nfession, or the birth
of a child, now at Yulia Mihailovna's caricatured Stepan Trofimovitch
himself in a killing way, under the title of "A Liberal of the
Forties." Everybody shook with laughter, so that in the end it was
quite impossible to turn him out: he had become too necessary a person.
Besides he fawned upon Pyotr Stepanovitch in a slavish way, and he,
in his turn, had obtained by this time a strange and unaccountable
influence over Yulia Mihailovna.

I wouldn't have talked about this scoundrel, and, indeed, he would not
be worth dwelling upon, but there was another revolting story, so people
declare, in which he had a hand, and this story I cannot omit from my
record.

One morning the news of a hideous and revolting sacrilege was all over
the town. At the entrance to our immense marketplace there stands the
ancient church of Our Lady's Nativity, which was a remarkable antiquity
in our ancient town. At the gates of the precincts there is a large ikon
of the Mother of God fixed behind a grating in the wall. And behold, one
night the ikon had been robbed, the glass of the case was broken, the
grating was smashed and several stones and pearls (I don't know whether
they were very precious ones) had been removed from the crown and the
setting. But what was worse, besides the theft a senseless, scoffing
sacrilege had been perpetrated. Behind the broken glass of the ikon they
found in the morning, so it was said, a live mouse. Now, four months
since, it has been established beyond doubt that the crime was committed
by the convict Fedka, but for some reason it is added that Lyamshin took
part in it. At the time no one spoke of Lyamshin or had any suspicion
of him. But now every one says it was he who put the mouse there. I
remember all our responsible officials were rather staggered. A crowd
thronged round the scene of the crime from early morning. There was a
crowd continually before it, not a very huge one, but always about a
hundred people, some coming and some going. As they approached they
crossed themselves and bowed down to the ikon. They began to give
offerings, and a church dish made its appearance, and with the dish a
monk. But it was only about three o'clock in the afternoon it occurred
to the authorities that it was possible to prohibit the crowds standing
about, and to command them when they had prayed, bowed down and left
their offerings, to pass on. Upon Von Lembke this unfortunate incident
made the glo