“So, you scoundrel, you’re troubling yourself over the salvation of my soul?”

“One needs to do a good deed sometimes, at least. But I see you’re angry with me, really angry!”

“Buffoon! And have you ever tempted them, the ones who eat locusts and pray for seventeen years in the barren desert, and get overgrown with moss?”

“My dear, I’ve done nothing else. One forgets the whole world and all worlds, and clings to such a one, because a diamond like that is just too precious; one such soul is sometimes worth a whole constellation—we have our own arithmetic. It’s a precious victory! And some of them, by God, are not inferior to you in development, though you won’t believe it: they can contemplate such abysses of belief and disbelief at one and the same moment that, really, it sometimes seems that another hair’s breadth and a man would fall in ‘heel-over-headed,’ as the actor Gorbunov says.”^[319]

“So, what? They put your nose out of joint?” “My friend,” the visitor observed sententiously, “it’s sometimes better to have your nose put out of joint than to have no nose at all, as one afflicted marquis (he must have been treated by a specialist) uttered not long ago in confession to his Jesuit spiritual director. I was present—it was just lovely. ‘Give me back my nose!’ he said, beating his breast. ‘My son,’ the priest hedged, ‘through the inscrutable decrees of Providence everything has its recompense, and a visible calamity sometimes brings with it a great, if invisible, profit. If a harsh fate has deprived you of your nose, your profit is that now for the rest of your life no one will dare tell you that you have had your nose put out of joint.’ ‘Holy father, that’s no consolation!’ the desperate man exclaimed. ‘On the contrary, I’d be delighted to have my nose put out of joint every day of my life, if only it were where it belonged!’ ‘My son,’ the priest sighed, ‘one cannot demand all blessings at once. That is to murmur against Providence, which even here has not forgotten you; for if you cry, as you have just cried, that you would gladly have your nose put out of joint for the rest of your life, in this your desire has already been fulfilled indirectly; for, having lost your nose, you have thereby, as it were, had your nose put out of joint all the same ...”

“Pah, how stupid!” cried Ivan.

“My friend, I merely wanted to make you laugh, but I swear that is real Jesuit casuistry, and I swear it all happened word for word as I’ve told it to you. That was a recent incident, and it gave me a lot of trouble. The unfortunate young man went home and shot himself that same night; I was with him constantly up to the last moment ... As for those little Jesuit confessional booths, that truly is my pet amusement in the sadder moments of life. Here’s another incident for you, from just the other day. A girl comes to an old priest, a blonde, from Normandy, about twenty years old. Beautiful, buxom, all nature—enough to make your mouth water. She bends down and whispers her sin to the priest through the little hole. ‘What, my daughter, can you have fallen again so soon ... ?’ the priest exclaims.’O Sancta Maria, what’s this I hear? With another man now? But how long will it go on? What shame! ‘ ‘Ah, mon père,’ the sinner replies, bathed in tears of repentance, ‘ça lui fait tant de plaisir, et à moi si peu de peine!’^[320]Well, just imagine such an answer! At that even I backed off: it was the very cry of nature, which, if you like, is better than innocence itself. I remitted her sin on the spot and turned to leave, but I had to come back at once: I heard the priest arranging a rendezvous with her for that evening through the hole; the old man was solid as a rock, but he fell in an instant! It was nature, the truth of nature, claiming its own! What, are you turning your nose up again, are you angry again? I really don’t know how to please you . . .” “Leave me, you’re throbbing in my brain like a persistent nightmare,” Ivan groaned painfully, powerless before his apparition. “I’m bored with you, it’s unbearable, agonizing! I’d give a lot to be able to get rid of you!”

“I repeat, moderate your demands, don’t demand ‘all that is great and beautiful’^[321] of me, and we shall live in peace and harmony, you’ll see,” the gentleman said imposingly. “Indeed, you’re angry with me that I have not appeared to you in some sort of red glow, ‘in thunder and lightning,’ with scorched wings, but have presented myself in such a modest form. You’re insulted, first, in your aesthetic feelings, and, second, in your pride: how could such a banal devil come to such a great man? No, you’ve still got that romantic little streak in you, so derided by Belinsky.^[322] It can’t be helped, young man. This evening, as I was getting ready to come to you, I did think of appearing, for a joke, in the form of a retired Regular State Councillor who had served in the Caucasus, with the star of the Lion and Sun pinned to my frock coat, but I was decidedly afraid, because you’d have thrashed me just for daring to tack the Lion and Sun on my frock coat, instead of the North Star or Sirius at least.^[323]And you keep saying how stupid I am. But, my God, I don’t make any claims to being your equal in intelligence. Mephistopheles, when he comes to Faust, testifies of himself that he desires evil, yet does only good.^[324] Well, let him do as he likes, it’s quite the opposite with me. I am perhaps the only man in all of nature who loves the truth and sincerely desires good. I was there when the Word who died on the cross was ascending into heaven, carrying on his bosom the soul of the thief who was crucified to the right of him, I heard the joyful shrieks of the cherubim singing and shouting ‘Hosannah,’ and the thundering shout of rapture from the seraphim, which made heaven and all creation shake. And, I swear by all that’s holy, I wanted to join the chorus and shout ‘Hosannah’ with everyone else. It was right on my lips, it was already bursting from my breast ... you know, I’m very sensitive and artistically susceptible. But common sense—oh, it’s the most unfortunate quality of my nature—kept me within due bounds even then, and I missed the moment! For what—I thought at that same moment—what will happen after my ‘Hosannah? Everything in the world will immediately be extinguished and no events will occur. And so, solely because of my official duty and my social position, I was forced to quash the good moment in myself and stay with my nasty tricks. Someone takes all the honor of the good for himself and only leaves me the nasty tricks. But I don’t covet the honor of living as a moocher, I’m not ambitious. Why, of all beings in the world, am I alone condemned to be cursed by all decent people, and even to be kicked with boots, for, when I become incarnate, I must occasionally take such consequences as well? There’s a secret here, I know, but they won’t reveal this secret to me for anything, because then, having learned what it’s all about, I might just roar ‘Hosannah,’ and the necessary minus would immediately disappear and sensibleness would set in all over the world, and with it, of course, the end of everything, even of newspapers and journals, because who would subscribe to them? I know that I will finally be reconciled, that I, too, will finish my quadrillion and be let in on the secret. But until that happens I sulk and grudgingly fulfill my purpose: to destroy thousands so that one may be saved. For instance, how many souls had to be destroyed, and honest reputations put to shame, in order to get just one righteous Job, with whom they baited me so wickedly in olden times! No, until the secret is revealed, two truths exist for me: one is theirs, from there, and so far completely unknown to me; the other is mine. And who knows which is preferable ... Are you asleep?”

“What else?” Ivan groaned spitefully. “Everything in my nature that is stupid, long outlived, mulled over in my mind, flung away like carrion—you are now offering to me as some kind of news!”