“H’m, yes . . .”  Father Christopher assented pensively, looking at his glass.  “I have no cause myself to rail against the Lord.  I have lived to the end of my days as any man might be thankful to live. . . .  I have married my daughters to good men, my sons I have set up in life, and now I am free; I have done my work and can go where I like.  I live in peace with my wife.  I eat and drink and sleep and rejoice in my grandchildren, and say my prayers and want nothing more.  I live on the fat of the land, and don’t need to curry favour with anyone.  I have never had any trouble from childhood, and now suppose the Tsar were to ask me, ’What do you need?  What would you like?’ why, I don’t need anything.  I have everything I want and everything to be thankful for.  In the whole town there is no happier man than I am.  My only trouble is I have so many sins, but there —­only God is without sin.  That’s right, isn’t it?”

“No doubt it is.”

“I have no teeth, of course; my poor old back aches; there is one thing and another, . . . asthma and that sort of thing. . . .  I ache. . . .  The flesh is weak, but then think of my age!  I am in the eighties!  One can’t go on for ever; one mustn’t outstay one’s welcome.”

Father Christopher suddenly thought of something, spluttered into his glass and choked with laughter.  Moisey Moisevitch laughed, too, from politeness, and he, too, cleared his throat.

“So funny!” said Father Christopher, and he waved his hand.  “My eldest son Gavrila came to pay me a visit.  He is in the medical line, and is a district doctor in the province of Tchernigov. . . .  ‘Very well . . .’  I said to him, ’here I have asthma and one thing and another. . . .  You are a doctor; cure your father!’ He undressed me on the spot, tapped me, listened, and all sorts of tricks, . . . kneaded my stomach, and then he said, ’Dad, you ought to be treated with compressed air.’” Father Christopher laughed convulsively, till the tears came into his eyes, and got up.

“And I said to him, ‘God bless your compressed air!’” he brought out through his laughter, waving both hands.  “God bless your compressed air!”

Moisey Moisevitch got up, too, and with his hands on his stomach, went off into shrill laughter like the yap of a lap-dog.

“God bless the compressed air!” repeated Father Christopher, laughing.

Moisey Moisevitch laughed two notes higher and so violently that he could hardly stand on his feet.

“Oh dear!” he moaned through his laughter.  “Let me get my breath . . . .  You’ll be the death of me.”

He laughed and talked, though at the same time he was casting timorous and suspicious looks at Solomon.  The latter was standing in the same attitude and still smiling.  To judge from his eyes and his smile, his contempt and hatred were genuine, but that was so out of keeping with his plucked-looking figure that it seemed to Yegorushka as though he were putting on his defiant attitude and biting sarcastic smile to play the fool for the entertainment of their honoured guests.