In his 1872 novel Devils Fyodor Dostoevsky describes the gathering of a group of intellectual and affluent potential revolutionaries for an evening of discussion.

The meeting takes place in the salon of a large house in a provincial town far from Saint Petersburg.  There is an atmosphere of risk, but also of excitement. Some of those in the room are devout, some of them are atheist; some of them are financially-independent individuals, others are army officers; some of them are ageing sceptics, others are young zealots some in the room …