“Alyosha! Alyosha! What do you say to that! Ah, you casuist! He must have been with the Jesuits, somewhere, Ivan. Oh, you stinking Jesuit, who taught you? But you’re talking nonsense, you casuist, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. Don’t cry, Grigory, we’ll reduce him to smoke and ashes in a moment. Tell me this, O ass; you may be right before your enemies, but you have renounced your faith all the same in your own heart, and you say yourself that in that very hour you became anathema accursed. And if once you’re anathema they won’t pat you on the head for it in hell. What do you say to that, my fine Jesuit?”
“There is no doubt that I have renounced it in my own heart, but there was no special sin in that. Or if there was sin, it was the most ordinary.”
“How’s that the most ordinary?”
“You lie, accursed one!” hissed Grigory.
“Consider yourself, Grigory Vassilyevitch,” Smerdyakov went on, staid and unruffled, conscious of his triumph, but, as it were, generous to the vanquished foe. “Consider yourself, Grigory Vassilyevitch; it is said in the Scripture that if you have faith, even as a mustard seed, and bid a mountain move into the sea, it will move without the least delay at your bidding. Well, Grigory Vassilyevitch,