The Father Superior listened to him with dignity, and, with a slight bend of the head, replied:
«I sincerely deplore his absence. Perhaps at our table he might have learnt to like us, and we him. Pray be seated, gentlemen.»
He stood before the holy image, and began to say grace, aloud. All bent their heads reverently, and Maximov clasped his hands before him, with peculiar fervour.
It was at this moment that Fyodor Pavlovitch played his last prank. It must be noted that he really had meant to go home, and really had felt the impossibility of going to dine with the Father Superior as though nothing had happened, after his disgraceful behaviour in the elder’s cell. Not that he was so very much ashamed of himself- quite the contrary perhaps. But still he felt it would be unseemly to go to dinner. Yet his creaking carriage had hardly been brought to the steps of the hotel, and he had hardly got into it, when he suddenly stopped short. He remembered his own words at the elder’s: «I always feel when I meet people that I am lower than all, and that they all take me for a buffoon; so I say let me play the buffoon, for you are, every one of you, stupider and lower than I.» He longed to revenge himself on everyone for his own unseemliness. He suddenly recalled how he had once in the past been asked, «Why do you hate so and so, so much?» And he had answered them, with his shameless impudence, «I’ll tell you. He has done me no harm. But I played him a dirty trick, and ever since I have hated him.»
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Remembering that now, he smiled quietly and malignantly, hesitating for a moment. His eyes gleamed, and his lips positively quivered.
«Well, since I have begun, I may as well go on,» he decided. His predominant sensation at that moment might be expressed in the following words, «Well, there is no rehabilitating myself now. So let me shame them for all I am worth. I will show them I don’t care what they think- that’s all!»
He told the coachman to wait, while with rapid steps he returned to the monastery and straight to the Father Superior’s. He had no clear idea what he would do, but he knew that he could not control himself, and that a touch might drive him to the utmost limits of ob-scenity, but only to obscenity, to nothing criminal, nothing for which he could be legally punished. In the last resort, he could always restrain himself, and had marvelled indeed at himself, on that score, sometimes. He appeared in the Father Superior’s dining-room, at the moment when the prayer was over, and all were moving to the table. Standing in the doorway, he scanned the company, and laughing his prolonged, impudent, malicious chuckle, looked them all boldly in the face. «They thought I had gone, and here I am again,» he cried to the whole room.
For one moment everyone stared at him without a word; and at once everyone felt that something revolting, grotesque, positively scandalous, was about to happen. Miusov passed immediately from the most benevolent frame of mind to the most savage. All the feelings that had subsided and died down in his heart revived instantly.
«No! this I cannot endure!» he cried. «I absolutely cannot! and… I certainly cannot!» The blood rushed to his head. He positively stammered; but he was beyond thinking of
style, and he seized his hat.
«What is it he cannot?» cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, «that he absolutely cannot and certainly cannot? Your reverence, am I to come in or not? Will you receive me as your guest?»
«You are welcome with all my heart,» answered the Superior. «Gentlemen!» he added, «I venture to beg you most earnestly to lay aside your dissensions, and to be united in love and family harmony- with prayer to the Lord at our humble table.»
«No, no, it is impossible!» cried Miusov, beside himself.
«Well, if it is impossible for Pyotr Alexandrovitch, it is impossible for me, and I won’t stop. That is why I came. I will keep with Pyotr Alexandrovitch everywhere now. If you will go away, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, I will go away too, if you remain, I will remain. You stung him by what you said about family harmony, Father Superior, he does not admit he is my relation. That’s right, isn’t it, von Sohn? Here’s von Sohn. How are you, von Sohn?»
«Do you mean me?» muttered Maximov, puzzled.
«Of course I mean you,» cried Fyodor Pavlovitch. «Who else? The Father Superior could not be von Sohn.»
«But I am not von Sohn either. I am Maximov.»
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«No, you are von Sohn. Your reverence, do you know who von Sohn was? It was a famous murder case. He was killed in a house of harlotry- I believe that is what such places are called among you- he was killed and robbed, and in spite of his venerable age, he was nailed up in a box and sent from Petersburg to Moscow in the luggage van, and while they were nailing him up, the harlots sang songs and played the harp, that is to say, the piano. So this is that very von Solin. He has risen from the dead, hasn’t he, von Sohn?»
«What is happening? What’s this?» voices were heard in the group of monks. «Let us go,» cried Miusov, addressing Kalganov.
«No, excuse me,» Fyodor Pavlovitch broke in shrilly, taking another step into the room. «Allow me to finish. There in the cell you blamed me for behaving disrespectfully just because I spoke of eating gudgeon, Pyotr Alexandrovitch. Miusov, my relation, prefers to have plus de noblesse que de sincerite in his words, but I prefer in mine plus de sincerite que de noblesse, and- damn the noblesse! That’s right, isn’t it, von Sohn? Allow me, Father Superior, though I am a buffoon and play the buffoon, yet I am the soul of honour, and I want to speak my mind. Yes, I am the soul of honour, while in Pyotr Alexandrovitch there is wounded vanity and nothing else. I came here perhaps to have a look and speak my mind. My son, Alexey, is here, being saved. I am his father; I care for his welfare, and it is my duty to care. While I’ve been playing the fool, I have been listening and having a look on the sly; and now I want to give you the last act of the performance. You know how things are with us? As a thing falls, so it lies. As a thing once has fallen, so it must lie for ever. Not a bit of it! I want to get up again. Holy Father, I am indignant with you. Confession is a great sacrament, before which I am ready to bow down reverently; but there in the cell, they all kneel down and confess aloud. Can it be right to confess aloud? It was ordained by the holy Fathers to confess in secret: then only your confession will be a mystery, and so it was of old. But how can I explain to him before everyone that I did this and that… well, you understand what- some-times it would not be proper to talk about it- so it is really a scandal! No, Fathers, one might be carried along with you to the Flagellants, I dare say…. at the first opportunity I shall write to the Synod, and I shall take my son, Alexey, home.»
We must note here that Fyodor Pavlovitch knew where to look for the weak spot. There had been at one time malicious rumours which had even reached the Archbishop (not only regarding our monastery, but in others where the institution of elders existed) that too much respect was paid to the elders, even to the detriment of the authority of the Superior, that the elders abused the sacrament of confession and so on and so on- absurd charges which had died away of themselves everywhere. But the spirit of folly, which had caught up Fyodor Pavlovitch and was bearing him on the current of his own nerves into lower and lower depths of ignominy, prompted him with this old slander. Fyodor Pavlovitch did not under-stand a word of it, and he could not even put it sensibly, for on this occasion no one had been kneeling and confessing aloud in the elder’s cell, so that he could not have seen anything
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of the kind. He was only speaking from confused memory of old slanders. But as soon as he had uttered his foolish tirade, he felt he had been talking absurd nonsense, and at once longed to prove to his audience, and above all to himself, that he had not been talking non-sense. And, though he knew perfectly well that with each word he would be adding more and more absurdity, he could not restrain himself, and plunged forward blindly.
«How disgraceful!» cried Pyotr Alexandrovitch.
«Pardon me!» said the Father Superior. «It was said of old, ‘Many have begun to speak against me and have uttered evil sayings about me. And hearing it I have said to myself: it is the correction of the Lord and He has sent it to heal my vain soul.’ And so we humbly thank you, honoured guest!» and he made Fyodor Pavlovitch a low bow.
«Tut- tut- tut- sanctimoniousness and stock phrases! Old phrases and old gestures. The old lies and formal
