“God and immortality. In God is immortality.”

“H’m! It’s more likely Ivan’s right. Good Lord! to think what faith, what force of all kinds, man has lavished for nothing, on that dream, and for how many thousand years. Who is it laughing at man? Ivan! For the last time, once for all, is there a God or not? I ask for the last time?”

“And for the last time there is not.”

“Who is laughing at mankind, Ivan?”

“It must be the devil,” said Ivan, smiling.

“And the devil? Does he exist?”

“No, there’s no devil either.”

“It’s a pity. Damn it all, what wouldn’t I do to the man who first invented God! Hanging on a bitter aspen tree would be too good for him.”

“There would have been no civilisation if they hadn’t invented God.”

“Wouldn’t there have been? Without God?”

“No. And there would have been no brandy either. But I must take your brandy away from you, anyway.”

“Stop, stop, stop, dear boy, one more little glass. I’ve hurt Alyosha’s feelings. You’re not angry with me, Alyosha? My dear little Alexey!”

“No, I am not angry. I know your thoughts. Your heart is better than your head.”

“My heart better than my head, is it? Oh Lord! And that from you. Ivan, do you love Alyosha?”

“Yes.”

“You must love him” (Fyodor Pavlovitch was by this time very drunk). “Listen, Alyosha, I was rude to your elder this morning. But I was excited. But there’s wit in that elder, don’t you think, Ivan?”

“Very likely.”

“There is, there is. Il y a du Piron là dedans. He’s a Jesuit, a Russian one, that is. As he’s an honourable person there’s a hidden indignation boiling within him at having to pretend and affect holiness.”

“But, of course, he believes in God.”

“Not a bit of it. Didn’t you know? Why, he tells every one of himself. That is, not every one, but all the clever people who come to him. He said straight out to Governor Schultz not long ago: ‘Credo, but I don’t know in what.”’

“Really?”

“He really did. But I respect him. There’s something of Mephistopheles about him, or rather of ‘The hero of our time.’ … Arbenin, or what’s his name? … You see, he’s a sensualist. He’s such a sensualist that I should be afraid for my daughter or my wife if she went to confess to him. You know, when he begins telling stories.… The year before last he invited us to tea, tea with liqueur (the ladies send him liqueur) and began telling us about old times till we nearly split our sides.… Especially how he once cured a paralysed woman. ‘If my legs were not bad I know a dance I could dance you,’ he said. What do