What finally 'did for,' as they say, Tchertop-hanov was the following circumstance. One day he sauntered, riding on Malek-Adel, about the back-yards of the priest's quarters round about the church of the parish in which is Bezsonovo. up, with his Cossack fur cap pulled down over his eyes, and his hands hanging loose on the saddle-bow, he jogged slowly on, a vague discontent in his heart. Suddenly someone called him.  
He stopped his horse, raised his head, and saw his correspondent, the deacon. With a brown, three-cornered hat on his brown hair, which was plaited in a pig-tail, in a yellowish nankin long coat, girt much below the waist by a strip of blue stuff, the servant of the altar had come out into his back-garden, and, sight of Panteley Eremyitch, he thought it his duty to pay his respects to him, and to take the opportunity of doing so to ask him a question about something. Without some such hidden , as we know, ecclesiastical persons do not venture to address temporal ones.
 
But Tchertop-hanov was in no mood for the deacon; he barely responded to his bow, and, muttering something between his teeth, he was already cracking his whip, when....
 
'What a magnificent horse you have!' the deacon made haste to add: 'and really you can take credit to yourself for it. Truly you're a man of amazing cleverness, simply a lion indeed!'
 
His the deacon prided himself on his , which was a great source of vexation to his reverence the priest, to whom the gift of words had not been ; even vodka did not loosen his tongue.
 
'After losing one animal by the cunning of evil men,' continued the deacon, 'you did not lose courage in repining; but, on the other hand, trusting the more confidently in Divine............