"I wouldn't say you haven't," Stavrogin remarked cautiously. "You took it ardently, and have altered it ardently without noticing it. The fact alone that you reduce God to a mere attribute of nationality..."

He suddenly began to observe Shatov with increased and particular attention, not so much his words as the man himself.

"I reduce God to an attribute of nationality?" Shatov cried. "On the contrary, I raise the nation up to God. Has it ever been otherwise? The nation is the body of God. Any nation is a nation only as long as it has its own particular God and rules out all other gods in the world with no conciliation; as long as it believes that through its God it will be victorious and will drive all other gods from the world. Thus all have believed from the beginning of time, all great nations at least, all that were marked out to any extent, all that have stood at the head of mankind. There is no going against the fact. The Jews lived only to wait for the true God, and left the true God to the world. The Greeks deified nature, and bequeathed the world their religion, that is, philosophy and art. Rome deified the nation in the state, and bequeathed the state to the nations. France, throughout her whole long history, has simply been the embodiment and development of the idea of the Roman God, and if she has finally flung her Roman God down into the abyss and plunged into atheism, which for the time being they call socialism, that is solely because atheism is, after all, healthier than Roman Catholicism. If a great nation does not believe that the truth is in it alone (precisely in it alone, and that exclusively), if it does not believe that it alone is able and called to resurrect and save everyone with its truth, then it at once ceases to be a great nation, and at once turns into ethnographic material and not a great nation. A truly great nation can never be reconciled with a secondary role in mankind, or even with a primary, but inevitably and exclusively with the first. Any that loses this faith is no longer a nation. But the truth is one, and therefore only one among the nations can have the true God, even if the other nations do have their particular and great gods. The only 'god-bearing' nation is the Russian nation, and... and ... do you, do you really regard me as such a fool, Stavrogin," he suddenly cried out frenziedly, "who cannot even tell whether his words now are old, decrepit rubbish, ground up in all the Slavophil mills of Moscow, or a completely new word, the last word, the only word of renewal and resurrection, and... what do I care about your laughter at this moment! What do I care that you don't understand me at all, not at all, not a word, not a sound! ... Oh, how I despise your proud laughter and look at this moment!"

He jumped up from his place; there was even foam on his lips.

"On the contrary, Shatov, on the contrary," Stavrogin said, with remarkable seriousness and restraint, without rising from his place, "on the contrary, with your ardent words you've revived many extremely powerful recollections in me. I recognize in your words my own state of mind two years ago, and I shall no longer say to you, as I just did, that you have exaggerated my thoughts of that time. It even seems to me that they were still more exceptional, still more absolute, and I assure you for the third time that I would wish very much to confirm everything you've said, even to a word, but..."

"But you need a hare?"

"Wha-a-at?"

"Your own vile expression," Shatov laughed spitefully, sitting down again.”‘To make sauce from a hare, you need a hare; to have belief in God, you need a God,' you went around saying in Petersburg, I'm told, like Nozdryov, who wanted to catch a hare by its hind legs."^[94]

"No, he was precisely boasting that he'd already caught it. Incidentally, though, allow me to trouble you with a question as well, the more so as it seems to me I now have full right to ask. Tell me about your hare—have you caught it, or is it still running around?"

"Do not dare to ask me in such words; use others, others!" Shatov suddenly trembled all over.

"As you wish, here are your others," Nikolai Vsevolodovich looked at him sternly. "I simply wanted to know: do you yourself believe in God, or not?"

"I believe in Russia, I believe in her Orthodoxy ... I believe in the body of Christ ... I believe that the new coming will take place in Russia ... I believe..." Shatov babbled frenziedly.

"But in God? In God?"

"I ... I will believe in God."

Not a muscle moved in Stavrogin's face. Shatov looked at him fierily, defiantly, as if he wanted to burn him with his eyes.

"But I didn't tell you I don't believe at all!" he finally cried. "I'm only letting you know that I am a wretched, boring book, and nothing more so far, so far... But perish my name! The point is in you, not me... I'm a man without talent, and can only give my blood, and nothing more, like any other man without talent. Perish my blood as well! I'm talking about you, I've been waiting here two years for you... I've just been dancing naked for you for half an hour. You, you alone could raise this banner! ..."

He did not finish, but leaned his elbows on the table and propped his head in both hands, as if in despair.

"I'll merely note, incidentally, as a strange thing," Stavrogin suddenly interrupted, "why is it that everyone is foisting some banner on me? Pyotr Verkhovensky is also convinced that I could 'raise their banner,' or so at least his words were conveyed to me. He's taken it into his head that I could play the role of Stenka Razin^[95] for them, 'owing to my extraordinary capacity for crime'—also his words."

"How's that?" Shatov asked.”‘Owing to your extraordinary capacity for crime'?"

"Precisely."

"Hm. And is it true that you," he grinned spitefully, "is it true that in Petersburg you belonged to some secret society of bestial sensualists? Is it true that the Marquis de Sade^[96] could take lessons from you? Is it true that you lured and corrupted children? Speak, do not dare to lie," he cried, completely beside himself, "Nikolai Stavrogin cannot lie before Shatov who hit him in the face! Speak everything, and if it's true, I'll kill you at once, right here, on the spot!"

"I did speak those words, but it was not I who offended children," said Stavrogin, but only after too long a silence. He turned pale, and his eyes lit up.

"But you spoke of it!" Shatov went on imperiously, not taking his flashing eyes from Stavrogin. "Is it true that you insisted you knew no difference in beauty between some brutal sensual stunt and any great deed, even the sacrifice of life for mankind? Is it true that you found a coincidence of beauty, a sameness of pleasure at both poles?"

"It's impossible to answer like this ... I won't answer," muttered Stavrogin, who could very well have gotten up and left, but did not get up and leave.

"I don't know why evil is bad and good is beautiful either, but I do know why the sense of this distinction is faded and effaced in such gentlemen as the Stavrogins," Shatov, trembling all over, would not let go. "Do you know why you married so disgracefully and basely then? Precisely because here the disgrace and senselessness reached the point of genius! Oh, you don't go straying along the verge, you boldly fly down headfirst. You married out of a passion for torture, out of a passion for remorse, out of moral sensuality. It was from nervous strain... The challenge to common sense was too enticing! Stavrogin and a scrubby, feebleminded, beggarly lame girl! When you bit the governor's ear, did you feel the sensuality of it? Did you? Idle, loafing young squire—did you feel it?"