--ran till we dropped; and in that way, in wild frenzy, I fell
into fornication."

The policeman laughed, but, noticing that no one else was laughing,
became serious and said:

"That's Molokanism. I have heard they are all like that in the
Caucasus."

"But I was not killed by a thunderbolt," Matvey went on, crossing
himself before the ikon and moving his lips. "My dead mother must
have been praying for me in the other world. When everyone in the
town looked upon me as a saint, and even the ladies and gentlemen
of good family used to come to me in secret for consolation, I
happened to go into our landlord, Osip Varlamitch, to ask forgiveness
--it was the Day of Forgiveness--and he fastened the door with
the hook, and we were left alone face to face. And he began to
reprove me, and I must tell you Osip Varlamitch was a man of brains,
though without education, and everyone respected and feared him,
for he was a man of stern, God-fearing life and worked hard. He had
been the mayor of the town, and a warden of the church for twenty
years maybe, and had done a great deal of good; he had covered all
the New Moscow Road with gravel, had painted the church, and had
decorated the columns to look like malachite. Well, he fastened the
door, and--'I have been wanting to get at you for a long time,
you rascal, . . .' he said. 'You think you are a saint,' he said.
'No you are not a saint, but a backslider from God, a heretic and
an evildoer! . . .' And he went on and on. . . . I can't tell you
how he said it, so eloquently and cleverly, as though it were all
written down, and so touchingly. He talked for two hours. His words