Grisha's thick words fell one upon the other like dry leaves in autumn:
"My father almost went out of his senses. He stamped his feet and cried: 'She has insulted her parents! Her soul is lost.' Only after the burial, when he saw that all of Kazan followed Liza's body and laid wreaths upon her tomb, did he come to himself. 'If all the people are for her,' he said, 'it means that I behaved like a scoundrel toward my child!'"
Grisha wept and dried his glasses, and his hands trembled.
"Even before this misfortune befell us I wanted to enter a monastery, and I had said to my father:
"'Let me.'
"But he swore at me and beat me. Nevertheless, I said firmly:
"'I will not do business. Let me go.'
"He was frightened by Liza's death, and gave me freedom, and now, in these four years, I have lived in three monasteries, and everywhere there is barter, and I have no place for my soul. They sell God's earth and God's word, His honey and His miracles. I cannot stand it any longer!"
His story awoke my soul again, for I did little thinking while I lived in the monastery. I was so worn out by my labors, that my rebellious thought slumbered. Suddenly his words woke me. I asked Grisha:
"Where, then, is our God? There is nothing around us but the arbitrary and mad foolishness of man; nothing but the petty deceptions from which misfortunes arise. Where, then, is God?"