We must make much of our young people; I treat them with affection and hold them back from the brink." "But he says such dreadful things," Von Lembke objected.

"I can't behave tolerantly when he maintains in my presence and before other people that the government purposely drenches the people with vodka in order to brutalise them, and so keep them from revolution.

Fancy my position when I'm forced to listen to that before every one." As he said this, Von Lembke recalled a conversation he had recently had with Pyotr Stepanovitch.

With the innocent object of displaying his Liberal tendencies he had shown him his own private collection of every possible kind of manifesto, Russian and foreign, which he had carefully collected since the year 1859, not simply from a love of collecting but from a laudable interest in them.

Pyotr Stepanovitch, seeing his object, expressed the opinion that there was more sense in one line of some manifestoes than in a whole government department, "not even excluding yours, maybe." Lembke winced.
"But this is premature among us, premature," he pronounced almost imploringly, pointing to the manifestoes.
"No, it's not premature; you see you're afraid, so it's not premature." "But here, for instance, is an incitement to destroy churches." "And why not?
You're a sensible man, and of course you don't believe in it yourself, but you know perfectly well that you need religion to brutalise the people.