"
Her eyes filled with tears. She was washing the dishes, and her
fingers trembled.
"You did not understand us, mother!" Pavel said softly and kindly.
"Beg your pardon, mother!" Rybin added in a slow, thick voice. He
looked at Pavel and smiled. "I forgot that you're too old to cut
out your warts."
"I did not speak," continued Pavel, "about that good and gracious
God in whom you believe, but about the God with whom the priests
threaten us as with a stick, about the God in whose name they want
to force all of us to the evil will of the few."
"That's it, right you are!" exclaimed Rybin, striking his fingers
upon the table. "They have mutilated even our God for us, they have
turned everything in their hands against us. Mark you, mother, God
created man in his own image and after his own likeness. Therefore
he is like man if man is like him. But we have become, not like
God, but like wild beasts! In the churches they set up a scarecrow
before us. We have got to change our God, mother; we must cleanse
him! They have dressed him up in falsehood and calumny; they have
distorted his face in order to destroy our souls!"
He talked composedly and very distinctly and intelligibly.
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