Litvinov shrugged his shoulders. ‘That’s stale, Sozont Ivanitch, that’s a commonplace.’ ‘And what of it? So that’s what you’re afraid of! A commonplace! I know many excellent commonplaces. Here, for example, Law and Liberty is a well-known commonplace. Why, do you consider it’s better as it is with us, lawlessness and bureaucratic tyranny? And, besides, all those phrases by which so many young heads are turned: vile bourgeoisie, _souveraineté du peuple_, right to labour, aren’t they commonplaces too? And as for love, inseparable from hate....’ ‘Byronism,’ interposed Litvinov, ‘the romanticism of the thirties.’ ‘Excuse me, you’re mistaken; such a mingling of emotions was first mentioned by Catullus, the Roman poet Catullus,[1] two thousand years ago. I have read that, for I know a little Latin, thanks to my clerical origin, if so I may venture to express myself. Yes, indeed, I both love and hate my Russia, my strange, sweet, nasty, precious country. I have left her just now. I want a little fresh air after sitting for twenty years on a clerk’s high stool in a government office; I have left Russia, and I am happy and contented here; but I shall soon go back again: I feel that. It’s a beautiful land of gardens--but our wild berries will not grow here.’ Footnote 1: Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. Nescio: sed fieri sentio, et excrucior.--CATULL. lxxxvi. ‘You are happy and contented, and I too like the place,’ said Litvinov, ‘and I came here to study; but that does not prevent me from seeing things like that.’ He pointed to two _cocottes_ who passed by, attended by a little group of members of the Jockey Club, grimacing and lisping, and to the gambling saloon, full to overflowing in spite of the lateness of the hour. ‘And who told you I am blind to that?’ Potugin broke in. ‘But pardon my saying it, your remark reminds me of the triumphant allusions made by our unhappy journalists at the time of the Crimean war, to the defects in the English War Department, exposed in the _Times_. I am not an optimist myself, and all humanity, all our life, all this comedy with tragic issues presents itself to me in no roseate colours: but why fasten upon the West what is perhaps ingrained in our very human nature? That gambling hall is disgusting, certainly; but is our home-bred card-sharping any lovelier, think you? No, my dear Grigory Mihalovitch, let us be more humble, more retiring. A good pupil sees his master’s faults, but he keeps a respectful silence about them; these very faults are of use to him, and set him on the right path. But if nothing will satisfy you but sharpening your teeth on the unlucky West, there goes Prince Kokó at a gallop, he will most likely lose in a quarter of an hour over the green table the hardly earned rent wrung from a hundred and fifty families; his nerves are upset, for I saw him at Marx’s to-day turning over a pamphlet of Vaillot.... He will be a capital person for you to talk to!’