" We quickly and rudely checked the man
who dared to say such words. We had to love something. We found it
out and loved it, and the something which the twenty-six of us loved
had to be inaccessible to each of us as our sanctity, and any one
coming out against us in this matter was our enemy. We loved,
perhaps, not what was really good, but then we were twenty-six, and
therefore we always wanted the thing dear to us to be sacred in the
eyes of others. Our love is not less painful than hatred. And
perhaps this is why some haughty people claim that our hatred is more
flattering than our love. But why, then, don't they run from us, if
that is true?
Aside from the biscuit department our proprietor had also a shop for
white bread; it was in the same house, separated from our ditch by a
wall; the _bulochniks_ (white-bread bakers), there were four of them,
kept aloof, considering their work cleaner than ours, and therefore
considering themselves better than we were; they never came to our
shop, laughed at us whenever they met us in the yard; nor did we go
to them. The proprietor had forbidden this for fear lest we might
steal loaves of white bread.
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