“I had never thought at all before, but now I began to think so hard that I could not go about the ordinary things of life, I was so wrapped up in the mystery of my own ignorance.

“People said I was under the evil eye.  But that again was nonsense.  ‘Whence comes man?’ I asked.  ’Where does he go?  Where was I before I was born?’ I was part of my ancestors.  Very well.  ’But where shall I go when I die?  What shall I be?’

“I nearly learned to disbelieve in religion.  You must know I began to go to church every Saturday evening and on all festivals.  I listened intently to all the services and the sermons, and I read all that I could find to read, and I asked questions of priests and of educated people—­all with the idea of solving this mystery of life.  I tried to be good at the bidding of the Church, but I gave that up.  I learned that it was impossible to avoid sin.

“You drink wine—­this is a sin; give short weight—­that is a sin; look on your neighbour’s wife—­that is a sin; everything you do is sin—­even if you do nothing, that is sin; there is no road of sinlessness.

“I went on living as I felt inclined, without care as to whether it were sin or no.  But still I asked myself about man’s life.

“Some one said to me, ’You will never understand, because you think of yourself as a separate individual, and not as just a little part of the human race.  You live on in all the people who come after you, just as before you were born you lived in those who were before you.’

“That was something new, but I understood him, and I asked him a new question:  ’If what you say is true—­and very likely it is—­what, then, is the past of the whole human race, and what its future?  What does the life of the human race mean?’

“That he could not answer.  Can you answer it?  No.  No one can answer it.”

* * * * *

“You are like Socrates,” I said.

“Who was Socrates?”

“He was the man whom the Oracle indicated as the wisest man alive.  All men knew nothing, but Socrates was found wiser than they, for he alone knew that he knew nought.”

A look of pleased vanity floated over the face of my Mingrelian host. 
He was at least quite human.

Before going to bed we drank one another’s healths.

V

“HAVE YOU A LIGHT HAND?”

This is not simply a matter of making pastry, as you shall see.

I was tramping along a Black Sea road one night, and was wondering where I should find a shelter, when suddenly a little voice cried out to me from the darkness of the steppe.  I stopped and looked and listened.  In a minute a little boy in a red shirt and a grey sheepskin hat came careering towards me, and called out:  “Do you want a place to sleep?  My mother’s coffee-house is the best you’ll find.  The coffee-house down the hill is nothing to it.  There it is, that dark house you passed.  I am out gathering wood for the fire, but I shall come in a minute.”