The day was clear, the sun shone in through the window, and Anthony sat entirely covered by its rays. Suddenly an unexpected thought flashed through my head and pierced my heart like the bite of a snake. I jumped from my chair and stared hard at the monk. He, too, arose, and I saw that he picked up a knife from the table and played with it, asking: "What is the matter with you?" "Are you not my father?" I asked him. His face became drawn, immovable and blue, as if it were carved from ice. He half closed his eyes so that the light went out of them, and said, almost in a whisper: "I think--not. Where were you born? When? How old are you? Who is your mother?" And as I told him how I was abandoned he smiled and put the knife back on the table. "I was not in the district at that time," he answered. I became embarrassed and uncomfortable. It was as if I had begged for charity and been refused. "Well," he said, "and if I had been your father, what then?" "Nothing," I answered. "Exactly. That is the way I think about it. We are living together in a place where there are no fathers and no children in the flesh, only in the spirit. On the other hand, we are all abandoned on this earth--that is, we are brothers in misery, which we call life. Man is an accident in life, do you know that?" I read in his eyes that he was making fun of me. I was still laboring under the unpleasant impression which my strange and incomprehensible question had aroused in me, and I would have liked to explain the question to him or to forget it altogether. But I made matters worse by asking: "Why did you take that knife in your hand?" Anthony gazed at me and then laughed low: "You are a bold questioner. I took it because I took it, and why I really do not know. I like it; it is a very pretty thing." And he gave me the knife. It was sharp and pointed, with a design in gold laid on the steel, and a silver handle, with red stones. "It is an Arabian knife," he explained to me. "I use it for cutting pages of books, and at night I put it under my pillow. There is a rumor abroad that I am rich and there are poor people living about me, and my cell is out of the way." The knife as well as the hands of Anthony had a rich, peculiar perfume, which almost intoxicated me and made my head swim. "Let us talk a little more," Anthony continued in his low, deep, soft voice. "Do you know that a woman comes to see me?" "So I heard." "It is not true that she is my sister. I sleep with her." "Why do you talk of these things to me?" I asked. "So that you will be shocked once and for all and not continue to be surprised. You like worldly books?" "I have never read them." He took from the book-case a little book bound in red leather and gave it to me. "Go, prepare the samovar and read this," he said, in a tone of command. I opened the book, and on the very first page I found a picture--a woman naked to her knees and a man in front of her, also naked.