“You have spoken the truth. Well, then, acquire sense, acquire it, and straighten yourself out.…Go to church. Listen to God’s Word. Therein is all wisdom.”

“Yes, of course,” Mishka almost groaned.

“And I will read to you some more. Would you like that?”

“Please, ma’am.”

The old woman produced her Bible from somewhere in back of her, paged it, and the courtyard resounded with her tremulous voice:

“ ‘Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest; for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same thing.’ ”

Mishka shook his head and scratched his left shoulder.

“ ‘And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God?’ ”

“Ma’am,” Mishka began with tears in his voice, “let me go, for God’s sake.…I’ll come some other time to listen. But now I’m awfully hungry. My stomach is rumbling something terrible. We’ve had nothing to eat since last night.”

The old woman shut the book with a bang.

“Get along with you! Go!” sounded sharply and curtly through the yard.

“Thank you kindly.” And he almost ran to the gate.

“Unrepentant souls, hearts of beasts,” she hissed after him.

Half an hour later all three of us were sitting in a tavern, having tea and white bread.

“It was as though she were screwing a gimlet into me,” said Mishka, smiling kindly at me with his gentle eyes. “I stood and thought to myself, ‘My God! Why in heaven’s name did I go there?’ It was torture. Instead of taking the clasps and letting me go, she began talking. How queer people are! You want to be decent with them, but they follow their own tack.…In the simplicity of my heart I said to her: ‘Here, mistress, are your clasps. Don’t hold it against me.’ But she said, ‘No, wait. You tell me why you brought them back to me,’ and then she went on pitching into me. I broke into a sweat listening to her, honest I did.”

And he kept on smiling in that infinitely gentle way of his.

Syomka, disheveled, sulky, and sullen, said to him earnestly:

“You’d better die straight off, my dear blockhead! Or else, with these doings of yours, the flies or cockroaches will eat you up.”

“Well! The things you say! Come, let’s drink a glass to the end of the affair!”

And we drank heartily to the end of this curious affair.

1895.