" "No!" Konstantin Levin broke in with still greater heat; "the emancipation of the serfs was a different matter.

There self-interest did come in.

One longed to throw off that yoke that crushed us, all decent people among us.

But to be a town councilor and discuss how many dustmen are needed, and how chimneys shall be constructed in the town in which I don't live--to serve on a jury and try a peasant who's stolen a flitch of bacon, and listen for six hours at a stretch to all sorts of jabber from the counsel for the defense and the prosecution, and the president cross-examining my old half-witted Alioshka, 'Do you admit, prisoner in the dock, the fact of the removal of the bacon?' 'Eh?'" Konstantin Levin had warmed to his subject, and began mimicking the president and the half-witted Alioshka: it seemed to him that it was all to the point.