"No, rather badly."

"H'm! . . . I can't give you any advice on that score, because I
don't know much about theology myself. You give me a list of books
you need, and I will send them to you from Petersburg in the winter.
It will be necessary for you to read the notes of religious travellers,
too; among them are some good ethnologists and Oriental scholars.
When you are familiar with their methods, it will be easier for you
to set to work. And you needn't waste your time till you get the
books; come to me, and we will study the compass and go through a
course of meteorology. All that's indispensable."

"To be sure . . ." muttered the deacon, and he laughed. "I was
trying to get a place in Central Russia, and my uncle, the head
priest, promised to help me. If I go with you I shall have troubled
them for nothing."

"I don't understand your hesitation. If you go on being an ordinary
deacon, who is only obliged to hold a service on holidays, and on
the other days can rest from work, you will be exactly the same as
you are now in ten years' time, and will have gained nothing but a
beard and moustache; while on returning from this expedition in ten
years' time you will be a different man, you will be enriched by
the consciousness that something has been done by you."

From the ladies' carriage came shrieks of terror and delight. The
carriages were driving along a road hollowed in a literally overhanging
precipitous cliff, and it seemed to every one that they were galloping
along a shelf on a steep wall, and that in a moment the carriages
would drop into the abyss. On the right stretched the sea; on the
left was a rough brown wall with black blotches and red veins and
with climbing roots; while on the summit stood shaggy fir-trees
bent over, as though looking down in terror and curiosity. A minute
later there were shrieks and laughter again: they had to drive under
a huge overhanging rock.

"I don't know why the devil I'm coming with you," said Laevsky.
"How stupid and vulgar it is! I want to go to the North, to run
away, to escape; but here I am, for some reason, going to this
stupid picnic."

"But look, what a view!" said Samoylenko as the horses turned to
the left, and the valley of the Yellow River came into sight and
the stream itself gleamed in the sunlight, yellow, turbid, frantic.

"I see nothing fine in that, Sasha," answered Laevsky. "To be in
continual ecstasies over nature shows poverty of imagination.