This belief founded on habits is one of the most grievous and harmful manifestations of our lives. Within the domains of such beliefs, as within the shadows of stone walls, anything new is born slowly, is deformed, and grows anaemic. In that dark faith there are very few of the beams of love, too many causes of offense, irritations, and petty spites which are always friendly with hatred. The flame of that faith is the phosphorescent gleam of putrescence.
But before I was convinced of this, I had to live through many weary years, break up many images in my soul, and cast them out of my memory. But at the time when I first came across these teachers of life, in the midst of tedious and sordid realities, they appeared to me as persons of great spiritual strength, the best people in the world. Almost every one of them had been persecuted, put in prison, had been banished from different towns, traveling by stages with convicts. They all lived cautious, hidden lives.
However, I saw that while pitying the "narrow spirit" of the Nikonites, these old people willingly and with great satisfaction kept one another within narrow bounds.
Crooked Pakhomie, when he had been drinking, liked to boast of his wonderful memory with regard to matters of the faith. He had several books at his finger-ends, as a Jew has his Talmud. He could put his finger on his favorite page, and from the word on which he had placed his finger, Pakhomie could go on reciting by heart in his mild, snuffling voice. He always looked on the floor, and his solitary eye ran over the floor disquietingly, as if he were seeking some lost and very valuable article.
The book with which he most often performed this trick was that of Prince Muishetzki, called "The Russian Vine," and the passage he best knew was, "The long suffering and courageous suffering of wonderful and valiant martyrs," but Petr Vassilitch was always trying to catch him in a mistake.
"That's a lie! That did not happen to Cyprian the Mystic, but to Denis the Chaste."
"What other Denis could it be? You are thinking of Dionysius."
"Don't shuffle with words!"
"And don't you try to teach me!"
In a few moments both, swollen with rage, would be looking fixedly at one another, and saying: