at least Pavlusha was undeveloped and idle at his lessons, so much
so that they thought of taking him away from the clerical school
and putting him into a shop; one day, going to the post at Obnino
for letters, he had stared a long time at the post-office clerks
and asked: "Allow me to ask, how do you get your salary, every month
or every day?"

His holiness crossed himself and turned over on the other side,
trying to stop thinking and go to sleep.

"My mother has come," he remembered and laughed.

The moon peeped in at the window, the floor was lighted up, and
there were shadows on it. A cricket was chirping. Through the wall
Father Sisoy was snoring in the next room, and his aged snore had
a sound that suggested loneliness, forlornness, even vagrancy. Sisoy
had once been housekeeper to the bishop of the diocese, and was
called now "the former Father Housekeeper"; he was seventy years
old, he lived in a monastery twelve miles from the town and stayed
sometimes in the town, too. He had come to the Pankratievsky Monastery
three days before, and the bishop had kept him that he might talk
to him at his leisure about matters of business, about the arrangements
here. . . .

At half-past one they began ringing for matins. Father Sisoy could
be heard coughing, muttering something in a discontented voice,
then he got up and walked barefoot about the rooms.

"Father Sisoy," the bishop called.