property. He needs to have in him the spirit of a dog, so that
he shall look after his master's stuff as he would look after
the skin which his mother has put on to his own body. But you,
you young puppy, haven't the slightest notion of what property
means. In fact, were anyone to go and tell Vasili Sergeitch
about the way in which you keep letting us off, he'd give it you
in the neck. Yes, you're no good to him at all, but just an
expense: whereas when a man serves a master he ought, do you
understand, to be PROFITABLE to that master."

He rolled and handed me a cigarette.

"Smoke this," said he, "and perhaps it'll make your brain work
easier. If only you had been of a less awkward, uncomfortable
nature, I should have said to you, 'Go and join the priests;
but, as things are, you aren't the right sort for that--you're
too stiff and unbending, and would never make headway even with
an abbot. No, you're not the sort to play cards with. A monk is
like a jackdaw--he chatters without knowing what he is chattering
about, and pays no heed to the root of things, so busy is he
with stuffing himself full with the grain. I say this to you
with absolute earnestness, for I perceive you to be strange to
our ways--a cuckoo that has blundered into the wrong nest."

And, doffing his cap, a gesture which he never failed to execute
when he had something particularly important to say, he added
humbly and sonorously as he glanced at the grey firmament:

"In the sight of the Lord our ways are the ways of thieves, and
such as will never gain of Him salvation."