Thus thought Toporoff, not considering that the people only liked superstition because there always have been, and still are, men like himself who, being enlightened, instead of using their light to help others to struggle out of their dark ignorance, use it to plunge them still deeper into it.

When Nekhludoff entered the reception-room Toporoff was in his study talking with an abbess, a lively and aristocratic lady, who was spreading the Greek orthodox faith in Western Russia among the Uniates (who acknowledge the Pope of Rome), and who have the Greek religion enforced on them.  An official who was in the reception-room inquired what Nekhludoff wanted, and when he heard that Nekhludoff meant to hand in a petition to the Emperor, he asked him if he would allow the petition to be read first.  Nekhludoff gave it him, and the official took it into the study.  The abbess, with her hood and flowing veil and her long train trailing behind, left the study and went out, her white hands (with their well-tended nails) holding a topaz rosary.  Nekhludoff was not immediately asked to come in.  Toporoff was reading the petition and shaking his head.  He was unpleasantly surprised by the clear and emphatic wording of it.

“If it gets into the hands of the Emperor it may cause misunderstandings, and unpleasant questions may be asked,” he thought as he read.  Then he put the petition on the table, rang, and ordered Nekhludoff to be asked in.

He remembered the case of the sectarians; he had had a petition from them before.  The case was this:  These Christians, fallen away from the Greek Orthodox Church, were first exhorted and then tried by law, but were acquitted.  Then the Archdeacon and the Governor arranged, on the plea that their marriages were illegal, to exile these sectarians, separating the husbands, wives, and children.  These fathers and wives were now petitioning that they should not be parted.  Toporoff recollected the first time the case came to his notice:  he had at that time hesitated whether he had not better put a stop to it.  But then he thought no harm could result from his confirming the decision to separate and exile the different members of the sectarian families, whereas allowing the peasant sect to remain where it was might have a bad effect on the rest of the inhabitants of the place and cause them to fall away from Orthodoxy.  And then the affair also proved the zeal of the Archdeacon, and so he let the case proceed along the lines it had taken.  But now that they had a defender such as Nekhludoff, who had some influence in Petersburg, the case might be specially pointed out to the Emperor as something cruel, or it might get into the foreign papers.  Therefore he at once took an unexpected decision.

“How do you do?” he said, with the air of a very busy man, receiving Nekhludoff standing, and at once starting on the business.  “I know this case.  As soon as I saw the names I recollected this unfortunate business,” he said, taking up the petition and showing it to Nekhludoff.  “And I am much indebted to you for reminding me of it.  It is the over-zealousness of the provincial authorities.”