“Oh, you won’t frighten me with your shouts now. You see a different Stepan Verhovensky before you now. The man I was is buried. Enfin, tout est dit. And why do you cry out? Simply because you’re not getting married, and you won’t have to wear a certain decoration on your head. Does that shock you again? My poor friend, you don’t know woman, while I have done nothing but study her. ‘If you want to conquer the world, conquer yourself’⁠—the one good thing that another romantic like you, my bride’s brother, Shatov, has succeeded in saying. I would gladly borrow from him his phrase. Well, here I am ready to conquer myself, and I’m getting married. And what am I conquering by way of the whole world? Oh, my friend, marriage is the moral death of every proud soul, of all independence. Married life will corrupt me, it will sap my energy, my courage in the service of the cause. Children will come, probably not my own either⁠—certainly not my own: a wise man is not afraid to face the truth. Liputin proposed this morning putting up barricades to keep out Nicolas; Liputin’s a fool. A woman would deceive the all-seeing eye itself. Le bon Dieu