"Yes, that will come later. 'Great Russia is falling into ruin. Evil is rampant in our country and horror prevails. People are oppressed by want. The heart has become perverted with envy. The patient and gentle Russian is perishing, and a heartless tribe ferocious with greed is being born, a race of wolves, cruel animals of prey. Faith is dissolved, and outside her fortress the people stand perturbed. Persons of depraved minds aim at the defenseless, take them captive with satanic shrewdness, and entice them onto the road of crime against all thy laws, Master of our lives.'" "'Master?' That's for a bishop," grumbled the Smokestack. "Don't you like it?" "No, we must make it different." "How?" "We must tell him directly that a general revolt against life is stirring among the people, and that 'therefore Thou, who art called by God--'" The hunchback shook his head disapprovingly. "We may point out. We have no right to advise." "Who is our enemy, and what is his name? Atheist, Socialist, and Revolutionist, a trinity. The destroyer of the family, the robber of our children, the fore-runner of the anti-Christ." "You and I don't believe in the anti-Christ," said the hunchback quietly. "That doesn't matter. We are speaking of the masses. They believe in the anti-Christ. And we must point out the root of the main evil where we see it. In the doctrine of destruction--" "He knows it himself." "How should he? Who would tell him the truth? Nobody cast the noose of insanity around his children. And on what are their teachings based? On general poverty and discontent with poverty. And we ought to say to him straight out, 'Thou art the father, and thou art rich. Then give the riches thou hast accumulated to thy people. Thus thou wilt cut off the root of the evil, and everything will have been saved by thy hand.'" The hunchback drew up his shoulders, and spread his mouth into a wide, thin crack. "They'll send us to the mines for that." Then he looked into Yevsey's face and at the master. Klimkov listened to the reading and the conversation as to a fairytale, and felt that all the words entered his head and fixed themselves forever in his memory. With parted lips and popping eyes he looked now at one, now at the other, and did not drop his gaze even when the dark look of the hunchback fastened upon his face. He was fascinated by the proceedings. "Anyway," said the hunchback, "this is inconvenient." "What is it, Klimkov?" asked the Smokestack glumly. Yevsey's throat grew dry, and he did not answer at once. "I am listening." Suddenly he realized by their faces that they did not believe him, that they were afraid of him. He rose from the table, and said, getting his words mixed: "I won't say anything to a soul--I need it myself. Please let me listen--why, I myself said to you, Kapiton Ivanovich, that things ought to be different."