“What is there to teach?  There is nothing to teach.  Sit down and write.”

“Oh, do me the favour, Father Fyodor!  I beseech you!  I know he will be frightened and will attend to your letter, because, you see, you are a cultivated man too.  Do be so good!  I’ll sit down, and you’ll dictate to me.  It will be a sin to write to-morrow, but now would be the very time; my mind would be set at rest.”

His Reverence looked at the deacon’s imploring face, thought of the disagreeable Pyotr, and consented to dictate.  He made the deacon sit down to his table and began.

“Well, write . . .  ‘Christ is risen, dear son . . .’ exclamation mark.  ‘Rumours have reached me, your father,’ then in parenthesis, ‘from what source is no concern of yours . . .’ close the parenthesis. . . .  Have you written it?  ’That you are leading a life inconsistent with the laws both of God and of man.  Neither the luxurious comfort, nor the worldly splendour, nor the culture with which you seek outwardly to disguise it, can hide your heathen manner of life.  In name you are a Christian, but in your real nature a heathen as pitiful and wretched as all other heathens—­more wretched, indeed, seeing that those heathens who know not Christ are lost from ignorance, while you are lost in that, possessing a treasure, you neglect it.  I will not enumerate here your vices, which you know well enough; I will say that I see the cause of your ruin in your infidelity.  You imagine yourself to be wise, boast of your knowledge of science, but refuse to see that science without faith, far from elevating a man, actually degrades him to the level of a lower animal, inasmuch as. . .’” The whole letter was in this strain.

When he had finished writing it the deacon read it aloud, beamed all over and jumped up.

“It’s a gift, it’s really a gift!” he said, clasping his hands and looking enthusiastically at his Reverence.  “To think of the Lord’s bestowing a gift like that!  Eh?  Holy Mother!  I do believe I couldn’t write a letter like that in a hundred years.  Lord save you!”

Father Anastasy was enthusiastic too.

“One couldn’t write like that without a gift,” he said, getting up and wagging his fingers—­“that one couldn’t!  His rhetoric would trip any philosopher and shut him up.  Intellect.  Brilliant intellect!  If you weren’t married, Father Fyodor, you would have been a bishop long ago, you would really!”

Having vented his wrath in a letter, his Reverence felt relieved; his fatigue and exhaustion came back to him.  The deacon was an old friend, and his Reverence did not hesitate to say to him: 

“Well deacon, go, and God bless you.  I’ll have half an hour’s nap on the sofa; I must rest.”

The deacon went away and took Anastasy with him.  As is always the case on Easter Eve, it was dark in the street, but the whole sky was sparkling with bright luminous stars.  There was a scent of spring and holiday in the soft still air.