"I was a priest for some time, but was unfro'cked and was put in a monastery at Suzdal for six years. You want to know why? Because I preached sermons in church which the people, in the simplicity of their souls, interpreted too literally. They were whipped for it and I was convicted. And thus the affair ended. What did I preach? I don't remember now. It was a long time ago, eighteen years, and one can forget in that time. I have had various thoughts but none of them ever came to anything." He laughed and in each wrinkle of his face the laughter played. He looked about him as if the mountains and the woods were created for him. When it became cooler we went on farther together, and on the way he asked me about myself. "Who are you?" Again, like that time before Anthony, I wished to place my former days before my eyes and to look upon their checkered face. I spoke about my childhood, about Larion and Savelko, and the old man laughed and shouted. "Eh, what good people! The Lord's fools, what! Those were dear, true flowers of the Russian soil, real God-loving ones." I did not understand this praise and his joy looked strange to me, but he could hardly walk from laughter. He stopped, threw his head back and shouted and called straight up to heaven, as if he had a friend there with whom he wished to share his joy. I said to him kindly: "You resemble Savelko somewhat." "Resemble!" he cried. "It is always good," he said, "to resemble some one. Eh, dear boy, if only the orthodox church had not ruined us ages ago, how different it would be for the living ones on the Russian soil now." His speech was dark to me. I told him about Titoff. He seemed to see my father-in-law before his eyes and he expressed himself freely about him. "Such a rascal! I have seen many such. They are rapacious bugs, but foolish and cowardly." When he heard my story about Anthony, he became thoughtful and then said: "So, that was a doubting Thomas. Well, not every Thomas is a genius. Some of them are stupidity itself." He drove a bumble-bee from him and lectured it. "Go away, go away from here. Such impoliteness, to fly straight into the eyes. The devil take you!" I listened to his words attentively, missing nothing. It seemed to me that they were children of deep thought. I spoke to him as before a confessor, except that I hesitated in mentioning God. I was afraid, and I regretted something. God's image had become tarnished in my soul at this time, and I wanted to polish it from the dust of the days, and I saw that I cleaned up to the hollow places and my heart shuddered with pain. The old man nodded his head and encouraged me. "Never mind; don't be afraid. If you keep silent you only lie to yourself, not to me. Speak. Regret nothing. For if you destroy, you will create something new." He responded to my words like an echo and I became more and more at ease with him. CHAPTER XIX Night overtook us. "Stop," he said, "let us find a place to rest."