even so now all kinds of foolish things passed through his mind, and he, the old man, reverentially bent his head, touching the flagstones of the church with the old knuckles of his hands, and Father Vasíli was evidently timid in celebrating mass in his presence, and incited to zeal by his zeal.
“If they only knew what foolish things are running through my head! But that is a sin, a sin; I must pray,” he said to himself, when the service commenced; and, trying to catch the meaning of the responses, he began to pray. Indeed, he soon transferred himself in feeling to the prayer and thought of his sins and of everything which he regretted.
A respectable-looking old man, bald-headed, with thick gray hair, dressed in a fur coat with a new white patch on one-half of his back, stepping evenly with his out-toeing bast shoes, went up to the altar, bowed low to him, tossed his hair, and went beyond the altar to place some tapers. This was the church elder, Iván Fedótov, one of the best peasants of the village of Izlegóshcha. Iván Petróvich knew him. The sight of this stern, firm face led Iván Petróvich to a new train of thoughts. He was one of those peasants who wanted to take the land away from him, and one of the best and richest married farmers, who needed the land, who could manage it, and had the means to work it. His stern aspect, ceremonious bow, and measured gait, and the exactness of his wearing-apparel—the leg-rags fitted his legs like stockings and the laces crossed each other symmetrically on either leg—all his appearance seemed to express rebuke and enmity on account of the land.
“I have asked forgiveness of my wife, of Mánya” (his daughter), “of the nurse, of my valet, Volódya, but it is his forgiveness that I ought to ask for, and I ought to forgive him,” thought Iván Petróvich, and he decided that after matins he would ask Iván Fedótov to forgive him.
And so he did.