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_ XX
THE village priest and his wife received Father Missael
with great honours, and the next day after he had arrived
the parishioners were invited to assemble in the church.
Missael in a new silk cassock, with a large cross on his chest,
and his long hair carefully combed, ascended the pulpit; the priest
stood at his side, the deacons and the choir at a little distance
behind him, and the side entrances were guarded by the police.
The dissenters also came in their dirty sheepskin coats.
After the service Missael delivered a sermon, admonishing the
dissenters to return to the bosom of their mother, the Church,
threatening them with the torments of hell, and promising full
forgiveness to those who would repent.
The dissenters kept silent at first. Then, being asked questions,
they gave answers. To the question why they dissented,
they said that their chief reason was the fact that the Church
worshipped gods made of wood, which, far from being ordained,
were condemned by the Scriptures.
When asked by Missael whether they actually considered the holy ikons
to be mere planks of wood, Chouev answered,--"Just look at the back
of any ikon you choose and you will see what they are made of."
When asked why they turned against the priests, their answer was
that the Scripture says: "As you have received it without fee,
so you must give it to the others; whereas the priests require
payment for the grace they bestow by the sacraments."
To all attempts which Missael made to oppose them by arguments
founded on Holy Writ, the tailor and Ivan Chouev gave calm
but very firm answers, contradicting his assertions by appeal
to the Scriptures, which they knew uncommonly well.
Missael got angry and threatened them with persecution by the authorities.
Their answer was: It is said, I have been persecuted and so will you be.
The discussion came to nothing, and all would have ended well if Missael
had not preached the next day at mass, denouncing the wicked seducers
of the faithful and saying that they deserved the worst punishment.
Coming out of the church, the crowd of peasants began to consult
whether it would not be well to give the infidels a good lesson for
disturbing the minds of the community. The same day, just when Missael
was enjoying some salmon and gangfish, dining at the village priest's
in company with the inspector, a violent brawl arose in the village.
The peasants came in a crowd to Chouev's cottage, and waited for the
dissenters to come out in order to give them a thrashing.
The dissenters assembled in the cottage numbered about twenty men
and women. Missael's sermon and the attitude of the orthodox peasants,
together with their threats, aroused in the mind of the dissenters
angry feelings, to which they had before been strangers.
It was near evening, the women had to go and milk the cows,
and the peasants were still standing and waiting at the door.
A boy who stepped out of the door was beaten and driven
back into the house. The people within began consulting
what was to be done, and could come to no agreement.
The tailor said, "We must bear whatever is done to us,
and not resist." Chouev replied that if they decided on
that course they would, all of them, be beaten to death.
In consequence, he seized a poker and went out of the house.
"Come!" he shouted, let us follow the law of Moses!"
And, falling upon the peasants, he knocked out one man's eye,
and in the meanwhile all those who had been in his house
contrived to get out and make their way home.
Chouev was thrown into prison and charged with sedition and blasphemy. _
Read next: PART FIRST: Chapter XXI
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