“Maxim Nikolaitch, the gentleman from Slavyanoserbsk, brought a little lad to school, too, last year. I don’t know how he is getting on there in studying the sciences, but he was a nice good little lad.⁠ ⁠… God give them help, they are nice gentlemen. Yes, he, too, brought his boy to school.⁠ ⁠… In Slavyanoserbsk there is no establishment, I suppose, for study. No.⁠ ⁠… But it is a nice town.⁠ ⁠… There’s an ordinary school for simple folks, but for the higher studies there is nothing. No, that’s true. What’s your name?⁠ ⁠…”

“Yegorushka.”

“Yegory, then.⁠ ⁠… The holy martyr Yegory, the Bearer of Victory, whose day is the twenty-third of April. And my christian name is Panteley,⁠ ⁠… Panteley Zaharov Holodov.⁠ ⁠… We are Holodovs.⁠ ⁠… I am a native of⁠—maybe you’ve heard of it⁠—Tim in the province of Kursk. My brothers are artisans and work at trades in the town, but I am a peasant.⁠ ⁠… I have remained a peasant. Seven years ago I went there⁠—home, I mean. I went to the village and to the town.⁠ ⁠… To Tim, I mean. Then, thank God, they were all alive and well;⁠ ⁠… but now I don’t know.⁠ ⁠… Maybe some of them are dead.⁠ ⁠… And it’s time they did die, for some of them are older than I am. Death is all right; it is good so long, of course, as one does not die without repentance. There is no worse evil than an impenitent death; an impenitent death is a joy to the devil. And if you want to die penitent, so that you may not be forbidden to enter the mansions of the Lord, pray to the holy martyr Varvara. She is the intercessor. She is, that’s the truth.⁠ ⁠… For God has given her such a place in the heavens that everyone has the right to pray to her for penitence.”