On one of the painfully monotonous days of the second month of Svetlogoúb’s imprisonment, the inspector, while making his daily round, handed him a little book with a gilt cross on its brown binding, saying that the Governor’s wife had visited the prison and had left some Testaments, and that permission had been granted to distribute them among the prisoners. Svetlogoúb thanked him, and smiled slightly as he put the book on the little table screwed fast to the wall. When the inspector had gone, Svetlogoúb informed his neighbour by tapping that the inspector had been, and had said nothing new, but had left a Testament. The neighbour replied that he also had received one.
After dinner Svetlogoúb opened the book, the pages of which stuck together from the damp, and began to read. He had never before read the gospels as a book, and knew them only as he had gone through them with the Scripture teacher at school, and as the priests and deacons chanted them in church.
“Chapter 1: The book of the generation of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham … Isaac begat Jacob, Jacob begat Judah …” and he went on to read: “Zorubbabel begat Abiud. …”
All this was just what he expected—some kind of involved, worthless jargon. Had he not been in prison he could not have read a single page to the end; but here he went on reading for the sake of the mechanical act of reading—“Just like Gógol’s Petroúsha,” he thought to himself. He read the first chapter, about the Virgin Birth and the prophecy which said that the newborn child would be named Emmanuel, which meant “God with us.”
“But where does the prophecy come in?” he thought, and went on reading the second chapter, about the wandering star; and the third,