d ideas. But
. . . er . . . it's mortifying, brother. . . . 'At what o'clock,
your Excellency, do you desire us to ring for Mass to-morrow?' And
he said: 'As you think best. Only, couldn't it be as short and quick
as possible without a choir.' Without a choir! Er . . . do you
understand, without, without a choir. . . ."

Alexey Alexeitch turned crimson. He would rather have spent two
hours on his knees again than have heard those words! He did not
sleep all night. He was not so much mortified at the waste of his
labours as at the fact that the deacon would give him no peace now
with his jeers. The deacon was delighted at his discomfiture. Next
day all through the service he was casting disdainful glances towards
the choir where Alexey Alexeitch was booming responses in solitude.
When he passed by the choir with the censer he muttered:

"Perform your music! Do your utmost! The Count will give a ten-rouble
note to the choir!"

After the service the sacristan went home, crushed and ill with
mortification. At the gate he was overtaken by the red-faced deacon.

"Stop a minute, Alyosha!" said the deacon. "Stop a minute, silly,
don't be cross! You are not the only one, I am in for it too!
Immediately after the Mass Father Kuzma went up to the Count and
asked: 'And what did you think of the deacon's voice, your Excellency.
He has a deep bass, hasn't he?' And the Count--do you know what
he answered by way of compliment? 'Anyone can bawl,' he said. 'A
man's voice is not as important as his brains.' A learned gentleman
from Petersburg! An atheist is an atheist, and that's all about it!
Come, brother in misfortune, let us go and have a drop to drown our
troubles!"

And the enemies went out of the gate arm-in-arm.

NERVES

DMITRI OSIPOVITCH VAXIN, the architect, returned from town to his
holiday cottage greatly impressed by the spiritualistic seance at
which he had been present. As he undressed and got into his solitary
bed (Madame Vaxin had gone to an all-night service) he could not
help remembering all he had seen and heard. It had not, properly
speaking, been a seance at all, but the whole evening had been spent
in terrifying conversation. A young lady had begun it by talking,
apropos of nothing, about thought-reading. From thought-reading
they had passed imperceptibly to spirits, and from spirits to ghosts,
from ghosts to people buried alive. . . . A gentleman had read a
horrible story of a corpse turning round in th