And then the thing happened. Once he went out, and the boy left his book and climbed on a chair. Earlier he had thrown a ball up onto the chiffonier, and he wanted to get his ball, but he caught his sleeve on a china lamp that stood on the chiffonier; the lamp crashed to the floor and broke into smithereens, the clatter was heard all over the house, and it was a costly object—Saxony china. And here suddenly Maxim Ivanovich heard it three rooms away and yelled. The child rushed out and ran in fear wherever his legs would take him, ran out to the terrace, and across the garden, and through the back gate, straight to the riverbank. And there was a boulevard along the bank, old willows, a cheerful spot. He ran down to the water, people saw, clasped his hands, at the very place where the ferry docks, maybe terrified of the water—and stood as if rooted to the spot. And it was a wide place, the river swift, barges going past, on the other side there are shops, a square, the church of God shines with its golden domes. And just then the wife of Colonel Ferzing—an infantry regiment was stationed in town—was hurrying to catch the ferry. Her daughter, also a little child of about eight, walks along in a white dress, looks at the boy and laughs, and she’s carrying a little country basket, and in the basket there’s a hedgehog. “Look, mummy,” she says, “how the boy is looking at my hedgehog.” “No,” says the colonel’s wife, “he’s frightened of something. What are you so afraid of, pretty boy?” (So they told it afterwards.) “And what a pretty boy he is, and how well he’s dressed; whose boy are you?” she says. And he had never seen a hedgehog before, he came closer and looked, and he had already forgotten—childhood! “What’s that you’ve got?” he says. “This,” says the young miss, “is our hedgehog, we just bought it from a village peasant, he found it in the forest.” “What’s a hedgehog like?” he says, and he’s laughing now, and he begins poking his finger at it, and the hedgehog bristles up, and the girl is glad of the boy. “We’re taking it home,” she says, “we want to tame it.” “Ah,” he says, “give me your hedgehog!” And he asked her so touchingly, and no sooner had he said it than Maxim Ivanovich descended on him: “Ah! Here’s where you are! Take him!” (He was so enraged that he had run out of the house without his hat to chase him.) The boy, the moment he remembered everything, cried out, rushed to the water, pressed his little fists to his breast, looked up at the sky (they saw it, they saw it!) and—splash into the water! Well, people shouted, rushed from the ferry, tried to pull him out, but the current was swift, it carried him away, and when they pulled him out he was already dead—drowned. He had a weak chest, he couldn’t endure the water, and how much does it take for such a boy? And in people’s memories in those parts there had never yet been such a small child to take his own life! Such a sin! And what can so small a soul say to the Lord God in the other world!
This was what Maxim Ivanovich brooded over ever after. And the man changed beyond recognition. He was sorely grieved then. He took to drinking, drank a lot, but stopped—it didn’t help. He stopped going to the factory as well, and paid no heed to anybody. They say something to him—he keeps silent or waves his hand. He went about like that for a couple of months, then began talking to himself. He goes about and talks to himself. An outlying village, Vaskova, caught fire, nine houses burned down; Maxim Ivanovich went to have a look. The burnt-out people surrounded him, wailing—he promised to help and gave orders, then summoned his steward and canceled it all: “No need to give them anything,” he said, and didn’t say why. “The Lord gave me over to all people,” he says, “to trample me down like some monster, so let it be so. Like the wind,” he says, “my glory has been scattered.” The abbot himself called on him, a stern old man who had introduced cenobitic order in the monastery.12 “What’s with you?” he says, so sternly. “Here’s what,” and Maxim Ivanovich opened the book for him and pointed to the place:
“But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).
“Yes,” said the abbot, “though it’s not said directly about that, still it touches upon it. It’s bad if a man loses his measure—he’s a lost man. And you’ve become conceited.”
Maxim Ivanovich sat as if dumbstruck. The abbot looked and looked.
