"Perverter of the truth! Away, shameless one!"
Pakhomie answered, as if he were adding up accounts:
"As for you, you are a libertine, a goat, always hanging round the women."
The shopman, with his hands tucked into his sleeves, smiled maliciously, and, encouraging the guardians of the ancient religion, cried, just like a small boy:
"Th—a—at's right! Go it!"
One day when the old men were quarreling, Petr Vassilitch slapped his comrade on the face with unexpected swiftness, put him to flight, and, wiping the sweat from his face, called after the fugitive:
"Look out; that sin lies to your account! You led my hand into sin, you accursed one; you ought to be ashamed of yourself!"
He was especially fond of reproaching his comrades in that they were wanting in firm faith, and predicting that they would fall away into "Protestantism."
"That is what troubles you, Aleksasha—the sound of the cock crowing!"
Protestantism worried and apparently frightened him, but to the question, "What is the doctrine of that sect?" he answered, not very intelligibly: