"You are blaspheming," I said. "You are afraid of God, but you don't love Him."
He drew his hands out of his pockets, threw them behind his back, and his face turned gray. It was plain that he was in great wrath.
"Whether it is so or not, I don't know," he answered, "but it seems to me that you pious ones use God as a ruler by which you mark off the sins of others. Without such as you, God would have a hard time measuring sins."
He took no notice of me for a long time after that. But an insufferable hatred rose in my soul against this man. I avoided him even more than I did Savelko. If at night I mentioned his name in my prayers, an ungovernable anger possessed me. It was at this time that I said my first spontaneous prayer:
"I do not wish to seek grace for a thief, O Lord. I ask that he be punished. May he not rob the poor without being punished."
And I prayed to God so ardently that Titoff be punished that I grew frightened at the terrible fate that awaited him.
Soon after this I bad another encounter with Migun. He came to the office for lime-bast,[1] when I happened to be alone. I asked him:
"Why do you always make fun of me, Savel?"
He showed his teeth and stared at me with his piercing eyes.
"I haven't much business here," he said. "I only came for lime-bast."
My legs trembled beneath me and my hands clenched of themselves. I clutched his throat and shook him lightly.
He was not frightened, nor was he angry. He simply took my hand and pushed it from his throat as if it were he, not I, who was the stronger. "When you are choking some one, he cannot speak well," he said. "Let me alone," he continued; "I have received beatings enough, and I don't need yours. Besides, you mustn't strike any one. It is against the commandments."
He spoke quietly and mockingly, in a light tone. I shouted:
[Footnote 1: A vegetable fiber made from the bark of the lime tree.]
I saw that I could make no headway with him by words, and my anger was already gone. I now only felt hurt and cold.
"You are all beasts," I said. "Can you make fun of a man because his parents abandoned him?"
He threw his words at me as if they were little stones:
"Don't be a hypocrite. We know you by your actions. You eat stolen bread and others suffer want."