Something cheerful smelled on Father Pavel. With pleasure he remembered how the peasants of his village, his parishioners, said about him that there was no worker against our father in the whole village.

"Here is another trait of the Russian character," the priest continued, as if thinking to himself, "grief befalls a person, and he rushes around with him and no longer wants to know anything, and does not think that another may have even greater grief. We love to cover our hearts with our sorrow, and we do not notice that by rushing with our grief, we add to the grief of others. Like you, for example.

"Who am I causing grief to?" Father Pavel asked in bewilderment.

- How, to whom? Here you are sitting and drinking, pouring out your grief, but you probably did not even think about that person... There's the gentleman who sits on the bench at the other end. Now we were passing the village, there was a church there. This gentleman took off his hat and piously crossed himself - it means that he still has faith in God in his heart. Well, now tell me, doesn't it hurt him to see a pastor of the church doing such an occupation?

Father Pavel squinted at the bottle of vodka standing in front of him, and the "father" rang the bell and ordered the waiter who came to the call to remove the bottle and the glass. Father Pavel did not protest and only, as if justifying himself, spoke:

"Why, I have a great resentment: I drink out of grief, that's right, father, you said.

"And you'd better tell me your grief, share it with me in a brotherly way, maybe it won't seem so heavy." The expressed grief is half a grief.

Father Pavel himself had long felt the desire to tell his grief to the "gentle father." The kind face of the priest and especially his eyes were disposed to this - intelligent, serious and as if sad, and yet sparkling with affection and warmth. Such people do not ask about someone else's grief out of curiosity.

"I got on trial," Father Pavel began, "I got married without documents... You see, it turned out like this - a guy and a girl came to me. Marry us, father, I'm an orphan, and she's an orphan, we worked together at a factory not far away... sin confused, but I want it to be in the lawful, in God's way, but the trouble is that we do not have documents. She lived with an aunt, ran away, and there is no passport, and I have an expired one, he sent it to replace it, but to this hour something is not sent.

"How can you do that," I said, "you can't get married without documents.

"Well, father, is it really better to live like this, without the law?"

"And that," I said, "is your business. Go where you came from.

They stand, they do not go; The bride burst into tears, the bridegroom fell at my feet... What to do here? I felt sorry for them. He opened the church and called them.

"Well," I said, "that you are of age, I see for myself, and you swear to me before the Lord God and before His Most Pure Image that there is no kinship between you.