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- 344 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
soon discovered that Andrey Semyonovitch was a commonplace
simpleton, but that by no means reassured Pyotr Petrovitch.
Even if he had been certain that all the progressives were fools
like him, it would not have allayed his uneasiness. All the doc-
trines, the ideas, the systems with which Andrey Semyonovitch
pestered him had no interest for him. He had his own object —
he simply wanted to find out at once what was happening here.
Had these people any power or not? Had he anything to fear
from them? Would they expose any enterprise of his? And
what precisely was now the object of their attacks? Could he
somehow make up to them and get round them if they really
were powerful? Was this the thing to do or not? Couldn't he
gain something through them? In fact hundreds of questions
presented themselves.
Andrey Semyonovitch was an anxmic, scrofulous little man,
with strangely flaxen mutton-chop whiskers of which he was
very proud. He was a clerk and had almost always something
wrong with his eyes. He was rather soft-hearted, but self-confi-
dent and sometimes extremely conceited in sj>eech which had an
absurd effect, incongruous with his little figure. He was one of
the lodgers most respected by Amalia Ivanovna, for he did not
get drunk and paid regularly for his lodging. Andrey Semyono-
Wtch really was rather stupid; he attached himself to the cause
of progress and "our younger generation" from enthusiasm. He
was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-
animate abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs, who
attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarise
it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely.
Though Lebeziatnikov was so good-natured, he, too, was be-
ginning todislike Pyotr Petrovitch. This happened on both sides
unconsciously. However simple Andrey Semyonovitch might
be, he began to see that Pyotr Petrovitch was duping him and
secretly despising him, and that "he was not the right sort of
man." He had tried expounding to him the system of Fou-
rier and the Darwinian theory, but of late Pyotr Petrovitch be-
gan to listen too sarcastically and even to be rude. The fact was
he had begun instinctively to guess that Lebeziatnikov was not
merely a commonplace simpleton, but, perhaps, a liar, too, and
that he had no connections of any consequence even in his own
circle, but had simply picked things up third-hand; and that
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