“You keep saying the same thing; but I had such an attack of rheumatism last year that I remember it to this day.”
“The devil have rheumatism!”
“Why not, if I sometimes put on fleshly form? I put on fleshly form and I take the consequences. Satan sum et nihil humanum a me alienum puto.”
“What, what, Satan sum et nihil humanum ... that’s not bad for the devil!”
“I am glad I’ve pleased you at last.”
“But you didn’t get that from me.” Ivan stopped suddenly, seeming struck. “That never entered my head, that’s strange.”
“C’est du nouveau, n’est‐ce pas? This time I’ll act honestly and explain to you. Listen, in dreams and especially in nightmares, from indigestion or anything, a man sees sometimes such artistic visions, such complex and real actuality, such events, even a whole world of events, woven into such a plot, with such unexpected details from the most exalted matters to the last button on a cuff, as I swear Leo Tolstoy has never invented. Yet such dreams are sometimes seen not by writers, but by the most ordinary people, officials, journalists, priests.... The subject is a complete enigma. A statesman confessed to me, indeed, that all his best ideas came to him when he was asleep. Well, that’s how it is now, though I am your hallucination, yet just as in a nightmare, I say original things which had not entered your head before. So I don’t repeat your ideas, yet I am only your nightmare, nothing more.”
“You are lying, your aim is to convince me you exist apart and are not my nightmare, and now you are asserting you are a dream.”
“My dear fellow, I’ve adopted a special method to‐day, I’ll explain it to you afterwards. Stay, where did I break off? Oh, yes! I caught cold then, only not here but yonder.”
“Where is yonder? Tell me, will you be here long? Can’t you go away?” Ivan exclaimed almost in despair. He ceased walking to and fro, sat down on the sofa, leaned his elbows on the table again and held his head tight in both hands. He pulled the wet towel off and flung it away in vexation. It was evidently of no use.