about. He had heard, like everyone else, that particularly in St Petersburg there were to be found progressives, nihilists, public accusers, and so on, and so forth, but, like many people, he tended to exaggerate and distort the sense and significance of these labels to the point of the absurd. For several years now he had feared more than anything else being made the victim of a public accusation, and this was the principal reason for his constant, exaggerated sense of anxiety,
