somehow can't resist, once they give in to those . . . finaglers . . . especially abroad."
"It all comes, I think, from our . . . fatigue," the little old man mumbled with authority, "well, and the manner they have of preaching . . . elegant, their own . . . and they know how to frighten. In the year thirty-two they frightened me in Vienna, I can assure you; only I didn't give in, I fled from them, ha, ha!"
"I heard, my dear man, that you abandoned your post and fled from Vienna to Paris that time with the beautiful Countess Levitsky, and not from a Jesuit," Belokonsky suddenly put in.
"Well, but it was from a Jesuit, all the same it comes out that it was from a Jesuit!" the little old man picked up, laughing at the pleasant memory. "You seem to be very religious, something rarely to be met with nowadays in a young man," he benignly addressed Prince Lev Nikolaevich, who listened open-mouthed and was still shocked; the little old man obviously wanted to get to know the prince more closely; for some reason he had begun to interest him very much.
"Pavlishchev was a bright mind and a Christian, a true Christian," the prince suddenly said, "how could he submit to ... an unchristian faith? . . . Catholicism is the same as an unchristian faith!" he added suddenly, his eyes flashing and staring straight ahead, his gaze somehow taking in everyone at once.
"Well, that's too much," the little old man murmured and looked at Ivan Fyodorovich with astonishment.
"How is it that Catholicism is an unchristian religion?" Ivan Petrovich turned on his chair. "What is it, then?"
"An unchristian faith, first of all!" the prince began speaking again, in extreme agitation and much too sharply. "That's first, and second, Roman Catholicism is even worse than atheism itself, that's my opinion! Yes, that's my opinion! Atheism only preaches a zero, but Catholicism goes further: it preaches a distorted Christ, a Christ it has slandered and blasphemed, a counter Christ! It preaches the Antichrist, I swear to you, I assure you! That is my personal and longstanding conviction, and it has tormented me . . . Roman Catholicism believes that without universal state power the Church on earth cannot stand, and it shouts: Non possumus!* 33In my opinion, Roman Catholicism is not even a faith, but decidedly the continuation of the Western Roman empire, and everything in
*We cannot!
it is subject to that idea, beginning with faith. The pope seized land, an earthly throne, and took up the sword; since then everything has gone on that way, only to the sword they added lies, trickery, deceit, fanaticism, superstition, villainy; they played upon the most holy, truthful, simple-hearted, ardent feelings of the people; they traded everything, everything, for money, for base earthly power. Isn't that the teaching of the Antichrist?! How could atheism not come out of them? Atheism came out of them, out of Roman Catholicism itself! Atheism began, before all else, with them themselves: could they believe in themselves? It grew stronger through repugnance against them; it is a product of their lies and spiritual impotence! Atheism! In Russia so far only exceptional classes of society do not believe, those who have lost their roots, as Evgeny Pavlovich put it so splendidly the other day; while there, in Europe, awful masses of the people themselves are beginning not to believe—formerly from darkness and deceit, but now from fanaticism, from hatred of the Church and of Christianity!"
The prince paused to catch his breath. He was speaking terribly quickly. He was pale and breathless. Everyone exchanged glances; but at last the little old man laughed openly. Prince N. took out his lorgnette and studied the prince, not taking his eyes away. The German poeticule crept out of the corner and moved closer to the table, smiling a sinister smile.
"You greatly ex-ag-ge-rate," Ivan Petrovich drew out with some boredom and even as if embarrassed at something. "In their Church there are also representatives who are worthy of all respect and vir-tu-ous men . . ."
"I never spoke of individual representatives of the Church. I was speaking of Roman Catholicism in its essence, I was speaking of Rome. The Church cannot disappear entirely. I never said that!"
"Agreed, but this is all well known and even—unnecessary and . . . belongs to theology . . ."
"Oh, no, no! Not only to theology, I assure you! It concerns us much more closely than you think. That is our whole mistake, that we're still unable to see that this is not only an exclusively theological matter! For socialism is also a product of Catholicism and the Catholic essence! It, too, like its brother atheism, came from despair, opposing Catholicism in a moral sense, in order to replace the lost moral force of religion with itself, in order to quench the spiritual thirst of thirsting mankind and save it not through Christ, but also through violence! It is also freedom through violence, it is
also unity through blood and the sword! 'Do not dare to believe in God, do not dare to have property, do not dare to have personality, fraternité ou la mort*two million heads!' 34You shall know them by their deeds, 33it is said! And don't think that it's all so innocent and unthreatening for us; oh, we must respond, and swiftly, swiftly! Our Christ, whom we have preserved and they have never known, must shine forth as a response to the West! Not by being slavishly caught on the Jesuits' hook, but by bringing them our Russian civilization, we must now confront them, and let it not be said among us that their preaching is elegant, as someone just said ..."
"But excuse me, excuse me," Ivan Petrovich became terribly worried, looking around and even beginning to get frightened, "your thoughts are all, of course, praiseworthy and full of patriotism, but it's all exaggerated in the highest degree and . . . it's even better if we drop it . . ."
"No, it's not exaggerated, but rather understated; precisely understated, because I'm not able to express it, but. . ."
"Ex-cuse me!"
The prince fell silent. He was sitting upright on his chair and looking at Ivan Petrovich with fixed, burning eyes.
"It seems to me that you've been too greatly shocked by the incident with your benefactor," the little old man observed gently and without losing his equanimity. "You're inflamed . . . perhaps from solitude. If you live more with people, and I hope society will welcome you as a remarkable young man, your animation will, of course, subside, and you will see that it's all much simpler . . . and besides, such rare cases . . . come, in my view, partly from our satiety, and partly from . . . boredom . . ."
"Precisely, precisely so," the prince cried, "a splendid thought! Precisely 'from our boredom,' not from satiety, but, on the contrary, from thirst . . . not from satiety, there you're mistaken! Not only from thirst, but even from inflammation, from feverish thirst! And . . . and don't think it's all on such a small scale that one can simply laugh; forgive me, but one must be able to foresee! The Russian people, as soon as they reach the shore, as soon as they believe it's the shore, are so glad of it that they immediately go to the ultimate pillars. 36Why is that? You marvel at Pavlishchev, you ascribe everything to his madness or to his kindness, but that's not so! And not only we but the whole of Europe marvels, on such occasions, at
*Brotherhood or death.
our Russian passion: if one of us embraces Catholicism, then he's bound to become a Jesuit, and of the most underground sort at that; 37if he becomes an atheist, he is bound to start demanding the eradication of belief in God by force, which means by the sword! Why is that, why is there such frenzy all at once? You really don't know? Because he has found his fatherland, which he had missed here, and he rejoices; he has found the shore, the land, and he rushes to kiss it! It's not only from vainglory, not only from nasty, vainglorious feelings that Russian atheists and Russian Jesuits proceed, but from spiritual pain, spiritual thirst, from the longing for a lofty cause, a firm shore, a native land, in which we've ceased to believe because we've never known it! It's so easy for a Russian man to become an atheist, easier than for anyone else in the whole world! And our people don't simply become atheists, but they must believein atheism, as in a new faith, without ever noticing that they are believing in a zero. Such is our thirst! 'Whoever has no ground under his feet also has no God.' That is not my phrase. It is the phrase of a merchant, an Old Believer, 38I met on my travels. True, he didn't put it that way, he said: 'Whoever has renounced his native land, has also renounced his God.' Only think that some of our most educated people got themselves into flagellantism 39. . . And in that case, incidentally, what makes flagellantism worse than nihilism, Jesuitism, atheism? It may even be a little more profound! But that is how far their anguish went! . . . Open to the thirsting and inflamed companions of Columbus the shores of the New World, open to the Russian man the Russian World, let him find the gold, the treasure, hidden from him in the ground! Show him the future renewal of all mankind and its resurrection, perhaps by Russian thought alone, by the Russian God and Christ, and you'll see what a mighty and righteous, wise and meek giant will rise up before the astonished world, astonished and frightened, because they expect nothing from us but the sword, the sword and violence, because, judging by themselves, they cannot imagine us without barbarism. And that is so to this day, and the more so the further it goes! And . . ."