The Brothers Karamazovwisdom. I’m like the philosopher, Diderot, your reverence.
Did you ever hear, most Holy Father, how Diderot went to
see the Metropolitan Platon, in the time of the Empress
Catherine? He went in and said straight out, ‘There is no
God.’ To which the great bishop lifted up his finger and an-
swered, ‘The fool has said in his heart there is no God and
he fell down at his feet on the spot. ‘I believe,’ he cried, ‘and
will be christened.’ And so he was. Princess Dashkov was
his godmother, and Potyomkin his godfather.’
‘Fyodor Pavlovitch, this is unbearable! You know you’re
telling lies and that that stupid anecdote isn’t true. Why are
you playing the fool?’ cried Miusov in a shaking voice.
‘I suspected all my life that it wasn’t true,’ Fyodor Pavlov-
itch cried with conviction. ‘But I’ll tell you the whole truth,
gentlemen. Great elder! Forgive me, the last thing about
Diderot’s christening I made up just now. I never thought of
it before. I made it up to add piquancy. I play the fool, Pyotr
Alexandrovitch, to make myself agreeable. Though I really
don’t know myself, sometimes, what I do it for. And as for
Diderot, I heard as far as ‘the fool hath said in his heart’
twenty times from the gentry about here when I was young.
I heard your aunt, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, tell the story. They
all believe to this day that the infidel Diderot came to dis-
pute about God with the Metropolitan Platon...’
Miusov got up, forgetting himself in his impatience. He
was furious, and conscious of being ridiculous.
What was taking place in the cell was really incredible.
For forty or fifty years past, from the times of former el-
ders, no visitors had entered that cell without feelings of the