"Oh! do, please, hear me out," interrupted Soloveitchik, with a
pleading gesture. "It might have been better--"
"For Sarudine, certainly," "No, for you, too; for you, too."
"Oh! Soloveitchik," replied Sanine, with a touch of annoyance, "a truce
to that silly old notion about moral victory; and a false notion, too.
Moral victory does not consist in offering one's cheek to the smiter,
but in being right before one's own conscience. How this is achieved is
a matter of chance, of circumstances. There is nothing so horrible as
slavery. Yet most horrible of all is it when a man whose inmost soul
rebels against coercion and force yet submits thereto in the name of
some power that is mightier than he."
Soloveitchik clasped his head with both hands, as one distraught.
"I've not got the brains to understand it all," he said plaintively.
"And I don't in the least know how I ought to live."
"Why should you know? Live as the bird flies. If it wants to move its
right wing, it moves it. If it wants to fly round a tree, it does so."
"Yes, a bird may do that, but I'm not a bird; I'm a man," said
Soloveitchik with naive earnestness.
Sanine laughed outright, and for a moment the merry sound echoed
through the gloomy courtyard.
Soloveitchik shook his head. "No," he murmured sadly, "all that's only
talk. You can't tell me how I ought to live. Nobody can tell me that."
"That's very true. Nobody can tell you that. The art of living implies
a talent; and he who does not possess that talent perishes or makes
shipwreck of his life."
"How calmly you say that! As if you knew everything! Pray don't be
offended, but have you always been like that--always so calm?" asked
Soloveitchik, keenly interested.
"Oh! no; though certainly my temperament has usually been calm enough,
but there were times when I was harassed by doubts of all kinds. At one
time, indeed, I dreamed that the ideal life for me was the Christian
life."
Sanine paused, and Soloveitchik leaned forward eagerly as if to hear
something of the utmost importance.
"At that time I had a comrade, a student of mathematics, Ivan Lande by
name. He was a wonderful man, of indomitable moral force; a Christian,
not from conviction, but by nature. In his life all Christianity was
mirrored. If struck, he did not strike back; he treated every man as
his brother, and in woman he did not recognize the sexual attraction.
Do you remember Semenoff?"