Father Theodore recognized Vorobyaninov.
After the terrible fiasco in Batumi, after all his hopes had been dashed, this new chance of gaining riches had an extraordinary effect on the priest.
He grabbed Ippolit Matveyevich by his scraggy Adam's apple, squeezed his fingers together, and shouted hoarsely:
"What have you done with the treasure that you slew your mother-in-law to obtain?"
Ippolit Matveyevich, who had not been expecting anything of this nature, said nothing, but his eyes bulged so far that they almost touched the lenses of his pince-nez.
"Speak!" ordered the priest. "Repent, you sinner!"
Vorobyaninov felt himself losing his senses.
Suddenly Father Theodore caught sight of Bender leaping from rock to rock; the technical adviser was coining down, shouting at the top of his voice:
"Against the sombre rocks they dash, Those waves, they foam and splash."
A terrible fear gripped Father Theodore.
He continued mechanically holding the marshal by the throat, but his knees began to knock.
"Well, of all people!" cried Ostap in a friendly tone. "The rival concern."
Father Theodore did not dally.
Obeying his healthy instinct, ' he grabbed the concessionaires' bread and sausage and fled.
"Hit him, Comrade Bender!" cried Ippolit Matveyevich, who was sitting on the ground recovering his breath.
"Catch him!.
Stop him I"
Ostap began whistling and whooping.
"Wooh-wooh," he warbled, starting in pursuit. "The Battle of the Pyramids or Bender goes hunting.
Where are you going, client?
I can offer you a well-gutted chair."
This persecution was too much for Father Theodore and he began climbing up a perpendicular wall of rock.
He was spurred on by his heart, which was in his mouth, and an itch in his heels known only to cowards.
His legs moved over the granite by themselves, carrying their master aloft.
"Wooooh-woooh!" yelled Ostap from below. "Catch him!"
"He's taken our supplies," screeched Vorobyaninov, running up.
"Stop!" roared Ostap. "Stop, I tell you."
But this only lent new strength to the exhausted priest.
He wove about, making several leaps, and finally ended ten feet above the highest inscription.
"Give back our sausage!" howled Ostap. "Give back the sausage, you fool, and we'll forget everything."
Father Theodore no longer heard anything.
He found himself on a flat ledge, on to which no man had ever climbed before.
Father Theodore was seized by a sickening dread.
He realized he could never get down again by himself.
The cliff face dropped vertically to the road.
He looked below.
Ostap was gesticulating furiously, and the marshal's gold pince-nez glittered at the bottom of the gorge.
"I'll give back the sausage," cried the holy father, "only get me down."
He could see all the movements of the concessionaires.
They were running about below and, judging from their gestures, swearing like troopers.
An hour later, lying on his stomach and peering over the edge, Father Theodore saw Bender and Vorobyaninov going off in the direction of the Cross gap.
Night fell quickly.
Surrounded by pitch darkness and deafened by the infernal roar, Father Theodore trembled and wept up in the very clouds.
He no longer wanted earthly treasures, he only wanted one thing-to get down on to the ground.
During the night he howled so loudly that at times the sound of the Terek was drowned, and when morning came, he fortified himself with sausage and bread and roared with demoniac laughter at the cars passing underneath.
The rest of the day was spent contemplating the mountains and that heavenly body, the sun.
The next night he saw the Tsaritsa Tamara.
She came flying over to him from her castle and said coquettishly:
"Let's be neighbours! "
"Mother!" said Father Theodore with feeling. "Not for personal gain . . ."