His face was unnaturally pale, and there was a terribly heavy look in his eyes. He was like a man in delirium. Pyotr Stepanovitch thought he would drop on to the floor.
“Give me the pen!” Kirillov cried suddenly, quite unexpectedly, in a positive frenzy. “Dictate; I’ll sign anything. I’ll sign that I killed Shatov even. Dictate while it amuses me. I am not afraid of what the haughty slaves will think! You will see for yourself that all that is secret shall be made manifest! And you will be crushed.… I believe, I believe!”
Pyotr Stepanovitch jumped up from his seat and instantly handed him an inkstand and paper, and began dictating, seizing the moment, quivering with anxiety.
“I, Alexey Kirillov, declare …”
“Stay; I won’t! To whom am I declaring it?”
Kirillov was shaking as though he were in a fever. This declaration and the sudden strange idea of it seemed to absorb him entirely, as though it were a means of escape by which his tortured spirit strove for a moment’s relief.
“To whom am I declaring it? I want to know to whom?”
“To no one, every one, the first person who reads it. Why define it? The whole world!”
“The whole world! Bravo! And I won’t have any repentance. I don’t want penitence and I don’t want it for the police!”
“No, of course, there’s no need of it, damn the police! Write, if you are in earnest!” Pyotr Stepanovitch cried hysterically.