prelate, on the canon of the honest Andrew, pastor of Crete, on the
works of the most beatific father, John the Damascene. He is
religious--unusually so! I used to lead him on, and he would sing to me
with tears in his eyes: 'Come ye brethren, and we will give the last
kiss to him who has gone to his rest...' From the ritual of the burial
of laymen. No, just think: it is only in the Russian soul alone that
such contradictions may dwell together!"

"Yes. A fellow like that will pray, and pray, then cut a throat, and
then wash his hands and put a candle before an image," said Ramses.

"Just so. I know of nothing more uncanny than this fusion of fully
sincere devoutness with an innate leaning toward crime. Shall I confess
to you? I, when I talk all alone to Simeon--and we talk with each other
long and leisurely, for hours--I experience at moments a genuine
terror. A superstitious terror! Just as though, for instance, I am
standing in the dusk upon a shaking little board, bending over some
dark, malodorous well, and just barely distinguish how there, at the
bottom, reptiles are stirring. And yet, he is devout in a real way, and
I am sure will some time join the monks and will be a great faster and
sayer of prayers, and the devil knows how, in what monstrous fashion, a
real religious ecstasy will entwine in his soul with blasphemy, with
scoffing at sacred things, with some repulsive passion or other, with
sadism or something else of that nature!"

"However, you do not spare the object of your observations," said
Yarchenko, and carefully indicated the girls with his eyes.

"Eh, it's all the same. Our relations are cool now."

"How so?" asked Volodya Pavlov, who had caught the end of the
conversation.

"Just so ... It isn't even worth the telling..." smiled the reporter
evasively. "A trifle ... Let's have your glass here, Mr. Yarchenko."

But the precipitate Niura, who could never keep her tongue behind her
teeth, suddenly shot oat in rapid patter:

"It's because Sergei Ivanich gave him one in the snout ... On account
of Ninka. A certain old man came to Ninka ... And stayed for the night
... And Ninka had the flowers ... And the old man was torturing her all
the time ... So Ninka started crying and ran away."[6]

[6] The Russian expression is "the red flag."--TRANS.

"Drop it, Niura; it's boring," said Platonov with a wry face.

"Can it!" (leave off) ordered Tamara severely, in the jargon of houses
of prostitut