The Brothers Karamazov
I haven’t been since. I saw a devil sitting on one man’s chest
hiding under his cassock, only his horns poked out; another
had one peeping out of his pocket with such sharp eyes, he
was afraid of me; another settled in the unclean belly of one,
another was hanging round a man’s neck, and so he was
carrying him about without seeing him.’
‘You — can see spirits?’ the monk inquired.
‘I tell you I can see, I can see through them. When I was
coming out from the Superior’s I saw one hiding from me
behind the door, and a big one, a yard and a half or more
high, with a thick long grey tail, and the tip of his tail was in
the crack of the door and I was quick and slammed the door,
pinching his tail in it. He squealed and began to struggle,
and I made the sign of the cross over him three times. And
he died on the spot like a crushed spider. He must have rot-
ted there in the corner and be stinking, but they don’t see,
they don’t smell it. It’s a year since I have been there. I reveal
it to you, as you are a stranger.’
‘Your words are terrible! But, holy and blessed father,’
said the monk, growing bolder and bolder, ‘is it true, as they
noise abroad even to distant lands about you, that you are in
continual communication with the Holy Ghost?’
‘He does fly down at times.’
‘How does he fly down? In what form?’
‘As a bird.’
‘The Holy Ghost in the form of a dove?’
‘There’s the Holy Ghost and there’s the Holy Spirit. The
Holy Spirit can appear as other birds — sometimes as a
swallow, sometimes a goldfinch and sometimes as a blue-