“Was he in a monastery too?”
“Yes,” answered Ivan Ivanovich. Then, with a sigh, “He’s from a good family. His father was a deacon in the city of N. You may have heard of him.... His brother is a secretary in a police office. He was betrothed....”
“Why didn’t he marry?”
“Don’t you see, he’d already gone wrong.... He ran away ... but he wasn’t a wanderer yet. He had the outfit but he didn’t wander.... He passed as a suitor. He was accepted. The girl loved him, and her father didn’t object.... Oh!... Oh!... Of course, it was sinful, ... he deceived them. Sometimes, when he tells about it, you’ll cry, and then again it’s really funny.”
Ivan Ivanovich acted strangely. He laughed and then began to choke and put his hand over his mouth. At first you could hardly tell he was laughing. But he really was,—an hysterical, bashful, rather explosive laugh, which ended like a cough. When he quieted down, Ivan Ivanovich said, half-pityingly:
“Only he tells it different every time.... You can’t tell whether it’s the truth or not.”
“He wouldn’t lie?”
“Not exactly, ... but he’s not always accurate. You see, the truth——”
“Just what does he say?”
“You know, the clerk, he says, was clever. He saw the young man wasting his time, really doing nothing. He pretended to go to a bazaar,—so he went to the city, left the old woman in the house, and gave her strict orders to keep an eye on him. Avtonomov, you see, didn’t live with them, but in the village with the woman who baked the bread for the church.... He kept visiting them.... Every day.... They’d sit by the river bank.... And the old woman was there, too. And, of course, she watched them.... One time, my dear little Avtonomov saw two men coming from the city in a cart—and both drunk. They came up and turned out to be the clerk and his older brother, the secretary. He hadn’t even looked around—when they landed on him and licked him. The reason why: his brother, because he ran away from the seminary; the clerk, for deceiving and disgracing him....”