"Such is our life."
With sudden excitation, as if obeying some impulse from within,
Andrey arose, waved his hands, and said:
"How can a man help it? It so happens that we sometimes must abhor
a certain person in order to hasten the time when it will be possible
only to take delight in one another. You must destroy those who
hinder the progress of life, who sell human beings for money in order
to buy quiet or esteem for themselves. If a Judas stands in the way
of honest people, lying in wait to betray them, I should be a Judas
myself if I did not destroy him. It's sinful, you say? And do they,
these masters of life, do they have the right to keep soldiers and
executioners, public houses and prisons, places of penal servitude,
and all that vile abomination by which they hold themselves in quiet
security and in comfort? If it happens sometimes that I am compelled
to take their stick into my own hands, what am I to do then? Why,
I am going to take it, of course. I will not decline. They kill
us out by the tens and hundreds. That gives me the right to raise
my hand and level it against one of the enemy, against that one of
their number who comes closest to me, and makes himself more directly
noxious to the work of my life than the others.
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