"Go behind the door, Alexei. Well, what have you done?"
He put his hand on his forehead, looked at me for some time and then muttered in a singing voice: "What? What's that? You fool!"
There was no need to insult me, and perhaps he did not mean it in that way. Our superiors insult people more out of habit and foolishness than from ill will. I said to him:
I sat down on a chair. But the old man motioned with his hands and shouted:
"Stand up! Stand up! You should kneel before me, impious one!"
"Why should I kneel? If I am guilty, I should kneel before God, not before you."
He became enraged. "Who am I? What am I to you? What am I to God?"
I was ashamed to quarrel with him on account of a bagatelle, so I knelt. He threatened me with his finger and said:
"I will teach you to respect the clergy!"
I lost my desire to talk with him, but still, before the desire had entirety gone, I began to speak, and I forgot his presence. For the first time in my life I expressed my thoughts in words, and I was astonished at myself. Suddenly I heard the old man cry out:
I felt as if I had suddenly come up against a wall while running. He stood over me, shaking his hands threateningly at me, and muttered:
"Do you know what you are saying, you crazy fool? Do you appreciate your blasphemies, wretched one? You lie, heretic! You did not come to do penance. You came as a messenger from the devil to tempt me!"
I saw that it was not wrath, but fear that played in his face. He trembled, and his beard and his hands, which were held out to me, were shaking. I, too, was frightened.
"What is your reverence saying?" I asked. "I believe in God."
He threatened me with the wrath and the vengeance of God, but he spoke in a low tone, and his whole body trembled so that his cassock flowed like green waves. He placed before my spirit a threatening, gruesome God, severe in countenance, wrathful in spirit, poor in mercy, and like the old God Jehovah in sternness. I said to the archbishop:
"Now you, yourself, have fallen into heresies. Is this then the Christian God? Where have you hidden Christ? Why do you place before man the stern Judge instead of the Friend and the Helper?" He clutched my hair and shook me to and fro, saying, haltingly: