“Stop! . . .”  Father Christopher said to him.  “If you don’t like your religion you had better change it, but to laugh at it is a sin; it is only the lowest of the low who will make fun of his religion.”

“You don’t understand,” Solomon cut him short rudely.  “I am talking of one thing and you are talking of something else. . . .”

“One can see you are a foolish fellow,” sighed Father Christopher.  “I admonish you to the best of my ability, and you are angry.  I speak to you like an old man quietly, and you answer like a turkeycock:  ‘Bla—–­bla—–­bla!’ You really are a queer fellow. . . .”

Moisey Moisevitch came in.  He looked anxiously at Solomon and at his visitors, and again the skin on his face quivered nervously.  Yegorushka shook his head and looked about him; he caught a passing glimpse of Solomon’s face at the very moment when it was turned three-quarters towards him and when the shadow of his long nose divided his left cheek in half; the contemptuous smile mingled with that shadow; the gleaming sarcastic eyes, the haughty expression, and the whole plucked-looking little figure, dancing and doubling itself before Yegorushka’s eyes, made him now not like a buffoon, but like something one sometimes dreams of, like an evil spirit.

“What a ferocious fellow you’ve got here, Moisey Moisevitch!  God bless him!” said Father Christopher with a smile.  “You ought to find him a place or a wife or something. . . .  There’s no knowing what to make of him. . . .”

Kuzmitchov frowned angrily.  Moisey Moisevitch looked uneasily and inquiringly at his brother and the visitors again.

“Solomon, go away!” he said shortly.  “Go away!” and he added something in Yiddish.  Solomon gave an abrupt laugh and went out.

“What was it?” Moisey Moisevitch asked Father Christopher anxiously.

“He forgets himself,” answered Kuzmitchov.  “He’s rude and thinks too much of himself.”

“I knew it!” Moisey Moisevitch cried in horror, clasping his hands.  “Oh dear, oh dear!” he muttered in a low voice.  “Be so kind as to excuse it, and don’t be angry.  He is such a queer fellow, such a queer fellow!  Oh dear, oh dear!  He is my own brother, but I have never had anything but trouble from him.  You know he’s. . .”

Moisey Moisevitch crooked his finger by his forehead and went on: 

“He is not in his right mind; . . . he’s hopeless.  And I don’t know what I am to do with him!  He cares for nobody, he respects nobody, and is afraid of nobody. . . .  You know he laughs at everybody, he says silly things, speaks familiarly to anyone.  You wouldn’t believe it, Varlamov came here one day and Solomon said such things to him that he gave us both a taste of his whip. . . .  But why whip me?  Was it my fault?  God has robbed him of his wits, so it is God’s will, and how am I to blame?”

Ten minutes passed and Moisey Moisevitch was still muttering in an undertone and sighing: