صفحة 651 من 1294

I simply couldn't pass by my mother starving, keeping my rouble

in my pocket while I waited for the 'happiness of all.' I am

putting my little brick into the happiness of all and so my heart

is at peace. Ha-ha! Why have you let me slip? I only live once, I

too want.... Ech, I am an aesthetic louse and nothing more," he

added suddenly, laughing like a madman. "Yes, I am certainly a

louse," he went on, clutching at the idea, gloating over it and

playing with it with vindictive pleasure. "In the first place,

because I can reason that I am one, and secondly, because for a

month past I have been troubling benevolent Providence, calling

it to witness that not for my own fleshly lusts did I undertake

it, but with a grand and noble object--ha-ha! Thirdly, because I

aimed at carrying it out as justly as possible, weighing,

measuring and calculating.