household drove to mass in three open carriages with footmen at
the back. Everything was very festive and gorgeous. Sipiagin
decorated himself with his order, Valentina Mihailovna was
dressed in a beautiful pale lavender-coloured Parisian gown, and
during the service read her prayers out of a tiny little prayer
hook bound in red velvet. This little book was a matter of great
concern among several old peasants, one of whom, unable to
contain himself any longer, asked of his neighbour: "What is she
doing? Lord have mercy on us! Is she casting a spell? " The sweet
scent of the flowers, which filled the whole church, mingled with
the smell of the peasant's coats, tarred boots and shoes, the
whole being drowned by the delicious, overpowering scent of
incense.

In the choir the clerks and sacristans tried their very
hardest to sing well, and with the help of the men from the
factory attempted something like a concert! There was a moment
when an almost painful sensation came over the congregation. The
tenor's voice (it belonged to one of the men from the factory,
who was in the last stages of consumption) rose high above the
rest, and without the slightest restraint trilled out long
chromatic flat minor notes; they were terrible these notes! but
to stop them would have meant the whole concert going to pieces.
. . . However, the thing went off without any mishap. Father
Kiprian, a priest of the most patriarchal appearance, dressed in
the full vestments of the church, delivered his sermon out of a
copy-book. Unfortunately, the conscientious father had considered
it necessary to introduce the names of several very wise Assyrian
kings, which caused him some trouble in pronunciation. He
succeeded in showing a certain amount of learning, but perspired