The Forged Coupon

Chapter 20

THE village priest and his wife received Father Missael with great

honours, and the next day after he had arrived the parishioners were

invited to assemble in the church. Missael in a new silk cassock, with

a large cross on his chest, and his long hair carefully combed, ascended

the pulpit; the priest stood at his side, the deacons and the choir at

a little distance behind him, and the side entrances were guarded by the

police. The dissenters also came in their dirty sheepskin coats.

After the service Missael delivered a sermon, admonishing the dissenters

to return to the bosom of their mother, the Church, threatening them

with the torments of hell, and promising full forgiveness to those who

would repent.

The dissenters kept silent at first. Then, being asked questions, they

gave answers. To the question why they dissented, they said that their

chief reason was the fact that the Church worshipped gods made of wood,

which, far from being ordained, were condemned by the Scriptures.

When asked by Missael whether they actually considered the holy ikons to

be mere planks of wood, Chouev answered,--"Just look at the back of any

ikon you choose and you will see what they are made of."

When asked why they turned against the priests, their answer was that

the Scripture says: "As you have received it without fee, so you must

give it to the others; whereas the priests require p*****t for the grace

they bestow by the sacraments." To all attempts which Missael made

to oppose them by arguments founded on Holy Writ, the tailor and Ivan

Chouev gave calm but very firm answers, contradicting his assertions by

appeal to the Scriptures, which they knew uncommonly well.

Missael got angry and threatened them with persecution by the

authorities. Their answer was: It is said, I have been persecuted and so

will you be.

The discussion came to nothing, and all would have ended well if Missael

had not preached the next day at mass, denouncing the wicked seducers of

the faithful and saying that they deserved the worst punishment. Coming

out of the church, the crowd of peasants began to consult whether it

would not be well to give the infidels a good lesson for disturbing the

minds of the community. The same day, just when Missael was enjoying

some salmon and gangfish, dining at the village priest's in company with

the inspector, a violent brawl arose in the village. The peasants came

in a crowd to Chouev's cottage, and waited for the dissenters to come

out in order to give them a thrashing.

The dissenters assembled in the cottage numbered about twenty men and

women. Missael's sermon and the attitude of the orthodox peasants,

together with their threats, aroused in the mind of the dissenters angry

feelings, to which they had before been strangers. It was near evening,

the women had to go and milk the cows, and the peasants were still

standing and waiting at the door.

A boy who stepped out of the door was beaten and driven back into the

house. The people within began consulting what was to be done, and could

come to no agreement. The tailor said, "We must bear whatever is done to

us, and not resist." Chouev replied that if they decided on that course

they would, all of them, be beaten to death. In consequence, he seized

a poker and went out of the house. "Come!" he shouted, "let us follow the

law of Moses!" And, falling upon the peasants, he knocked out one man's

eye, and in the meanwhile all those who had been in his house contrived

to get out and make their way home.

Chouev was thrown into prison and charged with sedition and blasphemy.