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Have pity on me, and do not require me to speak when I must be silent forever. And believe me! Do not believe these men! Do not believe Matrena Petrovna. And am I not your daughter? Your very own daughter! Your Natacha Feodorovna! I cannot make things dear to you. No, no, by the Holy Virgin Mother of Jesus I cannot explain. By the holy ikons, it is because I must not.
Churches, shrines, chapels, ikons, candles, processions, priests, bells, monasteries, travelling preachers, every day's saints, fast seasons everything is the repetition of the same idea, namely, that Christ is the ruler of life and we are His followers. Christ must be expressed everywhere, indoors and outdoors.
He knows how to read as no one else can Father John of Cronstadt excepted, to be strictly accurate on the sheets of bull-hide where the dark angels have traced mysterious signs of destiny." Here the gentleman picked up an old pair of boots, which he threw on the counter in the midst of the ikons. "Pere Alexis, perhaps these are not bull-hide, but good enough cow-hide.
Something different may be talked of and written of in the capitals; but among the hundred millions of the people this is what is done, this is what is taught, and nothing more. Churchmen may talk of something else, but this is what they teach by every means in their power. All this, and the worship of relics and of ikons, has been introduced into works of theology and into the catechisms.
Thus she became an isolated island. The Anglican Church repudiated the papal authority. She repudiated as well the Eastern worship of the saints and use of ikons on the one side, and on the other she repudiated all the extremes of Protestantism in teaching, worship and administration.
There was something new, something gay and light-hearted in her giving of alms, just as there was in the lamps before the ikons and in the red flowers.
Here and there were old teeth, ragged finery, dilapidated hats, and jars of strange herbs ranged upon some rickety shelving. Between the set of scales on the counter and a heap of little blocks of wood used for figuring the accounts of this singular business were ungilded ikons, oxidized silver crosses, and Byzantine pictures representing scenes from the Old and New Testaments.
All present to each other hideous ikons in which not only no one amongst the educated believes, but which unlearned peasants are beginning to abandon; all bow down to the ground before these ikons, kiss them, and pronounce pompous and deceitful speeches in which no one really believes.
When she was frightened her arms and legs trembled and her cheeks twitched. Sitting in the kitchen she tried to hear what the visitors were saying, and she kept crossing herself, pressing her fingers to her forehead, and gazing at the ikons. Anisim, slightly drunk, opened the door into the kitchen and said in a free-and-easy way: "Why are you sitting in here, precious mamma?
We all faced round to the ikons, and to a monk standing in front of them. A long prayer was said in a very military fashion, and then we all crossed ourselves and took our places at the tables once more. Five of the brethren were in attendance, and fluttered up and down, shifting the bread or refilling the wine bowls.
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