“You are most cordially welcome,” the Superior replied. “Gentlemen!” he added suddenly, “allow me to ask you earnestly to lay aside your incidental quarrels and come together in love and familial harmony, with a prayer to the Lord, over our humble meal...”

“No, no, impossible,” cried Pyotr Alexandrovich, as if beside himself.

“If it’s impossible for Pyotr Alexandrovich, then it’s impossible for me—I won’t stay either. That is why I came. I will be with Pyotr Alexandrovich wherever he goes: if you leave, I leave, Pyotr Alexandrovich, and if you stay, I stay. You really stung him with that ‘familial harmony,’ Father Superior: he doesn’t consider himself my relative! Am I right, von Sohn? That’s von Sohn over there. Greetings, von Sohn!”^[65]

“Are you ... is it me, sir?” muttered the amazed landowner Maximov.

“Of course it’s you,” Fyodor Pavlovich shouted. “Who else? The Father Superior couldn’t be von Sohn!”

“But I am not von Sohn either, I am Maximov.”

“No, you’re von Sohn. Your reverence, do you know about von Sohn? It was a murder case: he was killed in a house of fornication—is that what you call those places?—they killed him and robbed him and, despite his venerable age, stuffed him into a box, nailed it shut, and sent it from Petersburg to Moscow in a baggage car, with a label and everything. And as they nailed him up, the dancing harlots were singing songs to the psaltery, I mean the pianoforte. And this is that same von Sohn. He rose from the dead, didn’t you, von Sohn?”

“What’s that? How can he!” came from the group of hieromonks.

“Let’s go!” cried Pyotr Alexandrovich, turning to Kalganov.

“No, sir, allow me!” Fyodor Pavlovich interrupted shrilly, taking another step into the room. “Allow me to finish. You defamed me there in the cell, as if I’d behaved disrespectfully—namely, by shouting about gudgeons. Pyotr Alexandrovich Miusov, my relative, likes it when one speaks with plus de noblesse que de sincérité, and I, conversely, like to speak with plus de sincérité que de noblesse, and—to hell with noblesse!^[66] Right, von Sohn? Excuse me, Father Superior, although I’m a buffoon and play the buffoon, still I’m an honorable knight and I want to have my say. Yes, I’m an honorable knight, and in Pyotr Alexandrovich there is wounded vanity and nothing more. I came here today, perhaps, to look around and have my say. My son Alexei is saving his soul here; I’m a father, I’m concerned for his future, and I ought to be concerned. I was listening and performing and quietly observing, and now I want to give you the last act of the performance. How is it with us generally? With us, once a thing falls, it lies there. With us, if a thing once falls, it can lie there forever. I won’t have it, sirs! I want to rise! Holy fathers, you make me indignant. Confession is a great mystery before which I stand in awe and am ready to bow down, and here suddenly everyone in the cell falls on his knees and confesses out loud. Is it proper to confess out loud? The Holy Fathers instituted whispered confession, only then is there any mystery in it, and that has been so since olden times.^[67] Otherwise how am I to explain to him in front of everyone that I did this and that, for instance ... well, this and that, you know what I mean! Sometimes it’s even indecent to say it. There would be a scandal! No, fathers, one might even get drawn into flagellationism with you here . . .^[68] I shall write to the Synod the first chance I get,^[69] and I shall take my son Alexei home ...”

Nota bene: Fyodor Pavlovich had heard the ringing of rumor’s bells. At one time there had been malicious gossip, which even reached the Bishop (and not only about our monastery but about others where the institution of elders had been established), that the elders seemed to be respected overmuch, to the detriment even of the position of Superior, and that, among other things, the elders allegedly abused the sacrament of confession, and so on and so forth. The accusations were absurd and eventually died down of themselves, both here and everywhere. But the silly devil who had snatched up Fyodor Pavlovich and carried him on his own nerves further and further into the shameful deep prompted him to this former accusation, which Fyodor Pavlovich could not even begin to understand. Nor did he manage to formulate it correctly, the more so since this time no one had knelt down in the elder’s cell and confessed aloud, so that Fyodor Pavlovich could have seen nothing of the sort and was simply repeating old rumors and gossip, which he recalled haphazardly. But, having uttered this foolishness, he suddenly felt that he had blurted out some absurd nonsense, and he wanted at once to prove to his listeners and above all to himself that what he had said was not nonsense at all. And though he knew perfectly well that with each word he would be adding more and more absurdities of the same sort to the nonsense he had already spoken, still he could not help himself and plunged headlong off the mountain.

“How vile!” cried Pyotr Alexandrovich.

“Excuse me,” the Superior said suddenly. “Of old it was said: ‘And they began to speak against me many things and evil things. And I heard it and said within myself: this is the medicine of Jesus, which he has sent me to heal my vain soul.’ And therefore we, too, humbly thank you, our precious guest.”

And he bowed deeply to Fyodor Pavlovich.

“Tut, tut, tut! Humbug and old phrases! Old phrases and old sentences! Old lies and conventional bows! We know these bows! ‘A kiss on the lips and a dagger in the heart,’ as in Schiller’s Robbers.^[70]I don’t like falseness, fathers, I want the truth! And the truth is not in gudgeons, I’ve already declared as much! Father monks, why do you fast? Why do you expect a heavenly reward for that? For such a reward, I’ll go and start fasting, too! No, holy monk, try being virtuous in life, be useful to society without shutting yourself up in a monastery on other people’s bread, and without expecting any reward up there—that’s a little more difficult. I, too, can talk sensibly, Father Superior. What have we got here?” He went up to the table. “Old port wine from Factori’s, Médoc bottled by Eliseyev Brothers!^[71] A far cry from gudgeons, eh, fathers? Look at all these bottles the fathers have set out—heh, heh, heh! And who has provided it all? The Russian peasant, the laborer, bringing you the pittance earned by his callused hands, taking it from his family, from the needs of the state! You, holy fathers, are sucking the people’s blood!”

“That is altogether unworthy on your part,” said Father Iosif. Father Paissy was stubbornly silent. Miusov rushed from the room, with Kalganov behind him.

“Well, fathers, I will follow Pyotr Alexandrovich! And I won’t come back again, even if you beg me on bended knee, I won’t come back. I sent you a thousand roubles, and now you’ve got your eyes cocked, heh, heh, heh! No, I won’t add any more. I’m taking revenge for my lost youth, for all my humiliations!” He pounded the table with his fist in a fit of sham emotion. “This little monastery has played a big part in my life! I’ve shed many a bitter tear because of it! You turned my wife, the shrieker, against me. You cursed me at all seven councils,^[72] you smeared my name over the whole district! Enough, fathers! This is the age of liberalism, the age of steamships and railways. You’ll get nothing from me—not a thousand roubles, not a hundred roubles, not even a hundred kopecks!”

Another nota bene: our monastery never meant anything special in his life, and he had never shed any bitter tears because of it. But he was so carried away by his own sham tears that for a moment he almost believed himself; he even as much as wept from self-pity; but at the same moment he felt it was time to rein himself in. In reply to his wicked lie, the Superior inclined his head and again spoke imposingly: