But he did not call me. The days passed one after another, like blind people in a wood along a narrow path, each one stumbling upon the other, and still the Abbot did not call me. Darkness was within me. At that time, in my twenty-second year, my first gray hair came.
I wanted to speak with the handsome monk, but I saw him rarely and only for an instant. Now and then his proud countenance came before me and then vanished and my longing for him followed him like an invisible shadow. I asked Misha about him.
"Oh," Misha cried, "that one! That animal! He was sent away from the military for gambling in cards and from the seminary for his scandals with women. A learned one, yes! He fell into the seminary from the military, cheated all the monks in the monastery of Chudoff; then came here, bought himself in with seven and a half thousand rubles, donated land and so won great respect. Here, too; they play cards. The Abbot, the steward and the treasurer, they all play with him. There is a girl who visits him—oh, the pigs! He has a separate apartment, and there he lives just as he pleases. The great filth of it!"
I did not believe him; I could not. One day I asked the steward, Father Isador, to help me gain an interview with the Abbot.
"An interview about what?"
"About faith."
"What do you mean, 'about faith'?"
"I have various questions."
He looked me over from head to toe. He was a head taller than I, thin, angular, with wise, smiling eyes, a long, crooked nose and a pointed beard.
"Speak plainly; your flesh masters you?"