“Please remember,” Stavrogin interposed once more, “that I was about to ask a real favour of you concerning Marya Timofyevna, of great importance for her, anyway.…”
“What?” Shatov frowned suddenly with the air of a man who has just been interrupted at the most important moment, and who gazes at you unable to grasp the question.
“And you did not let me finish,” Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch went on with a smile.
“Oh, nonsense, afterwards!” Shatov waved his hand disdainfully, grasping, at last, what he wanted, and passed at once to his principal theme.
VII
“Do you know,” he began, with flashing eyes, almost menacingly, bending right forward in his chair, raising the forefinger of his right hand above him (obviously unaware that he was doing so), “do you know who are the only ‘god-bearing’ people on earth, destined to regenerate and save the world in the name of a new God, and to whom are given the keys of life and of the new world … Do you know which is that people and what is its name?”
“From your manner I am forced to conclude, and I think I may as well do so at once, that it is the Russian people.”
“And you can laugh, oh, what a race!” Shatov burst out.
“Calm yourself, I beg of you; on the contrary, I was expecting something of the sort from you.”
“You expected something of the sort? And don’t you know those words yourself?”