to serve a just cause, come from every part of Russia, and directly and clearly express their thought and aim. They bring their halfpence or go themselves and say directly what for. What does it mean?”

“It means, to my thinking,” said Levin, who was beginning to get warm, “that among eighty millions of people there can always be found not hundreds, as now, but tens of thousands of people who have lost caste, ne’er-do-wells, who are always ready to go anywhere — to Pogatchev’s bands, to Khiva, to Serbia...”

“I tell you that it’s not a case of hundreds or of ne’er-do-wells, but the best representatives of the people!” said Sergey Ivanovitch, with as much irritation as if he were defending the last penny of his fortune.