"Then I won't let you in."
"All right. Then I'll go in myself."
He saw that I was determined not to give in to him.
"Well, then, come in," he said. "I was only joking. You are a funny fellow."
He led me into a little room, where a gray old man sat coughing in a corner of a divan, dressed in a green cassock. His face was wrinkled and his eyes were very stern and set deep in his forehead.
"Well," I thought, "he can tell me something."
"What do you want?" he asked me.
"My soul is troubled, father."
The secretary stood behind me and whispered:
"You must say 'your reverence.'"