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Updated: June 11, 2025
Though he expected no good result from his visit, still Nekhludoff, following Bogatyreff's advice, went to see Toporoff, on whom the sectarians' fate depended. The position occupied by Toporoff, involving as it did an incongruity of purpose, could only be held by a dull man devoid of moral sensibility. Toporoff possessed both these negative qualities.
Toporoff, like all those who are quite destitute of the fundamental religious feeling that recognises the equality and brotherhood of men, was fully convinced that the common people were creatures entirely different from himself, and that the people needed what he could very well do without, for at the bottom of his heart he believed in nothing, and found such a state very convenient and pleasant.
An official who was in the reception-room inquired what Nekhludoff wanted, and when he heard that Nekhludoff meant to hand in a petition to the Emperor, he asked him if he would allow the petition to be read first. Nekhludoff gave it him, and the official took it into the study. Nekhludoff was not immediately asked to come in. Toporoff was reading the petition and shaking his head.
"Then what did these people suffer for?" Nekhludoff asked, as he took the envelope. Toporoff raised his head and smiled, as if Nekhludoff's question gave him pleasure. "That I cannot tell. All I can say is that the interests of the people guarded by us are so important that too great a zeal in matters of religion is not so dangerous or so harmful as the indifference which is now spreading "
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