Demons

necessary afterwards. Make a vow to yourself, and with this great sacrifice you will buy everything that you long for, and even what you do not expect, for you cannot understand now what you will receive!'

Stavrogin heard out his last suggestion seriously, even very seriously.

'You are quite simply suggesting that I become a monk in that monastery? Much though I respect you, that is precisely what I should have expected. Well, I shall even confess to you that the thought has already flashed in me at moments of faintheartedness: to hide away from people in a monastery, at least for a time, once I had made these pages public. But I immediately blushed at such baseness. But to take monastic vows—that never entered my head even in moments of the most fainthearted fear.'

'You needn't be in a monastery, you needn't take vows, just be a novice secretly, unapparently, it may even be done so that you live entirely in the world...'

'Stop it, Father Tikhon,' Stavrogin interrupted squeamishly and rose from the chair. Tikhon rose, too.

'What's the matter with you?' he suddenly cried out, peering at Tikhon almost in fright. The man stood before him, his hands pressed together in front of him, and a painful spasm, as if from the greatest fear, passed momentarily over his face.

'What's the matter? What's the matter?' Stavrogin repeated, rushing to support him. It seemed to him that the man was about to fall over.

'I see ... I see as in reality,' Tikhon exclaimed in a soul-penetrating voice and with an expression of the most intense grief, 'that you, poor, lost youth, have never stood so close to the most terrible crime as at this moment!'

'Calm yourself!' Stavrogin kept repeating, decidedly alarmed for him. 'I may still put it off... you're right, I may not be able to endure it, and in my spite I'll commit a new crime ... all that is so... you're right, I'll put it off.'

'No, not after the publication, but before the publication of the pages, a day, maybe an hour before the great step, you will throw yourself into a new crime as a way out, only to avoid publishing these pages!'

Stavrogin even trembled with wrath and almost with fear.

'Cursed psychologist!' he broke off suddenly in a rage and, without looking back, left the cell.

Notes

For many details in the following notes we are indebted to the commentaries in the Soviet Academy of Sciences edition, volume a (Leningrad, 1975).

^[i] 'They treated me like an old cotton bonnet!'

^[ii] 'can break my existence in two'

^[iii] 'in every land, [even] in the land of Makar and his calves'

^[iv] 'I am a [mere sponger] and nothing more! Yes, nothing more!'

^[v] 'among these seminarians'

^[vi] 'for our holy Russia.'

^[vii] 'but let us distinguish'

^[viii] 'Just between us'

^[ix] 'These interminable Russian words!'

^[x] 'You know, with us ... In a word'

^[xi] 'in order to show you his power.'

^[xii] 'no, it's very curious'

^[xiii] 'you know that singing and the book of Job'

^[xiv] 'and he showed his power'

^[xv] 'what an idea, red!' or 'what a red idea!'

^[xvi] 'you know'

^[xvii] 'with such pomposity'

^[xviii] 'Really?'

^[xix] 'Charming child!'

^[xx] 'And then, since one always finds more monks than reason'

^[xxi] 'My word, dear'

^[xxii] 'Oh, it's a very stupid story! I was waiting for you, my good friend, in order to tell you...'

^[xxiii] 'AII men of genius and progress in Russia were, are and always will be [card players] and [drunkards] who drink in zapoi [bouts]'

^[xxiv] 'But, just between us'

^[xxv] 'But she's a child!'

^[xxvi] 'Yes, I mistook one word for another. But... it's all the same'