"No, I guessed it myself: if Stavrogin has faith, he does not believe that he has faith.
If he hasn't faith, he does not believe that he hasn't."
"Well, Stavrogin has got something else worse than that in his head," Pyotr Stepanovitch muttered peevishly, uneasily watching the turn the conversation had taken and the pallor of Kirillov.
"Damn it all, he won't shoot himself!" he was thinking. "I always suspected it; it's a maggot in the brain and nothing more; what a rotten lot of people!"
"You are the last to be with me; I shouldn't like to part on bad terms with you," Kirillov vouchsafed suddenly.
Pyotr Stepanovitch did not answer at once.
"Damn it all, what is it now?" he thought again.
"I assure you, Kirillov, I have nothing against you personally as a man, and always..."
"You are a scoundrel and a false intellect.
But I am just the same as you are, and I will shoot myself while you will remain living."
"You mean to say, I am so abject that I want to go on living."
He could not make up his mind whether it was judicious to keep up such a conversation at such a moment or not, and resolved "to be guided by circumstances."
But the tone of superiority and of contempt for him, which Kirillov had never disguised, had always irritated him, and now for some reason it irritated him more than ever—possibly because Kirillov, who was to die within an hour or so (Pyotr Stepanovitch still reckoned upon this), seemed to him, as it were, already only half a man, some creature whom he could not allow to be haughty.
"You seem to be boasting to me of your shooting yourself."
"I've always been surprised at every one's going on living," said Kirillov, not hearing his remark.
"H'm! Admitting that's an idea, but..."
"You ape, you assent to get the better of me.
Hold your tongue; you won't understand anything.
If there is no God, then I am God."
"There, I could never understand that point of yours: why are you God?"
"If God exists, all is His will and from His will I cannot escape.
If not, it's all my will and I am bound to show self-will."
"Self-will?
But why are you bound?"
"Because all will has become mine.
Can it be that no one in the whole planet, after making an end of God and believing in his own will, will dare to express his self-will on the most vital point?
It's like a beggar inheriting a fortune and being afraid of it and not daring to approach the bag of gold, thinking himself too weak to own it.
I want to manifest my self-will.
I may be the only one, but I'll do it."
"Do it by all means."
"I am bound to shoot myself because the highest point of my self-will is to kill myself with my own hands."
"But you won't be the only one to kill yourself; there are lots of suicides."
"With good cause.
But to do it without any cause at all, simply for self-will, I am the only one."
"He won't shoot himself," flashed across Pyotr Stepanovitch's mind again.
"Do you know," he observed irritably, "if I were in your place I should kill someone else to show my self-will, not myself.
You might be of use.
I'll tell you whom, if you are not afraid.
Then you needn't shoot yourself to-day, perhaps.
We may come to terms."
"To kill someone would be the lowest point of self-will, and you show your whole soul in that.
I am not you: I want the highest point and I'll kill myself."
"He's come to it of himself," Pyotr Stepanovitch muttered malignantly.
"I am bound to show my unbelief," said Kirillov, walking about the room.
"I have no higher idea than disbelief in God.
I have all the history of mankind on my side.
Man has done nothing but invent God so as to go on living, and not kill himself; that's the whole of universal history up till now.
I am the first one in the whole history of mankind who would not invent God.
Let them know it once for all."
"He won't shoot himself," Pyotr Stepanovitch thought anxiously.