'All right, all right! I am not driving them away. I am only
remonstrating with them,' replied the merchant. 'You know they wouldn't
hesitate to drive a man to death. They have no pity, they only consider
themselves. . . . You've been told you cannot see him. Go away!
To-morrow!' And he got rid of them all.

He took all these pains because he liked order and liked to domineer
and drive the people away, but chiefly because he wanted to have Father
Sergius to himself. He was a widower with an only daughter who was an
invalid and unmarried, and whom he had brought fourteen hundred versts
to Father Sergius to be healed. For two years past he had been taking
her to different places to be cured: first to the university clinic in
the chief town of the province, but that did no good; then to a peasant
in the province of Samara, where she got a little better; then to a
doctor in Moscow to whom he paid much money, but this did no good at
all. Now he had been told that Father Sergius wrought cures, and had
brought her to him. So when all the people had been driven away he
approached Father Sergius, and suddenly falling on his knees loudly
exclaimed:

'Holy Father! Bless my afflicted offspring that she may be healed of her
malady. I venture to prostrate myself at your holy feet.'

And he placed one hand on the other, cup-wise. He said and did all this
as if he were doing something clearly and firmly appointed by law and
usage--as if one must and should ask for a daughter to be cured in just
this way and no other. He did it with such conviction that it seemed
even to Father Sergius that it should be said and done in just that way,
but nevertheless he bade him rise and tell him what the trouble was. The