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Every dinner we have is a torture to me.
MARY IVÁNOVNA. But all this was so before. Is it not done by
everyone--both here and abroad?
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. But I can't do it. Since I realised that we are
all brothers, I cannot see it without suffering.
MARY IVÁNOVNA. That is as you please. One can invent anything.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH [hotly] It's just this want of understanding that is
so terrible. Take for instance to-day! I spent this morning at Rzhánov's
lodging-house, among the outcasts there; and I saw an infant literally
die of hunger; a boy suffering from alcoholism; and a consumptive
charwoman rinsing clothes outside in the cold. Then I returned home, and
a footman with a white tie opens the door for me. I see my son--a mere
lad--ordering that footman to fetch him some water; and I see the army
of servants who work for us. Then I go to visit Borís--a man who is
sacrificing his life for truth's sake. I see how he, a pure, strong,
resolute man, is deliberately being goaded to lunacy and to
destruction, that the Government may be rid of him! I know, and they
know, that his heart is weak, and so they provoke him, and drag him to a
ward for raving lunatics. It is too dreadful, too dreadful. And when I
come home, I hear that the one member of our family who understood--not
me but the truth--has thrown over both her betrothed to whom she had
promised her love, and the truth, and is going to marry a lackey, a
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