“There’s no doubt our society is still so barbarous (it’s not the same in England) that very many” — and among these were those whose opinion Alexey Alexandrovitch particularly valued — “look favorably on the duel; but what result is attained by it? Suppose I call him out,” Alexey Alexandrovitch went on to himself, and vividly picturing the night he would spend after the challenge, and the pistol aimed at him, he shuddered, and knew that he never would do it — “suppose I call him out. Suppose I am taught,” he went on musing, “to shoot; I press the trigger,” he said to himself, closing his eyes, “and it turns out I have killed him,” Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, and he shook his head as though to dispel such silly ideas. “What sense is there in murdering