Before the rectory garden there stood a long row of conveyances, only a few of which he knew. There was also aristocratic carriages among them. The coachmen with their shining buttons sat on their boxes with proud smiles and threw contemptuous glances all around.
In the garden were assembled a big troop of children. The boys and girls stood apart. Among the boys were the two brothers from whom he had had to suffer so much formerly, and who had ceased going to school for the last year. They gave him a friendly greeting, and while one of them shook hands with him the other tripped him up.
Some of the girls walked arm in arm on the paths. Some also had put their arms round each other’s waists and giggled. Most of them were strangers to him. Some seemed especially aristocratic; they wore fine gray ulsters, and had hats with feathers on their heads. The carriages outside must belong to them.
He looked down at his jacket, to assure himself that he had nothing to be ashamed of. It was made of fine black cloth, from an old evening suit of his student brother’s, and looked as good as new, only that the seams were a little shiny. Taken altogether, he did not need to be ashamed of himself.
A bell sounded. The candidates were called into the church. Paul felt light-hearted and pious in the solemn twilight of the house of God. He did not think of his jacket any longer; the forms of the boys around grew shadowy.
At both sides of the altar benches were placed. On the right the boys were to have their seats, and on the left the girls.
Paul was pushed into the back row, where the little ones and the poor sat. Between two barefooted cottage children, who wore coarse, ragged jackets, he took his seat. Past the shoulders of the boys before him he saw how the girls on the other side ranged themselves: the most distinguished in front, and then the more poorly clad.
He was thinking whether in heaven the order of rank would be a similar one, and the verse occurred to him:
“Blessed are the meek and lowly, for they shall be exalted.”
The vicar came.