“Your perversity in matters of religion is known to everybody in the town!” replied Father Michael; and he was so transported with anger that his long thin head quivered.

“Gentlemen! Father Michael!” exclaimed the director of the school, trying to appease their wrath. But they did not listen to him.

“It is my duty as a priest to look after the religious and moral education of our pupils.”

“Oh, cease your pretence to be religious! Oh, stop all this humbug of religion! As if I did not know that you believe neither in God nor Devil.”

“I consider it beneath my dignity to talk to a man like you,” said Father Michael, very much hurt by Smokovnikov’s last words, the more so because he knew they were true.