should we let our chance slip! Why, I know — and I kept the secret — two or three books which one might get a hundred roubles simply for thinking of translating and publishing. Indeed, and I would not take five hundred for the very idea of one of them. And what do you think? If I were to tell a publisher, I dare say he’d hesitate — they are such blockheads! And as for the business side, printing, paper, selling, you trust to me, I know my way about. We’ll begin in a small way and go on to a large. In any case it will get us our living and we shall get back our capital.”

Dounia’s eyes shone.

“I like what you are saying, Dmitri Prokofitch!” she said.

“I know nothing about it, of course,” put in Pulcheria Alexandrovna,