Notes from a Dead House (Vintage Classics)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Strangely enough, there are even some among them who are not kind people at all, and yet they sometimes acquire great popularity. They are not squeamish, they are not disgusted by the people under them—there, it seems to me, is where the reason lies! You see nothing of the clean-handed little squire in them, you catch no whiff of the fine lord, but they have a sort of special, inborn, common-folk smell, and, my God, how sensitive the people are to that smell! What won’t they give for it! They are even ready to exchange the most merciful man for the most severe, so long as he gives off their own homespun smell. And what if the man with their smell is also really kindhearted, though in his own way? Then he’s priceless!