“I must go,” she replied.
“No, tell us more, please!” Mitinka insisted, and she repeated all she had said before. She told us how they crucified Him, how they beat and martyred Him, and how He went on praying and did not blame them.
“Auntie, why did they torture Him?”
“They were wicked.”
“But wasn’t he God?”
“Be still—it is nine o’clock, don’t you hear the clock striking?”
“Why did they beat Him? He had forgiven them. Then why did they hit Him? Did it hurt Him? Auntie, did it hurt?”
“Be quiet, I say. I am going to the dining-room to have tea now.”
“But perhaps it never happened, perhaps He was not beaten by them?”
“I am going.”
“No, Auntie, don’t go! …” And again my madness took possession of me. I sobbed and sobbed, and began knocking my head against the wall.
Such had been the fits of my madness in my childhood. But after I was fourteen, from the time the instincts of sex awoke and I began to give way to vice, my madness seemed to have passed, and I was a boy like other boys. Just as happens with all of us who are brought up on rich, overabundant food, and are spoiled and made effeminate, because we never do any physical work, and are surrounded by all possible temptations, which excite our sensual nature when in the company of other children similarly spoiled, so I had been taught vice by other boys of my age and I indulged in it. As time passed other vices came to take the