Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 10 didn’t ask out of sympathy. You needn’t answer. Now rheu-
matism has come in again-.’
‘Fool!’ repeated Ivan.
‘You keep saying the same thing; but I had such an attack
of rheumatism last year that I remember it to this day.’
‘The devil have rheumatism!’
‘Why not, if I sometimes put on fleshly form? I put on
fleshly form and I take the consequences. Satan sum et nihil
humanum a me alienum puto.’*
- I am Satan, and deem nothing human alien to me.
‘What, what, Satan sum et nihil humanum... that’s not
bad for the devil!’
‘I am glad I’ve pleased you at last.’
‘But you didn’t get that from me.’ Ivan stopped sud-
denly, seeming struck. ‘That never entered my head, that’s
strange.’
‘C’est du nouveau, n’est-ce pas?’* This time I’ll act hon-
estly and explain to you. Listen, in dreams and especially
in nightmares, from indigestion or anything, a man sees
sometimes such artistic visions, such complex and real ac-
tuality, such events, even a whole world of events, woven
into such a plot, with such unexpected details from the most
exalted matters to the last button on a cuff, as I swear Leo
Tolstoy has never invented. Yet such dreams are sometimes
seen not by writers, but by the most ordinary people, offi-
cials, journalists, priests.... The subject is a complete enigma.
A statesman confessed to me, indeed, that all his best ideas
came to him when he was asleep. Well, that’s how it is now,
though I am your hallucination, yet just as in a nightmare, I