against the priests, their answer was that
the Scripture says: "As you have received it without fee, so you must
give it to the others; whereas the priests require payment for the grace
they bestow by the sacraments." To all attempts which Missael made
to oppose them by arguments founded on Holy Writ, the tailor and Ivan
Chouev gave calm but very firm answers, contradicting his assertions by
appeal to the Scriptures, which they knew uncommonly well.

Missael got angry and threatened them with persecution by the
authorities. Their answer was: It is said, I have been persecuted and so
will you be.

The discussion came to nothing, and all would have ended well if Missael
had not preached the next day at mass, denouncing the wicked seducers of
the faithful and saying that they deserved the worst punishment. Coming
out of the church, the crowd of peasants began to consult whether it
would not be well to give the infidels a good lesson for disturbing the
minds of the community. The same day, just when Missael was enjoying
some salmon and gangfish, dining at the village priest's in company with
the inspector, a violent brawl arose in the village. The peasants came
in a crowd to Chouev's cottage, and waited for the dissenters to come
out in order to give them a thrashing.

The dissenters assembled in the cottage numbered about twenty men and
women. Missael's sermon and the attitude of the orthodox peasants,
together with their threats, aroused in the mind of the dissenters angry
feelings, to which they had before been strangers. It was near evening,
the women had to go and milk the cows, and the peasants were still
standing and waiting at the door.

A boy who stepped out of the door was beaten and driven back into the
house. The people within began consulting what was to be done, and could
come to no agreement. The tailor said, "We must bear whatever is done to
us, and not resist." Chouev replied that if they decided on that course
they would, all of them, be beaten to death. In consequence, he seized
a poker and went out of the house. "Come!" he shouted, "let us follow the
law of Moses!" And, falling upon the peasants, he knocked out one man's
eye, and in the meanwhile all those who had been in his house contrived
to get out and make their way home.

Chouev was thrown into prison and charged with sedition and blasphemy.

XXI

Two years previous to those events a strong and handsome young girl
of an eastern type, Kat