Father Yakov was so absorbed in drinking tea that he did not answer this question at once.  He lifted his grey-blue eyes to Kunin, thought a moment, and as though recalling his question, he shook his head in the negative.  An expression of pleasure and of the most ordinary prosaic appetite overspread his face from ear to ear.  He drank and smacked his lips over every gulp.  When he had drunk it to the very last drop, he put his glass on the table, then took his glass back again, looked at the bottom of it, then put it back again.  The expression of pleasure faded from his face. . . .  Then Kunin saw his visitor take a biscuit from the cake-basket, nibble a little bit off it, then turn it over in his hand and hurriedly stick it in his pocket.

“Well, that’s not at all clerical!” thought Kunin, shrugging his shoulders contemptuously.  “What is it, priestly greed or childishness?”

After giving his visitor another glass of tea and seeing him to the entry, Kunin lay down on the sofa and abandoned himself to the unpleasant feeling induced in him by the visit of Father Yakov.

“What a strange wild creature!” he thought.  “Dirty, untidy, coarse, stupid, and probably he drinks. . . .  My God, and that’s a priest, a spiritual father!  That’s a teacher of the people!  I can fancy the irony there must be in the deacon’s face when before every mass he booms out:  ‘Thy blessing, Reverend Father!’ A fine reverend Father!  A reverend Father without a grain of dignity or breeding, hiding biscuits in his pocket like a schoolboy. . . .  Fie!  Good Lord, where were the bishop’s eyes when he ordained a man like that?  What can he think of the people if he gives them a teacher like that?  One wants people here who . . .”

And Kunin thought what Russian priests ought to be like.

“If I were a priest, for instance. . . .  An educated priest fond of his work might do a great deal. . . .  I should have had the school opened long ago.  And the sermons?  If the priest is sincere and is inspired by love for his work, what wonderful rousing sermons he might give!”

Kunin shut his eyes and began mentally composing a sermon.  A little later he sat down to the table and rapidly began writing.

“I’ll give it to that red-haired fellow, let him read it in church, . . .” he thought.

The following Sunday Kunin drove over to Sinkino in the morning to settle the question of the school, and while he was there to make acquaintance with the church of which he was a parishioner.  In spite of the awful state of the roads, it was a glorious morning.  The sun was shining brightly and cleaving with its rays the layers of white snow still lingering here and there.  The snow as it took leave of the earth glittered with such diamonds that it hurt the eyes to look, while the young winter corn was hastily thrusting up its green beside it.  The rooks floated with dignity over the fields.  A rook would fly, drop to earth, and give several hops before standing firmly on its feet. . . .