0 The Brothers Karamazov‘You’ve had another glass. That’s enough.’
‘Wait a bit. I’ll have one more, and then another, and
then I’ll stop. No, stay, you interrupted me. At Mokroe I
was talking to an old man, and he told me: ‘There’s nothing
we like so much as sentencing girls to be thrashed, and we
always give the lads the job of thrashing them. And the girl
he has thrashed to-day, the young man will ask in marriage
to-morrow. So it quite suits the girls, too,’ he said. There’s a
set of de Sades for you! But it’s clever, anyway. Shall we go
over and have a look at it, eh? Alyosha, are you blushing?
Don’t be bashful, child. I’m sorry I didn’t stay to dinner at
the Superior’s and tell the monks about the girls at Mokroe.
Alyosha, don’t be angry that I offended your Superior this
morning. I lost my temper. If there is a God, if He exists,
then, of course, I’m to blame, and I shall have to answer for
it. But if there isn’t a God at all, what do they deserve, your
fathers? It’s not enough to cut their heads off, for they keep
back progress. Would you believe it, Ivan, that that lacer-
ates my sentiments? No, you don’t believe it as I see from
your eyes. You believe what people say, that I’m nothing but
a buffoon. Alyosha, do you believe that I’m nothing but a
buffoon?’
‘No, I don’t believe it.’
‘And I believe you don’t, and that you speak the truth. You
look sincere and you speak sincerely. But not Ivan. Ivan’s
supercilious.... I’d make an end of your monks, though, all
the same. I’d take all that mystic stuff and suppress it, once
for all, all over Russia, so as to bring all the fools to reason.
And the gold and the silver that would flow into the mint!’