salvation of their souls, but not for murder," he added, involuntarily connecting this conversation with the thoughts of the morning.
"What do you mean by soul? That, to a naturalist, you must remember, is a very puzzling expression. What is the soul?" demanded Katavasof, with a smile.
"Oh, you know."
"'Pon my word,[1] I haven't the least idea," and the professor broke into a burst of laughter.
"Christ said, 'I am come not to bring peace, but a sword'," remarked Sergyeï Ivanovitch, quoting as simply as if it were something comprehensible, a passage from the Gospel which had always troubled Levin.
"That's just so," repeated the old bee-keeper, who had been standing near them, in response to a chance look directed to him.
"Come, batyushka, you're beaten, you're beaten,—wholly beaten!" cried Katavasof, gayly.
Levin reddened with vexation, not because he was beaten, but because he had been drawn into discussion again.
"No; it is impossible for me to dispute with them," he thought; "their armor is impenetrable, and I am defenseless."
He saw that he could not defeat his brother and Katavasof, and it was equally impossible to agree with them. Their arguments were the fruit of that same pride of the intellect which had almost ruined him. He could not admit that a handful of men, his brother among them, had the right, on the ground of what was told them by a few hundred eloquent volunteers who came to the capital, to claim that they and the newspapers expressed the will and sentiment of the people, especially when this sentiment expressed itself in vengeance and butchery.
He could not agree with this because he did not discover the expression of these thoughts among the people in whose midst he lived, and he did not find them in himself—and he could not consider himself as anything
- ↑ Vot yeï Bogu, literally, "Here by God".
