Occasionally other valuers came. These were Pakhomi, a man with a fat belly, in greasy clothes, with one crooked eye who was wrinkled and snarling; Lukian, a little old man, smooth as a mouse, kind and brisk; and with him came a big, gloomy man looking like a coachman, black bearded, with a deathlike face, unpleasant to look upon, but handsome, and with eyes which never seemed to move. Almost always they brought ancient books, icons and thuribles to sell, or some kind of bowl. Sometimes they brought the vendors--an old man or woman from the Volga. When their business was finished, they sat on the counter, looking just like crows on a furrow, drank tea with rolls and lenten sugar, and told each other about the persecutions of the Nikonites. Here a search had been made, and books of devotion had been confiscated; there the police had closed a place of worship, and had contrived to bring its owner to justice under Article 103. This Article 103 was frequently the theme of their discussions, but they spoke of it calmly, as of something unavoidable, like the frosts of winter. The words police, search, prison, justice, Siberia--these words, continually recurring in their conversations about the persecutions for religious beliefs, fell on my heart like hot coals, kindling sympathy and fellow feeling for these Old Believers. Reading had taught me to look up to people who were obstinate in pursuing their aims, to value spiritual steadfastness. I forgot all the bad which I saw in these teachers of life. I felt only their calm stubbornness, behind which, it seemed to me, was hidden an unwavering belief in the teachings of their faith, for which they were ready to suffer all kinds of torments. At length, when I had come across many specimens of these guardians of the old faith, both among the people and among the intellectuals, I understood that this obstinacy was the oriental passivity of people who never moved from the place whereon they stood, and had no desire to move from it, but were bound by strong ties to the ways of the old words, and worn-out ideas. They were steeped in these words and ideas. Their wills were stationary, incapable of looking forward, and when some blow from without cast them out of their accustomed place, they mechanically and without resistance let themselves roll down, like a stone off a hill. They kept their own fasts in the graveyards of lived-out truths, with a deadly strength of memory for the past, and an insane love of suffering and persecution; but if the possibility of suffering were taken away from them, they faded away, disappeared like a cloud on a fresh winter day.