"I've told them honestly that I've cut myself off from them in everything.
That is my right, the right to freedom of conscience and of thought.... I won't put up with it!
There's no power which could..."
"I say, don't shout," Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch said earnestly, checking him. "That Verhovensky is such a fellow that he may be listening to us now in your passage, perhaps, with his own ears or someone else's.
Even that drunkard, Lebyadkin, was probably bound to keep an eye on you, and you on him, too, I dare say?
You'd better tell me, has Verhovensky accepted your arguments now, or not?"
"He has. He has said that it can be done and that I have the right... ."
"Well then, he's deceiving you.
I know that even Kirillov, who scarcely belongs to them at all, has given them information about you. And they have lots of agents, even people who don't know that they're serving the society.
They've always kept a watch on you.
One of the things Pyotr Verhovensky came here for was to settle your business once for all, and he is fully authorised to do so, that is at the first good opportunity, to get rid of you, as a man who knows too much and might give them away.
I repeat that this is certain, and allow me to add that they are, for some reason, convinced that you are a spy, and that if you haven't informed against them yet, you will.
Is that true?"
Shatov made a wry face at hearing such a question asked in such a matter-of fact tone.
"If I were a spy, whom could I inform?" he said angrily, not giving a direct answer.
"No, leave me alone, let me go to the devil!" he cried suddenly, catching again at his original idea, which agitated him violently. Apparently it affected him more deeply than the news of his own danger.
"You, you, Stavrogin, how could you mix yourself up with such shameful, stupid, second-hand absurdity?
You a member of the society?
What an exploit for Stavrogin!" he cried suddenly, in despair.
He clasped his hands, as though nothing could be a bitterer and more inconsolable grief to him than such a discovery.
"Excuse me," said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, extremely surprised, "but you seem to look upon me as a sort of sun, and on yourself as an insect in comparison.
I noticed that even from your letter in America."
"You... you know.... Oh, let us drop me altogether," Shatov broke off suddenly, "and if you can explain anything about yourself explain it.... Answer my question!" he repeated feverishly.
"With pleasure.
You ask how I could get into such a den?
After what I have told you, I'm bound to be frank with you to some extent on the subject.
You see, strictly speaking, I don't belong to the society at all, and I never have belonged to it, and I've much more right than you to leave them, because I never joined them.
In fact, from the very beginning I told them that I was not one of them, and that if I've happened to help them it has simply been by accident as a man of leisure.
I took some part in reorganising the society, on the new plan, but that was all.
But now they've changed their views, and have made up their minds that it would be dangerous to let me go, and I believe I'm sentenced to death too."
"Oh, they do nothing but sentence to death, and all by means of sealed documents, signed by three men and a half.
And you think they've any power!"
"You're partly right there and partly not," Stavrogin answered with the same indifference, almost listlessness.
"There's no doubt that there's a great deal that's fanciful about it, as there always is in such cases: a handful magnifies its size and significance.
To my thinking, if you will have it, the only one is Pyotr Verhovensky, and it's simply good-nature on his part to consider himself only an agent of the society.
But the fundamental idea is no stupider than others of the sort.
They are connected with the Internationale. They have succeeded in establishing agents in Russia, they have even hit on a rather original method, though it's only theoretical, of course.
As for their intentions here, the movements of our Russian organisation are something so obscure and almost always unexpected that really they might try anything among us.
Note that Verhovensky is an obstinate man."
"He's a bug, an ignoramus, a buffoon, who understands nothing in Russia!" cried Shatov spitefully.
"You know him very little.
It's quite true that none of them understand much about Russia, but not much less than you and I do. Besides, Verhovensky is an enthusiast."
"Verhovensky an enthusiast?"
"Oh, yes.
There is a point when he ceases to be a buffoon and becomes a madman.
I beg you to remember your own expression:
'Do you know how powerful a single man may be?'
Please don't laugh about it, he's quite capable of pulling a trigger.
They are convinced that I am a spy too.
As they don't know how to do things themselves, they're awfully fond of accusing people of being spies."