thos--that is, every day my matins began at midnight without
fail, and on the eve of the chief of the twelve great holy days my
midnight service lasted ten hours and sometimes even twelve. Monks
are allowed by rule to sit during the singing of the Psalter and
the reading of the Bible, but I wanted to be better than the monks,
and so I used to stand all through. I used to read and sing slowly,
with tears and sighing, lifting up my hands, and I used to go
straight from prayer to work without sleeping; and, indeed, I was
always praying at my work, too. Well, it got all over the town
'Matvey is a saint; Matvey heals the sick and senseless.' I never
had healed anyone, of course, but we all know wherever any heresy
or false doctrine springs up there's no keeping the female sex away.
They are just like flies on the honey. Old maids and females of all
sorts came trailing to me, bowing down to my feet, kissing my hands
and crying out I was a saint and all the rest of it, and one even
saw a halo round my head. It was too crowded in the prayer-room. I
took a bigger room, and then we had a regular tower of Babel. The
devil got hold of me completely and screened the light from my eyes
with his unclean hoofs. We all behaved as though we were frantic.
I read, while the old maids and other females sang, and then after
standing on their legs for twenty-four hours or longer without
eating or drinking, suddenly a trembling would come over them as
though they were in a fever; after that, one would begin screaming
and then another--it was horrible! I, too, would shiver all over
like a Jew in a frying-pan, I don't know myself why, and our legs
began to prance about. It's a strange thing, indeed: you don't want
to, but you prance about and waggle your arms; and after that,
screaming and shrieking, we all danced and ran after one another
--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,