ed with a lie. But
Father Anastasy perceived it clearly, and realized that his presence
was burdensome and inappropriate, that his Reverence, who had taken
an early morning service in the night and a long mass at midday,
was exhausted and longing for repose; every minute he was meaning
to get up and go, but he did not get up, he sat on as though he
were waiting for something. He was an old man of sixty-five,
prematurely aged, with a bent and bony figure, with a sunken face
and the dark skin of old age, with red eyelids and a long narrow
back like a fish's; he was dressed in a smart cassock of a light
lilac colour, but too big for him (presented to him by the widow
of a young priest lately deceased), a full cloth coat with a broad
leather belt, and clumsy high boots the size and hue of which showed
clearly that Father Anastasy dispensed with goloshes. In spite of
his position and his venerable age, there was something pitiful,
crushed and humiliated in his lustreless red eyes, in the strands
of grey hair with a shade of green in it on the nape of his neck,
and in the big shoulder-blades on his lean back. . . . He sat without
speaking or moving, and coughed with circumspection, as though
afraid that the sound of his coughing might make his presence more
noticeable.

The old man had come to see his Reverence on business. Two months
before he had been prohibited from officiating till further notice,
and his case was being inquired into. His shortcomings were numerous.
He was intemperate in his habits, fell out with the other clergy
and the commune, kept the church records and accounts carelessly
--these were the formal charges against him; but besides all that,
there had been rumours for a long time past that he celebrated
unlawful marriages for money and sold certificates of having fasted
and taken the sacrament to officials and officers who came to him
from the town. These rumours were maintained the more persistently
that he was poor and had nine children to keep, who were as incompetent
and unsuccessful as himself. The sons were spoilt and uneducated,
and stayed at home doing nothing, while the daughters were ugly and
did not get married.

Not having the moral force to be open, his Reverence walked up and
down the room and said nothing or spoke in hints.

"So you are not going home to-night?" he asked, stopping near the
dark window and poking with his little finger into the cage where
a canary was asleep with its f