The stranger heaved a deep sigh.
“That is the truth!” he said sadly. “I’ll tell you about myself,” he whispered, as if he did not wish his words to be heard by any one in the blackness along the road. “Do you know who ruined me? My own mother and my father superior!”
“Wh-what?” queried Andrey Ivanovich, also in a low tone.
“Yes!... I know it’s sinful to blame my dead mother,—may she rest in peace!” He took off his hat and crossed himself. “And yet I keep thinking: if she had had me taught a trade, I might have been a man like the others.... No, she wanted her child to have an easy life, the Lord forgive her....”
“Go on, go on!” urged Andrey Ivanovich.
“You know,” continued Ivan Ivanovich sadly, “in old times, as the books say, parents always objected and children went secretly to the monastic cell to devote themselves.... But my mother took me herself to the monastery; she wanted me to become a clerk.”
“Yes, yes!”
“And before that, I must tell you, they used to make them psalmists and so on, ... but they had changed by my time!”
“That’s the rank!”
“Yes!... And mother again! stay there in the monastery.... That’s an easy life. And the superior loves you.... That’s the truth: the father superior did love me and took me as a novice under his own charge. But if a man is doomed, fortune will become misfortune. I’ll tell you the truth: I fell because of an angel ... not because of the devil....”