He considered it an obligation of politeness to make such inscriptions in other people’s books.

II

On Annunciation Day, after the mail train had been sent off, Matvey was sitting in the refreshment bar, talking and drinking tea with lemon in it.

The waiter and Zhukov the policeman were listening to him.

“I was, I must tell you,” Matvey was saying, “inclined to religion from my earliest childhood.  I was only twelve years old when I used to read the epistle in church, and my parents were greatly delighted, and every summer I used to go on a pilgrimage with my dear mother.  Sometimes other lads would be singing songs and catching crayfish, while I would be all the time with my mother.  My elders commended me, and, indeed, I was pleased myself that I was of such good behaviour.  And when my mother sent me with her blessing to the factory, I used between working hours to sing tenor there in our choir, and nothing gave me greater pleasure.  I needn’t say, I drank no vodka, I smoked no tobacco, and lived in chastity; but we all know such a mode of life is displeasing to the enemy of mankind, and he, the unclean spirit, once tried to ruin me and began to darken my mind, just as now with my cousin.  First of all, I took a vow to fast every Monday and not to eat meat any day, and as time went on all sorts of fancies came over me.  For the first week of Lent down to Saturday the holy fathers have ordained a diet of dry food, but it is no sin for the weak or those who work hard even to drink tea, yet not a crumb passed into my mouth till the Sunday, and afterwards all through Lent I did not allow myself a drop of oil, and on Wednesdays and Fridays I did not touch a morsel at all.  It was the same in the lesser fasts.  Sometimes in St. Peter’s fast our factory lads would have fish soup, while I would sit a little apart from them and suck a dry crust.  Different people have different powers, of course, but I can say of myself I did not find fast days hard, and, indeed, the greater the zeal the easier it seems.  You are only hungry on the first days of the fast, and then you get used to it; it goes on getting easier, and by the end of a week you don’t mind it at all, and there is a numb feeling in your legs as though you were not on earth, but in the clouds.  And, besides that, I laid all sorts of penances on myself; I used to get up in the night and pray, bowing down to the ground, used to drag heavy stones from place to place, used to go out barefoot in the snow, and I even wore chains, too.  Only, as time went on, you know, I was confessing one day to the priest and suddenly this reflection occurred to me:  why, this priest, I thought, is married, he eats meat and smokes tobacco—­how can he confess me, and what power has he to absolve my sins if he is more sinful that I?  I even scruple to eat Lenten oil, while he eats sturgeon, I dare say.  I went to another priest, and he, as ill luck would have it,