“Shall I steal?” he thought.  “Even if stealing is an easy matter, hiding is what’s difficult.  Men run away to America, they say, with what they’ve stolen, but the devil knows where that blessed America is.  One must have education even to steal, it seems.”

The bells died down.  He heard only a distant noise of carriages and Paramon’s cough, while his depression and anger grew more and more intense and unbearable.  The clock in the office struck half-past twelve.

“Shall I write a secret report?  Proshkin did, and he rose rapidly.”

Nevyrazimov sat down at his table and pondered.  The lamp in which the kerosene had quite run dry was smoking violently and threatening to go out.  The stray cockroach was still running about the table and had found no resting-place.

“One can always send in a secret report, but how is one to make it up?  I should want to make all sorts of innuendoes and insinuations, like Proshkin, and I can’t do it.  If I made up anything I should be the first to get into trouble for it.  I’m an ass, damn my soul!”

And Nevyrazimov, racking his brain for a means of escape from his hopeless position, stared at the rough copy he had written.  The letter was written to a man whom he feared and hated with his whole soul, and from whom he had for the last ten years been trying to wring a post worth eighteen roubles a month, instead of the one he had at sixteen roubles.

“Ah, I’ll teach you to run here, you devil!” He viciously slapped the palm of his hand on the cockroach, who had the misfortune to catch his eye.  “Nasty thing!”

The cockroach fell on its back and wriggled its legs in despair.  Nevyrazimov took it by one leg and threw it into the lamp.  The lamp flared up and spluttered.

And Nevyrazimov felt better.

THE REQUIEM

IN the village church of Verhny Zaprudy mass was just over.  The people had begun moving and were trooping out of church.  The only one who did not move was Andrey Andreyitch, a shopkeeper and old inhabitant of Verhny Zaprudy.  He stood waiting, with his elbows on the railing of the right choir.  His fat and shaven face, covered with indentations left by pimples, expressed on this occasion two contradictory feelings:  resignation in the face of inevitable destiny, and stupid, unbounded disdain for the smocks and striped kerchiefs passing by him.  As it was Sunday, he was dressed like a dandy.  He wore a long cloth overcoat with yellow bone buttons, blue trousers not thrust into his boots, and sturdy goloshes—­the huge clumsy goloshes only seen on the feet of practical and prudent persons of firm religious convictions.

His torpid eyes, sunk in fat, were fixed upon the ikon stand.  He saw the long familiar figures of the saints, the verger Matvey puffing out his cheeks and blowing out the candles, the darkened candle stands, the threadbare carpet, the sacristan Lopuhov running impulsively from the altar and carrying the holy bread to the churchwarden....  All these things he had seen for years, and seen over and over again like the five fingers of his hand....  There was only one thing, however, that was somewhat strange and unusual.  Father Grigory, still in his vestments, was standing at the north door, twitching his thick eyebrows angrily.