"I beg you to treat me with respect, I insist on it!" shouted Shatov, "not my personality--I don't care a hang for that, but something else, just for this once. While I am talking... we are two beings, and have come together in infinity... for the last time in the world. Drop your tone, and speak like a human being! Speak, if only for once in your life with the voice of a man. I say it not for my sake but for yours. Do you understand that you ought to forgive me that blow in the face if only because I gave you the opportunity of realising your immense power. ... Again you smile your disdainful, worldly smile! Oh, when will you understand me! Have done with being a snob! Understand that I insist on that. I insist on it, else I won't speak, I'm not going to for anything!" His excitement was approaching frenzy. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch frowned and seemed to become more on his guard. "Since I have remained another half-hour with you when time is so precious," he pronounced earnestly and impressively, "you may rest assured that I mean to listen to you at least with interest... and I am convinced that I shall hear from you much that is new." He sat down on a chair. "Sit down!" cried Shatov, and he sat down himself. "Please remember," Stavrogin interposed once more, "that I was about to ask a real favour of you concerning Marya Timofyevna, of great importance for her, anyway...." "What?" Shatov frowned suddenly with the air of a man who has just been interrupted at the most important moment, and who gazes at you unable to grasp the question. "And you did not let me finish," Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch went on with a smile. "Oh, nonsense, afterwards!" Shatov waved his hand disdainfully, grasping, at last, what he wanted, and passed at once to his principal theme. VII "Do you know," he began, with flashing eyes, almost menacingly, bending right forward in his chair, raising the forefinger of his right hand above him (obviously unaware that he was doing so), "do you know who are the only 'god-bearing' people on earth, destined to regenerate and save the world in the name of a new God, and to whom are given the keys of life and of the new world... Do you know which is that people and what is its name?" "From your manner I am forced to conclude, and I think I may as well do so at once, that it is the Russian people." "And you can laugh, oh, what a race!" Shatov burst out. "Calm yourself, I beg of you; on the contrary, I was expecting something of the sort from you." "You expected something of the sort? And don't you know those words yourself?" "I know them very well. I see only too well what you're driving at. All your phrases, even the expression 'god-bearing people' is only a sequel to our talk two years ago, abroad, not long before you went to America. ... At least, as far as I can recall it now."