he felt horribly annoyed.
“I must confess I can’t endure entering on such discussions,” he said with a final air. “It’s possible for one who doesn’t believe in God to love mankind, don’t you think so? Voltaire didn’t believe in God and loved mankind?”
(“I am at it again,” he thought to himself.)
“Voltaire believed in God, though not very much, I think, and I don’t think he loved mankind very much either,” said Alyosha quietly, gently, and quite naturally, as though he were talking to someone of his own age, or even older.
Kolya was particularly struck by Alyosha’s apparent diffidence about his opinion of Voltaire. He seemed to be leaving the question for him, little Kolya, to settle.
“Have you read Voltaire?” Alyosha finished.
“No, not to say read. … But I’ve read Candide in the Russian translation … in an absurd, grotesque,