Grigori laughed in an embarrassed manner, and Petr said in his beard:
"And wizards don't have a bad time of it, and other kinds of godless people."
But Osip returned quickly:
"A wizard is not a man of education; education is not usually a possession of the wizard."
And he told me:
"Now look at this; just listen. In our district there lived a peasant, Tushek was his name, an emaciated little man, and idle. He lived like a feather, blown about here and there by the wind, neither a worker nor a do-nothing. Well, one day he took to praying, because he had nothing else to do, and after wandering about for two years, he suddenly showed himself in a new character. His hair hung down over his shoulders; he wore a skull-cap, and a brown cassock of leather; he looked on all of us with a baneful eye, and said straight out: 'Repent, ye cursed!' And why not repent, especially if you happened to be a woman? And the business ran its course: Tushek overfed, Tushek drunk, Tushek having his way with the women to his heart's content—"
The bricklayer interrupted him angrily:
"What has that got to do with the matter, his overfeeding, or overdrinking?"
"What else has to do with it, then?"
"His words are all that matter."