“Certainly I’ll ask differently.” Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch looked coldly at him. “I only wanted to know, do you believe in God, yourself?”
“I believe in Russia.… I believe in her orthodoxy.… I believe in the body of Christ.… I believe that the new advent will take place in Russia.… I believe …” Shatov muttered frantically.
“And in God? In God?”
“I … I will believe in God.”
Not one muscle moved in Stavrogin’s face. Shatov looked passionately and defiantly at him, as though he would have scorched him with his eyes.
“I haven’t told you that I don’t believe,” he cried at last. “I will only have you know that I am a luckless, tedious book, and nothing more so far, so far.… But confound me! We’re discussing you not me.… I’m a man of no talent, and can only give my blood, nothing more, like every man without talent; never mind my blood either! I’m talking about you. I’ve been waiting here two years for you.… Here I’ve been dancing about in my nakedness before you for the last half-hour. You, only you can raise that flag!…”
He broke off, and sat as though in despair, with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands.
“I merely mention it as something queer,” Stavrogin interrupted suddenly. “Every one for some inexplicable reason keeps foisting a flag upon me. Pyotr Verhovensky, too, is convinced that I might ‘raise his flag,’ that’s how his words were repeated to me, anyway. He has taken it into his head that I’m capable of playing the part of Stenka Razin for them, ‘from my extraordinary aptitude for crime,’ his saying too.”
“What?” cried Shatov, “‘from your extraordinary aptitude for crime’?”
“Just so.”