“Dull? Now, my boy, that is not true. If you found it dull you would be a bad scholar, whereas your teachers testify that you are a very apt pupil. That means that you have another reason for being naughty.”
Taking a little book from his breast, he said as he wrote in it :
“Pyeshkov, Alexei. There ! . . . All the same, my boy, you must keep yourself in hand, and try not to be too naughty. . . . We will allow you to be just a little naughty; but people have plenty to plague them without that. Isn’t it so, children?”
Many voices answered gaily:
“Yes.”
“But I can see that you are not very naughty yourselves. Am I right?”
And the boys laughingly answered all together:
“No. We are very naughty too very !”
The Bishop leaned over the back of a chair, drew me to him, and said surprisingly, causing us all even the teacher and the priest to laugh:
“It is a fact, my brothers that when I was your age I was very naughty too. What do you think of that?”
The children laughed, and he began to ask them questions, adroitly contriving to muddle them, so that they began to answer each other; and the merriment redoubled. At length he stood up, saying:
“Well, it is very nice to be with you, but it is time for me to go now.”
Raising his hand and throwing back his sleeve, he made the sign of the Cross over us all with one wide gesture, and blessed us:
“In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I bless you and your labors. Good-by!”
They all cried :
“Good-by, my lord. Come again soon.”
Shaking his cowl, he said :
“I shall come again. I shall come again, and bring you some little books.”
And he said to the teacher as he sailed out of the classroom :
“Let them go home now.”
He led me by the hand to the porch, where he said quietly, bending down to me:
“So you will hold yourself in, won’t you? ... Is that settled? ... I understand why you are naughty, you know. . . . Good-by, my boy !”
I was very excited; my heart was seething with strange feelings, and when the teacher, having dismissed the rest of the class, kept me in to tell me that now I ought to be quieter than water and humbler than grass, I listened to him attentively and willingly.
The priest, putting on his fur-coat, chimed in gently :
“And from today you will have to assist at my lessons. Yes, you’ll have to. And sit still too. Yes sit still.”