"If I had been home, I would not have let him go that way. What did he take along with him? A feeling of discontent and a muddle in his head!"
"Well," said Andrey, laughing, "when a man's grown to the age of forty and has fought so long with the bears in his heart, it's hard to make him over."
Pavel looked at him sternly and asked:
"Do you think it's impossible for enlightenment to destroy all the rubbish that's been crammed into a man's brains?"
"Don't fly up into the air at once, Pavel! Your flight will knock you up against the belfry tower and break your wings," said the Little Russian in admonition.
And they started one of those discussions in which words were used that were unintelligible to the mother. The dinner was already at an end, but they still continued a vehement debate, flinging at each other veritable rattling hailstones of big words. Sometimes their language was simpler:
"We must keep straight on our path, turning neither to the right nor to the left!" Pavel asserted firmly.
"And run headlong into millions of people who will regard us as their enemies!"
"You can't avoid that!"