e from the first,
and so you've been a regular scoundrel to me. For all the world like a
filthy human louse--that's how I look on you. You've promised me a lot
of money for shedding innocent blood and swore it was for Mr. Stavrogin,
though it turns out to be nothing but your want of breeding. I didn't
get a farthing out of it, let alone fifteen hundred, and Mr. Stavrogin
hit you in the face, which has come to our ears. Now you are threatening
me again and promising me money--what for, you don't say. And I
shouldn't wonder if you are sending me to Petersburg to plot some
revenge in your spite against Mr. Stavrogin, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch,
reckoning on my simplicity. And that proves you are the chief murderer.
And do you know what you deserve for the very fact that in the depravity
of your heart you've given up believing in God Himself, the true
Creator? You are no better than an idolater and are on a level with
the Tatar and the Mordva. Alexey Nilitch, who is a philosopher, has
expounded the true God, the Creator, many a time to you, as well as the
creation of the world and the fate that's to come and the transformation
of every sort of creature and every sort of beast out of the Apocalypse,
but you've persisted like a senseless idol in your deafness and your
dumbness and have brought Ensign Erkel to the same, like the veriest
evil seducer and so-called atheist...."

"Ah, you drunken dog! He strips the ikons of their setting and then
preaches about God!"

"D'you see, Pyotr Stepanovitch, I tell you truly that I have stripped
the ikons, but I only took out the pearls; and how do you know? Perhaps
my own tear was transformed into a pearl in the furnace of the Most High
to make up for my sufferings, seeing I am just that very orphan, having
no daily refuge. Do you know from the books that once, in ancient times,
a merchant with just such tearful sighs and prayers stole a pearl from
the halo of the Mother of God, and afterwards, in the face of all the
people, laid the whole price of it at her feet, and the Holy Mother
sheltered him with her mantle before all the people, so that it was a
miracle, and the command was given through the authorities to write it
all down word for word in the Imperial books. And you let a mouse in,
so you insulted the very throne of God. And if you were not my natural
master, whom I dandled in my arms when I was a stripling, I would have
done for you now, without budging from this place!"

Pyotr