“A fox is prowling about—it has a hole here. Many hunting people have asked me: is there a fox near by, grandfather? And I lie to them! Foxes? What should foxes be doing here? I have no liking for hunters, to the dickens with them!”

I had noticed by then that the old man often wanted to break out into real foul language, but realizing that it was out of character for him to do so, he resorted to milder expressions.

After a glass of cowslip vodka, he said, half-closing his lacerated eyes:

“What tasty fish this is—thank you kindly for it—I do love everything tasty.…”

His attitude toward God was not very clear to me and cautiously I tried to broach the subject. At first he answered with the hackneyed words of pilgrims, cloister habitues and professional holy-men, but I felt that this manner was in fact irksome to him, and I was not mistaken. Drawing closer to me and lowering his voice, he suddenly began to talk with more animation:

“I’ll tell you this, friend, about a little Frenchie, a French priest—a little man, black as a starling, with a spot shaved bare on his head, golden spectacles on his nose, tiny little hands, like a little girl’s, and all of him like a toy of God’s. I met him at the Pochaev monastery; that is a long way off, over there!”

He waved his hand towards the East, in the direction of India, stretched out his legs more comfortably, and continued, propping his back against some stones:

“Polish people living all around—a foreign soil, not our own. I was palavering with a monk one day, who thought people should get punished more often; so I just smiled and said that if one was to begin punishing rightly, all men would have to go through it, and then there would be time for nothing else, no other work done but just flaying one another. The monk got quite angry with me, called me a fool, and walked away. Then the little priest, who had been sitting in the corner, nestled up to me and started telling me, oh, great things. I tell you, friend, he seemed to me like a kind of John the Baptist. He wasn’t quite easy in his speech, for not all our words can be put into a foreign tongue, but his big soul shone through all right. ‘I see you do not agree with that monk,’ he said, so polite-like, ‘and you are right. God is not a fiend; He is a dear friend to people; but this is what has happened, owing to His kindness: He’s melted in our tearful life like sugar in water, and the water is filthy and full of dregs, so that we do not feel Him any more; we do not get the taste of Him in our lives. Nevertheless, He is spread over the whole world and lives in every soul as the purest spark; we should seek Him in man, collect Him into a single ball, and when the divine spark of all these living souls is gathered into this powerful whole—the Devil will come and say to the Lord: ‘Thou art great, my God, and Thy might is measureless—I didn’t know this before, so pray forgive me! I won’t struggle with Thee any more now—please take me into Thy service.’ ”

The old man spoke with emphasis, and his dilated pupils gleamed strangely in his dark face.

“And then the end will come to all evil and wickedness and human strife, and people will return to their God, like rivers flowing into the ocean.”

He choked over his words, slapped his knees, and continued joyfully, with a hoarse little laugh:

“All this came as such balm to my heart; it struck a light in my soul—I didn’t know how to say it to the Frenchie. ‘Might I be allowed to embrace you, you image of Christ?’ I said. So we embraced one another and started crying, both of us. And how we cried! Like small children, finding their parents after a long parting. We were both quite old, you know; the bristle round his shaven spot was gray, too. So I told him then and there: ‘You’re like John the Baptist to me, Christ’s image.’ Christ’s image is what I called him; funny, isn’t it, when I told you he resembled a starling! The monk, Vitaly, kept abusing him and saying: ‘A nail, that’s what you are.’ And true it was indeed, he was like a nail, as sharp as one. Of course, friend, you do not understand this sweet joy of mine; you can read and write; you know all about everything; but I, at that time, went about as one blind—I was able to see all right, but just couldn’t make out: where is