“It is unpleasant for me to see you.  Why did you come here?  Go home, priest, no one will touch you.  Keep on fishing—­and what else were you doing?  Oh, yes—­make your own prayers.  We are going out to the ocean; your daughter, you know, is also going with me.  Do you see the ship?  That is mine.  It’s a pity that you don’t know about ships—­you would have laughed for joy at the sight of such a beautiful ship!  Why is he silent, Mariet?  You had better tell him.”

Abbot—­Prayers?  In what language?  Have you, perhaps, discovered a new language in which prayers reach God?  Oh, Haggart, Haggart!

He weeps, covering his face with his hands.  Haggart, alarmed, asks: 

“You are crying, abbot?”

“Look, Gart, he is crying.  Father never cried.  I am afraid, Gart.”

The abbot stops crying.  Heaving a deep sigh, he says: 

“I don’t know what they call you:  Haggart or devil or something else—­
I have come to you with a request.  Do you hear, robber, with a request? 
Tell your crew not to gnash their teeth like that—­I don’t like it.”

Haggart replies morosely: 

“Go home, priest!  Mariet will stay with me.”

“Let her stay with you.  I don’t need her, and if you need her, take her.  Take her, Haggart.  But—­”

He kneels before him.  A murmur of astonishment.  Mariet, frightened, advances a step to her father.

“Father!  You are kneeling?”

Abbot—­Robber!  Give us back the money.  You will rob more for yourself, but give this money to us.  You are young yet, you will rob some more yet—­

Haggart—­You are insane!  There’s a man—­he will drive the devil himself to despair!  Listen, priest, I am shouting to you:  You have simply lost your mind!

The abbot, still kneeling, continues: 

“Perhaps, I have—­by God, I don’t know.  Robber, dearest, what is this to you?  Give us this money.  I feel sorry for them, for the scoundrels!  They rejoiced so much, the scoundrels.  They blossomed forth like an old blackthorn which has nothing but thorns and a ragged bark.  They are sinners.  But am I imploring God for their sake?  I am imploring you.  Robber, dearest—­”

Mariet looks now at Haggart, now at the priest.  Haggart is hesitating.  The abbot keeps muttering: 

“Robber, do you want me to call you son?  Well, then—­son—­it makes no difference now—­I will never see you again.  It’s all the same!  Like an old blackthorn, they bloomed—­oh, Lord, those scoundrels, those old scoundrels!”

“No,” Haggart replied sternly.

“Then you are the devil, that’s who you are.  You are the devil,” mutters the abbot, rising heavily from the ground.  Haggart shows his teeth, enraged.

“Do you wish to sell your soul to the devil?  Yes?  Eh, abbot—­don’t you know yet that the devil always pays with spurious money?  Let me have a torch, sailor!”