felt fearfully tired, and the fish seemed to
him stale and tasteless; he felt thirsty all the time. . . .

After dinner two rich ladies, landowners, arrived and sat for an
hour and a half in silence with rigid countenances; the archimandrite,
a silent, rather deaf man, came to see him about business. Then
they began ringing for vespers; the sun was setting behind the wood
and the day was over. When he returned from church, he hurriedly
said his prayers, got into bed, and wrapped himself up as warm as
possible.

It was disagreeable to remember the fish he had eaten at dinner.
The moonlight worried him, and then he heard talking. In an adjoining
room, probably in the parlour, Father Sisoy was talking politics:

"There's war among the Japanese now. They are fighting. The Japanese,
my good soul, are the same as the Montenegrins; they are the same
race. They were under the Turkish yoke together."

And then he heard the voice of Marya Timofyevna:

"So, having said our prayers and drunk tea, we went, you know, to
Father Yegor at Novokatnoye, so. . ."

And she kept on saying, "having had tea" or "having drunk tea," and
it seemed as though the only thing she had done in her life was to
drink tea.

The bishop slowly, languidly, recalled the seminary, the academy.
For three years he had been Greek teacher in the seminary: by that
time he could not read without spectacles. Then he had become a
monk; he had been made a school inspector. Then he had defended his
thesis for his degree. When he was thirty-two he had been made
rector of the seminary, and consecrated archimandrite: and then his
life had been so easy, so pleasant; it seemed so long, so long, no
end was in sight. Then he had begun to be ill, had grown very thin
and almost blind, and by the advice of the doctors had to give up
everything and go abroad.

"And what then?" asked Sisoy in the next room.

"Then we drank tea . . ." answered Marya Timofyevna.

"Good gracious, you've got a green beard," said Katya suddenly in
surprise, and she laughed.

The bishop remembered that the grey-headed Father Sisoy's beard
really had a shade of green in it, and he laughed.

"God have mercy upon us, what we have to put up with with this
girl!" said Sisoy, aloud, getting angry. "Spoilt child! Sit quiet!"

The bishop remembered the perfectly new white church in which he
had conducted the services while living abroad, he remembered the
sound of the warm sea. In his flat he h