“How will you do it?” exclaims his sister, greatly alarmed. “Please do nothing that will cause the police to send you to prison.”
There comes a knock at the door; the brother opens it, and in walks one of the monks from the monastery. He is such an unclean, repulsive-looking man you would want to run away from him if you met him on a lonely road. He does not look at all like the priests, or preachers, we know. He holds out a tin cup and whines, “Please help a poor friar who is begging for holy church.” All the Russians in the audience laugh in derision when they hear the whining voice.
“Why is the church in need of money?” asks the student.
“We need money,” whines the monk, “because the people no longer visit us as in years past, and since they do not bring money in we monks must collect it.”
“But,” persisted the questioner, “why have the moujiks stopped visiting you?”
“They do not believe in holy church nor in the sacred ikon as they once did.” (The ikon on the altar of this monastery was believed to have worked many wonders.) “What the church needs is some miracle to restore the faith of the peasants,” and the monk seems very sad, probably because he would rather sit down comfortably at home than walk the muddy Russian roads begging alms.
“Why do you deceive the peasants?” says the indignant student. “You know your sacred ikon never cured anybody, nor worked any miracle. I will give you the dynamite if you will blow it up.” The monk admits the ikon worship is a fraud and says finally after a long discussion, “I will place the dynamite under the image and blow it up.”
When the time comes to explode the dynamite, the monk is afraid and confesses the plot to the Abbot. “Let us blow up the altar,” says the Abbot; “we can say the anarchists did it, but we will first remove the ikon and then tell the people a miracle was wrought—the altar was destroyed, but the image was saved.”
The Home of a Russian Peasant