One day when the old men were quarreling, Petr Vassilitch slapped his comrade on the face with unexpected swiftness, put him to flight, and, wiping the sweat from his face, called after the fugitive:
“Look out; that sin lies to your account!
You led my hand into sin, you accursed one; you ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
He was especially fond of reproaching his comrades in that they were wanting in firm faith, and predicting that they would fall away into “Protestantism.”
“That is what troubles you, Aleksasha — the sound of the cock crowing!”
Protestantism worried and apparently frightened him, but to the question, “What is the doctrine of that sect?” he answered, not very intelligibly:
“Protestantism is the most bitter heresy; it acknowledges reason alone, and denies God!
Look at the Bible Christians, for example, who read nothing but the Bible, which came from a German, from Luther, of whom it was said: He was rightly called Luther, for if you make a verb of it, it runs: Lute bo, lubo luto!
9 And all that comes from the west, from the heretics of that part of the world.” 9 From Lutui which means hard, violent.
Stamping his mutilated foot, he would say coldly and heavily:
“Those are they whom the new Ritualists will have to drive out, whom they will have to watch, — yes, and burn too!
But not us — we are of the true faith. Eastern, we are of the faith, the true, eastern, original Russian faith, and all the others are of the west, spoiled by free will!
What good has ever come from the Germans, or the French?
Look what they did in the year 12 — .”
Carried away by his feelings, he forgot that it was a boy who stood before him, and with his strong hands he took hold of me by the belt, now drawing me to him, now pushing me away, as he spoke beautifully, emotionally, hotly, and youthfully:
“The mind of man wanders in the forest of its own thoughts. Like a fierce wolf it wanders, the devil’s assistant, putting the soul of man, the gift of God, on the rack!
What have they imagined, these servants of the devil?
The Bogomuili,10 through whom Protestantism came, taught thus: Satan, they say, is the son of God, the elder brother of Jesus Christ, That 10 Another sect of Old Believers. is what they have come to!
They taught people also not to obey their superiors, not to work, to abandon wife and children; a man needs nothing, no property whatever in his life; let him live as he chooses, and the devil shows him how.
That Aleksasha has turned up here again.”
At this moment the shopman set me to do some work, and I left the old man alone in the gallery, but he went on talking to space:
“O soul without wings! O blind-born kitten, whither shall I run to get away from you?”
And then, with bent head and hands resting on hi? knees, he fell into a long silence, gazing, intent and motionless, up at the gray winter sky.
He began to take more notice of me, and his manner was kinder. When he found me with a book, he would glance over my shoulder, and say:
“Read, youngster, read; it is worth your while I It may be that you are clever; it is a pity that you think so little of your elders. You can stand up to any one, you think, but where will your sauciness land you in the end?
It will lead you nowhere, youngster, but to a convict’s prison.
Read by all means; but remember that books are books, and use your own brains I Danilov, the founder of the Xlist sect, came to the conclusion that neither old nor new books were necessary, and he put them all in a sack, and threw them in the water.
Of course that was a stupid thing to do, but And now that cur, Aleksasha, must come disturbing us.”
He was always talking about this Aleksasha, and one day he came into the shop, looking preoccupied and stem, and explained to the shopman:
“Aleksander Vassiliev is here in the town; he came yesterday.
I have been looking for him for a long time, but he has hidden himself somewhere 1”
The shopman answered in an unfriendly tone:
“I don’t know anything about him!”
Bending his head, the old man said:
“That means that for you, people are either buyers or sellers, and nothing more!
Let us have some tea.”
When I brought in the big copper tea-pot, there were visitors in the shop. There was old Lukian, smiling happily, and behind the door in a dark corner sat a stranger dressed in a dark overcoat and high felt boots, with a green belt, and a cap set clumsily over his brows.
His face was indistinct, but he seemed to be quiet and modest, and he looked somewhat like a shopman who had just lost his place and was very dejected about it.
Petr Vassilich, not glancing in his direction, said something sternly and ponderously, and he pulled at his cap all the time, with a convulsive movement of his right hand. He would raise his hand as if he were about to cross himself, and push his cap upwards, and he would do this until he had pushed it as far back as his crown, when he would again pull it over his brows.
That convulsive movement reminded me of the mad beggar, Igosha, “Death in his pocket.”
“Various kinds of reptiles swim in our muddy rivers, and make the water more turbid than ever,” said Petr Vassilich.
The man who resembled a shopman asked quietly and gently:
“Do you mean that for me?”
“And suppose I do mean it for you?”
Then the man asked again, not loudly but very frankly:
“Well, and what have you to say about yourself, man?”
“What I have to say about myself, I say to God — that is my business.”
“No, man, it is mine also,” said the new-comer solemnly and firmly. “Do not turn away your face from the truth, and don’t blind yourself deliberately; that is the great sin towards God and your fellow-creatures!”
I liked to hear him call Petr Vassilich “man,” and his quiet, solemn voice stirred me.
He spoke as a good priest reads,