A lean priest, with thin long hair, in a lilac cassock, with a small gilt cross on his breast and a large silver one in his weak white thick-veined hand encircled by a black velvet cuff, drew near to Svetlogoúb.
“Merciful Lord! …” he began, changing the cross from his left to his right hand, and holding it out to Svetlogoúb. Svetlogoúb shuddered and moved aside. He was on the point of saying some angry words to this priest, who was taking part in the deed that was being done to him and was at the same time speaking of mercy; but, recollecting the words of the Gospels, “they know not what they do,” he made an effort and mildly uttered the words: “Excuse me, I do not want it. Please forgive me, but really I don’t want it, thank you!”
He held out his hand to the priest, who changed the cross back into his left hand, and after pressing Svetlogoúb’s hand, descended from the scaffold, trying not to look him in the face. The drums began to roll again, deafening every other sound. After the priest, a man of medium height with sloping shoulders and muscular arms, and wearing a pea-jacket over his Russian shirt, approached Svetlogoúb with rapid steps, shaking the boards of the scaffold. This man glanced rapidly at Svetlogoúb, came quite close up to him, enveloping him in a disagreeable odour of spirits and perspiration, and with clutching fingers took him by the arms just above the wrists, and pressing them together so that they hurt, twisted them behind Svetlogoúb’s back and tied them there tightly. After that, the hangman stood for a moment or two as if considering something, looking first at Svetlogoúb, then at some things he had brought with him and had put down on the scaffold, and then at the rope dangling above. Having made his observations, he went up to the rope, did something to it, and moved Svetlogoúb forward, nearer to it and to the edge of the scaffold.
Just as, at the time when the sentence had been pronounced on him, Svetlogoúb could not realize the importance of what was being said, so