looking at his victim. 'But we have at last accomplished our
task, and--in Thy name.... For fifteen long centuries we had to
toil and suffer owing to that "freedom": but now we have
prevailed and our work is done, and well and strongly it is done.
....Believest not Thou it is so very strong? ... And why should
Thou look at me so meekly as if I were not worthy even of Thy
indignation?... Know then, that now, and only now, Thy people
feel fully sure and satisfied of their freedom; and that only
since they have themselves and of their own free will delivered
that freedom unto our hands by placing it submissively at our
feet. But then, that is what we have done. Is it that which Thou
has striven for? Is this the kind of "freedom" Thou has promised
them?'"

"Now again, I do not understand," interrupted Alyosha. "Does the
old man mock and laugh?"

"Not in the least. He seriously regards it as a great service
done by himself, his brother monks and Jesuits, to humanity, to
have conquered and subjected unto their authority that freedom,
and boasts that it was done but for the good of the world. 'For
only now,' he says (speaking of the Inquisition) 'has it become
possible to us, for the first time, to give a serious thought to
human happiness. Man is born a rebel, and can rebels be ever
happy?... Thou has been fairly warned of it, but evidently to no
use, since Thou hast rejected the only means which could make
mankind happy; fortunately at Thy departure Thou hast delivered
the task to us.... Thou has promised, ratifying the pledge by Thy
own words, in words giving us the right to bind and unbind... and
surely, Thou couldst not think of depriving us of it now!'"

"But what can he mean by the words, 'Thou has been fairly
warned'?" asked Alexis.

"These words give the key to what the old man has to say for his
justification... But listen--

"'The terrible and wise spirit, the spirit of self annihilation
and non-being,' goes on the Inquisitor, 'the great spirit of
negation conversed with Thee in the wilderness, and we are told
that he "tempted" Thee... Was it so? And if it were so, then it is
impossible to utter anything more truthful than what is contained
in his three offers, which Thou didst reject, and which are
usually called "temptations." Yea; if ever there was on earth a
genuine striking wonder produced, it was on that day of Thy three
temptations, and it is precisely in these three short sentences
that the marvel