rresponsible lot, and don't stir a finger for themselves.
I can fancy there will be no one to give them a meal after the fast!
We have no mother, and we have such servants that they can't lay
the tablecloth properly when I am away. You can imagine their
condition now! They will be left with nothing to break their fast,
while I have to stay here all night. How strange it all is."

She shrugged her shoulders, took a sip from her cup, and said:

"There are festivals that have a special fragrance: at Easter,
Trinity and Christmas there is a peculiar scent in the air. Even
unbelievers are fond of those festivals. My brother, for instance,
argues that there is no God, but he is the first to hurry to Matins
at Easter."

Liharev raised his eyes to Mlle. Ilovaisky and laughed.

"They argue that there is no God," she went on, laughing too, "but
why is it, tell me, all the celebrated writers, the learned men,
clever people generally, in fact, believe towards the end of their
life?"

"If a man does not know how to believe when he is young, Madam, he
won't believe in his old age if he is ever so much of a writer."

Judging from Liharev's cough he had a bass voice, but, probably
from being afraid to speak aloud, or from exaggerated shyness, he
spoke in a tenor. After a brief pause he heaved a sign and said:

"The way I look at it is that faith is a faculty of the spirit. It
is just the same as a talent, one must be born with it. So far as
I can judge by myself, by the people I have seen in my time, and
by all that is done around us, this faculty is present in Russians
in its highest degree. Russian life presents us with an uninterrupted
succession of convictions and aspirations, and if you care to know,
it has not yet the faintest notion of lack of faith or scepticism.
If a Russian does not believe in God, it means he believes in
something else."

Liharev took a cup of tea from Mlle. Ilovaisky, drank off half in
one gulp, and went on:

"I will tell you about myself. Nature has implanted in my breast
an extraordinary faculty for belief. Whisper it not to the night,
but half my life I was in the ranks of the Atheists and Nihilists,
but there was not one hour in my life in which I ceased to believe.
All talents, as a rule, show themselves in early childhood, and so
my faculty showed itself when I could still walk upright under the
table. My mother liked her children to eat a great deal, and when
she gave me food she used to