BUT Balaam's ass had suddenly spoken. The subject was a strange

one. Grigory had gone in the morning to make purchases, and had

heard from the shopkeeper Lukyanov the story of a Russian soldier

which had appeared in the newspaper of that day. This soldier had been

taken prisoner in some remote part of Asia, and was threatened with an

immediate agonising death if he did not renounce Christianity and

follow Islam. He refused to deny his faith, and was tortured, flayed

alive, and died, praising and glorifying Christ. Grigory had related

the story at table. Fyodor Pavlovitch always liked, over the dessert

after dinner, to laugh and talk, if only with Grigory. This

afternoon he was in a particularly good-humoured and expansive mood.

Sipping his brandy and listening to the story, he observed that they

ought to make a saint of a soldier like that, and to take his skin

to some monastery. "That would make the people flock, and bring the

money in."

    Grigory frowned, seeing that Fyodor Pavlovitch was by no means

touched, but, as usual, was beginning to scoff. At that moment

Smerdyakov, who was standing by the door, smiled. Smerdyakov often

waited at table towards the end of dinner, and since Ivan's arrival in

our town he had done so every day.

    "What are you grinning at?" asked Fyodor Pavlovitch, catching

the smile instantly, and knowing that it referred to Grigory.

    "Well, my opinion is," Smerdyakov began suddenly and

unexpectedly in a loud voice, "that if that laudable soldier's exploit

was so very great there would have been, to my thinking, no sin in

it if he had on such an emergency renounced, so to speak, the name

of Christ and his own christening, to save by that same his life,

for good deeds, by which, in the course of years to expiate his

cowardice."

    "How could it not be a sin? You're talking nonsense. For that

you'll go straight to hell and be roasted there like mutton," put in

Fyodor Pavlovitch.

    It was at this point that Alyosha came in, and Fyodor

Pavlovitch, as we have seen, was highly delighted at his appearance.

    "We're on your subject, your subject," he chuckled gleefully,

making Alyosha sit down to listen.

    "As for mutton, that's not so, and there'll be nothing there for

this, and there shouldn't be either, if it's according to justice,"

Smerdyakov maintained stoutly.

    "How do you mean 'according to justice'?" Fyodor Pavlovitch

cried still more gaily, nudging Alyosha with his knee.

    "He's a rascal, that's what he is!" burst from Grigory. He

looked Smerdyakov wrathfully in the face.

    "As for being a rascal, wait a little, Grigory Vassilyevitch,"

answered Smerdyakov with perfect composure. "You'd better consider

yourself that, once I am taken prisoner by the enemies of the

Christian race, and they demand from me to curse the name of God and

to renounce my holy christening, I am fully entitled to act by my

own reason, since there would be no sin in it."

    "But you've said that before. Don't waste words. Prove it,"

cried Fyodor Pavlovitch.

    "Soup-maker!" muttered Grigory contemptuously.

    "As for being a soup-maker, wait a bit, too, and consider for

yourself, Grigory Vassilyevitch, without abusing me. For as soon as

I say to those enemies, 'No, I'm not a Christian, and I curse my

true God,' then at once, by God's high judgment, I become

immediately and specially anathema accursed, and am cut off from the

Holy Church, exactly as though I were a heathen, so that at that

very instant, not only when I say it aloud, but when I think of saying

it, before a quarter of a second has passed, I am cut off. Is that

so or not, Grigory Vassilyevitch?"

    He addressed Grigory with obvious satisfaction, though he was

really answering Fyodor Pavlovitch's questions, and was well aware

of it, and intentionally pretending that Grigory had asked the

questions.

    "Ivan," cried Fyodor Pavlovitch suddenly, "stoop down for me to

whisper. He's got this all up for your benefit. He wants you to praise

him. Praise him."

    Ivan listened with perfect seriousness to his father's excited

whisper.

    "Stay, Smerdyakov, be quiet a minute," cried Fyodor Pavlovitch

once more. "Ivan, your ear again."

    Ivan bent down again with a perfectly grave face.

    "I love you as I do Alyosha. Don't think I don't love you. Some

brandy?"

    "Yes.- But you're rather drunk yourself," thought Ivan, looking

steadily at his father.

    He was watching Smerdyakov with great curiosity.

    "You're anathema accursed, as it is, Grigory suddenly burst out,

"and how dare you argue, you rascal, after that, if- "

    "Don't scold him, Grigory, don't scold him," Fyodor Pavlovitch cut

him short.

    "You should wait, Grigory Vassilyevitch, if only a short time, and

listen, for I haven't finished all I had to say. For at the very

moment I become accursed, at that same highest moment, I become

exactly like a heathen, and my christening is taken off me and becomes

of no avail. Isn't that so?"

    "Make haste and finish, my boy," Fyodor Pavlovitch urged him,

sipping from his wineglass with relish.

    "And if I've ceased to be a Christian, then I told no lie to the

enemy when they asked whether I was a Christian or not a Christian,

seeing I had already been relieved by God Himself of my Christianity

by reason of the thought alone, before I had time to utter a word to

the enemy. And if I have already been discharged, in what manner and

with what sort of justice can I be held responsible as a Christian

in the other world for having denied Christ, when, through the very

thought alone, before denying Him I had been relieved from my

christening? If I'm no longer a Christian, then I can't renounce

Christ, for I've nothing then to renounce. Who will hold an unclean

Tatar responsible, Grigory Vassilyevitch, even in heaven, for not

having been born a Christian? And who would punish him for that,

considering that you can't take two skins off one ox? For God Almighty

Himself, even if He did make the Tatar responsible, when he dies would

give him the smallest possible punishment, I imagine (since he must be

punished), judging that he is not to blame if he has come into the

world an unclean heathen, from heathen parents. The Lord God can't

surely take a Tatar and say he was a Christian? That would mean that

the Almighty would tell a real untruth. And can the Lord of Heaven and

earth tell a lie, even in one word?"

    Grigory was thunderstruck and looked at the orator, his eyes

nearly starting out of his head. Though he did not clearly

understand what was said, he had caught something in this rigmarole,

and stood, looking like a man who has just hit his head against a

wall. Fyodor Pavlovitch emptied his glass and went off into his shrill

laugh.

    "Alyosha! Alyosha! What do you say to that! Ah, you casuist! He

must have been with the Jesuits, somewhere, Ivan. Oh, you stinking

Jesuit,who taught you? But you're talking nonsense, you casuist,

nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. Don't cry, Grigory, we'll reduce him

to smoke and ashes in a moment. Tell me this, O ass; you may be

right before your enemies, but you have renounced your faith all the

same in your own heart, and you say yourself that in that very hour

you became anathema accursed. And if once you're anathema they won't

pat you on the head for it in hell. What do you say to that, my fine

Jesuit?"

    "There is no doubt that I have renounced it in my own heart, but

there no special sin in that. Or if there was sin, it was the most

ordinary."

    "How's that the most ordinary?"

    "You lie, accursed one!" hissed Grigory.

    "Consider yourself, Grigory Vassilyevitch," Smerdyakov went on,

staid and unruffled, conscious of his triumph, but, as it were,

generous to the vanquished foe. "Consider yourself, Grigory

Vassilyevitch; it is said in the Scripture that if you have faith,

even as a mustard seed, and bid a mountain move into the sea, it

will move without the least delay at your bidding. Well, Grigory

Vassilyevitch, if I'm without faith and you have so great a faith that

you are continually swearing at me, you try yourself telling this

mountain, not to move into the sea for that's a long way off, but even

to our stinking little river which runs at the bottom of the garden.

You'll see for yourself that it won't budge, but will remain just

where it is however much you shout at it, and that shows, Grigory

Vassilyevitch, that you haven't faith in the proper manner, and only

abuse others about it. Again, taking into consideration that no one in

our day, not only you, but actually no one, from the highest person to

the lowest peasant, can shove mountains into the sea- except perhaps

some one man in the world, or, at most, two, and they most likely

are saving their souls in secret somewhere in the Egyptian desert,

so you wouldn't find them- if so it be, if all the rest have no faith,

will God curse all the rest? that is, the population of the whole

earth, except about two hermits in the desert, and in His well-known

mercy will He not forgive one of them? And so I'm persuaded that

though I may once have doubted I shall be forgiven if I shed tears

of repentance."

    "Stay!" cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, in a transport of delight. "So

you do suppose there are two who can move mountains? Ivan, make a note

of it, write it down. There you have the Russian all over!"

    "You're quite right in saying it's characteristic of the

people's faith," Ivan assented, with an approving smile.

    "You agree. Then it must be so, if you agree. It's true, isn't

it Alyosha? That's the Russian faith all over, isn't it?"

    "No, Smerdyakov has not the Russian faith at all," said Alyosha

firmly and gravely.

    "I'm not talking about his faith. I mean those two in the

desert, only that idea. Surely that's Russian, isn't it?"

    "Yes, that's purely Russian," said Alyosha smiling.

    "Your words are worth a gold piece, O ass, and I'll give it to you

to-day. But as to the rest you talk nonsense, nonsense, nonsense.

Let me tell you, stupid, that we here are all of little faith, only

from carelessness, because we haven't time; things are too much for

us, and, in the second place, the Lord God has given us so little

time, only twenty-four hours in the day, so that one hasn't even

time to get sleep enough, much less to repent of one's sins. While you

have denied your faith to your enemies when you'd nothing else to

think about but to show your faith! So I consider, brother, that it

constitutes a sin."

    "Constitute a sin it may, but consider yourself, Grigory

Vassilyevitch, that it only extenuates it, if it does constitute. If I

had believed then in very truth, as I ought to have believed, then

it really would have been sinful if I had not faced tortures for my

faith, and had gone over to the pagan Mohammedan faith. But, of

course, it wouldn't have come to torture then, because I should only

have had to say at that instant to the mountain, 'Move and crush the

tormentor,' and it would have moved and at the very instant have

crushed him like a black-beetle, and I should have walked away as

though nothing had happened, praising and glorifying God. But, suppose

at that very moment I had tried all that, and cried to that

mountain, 'Crush these tormentors,' and it hadn't crushed them, how

could I have helped doubting, pray, at such a time, and at such a

dread hour of mortal terror? And apart from that, I should know

already that I could not attain to the fullness of the Kingdom of

Heaven (for since the mountain had not moved at my word, they could

not think very much of my faith up aloft, and there could be no very

great reward awaiting me in the world to come). So why should I let

them flay the skin off me as well, and to no good purpose? For, even

though they had flayed my skin half off my back, even then the

mountain would not have moved at my word or at my cry. And at such a

moment not only doubt might come over one but one might lose one's

reason from fear, so that one would not be able to think at all.

And, therefore, how should I be particularly to blame if not seeing my

advantage or reward there or here, I should, at least, save my skin.

And so trusting fully in the grace of the Lord I should cherish the

hope that I might be altogether forgiven."