He drew the book towards him and gave it a cursory glance. It was a full and able account of the circumstances of the last war, not so much from the military point of view, however, as from the purely literary. Having turned the book over, he suddenly put it down impatiently.
“I positively do not know why I came here,” he said with aversion, looking straight into Tikhon’s eyes, as though he expected him to reply.
And suddenly he related, in the shortest and most abrupt manner so that certain words could hardly be understood, that he was subject, especially at nights, to a kind of hallucinations, that he sometimes saw or felt near him a spiteful being, mocking and “rational,” “in various forms and in various characters, but it is always one and the same and I always fly into a rage.”
Wild and confused were these revelations, as if indeed they came from a madman. And yet Nikolai Vsevolodovich spoke with such strange frankness, never seen in him before, with such a simplicity, quite unnatural to him, that it seemed as if suddenly and unexpectedly his former self had completely disappeared. He was not in the least ashamed of showing the fear with which he spoke of his apparition. But all this was momentary and went as suddenly as it had come.
“It’s all nonsense,” he said, drawing back with awkward irritation. “I’ll go and see a doctor.”
“You should, certainly,” Tikhon assented.
“You speak so confidently.... Have you seen people, like me, with such apparitions?”
“I have, but very rarely. Indeed I remember only one such case in my life. He was a military officer; it was after he had lost his wife, his life companion. The other case was mere hearsay. Both men then went to a cure abroad.[12] Have you been subject to this for long?”
“For about a year, but it’s all nonsense. I’ll see a doctor. This is all nonsense, utter nonsense. It is myself in various aspects, and nothing else. But even as I use that phrase, you certainly think that I am still doubtful and am not sure that it is myself, and not really the devil.”
“And ... you actually see him?” he asked, dismissing, in fact, any question of its being a false and morbid hallucination. “Do you actually see a certain image?”
“It is strange that you should lay such stress upon this, when I have already told you that I do see it.” Stavrogin again began to grow more and more irritated with each word. “Of course I see it; I see it as plainly as I see you ... and sometimes I see it and I’m not sure that I see it, although I do see it ... and sometimes[13] I do not know what is real: I or it ... it’s all nonsense. And can’t you possibly believe that this is indeed the devil?” he added, breaking into a laugh and passing too abruptly into derision. “Surely that would be more in keeping with your profession.”