Those possessed fell in heaps in the dust and mud under the feet of the crowd, and they struggled like fish in the water, and their wild cries were heard. But the crowds passed over these palpitating bodies, stamped them and kicked them under foot, and cried out to the image of the Virgin, "Rejoice, Thou queen of heaven!" Their faces were distorted and wild with straining, damp with sweat and black with dirt; and this whole procession of man, singing a joyless song with weary voices and marching with hollow steps, insulted the earth and darkened the heavens. The beggars sat or reclined on the sides of the road, under the trees and stretched themselves out like two gay ribbons--the sick, the crippled, the wounded, the armless, the legless and the blind. Their worn bodies crept over the earth, their mutilated arms and legs trembled in the air and pushed themselves before people to excite their pity. The beggars moaned and wailed, their wounds burned in the sun, while they asked and begged a kopeck for themselves, in the name of God. Many of them were eyeless, while in others the eyes burned like coals and pain gnawed the flesh without respite, and they resembled some horrible growth. I saw man persecuted. The force which drove him into the dust and the dirt seemed hostile to me. Whither did it drive them? No; that is not the right! Once I was in the exquisite city of Kiev, and I was struck by the beauty and the grandeur of this ancient nest of the Russians. There I had an interview with a monk who was supposed to be very wise. I said to him: "I cannot understand the laws upon which the life of a man is based." "Who are you?" he asked me. "A peasant." "Can you read and write?" "A little." "Reading and writing is not for such as you," he said sternly. I saw in truth that he was a seer. "Are you a Stundist?" he asked me. "No. "A-ha! Then you are a Dukhobor?" "Why?" "I gather it from your words." His face was pink like flesh and his eyes were small. "If you seek God," he said to me, "then it is for but one reason--to abase Him." He threatened me with his finger. "I know your kind. You will not read the Credo a hundred times. Well, read it, and all your foolishness will vanish like smoke. I would send all you heretics to Abyssinia, to the Ethiopians in Africa. There you would perish alive from the heat." "Were you ever in Abyssinia?" I asked him. "Yes," he answered. "And you didn't perish?" The monk became enraged.