ld 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