“Ah, well!” he chuckled. “You’ll always be the same shiftless good-for-naughts. I’ve told you so before, little fathers. I say so again!” He went on licking his cigar to reattach a ragged edge of pseudo-tobacco. “See, you! Your tyrant married a little while ago. Did he perhaps wed a dame of his own rank, even of his people--of ours, I mean?” he hastily corrected. “No, he’s taken a wife from among strangers, from an island you don’t know anything about, nor even where it is; but I do. It’s called England, and they are all merchants there, and--as you’re so devout--you might just as well know that they have another God than we in Holy Russia. Their priests are no priests at all; they dress like you and me--that is,” he interpolated, “like me, for they, of course, don’t wear your _touloupe_ or your _kaftán_!” He granted an approving tap to his eminently reproachable trousers and coat, which, according to him, were models of Anglican fashion, and once more glanced about him. “Not of our religion!” chorused the audience. “Do you say that her new Highness is not of our religion?” Gregor saw that he had scored a point, and gave instant attention to driving it home. “They made her take some vows, of course,” he explained, unsatisfactorily. “I’ve read something of the kind in the news-sheets, but can you make a black heifer white by mumbling words over her? Can you change one from the south into one of us northerners? You can’t, eh? Well, neither can the Archimandrite change a foreign woman into a Russian lady fit to rule you as you seem to like being ruled.” Marzof, the elder, rose to his full height. “You’re talking great foolishness, my son,” he calmly stated. “Why do you come and speak against strangers to us, who have known the grandmother of our Prince? She came from foreign parts, too, and she was an angel straight out of heaven, I’ll swear it. We gave her a name here, for we couldn’t say right the one she bore; that was too difficult for our stiff tongues, and the name we gave her was ‘Raïssa’ (the Heaven-sent). We were serfs then still--slaves, as you say--but she cared for us as if we’d been her own children. When the great sickness [cholera] came, she went from house to house, never afraid, helping us, feeding us, touching us with her tiny white hands.” The old man lifted his fur cap and reverently went on. “May God keep fresh the memory of Princess Raïssa, the blessed grandmother of our present Prince, and the mother of our late master, who, too, was kind to his people, and may He rest their souls in His Paradise!” He sat heavily down again, and Gregor Lukitch slipped from the table to the sanded floor. “I abandon you--I leave you to your fate!” he clamored, spreading wide his arms, as one who lets drop a burden too heavy for his strength. “I leave you, I say, to your ignorance and your sloth. You will not see the truth when it’s shown to you dear as day. What more can I do!”