secular history, and all the sciences.  The Lord gave me a marvellous memory.  Sometimes, if I read a thing once or twice, I knew it by heart.  My preceptors and patrons were amazed, and so they expected I should make a learned man, a luminary of the Church.  I did think of going to Kiev to continue my studies, but my parents did not approve.  ‘You’ll be studying all your life,’ said my father; ‘when shall we see you finished?’ Hearing such words, I gave up study and took a post. . . .  Of course, I did not become a learned man, but then I did not disobey my parents; I was a comfort to them in their old age and gave them a creditable funeral.  Obedience is more than fasting and prayer.

“I suppose you have forgotten all your learning?” observed Kuzmitchov.

“I should think so!  Thank God, I have reached my eightieth year!  Something of philosophy and rhetoric I do remember, but languages and mathematics I have quite forgotten.”

Father Christopher screwed up his eyes, thought a minute and said in an undertone: 

“What is a substance?  A creature is a self-existing object, not requiring anything else for its completion.”

He shook his head and laughed with feeling.

“Spiritual nourishment!” he said.  “Of a truth matter nourishes the flesh and spiritual nourishment the soul!”

“Learning is all very well,” sighed Kuzmitchov, “but if we don’t overtake Varlamov, learning won’t do much for us.”

“A man isn’t a needle—­we shall find him.  He must be going his rounds in these parts.”

Among the sedge were flying the three snipe they had seen before, and in their plaintive cries there was a note of alarm and vexation at having been driven away from the stream.  The horses were steadily munching and snorting.  Deniska walked about by them and, trying to appear indifferent to the cucumbers, pies, and eggs that the gentry were eating, he concentrated himself on the gadflies and horseflies that were fastening upon the horses’ backs and bellies; he squashed his victims apathetically, emitting a peculiar, fiendishly triumphant, guttural sound, and when he missed them cleared his throat with an air of vexation and looked after every lucky one that escaped death.

“Deniska, where are you?  Come and eat,” said Kuzmitchov, heaving a deep sigh, a sign that he had had enough.

Deniska diffidently approached the mat and picked out five thick and yellow cucumbers (he did not venture to take the smaller and fresher ones), took two hard-boiled eggs that looked dark and were cracked, then irresolutely, as though afraid he might get a blow on his outstretched hand, touched a pie with his finger.

“Take them, take them,” Kuzmitchov urged him on.

Deniska took the pies resolutely, and, moving some distance away, sat down on the grass with his back to the chaise.  At once there was such a sound of loud munching that even the horses turned round to look suspiciously at Deniska.