“Blum, you are so devoted to me and so anxious to serve me that I am always in a panic when I look at you.”
“You always say witty things, and sleep in peace satisfied with what you’ve said, but that’s how you damage yourself.”
“Blum, I have just convinced myself that it’s quite a mistake, quite a mistake.”
“Not from the words of that false, vicious young man whom you suspect yourself? He has won you by his flattering praise of your talent for literature.”
“Blum, you understand nothing about it; your project is absurd, I tell you. We shall find nothing and there will be a fearful upset and laughter too, and then Yulia Mihailovna …”
“We shall certainly find everything we are looking for.” Blum advanced firmly towards him, laying his right hand on his heart. “We will make a search suddenly early in the morning, carefully showing every consideration for the person himself and strictly observing all the prescribed forms of the law. The young men, Lyamshin and Telyatnikov, assert positively that we shall find all we want. They were constant visitors there. Nobody is favourably disposed to Mr. Verhovensky. Madame Stavrogin has openly refused him her graces, and every honest man, if only there is such a one in this coarse town, is persuaded that a hotbed of infidelity and social doctrines has always been concealed there. He keeps all the forbidden books, Ryliev’s ‘Reflections,’ all Herzen’s works.… I have an approximate catalogue, in case of need.”
“Oh heavens! Every one has these books; how simple you are, my poor Blum.”
“And many manifestoes,” Blum went on without heeding the observation. “We shall end by certainly coming upon traces of the real manifestoes here. That young Verhovensky I feel very suspicious of.”
“But you are mixing up the father and the son. They are not on good terms. The son openly laughs at his father.”
“That’s only a mask.”