but this dream was not a dream. It has happened before. I have dreams now, Alyosha…yet they are not dreams, but reality. I walk about, talk and see…though I am asleep. But he was sitting here, on that sofa there.…He is frightfully stupid, Alyosha, frightfully stupid.” Ivan laughed suddenly and began pacing about the room.

“Who is stupid? Of whom are you talking, brother?” Alyosha asked anxiously again.

“The devil! He’s taken to visiting me. He’s been here twice, almost three times. He taunted me with being angry at his being a simple devil and not Satan, with scorched wings, in thunder and lightning. But he is not Satan: that’s a lie. He is an imposter. He is simply a devil—a paltry, trivial devil. He goes to the baths. If you undressed him, you’d be sure to find he had a tail, long and smooth like a Danish dog’s, a yard long, dun colour.…Alyosha, you are cold. You’ve been in the snow. Would you like some tea? What? Is it cold? Shall I tell her to bring some? C’est á ne pas mettre un chien dehors…”

Alyosha ran to the washing stand, wetted the towel, persuaded Ivan to sit down again, and put the wet towel round his head. He sat down beside him.

“What were you telling me just now about Lise?” Ivan began again. (He was becoming very talkative.) “I like Lise. I said something nasty about her. It was a lie. I like her…I am afraid for Katya to-morrow. I am more afraid of her than of anything. On account of the future. She will cast me off to-morrow and trample me under foot. She thinks that I am ruining Mitya from jealousy on her account! Yes, she thinks that! But it’s not so. To-morrow the cross, but not the gallows. No, I shan’t hang myself. Do you know, I can never commit suicide, Alyosha. Is it because I am base? I am not a coward. Is it from love of life? How did I know that Smerdyakov had hanged himself? Yes, it was he told me so.”

“And you are quite convinced that there has been some one here?” asked Alyosha.

“Yes, on that sofa in the corner. You would have driven him away. You did drive him away: he disappeared when you arrived. I love your face, Alyosha. Did you know that I loved your face? And he is myself, Alyosha. All that’s base in me, all that’s mean and contemptible. Yes, I am a romantic. He guessed it…though it’s a libel. He is frightfully stupid; but it’s to his advantage. He has cunning, animal cunning—he knew how to infuriate me. He kept taunting me with believing in him, and that was how he made me listen to him. He fooled me like a boy. He told me a great deal that was true about myself, though. I should never have owned it to myself. Do you know, Alyosha,” Ivan added in an intensely earnest and confidential tone, “I should be awfully glad to think that it was he and not I.”

“He has worn you out,” said Alyosha, looking compassionately at his brother.

“He’s been teasing me. And you know he does it so cleverly, so cleverly. ‘Conscience! What is conscience! I make it up for myself. Why am I tormented by it? From habit. From the universal habit of mankind for the seven thousand years. So let us give it up, and we shall be gods.’ It was he said that, it was he said that!”

“And not you, not you?” Alyosha could not help crying, looking frankly at his brother. “Never mind him, anyway; have done with him and forget him. And let him take with him all that you curse now, and never come back!”

“Yes, but he is spiteful. He laughed at me. He was impudent, Alyosha,” Ivan said, with a shudder of offence. “But he was unfair to me, unfair to me about lots of things. He told lies about me to my face. ‘Oh, you are going to perform an act of heroic virtue: to confess you murdered your father, that the valet murdered him at your instigation.’ ”

“Brother,” Alyosha interposed, “restrain yourself. It was not you murdered him. It’s not true!”