You, only you can raise that flag!..." He broke off, and sat as though in despair, with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands.
"I merely mention it as something queer," Stavrogin interrupted suddenly.

"Every one for some inexplicable reason keeps foisting a flag upon me.

Pyotr Verhovensky, too, is convinced that I might 'raise his flag,' that's how his words were repeated to me, anyway.

He has taken it into his head that I'm capable of playing the part of Stenka Razin for them, 'from my extraordinary aptitude for crime,' his saying too." "What ?" cried Shatov, "'from your extraordinary aptitude for crime' ?" "Just so." "H'm! And is it true ?" he asked, with an angry smile.

"Is it true that when you were in Petersburg you belonged to a secret society for practising beastly sensuality?
Is it true that you could give lessons to the Marquis de Sade?
Is it true that you decoyed and corrupted children?
Speak, don't dare to lie," he cried, beside himself.