_Entre nous soit dit,_ I can imagine nothing more comic than the moment when Gogol (the Gogol of that period!) read that phrase, and...

the whole letter! But dismissing the humorous aspect, and, as I am fundamentally in agreement, I point to them and say--these were men! They knew how to love their people, they knew how to suffer for them, they knew how to sacrifice everything for them, yet they knew how to differ from them when they ought, and did not filch certain ideas from them.

Could Byelinsky have sought salvation in Lenten oil, or peas with radish!..." But at this point Shatov interposed.
"Those men of yours never loved the people, they didn't suffer for them, and didn't sacrifice anything for them, though they may have amused themselves by imagining it!" he growled sullenly, looking down, and moving impatiently in his chair.
"They didn't love the people!" yelled Stepan Trofimovitch.

"Oh, how they loved Russia!" "Neither Russia nor the people!" Shatov yelled too, with flashing eyes.
"You can't love what you don't know and they had no conception of the Russian people.

All of them peered at the Russian people through their fingers, and you do too; Byelinsky especially: from that very letter to Gogol one can see it.