"Forgive me, brother, when my head's as heavy as it is now, and this illness . . . I've become quite absentminded and ridiculous.
This is not at all what I wanted to ask about ... I don't remember what it was.
Good-bye . . ."
"Not that way," said Rogozhin.
"I forget!"
"This way, this way, come on, I'll show you."
IV
They went through the same rooms the prince had already passed through; Rogozhin walked a little ahead, the prince followed.
They came to a big reception room.
Here there were several paintings on the walls, all portraits of bishops or landscapes in which nothing could be made out.
Over the door to the next room hung a painting rather strange in form, around six feet wide and no more than ten inches high.
It portrayed the Savior just taken down from the cross.
The prince glanced fleetingly at it, as if recalling something, not stopping, however, wanting to go on through the door.
He felt very oppressed and wanted to be out of this house quickly.
But Rogozhin suddenly stopped in front of the painting.
"All these paintings here," he said, "my deceased father bought at auctions for a rouble or two. He liked that.
One man who's a connoisseur looked at them all: trash, he said, but that one—the painting over the door, also bought for two roubles—he said, isn't trash.
In my father's time somebody showed up offering three hundred and fifty roubles for it, and Savelyev, Ivan Dmitrich, a merchant, a great amateur, went up to four hundred, and last week he offered my brother Semyon Semyonych as much as five hundred.
I kept it for myself."
"Yes, it's . . . it's a copy from Hans Holbein," said the prince, having managed to take a look at the painting, "and, though I'm no great expert, it seems to be an excellent copy.
I saw the painting abroad and cannot forget it.19 But . . . what's the matter . . ."
Rogozhin suddenly abandoned the painting and went further on his way.
Of course, absentmindedness and the special, strangely irritated mood that had appeared so unexpectedly in Rogozhin might have explained this abruptness; but even so the prince thought it somehow odd that a conversation not initiated by him should be so suddenly broken off, and that Rogozhin did not even answer him.
"But I've long wanted to ask you something, Lev Nikolaich: do you believe in God or not?" Rogozhin suddenly began speaking again, after going several steps.
"How strangely you ask and . . . stare!" the prince observed involuntarily.
"But I like looking at that painting," Rogozhin muttered after a silence, as if again forgetting his question.
"At that painting!" the prince suddenly cried out, under the impression of an unexpected thought. "At that painting!
A man could even lose his faith from that painting!"
"Lose it he does," Rogozhin suddenly agreed unexpectedly.
They had already reached the front door.
"What?" the prince suddenly stopped. "How can you! I was almost joking, and you're so serious!
And why did you ask me whether I believe in God?"
"Never mind, I just did.
I wanted to ask you before.
Many people don't believe nowadays.
And is it true (because you've lived abroad) what one drunk man told me, that in our Russia, people don't believe in God even more than in other countries?
'It's easier for us than for them,' he said, 'because we've gone further than they have . . .' "
Rogozhin smiled sarcastically; having uttered his question, he suddenly opened the door and, keeping hold of the handle, waited for the prince to go out.
The prince was surprised, but went out.
Rogozhin followed him out to the landing and closed the door behind him.
The two men stood facing each other, looking as if they had forgotten where they had come to and what they were to do next.
"Good-bye, then," said the prince, holding out his hand.
"Good-bye," said Rogozhin, shaking the extended hand firmly but quite mechanically.
The prince went down one step and turned.
"But with regard to belief," he began, smiling (evidently unwilling to leave Rogozhin like that), and also becoming animated under the impression of an unexpected memory, "with regard to belief, I had four different encounters in two days last week.
One morning I was traveling on a new railway line and spent four hours talking on the train with a certain S., having only just made his acquaintance.
I had heard a good deal about him before and, among other things, that he was an atheist.
He's really a very learned man, and I was glad to be talking with a true scholar.
Moreover, he's a man of rare courtesy, and he talked with me as if I were perfectly equal to him in knowledge and ideas.
He doesn't believe in God.