He is
religious--unusually so! I used to lead him on, and he would sing
to me with tears in his eyes: 'Come ye brethren, and we will give
the last kiss to him who has gone to his rest...' From the ritual
of the burial of laymen. No, just think: it is only in the Russian
soul alone that such contradictions may dwell together!"
"Yes. A fellow like that will pray, and pray, then cut a throat,
and then wash his hands and put a candle before an image," said
Ramses.
"Just so. I know of nothing more uncanny than this fusion of fully
sincere devoutness with an innate leaning toward crime. Shall I
confess to you? I, when I talk all alone to Simeon--and we talk
with each other long and leisurely, for hours--I experience at
moments a genuine terror. A superstitious terror! Just as though,
for instance, I am standing in the dusk upon a shaking little
board, bending over some dark, malodorous well, and just barely
distinguish how there, at the bottom, reptiles are stirring. And
yet, he is devout in a real way, and I am sure will some time join
the monks and will be a great faster and sayer of prayers, and the
devil knows how, in what monstrous fashion, a real religious
ecstasy will entwine in his soul with blasphemy, with scoffing at
sacred things, with some repulsive passion or other, with sadism
or something else of that nature!"
"However, you do not spare the object of your observations," said
Yarchenko, and carefully indicated the girls with his eyes.
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