10 The Brothers Karamazovment where private information is received. Well, this wild
legend belongs to our middle ages — not yours, but ours
— and no one believes it even among us, except the old la-
dies of eighteen stone, not your old ladies I mean, but ours.
We’ve everything you have, I am revealing one of our se-
crets out of friendship for you; though it’s forbidden. This
legend is about Paradise. There was, they say, here on earth
a thinker and philosopher. He rejected everything, ‘laws,
conscience, faith,’ and, above all, the future life. He died; he
expected to go straight to darkness and death and he found
a future life before him. He was astounded and indignant.
‘This is against my principles!’ he said. And he was punished
for that... that is, you must excuse me, I am just repeating
what I heard myself, it’s only a legend... he was sentenced
to walk a quadrillion kilometres in the dark (we’ve adopt-
ed the metric system, you know): and when he has finished
that quadrillion, the gates of heaven would be opened to
him and he’ll be forgiven-.’
‘And what tortures have you in the other world besides
the quadrillion kilometres?’ asked Ivan, with a strange ea-
gerness.
‘What tortures? Ah, don’t ask. In old days we had all sorts,
but now they have taken chiefly to moral punishments —
‘the stings of conscience’ and all that nonsense. We got that,
too, from you, from the softening of your manners. And
who’s the better for it? Only those who have got no con-
science, for how can they be tortured by conscience when
they have none? But decent people who have conscience and
a sense of honour suffer for it. Reforms, when the ground