"What is the matter with you? You yourself complained that the people were fools, and now you are shamelessly making a fool of Matveika! Why?" He jumped over to me and said: "Look, Motka, here are matches. I rub them between my hands, see? Put out the light, Larion." They put out the lamp, and I saw Savelko's two hands glow in the darkness with the same blue phosphorescence as the miraculous ikon. It was terrible and offensive to see. Savelko said something, but I crouched in a corner of the stove, closed my ears with my fingers, and remained silent. Then they crawled in by my side, took vodka along, and for a long time they took turns in telling me about true miracles and of the faith of man sacrilegiously betrayed. And so I fell asleep while they talked. After two or three days, many priests and officials arrived, arrested the ikon, dismissed the village elder from his post, and the priest, too, was threatened with a law-suit. Then I believed the whole thing had been a fraud, though it was hard for me to admit that it was done for the purpose of getting linen from the women and some pennies from the men. When I was six years old, Larion began to teach me the abcs in the Church-tongue and when two winters later a school was opened in our village, he sent me there. At first I grew somewhat apart from Larion. I liked to study, and I took to my books zealously, so that when he asked me my lessons, as sometimes happened, he would say, after hearing me, "Fine, Motka." Once he said: "Good blood boils in you. It's plain your father was no fool." And I asked, "But where is he?" "Who can know!" "Is he a peasant?" "All one can say for sure is that he was a man. His caste is unknown. However, he could hardly have been a peasant. By your face and skin, not to mention your character, he seems to have been from the gentry." Those casual words of his sank deep into my mind and they didn't do me much good. When they called me a foundling at school, I balked and shouted to my comrades: "You are peasant children, but my father is a gentleman!" I became very firm about this. One must protect oneself somehow against insults, and I had no other protection in my mind. They began to dislike me, to call me bad names, and I fought back. I was a strong youngster and could fight easily. Complaints grew about me, and people said to the sexton: "Quiet that bastard of yours!" And others without bothering to complain, pulled my ears to their hearts' content. Then Larion said to me: "You may be a son of a general, Matvei, but that isn't of such great importance. We are all born in the same way and therefore the honor is the same for all." But it was too late. I was twelve years old at the time and felt insults keenly. Something pulled me away from people and again I found myself close to the sexton. All winter we wandered together in the wood, catching birds, and I became worse in my studies.