Stavrogin tried to quicken his pace and get home more quickly. "If the man is drunk, where did he manage to get drunk?" kept occurring to him. "Can it be the cognac?"

"Listen, Stavrogin: to level the mountains is a good idea, not a ridiculous one. I'm for Shigalyov! No need for education, enough of science! There's sufficient material even without science for a thousand years to come, but obedience must be set up. Only one thing is lacking in the world: obedience. The thirst for education is already an aristocratic thirst. As soon as there's just a tiny bit of family or love, there's a desire for property. We'll extinguish desire: we'll get drinking, gossip, denunciation going; we'll get unheard-of depravity going; we'll stifle every genius in infancy. Everything reduced to a common denominator, complete equality.^[154] 'We've learned a trade, and we're honest people, we don't need anything else'—that was the recent response of the English workers. Only the necessary is necessary— henceforth that is the motto of the whole globe. But there is also a need for convulsion; this will be taken care of by us, the rulers. Slaves must have rulers. Complete obedience, complete impersonality, but once every thirty years Shigalyov gets a convulsion going, and they all suddenly start devouring each other, up to a certain point, simply so as not to be bored. Boredom is an aristocratic sensation; in Shigalyovism there will be no desires. Desire and suffering are for us; and for the slaves—Shigalyovism."

"You exclude yourself?" again escaped from Stavrogin.

"And you. You know, I thought of handing the whole world over to the Pope. Let him come out on foot, unshod, and show himself to the mob, as if to say: 'Look what I've been driven to!'—and everyone will swarm after him, even the army. The Pope on top, us around him, and under us—Shigalyovism. It's only necessary that the Internationale agree to the Pope; but it will. And the old codger will instantly agree. Besides, he has no other choice, so remember my words, ha, ha, ha, stupid? Tell me, is it stupid, or not?"

"Enough," Stavrogin muttered in vexation.

"Enough! Listen, I'm dropping the Pope! To hell with Shigalyovism! To hell with the Pope! We need actuality, not Shigalyovism, because Shigalyovism is a piece of jewelry. It's an ideal, it's for the future. Shigalyov is a jeweler and as stupid as every philanthropist. We need dirty work, and Shigalyov despises dirty work. Listen, the Pope will be in the West, and we, we will have you!"

"Leave me alone, drunk man!" Stavrogin muttered, and quickened his pace.

"Stavrogin, you are beautiful!" Pyotr Stepanovich cried out, almost in ecstasy. "Do you know that you are beautiful! The most precious thing in you is that you sometimes don't know it. Oh, I've studied you! I've often looked at you from the side, from a corner! There's even simpleheartedness and naivety in you, do you know that? There is, there still is! You must be suffering, and suffering in earnest, from this simpleheartedness. I love beauty. I am a nihilist, but I love beauty. Do nihilists not love beauty? They just don't love idols, but I love an idol! You are my idol! You insult no one, yet everyone hates you; you have the air of being everyone's equal, yet everyone is afraid of you—this is good. No one will come up and slap you on the shoulder. You're a terrible aristocrat. An aristocrat, when he goes among democrats, is captivating! It's nothing for you to sacrifice life, your own or someone else's. You are precisely what's needed. I, I need precisely such a man as you. I know no one but you. You are a leader, you are a sun, and I am your worm..."

He suddenly kissed his hand. A chill ran down Stavrogin's spine, and he jerked his hand away in fright. They stopped.

"Madman!" whispered Stavrogin.

"Maybe I'm raving, maybe I'm raving!" the other went on in a patter. "But I've thought up the first step. Shigalyov could never think up the first step. The Shigalyovs are many! But one man, only one man in Russia has invented the first step and knows how to do it. That man is me. Why are you staring at me? It's you I need, you, without you I'm a zero. Without you I'm a fly, an idea in a bottle, Columbus without America."

Stavrogin stood looking fixedly into his insane eyes.

"Listen, first we'll get trouble going," Verkhovensky was hurrying terribly, and kept seizing Stavrogin by the left sleeve every moment. "I've already told you: we'll penetrate among the people themselves. Do you know that we're already terribly strong now? Ours aren't only the ones who knife and burn, or perform classic pistol shots, or bite people. That kind only gets in the way. I can conceive of nothing without discipline. I'm a crook, really, not a socialist, ha, ha! Listen, I've counted them all up: the teacher who laughs with children at their God and at their cradle, is already ours. The lawyer who defends an educated murderer by saying that he's more developed than his victims and couldn't help killing to get money, is already ours. Schoolboys who kill a peasant just to see how it feels, are ours. Jurors who acquit criminals right and left, are ours. The prosecutor who trembles in court for fear of being insufficiently liberal, is ours, ours. Administrators, writers—oh, a lot of them, an awful lot of them are ours, and they don't know it themselves! On the other hand, the docility of schoolboys and little fools has reached the highest point; their mentors all have burst gallbladders; everywhere there is vanity in immeasurable measure, appetites beastly, unheard-of... Do you know, do you know how much we can achieve with little ready-made ideas alone? When I left, Littré's thesis that crime is insanity was raging; I come back— crime is no longer insanity but precisely common sense itself, almost a duty, at any rate a noble protest: 'But how can a developed murderer not murder, if he needs money!'^[155] And this is just the fruit. The Russian God has already folded in the face of 'rotgut.' The people are drunk, mothers are drunk, children are drunk, the churches are empty, and in the courts it's 'two hundred strokes, or fetch us a pot.' Oh, just let this generation grow up! Only it's a pity there's no time to wait, otherwise they could get themselves even drunker! Ah, what a pity there are no proletarians! But there will be, there will be, we're getting there..."

"It's also a pity we've grown more stupid," Stavrogin muttered, and moved on his way.

"Listen, I myself saw a six-year-old child leading his drunken mother home, and she was swearing at him in foul language. You think I'm glad of that? When it's in our hands, we may even cure it ... if need be we'll drive them into the desert for forty years^[156]... But one or two generations of depravity are necessary now, an unheard-of, mean little depravity, that turns men into vile, cowardly, cruel, self-loving slime—that's what's needed! And with a bit of 'fresh blood' to boot, for the sake of habit. Why are you laughing? I'm not contradicting myself. I'm only contradicting the philanthropists and Shigalyovism, not myself. I'm a crook, not a socialist. Ha, ha, ha! It's just a pity there's so little time. I promised Karmazinov I'd start in May and be done by the Protection. Too soon? Ha, ha! Do you know what I'm going to tell you, Stavrogin: so far there's been no cynicism in the Russian people, though they swear in foul language. Do you know that the enslaved serf had more self-respect than Karmazinov? He got flogged, but he upheld his gods, and Karmazinov did not."

"Well, Verkhovensky, I'm listening to you for the first time, and listening in amazement," said Nikolai Vsevolodovich. "So you're really not a socialist, but some sort of political... climber?"