When on the way to Petersburg I told you that I meant to found a journal and to devote my whole life to it, you looked at me ironically at once, and suddenly became horribly supercilious." "That was not that, not that....

we were afraid then of persecution...." "It was just that.

And you couldn't have been afraid of persecution in Petersburg at that time.

Do you remember that in February, too, when the news of the emancipation came, you ran to me in a panic, and demanded that I should at once give you a written statement that the proposed magazine had nothing to do with you; that the young people had been coming to see me and not you; that you were only a tutor who lived in the house, only because he had not yet received his salary.

Isn't that so?
Do remember that?
You have distinguished yourself all your life, Stepan Trofimovitch." "That was only a moment of weakness, a moment when we were alone," he exclaimed mournfully.