroked him on the shoulder. 'Will you come?'
'Yes, yes; but give me some water.'
Laptev ran himself to the dining-room to take the first thing he could get from the sideboard. This was a tall beer-jug. He poured water into it and brought it to his brother. Fyodor began drinking, but bit a piece out of the jug; they heard a crunch, and then sobs. The water ran over his fur coat and his jacket, and Laptev, who had never seen men cry, stood in confusion and dismay, not knowing what to do. He looked on helplessly while Yulia and the servant took off Fyodor's coat and helped him back again into the room, and went with him, feeling guilty.
Yulia made Fyodor lie down on the sofa and knelt beside him.
'It's nothing,' she said, trying to comfort him. 'It's your nerves. . . .'
'I'm so miserable, my dear!' he said. 'I am so unhappy, unhappy . . . but all the time I've been hiding it, I've been hiding it!'
He put his arm round her neck and whispered in her ear:
'Every night I see my sister Nina. She comes and sits in the chair near my bed. . . .'
When, an hour later, he put on his fur coat in the hall, he was smiling again and ashamed to face the servant. Laptev went with him to Pyatnitsky Street.
'Come and have dinner with us to-morrow,' he said on the way, holding him by the arm, 'and at Easter we'll go abroad together. You absolutely must have a change, or you'll be getting quite morbid.'
When he got home Laptev found his wife in a state of great nervous agitation. The scene with Fyodor had upset her, and she could not recover her composure. She wasn't crying but kept tossing on the bed, clutching with cold fingers at the quilt, at the pillows, at her husband's hands. Her eyes looked big and frightened.
'Don't go away from me, don't go away,' she said to her husband. 'Tell me, Alyosha, why have I left off saying
