d Father Simeon overhearing it, said not
a word, and was only ashamed because he could not remember where
such an ass was mentioned in the Bible. After him the priest at
Lesopolye had been Father Demyan, who used to drink heavily, and
at times drank till he saw green snakes, and was even nicknamed
Demyan Snakeseer. The schoolmaster at Lesopolye was Matvey Nikolaitch,
who had been a divinity student, a kind and intelligent man, but
he, too, was a drunkard; he never beat the schoolchildren, but for
some reason he always had hanging on his wall a bunch of birch-twigs,
and below it an utterly meaningless inscription in Latin: "Betula
kinderbalsamica secuta." He had a shaggy black dog whom he called
Syntax.

And his holiness laughed. Six miles from Lesopolye was the village
Obnino with a wonder-working ikon. In the summer they used to carry
the ikon in procession about the neighbouring villages and ring the
bells the whole day long; first in one village and then in another,
and it used to seem to the bishop then that joy was quivering in
the air, and he (in those days his name was Pavlusha) used to follow
the ikon, bareheaded and barefoot, with naive faith, with a naive
smile, infinitely happy. In Obnino, he remembered now, there were
always a lot of people, and the priest there, Father Alexey, to
save time during mass, used to make his deaf nephew Ilarion read
the names of those for whose health or whose souls' peace prayers
were asked. Ilarion used to read them, now and then getting a five
or ten kopeck piece for the service, and only when he was grey and
bald, when life was nearly over, he suddenly saw written on one of
the pieces of paper: "What a fool you are, Ilarion." Up to fifteen
at least Pavlusha was undeveloped and idle at his lessons, so much
so that they thought of taking him away from the clerical school
and putting him into a shop; one day, going to the post at Obnino
for letters, he had stared a long time at the post-office clerks
and asked: "Allow me to ask, how do you get your salary, every month
or every day?"

His holiness crossed himself and turned over on the other side,
trying to stop thinking and go to sleep.

"My mother has come," he remembered and laughed.

The moon peeped in at the window, the floor was lighted up, and
there were shadows on it. A cricket was chirping. Through the wall
Father Sisoy was snoring in the next room, and his aged snore had
a sound that suggested loneliness, forlornn