house it is anything but joyful. The nearest church is four miles
away; with my weak health I can't get so far; there are no singers
there. And there is no peace or quiet in our family; day in day
out, there is an uproar, scolding, uncleanliness; we all eat out
of one bowl like peasants; and there are beetles in the cabbage
soup. . . . God has not given me health, else I would have gone
away long ago, Sergey Nikanoritch."

Matvey Terehov was a middle-aged man about forty-five, but he had
a look of ill-health; his face was wrinkled and his lank, scanty
beard was quite grey, and that made him seem many years older. He
spoke in a weak voice, circumspectly, and held his chest when he
coughed, while his eyes assumed the uneasy and anxious look one
sees in very apprehensive people. He never said definitely what was
wrong with him, but he was fond of describing at length how once
at the factory he had lifted a heavy box and had ruptured himself,
and how this had led to "the gripes," and had forced him to give
up his work in the tile factory and come back to his native place;
but he could not explain what he meant by "the gripes."

"I must own I am not fond of my cousin," he went on, pouring himself
out some tea. "He is my elder; it is a sin to censure him, and I
fear the Lord, but I cannot bear it in patience. He is a haughty,
surly, abusive man; he is the torment of his relations and workmen,
and constantly out of humour. Last Sunday I asked him in an amiable
way, 'Brother, let us go to Pahomovo for the Mass!' but he said 'I
am not going; the priest there is a gambler;' and he would not come
here to-day because, he said, the priest from Vedenyapino smokes
and drinks vodka. He doesn't like the clergy! He reads Mass himself
and the Hours and the Vespers, while his sister acts as sacristan;