e." Whichever the
choir learned best would be sung before the Count. During the
"concert" the sacristan rose to a pitch of enthusiasm. The expression
of benevolence was continually alternating with one of alarm.

"Forte!" he muttered. "Andante! let yourselves go! Sing, you image!
Tenors, you don't bring it off! To-to-ti-to-tom. . . . Sol . . .
si . . . sol, I tell you, you blockhead! Glory! Basses, glo . . .
o . . . ry."

His bow travelled over the heads and shoulders of the erring trebles
and altos. His left hand was continually pulling the ears of the
young singers. On one occasion, carried away by his feelings he
flipped the bass Gennady under the chin with his bent thumb. But
the choristers were not moved to tears or to anger at his blows:
they realised the full gravity of their task.

After the "concert" came a minute of silence. Alexey Alexeitch,
red, perspiring and exhausted, sat down on the window-sill, and
turned upon the company lustreless, wearied, but triumphant eyes.
In the listening crowd he observed to his immense annoyance the
deacon Avdiessov. The deacon, a tall thick-set man with a red
pock-marked face, and straw in his hair, stood leaning against the
stove and grinning contemptuously.

"That's right, sing away! Perform your music!" he muttered in a
deep bass. "Much the Count will care for your singing! He doesn't
care whether you sing with music or without. . . . For he is an
atheist."

Father Kuzma looked round in a scared way and twiddled his fingers.

"Come, come," he muttered. "Hush, deacon, I beg."

After the "concert" they sang "May our lips be filled with praise,"
and the choir practice was over. The choir broke up to reassemble
in the evening for another practice. And so it went on every day.

One month passed and then a second. . . . The steward, too, had by
then received a notice that the Count would soon be coming. At last
the dusty sun-blinds were taken off the windows of the big house,
and Yefremovo heard the strains of the broken-down, out-of-tune
piano. Father Kuzma was pining, though he could not himself have
said why, or whether it was from delight or alarm. . . . The deacon
went about grinning.

The following Saturday evening Father Kuzma went to the sacristan's
lodgings. His face was pale, his shoulders drooped, the lilac of
his cassock looked faded.

"I have just been at his Excellency's," he said to the sacristan,
stammering. "He is a cultivated gentleman with refine