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"I don't agree with you," Pyotr Petrovitch replied, with evident

enjoyment. "Of course, people do get carried away and make

mistakes, but one must have indulgence; those mistakes are merely

evidence of enthusiasm for the cause and of abnormal external

environment. If little has been done, the time has been but

short; of means I will not speak. It's my personal view, if you

care to know, that something has been accomplished already. New

valuable ideas, new valuable works are circulating in the place

of our old dreamy and romantic authors. Literature is taking a

maturer form, many injurious prejudices have been rooted up and

turned into ridicule.... In a word, we have cut ourselves off

irrevocably from the past, and that, to my thinking, is a great

thing..."

"He's learnt it by heart to show off!" Raskolnikov pronounced

suddenly.

"What?" asked Pyotr Petrovitch, not catching his words; but he

received no reply.

"That's all true," Zossimov hastened to interpose.