V.
The Saintly Fool
Into the room entered a man of about fifty years of age, with a pale, pock-marked, oval face, long gray hair, and a scanty reddish beard. He was so tall that, in order to enter, he had to bend not only his head, but his whole body. He was dressed in something torn that resembled a caftan and a cassock; in his hand he held a huge staff. As he entered the room, he with all his might struck the floor with it, and, furrowing his brow and opening his mouth beyond measure, laughed out in a most terrible and unnatural manner. One of his eyes was maimed, and the white pupil of that eye kept on leaping about and giving to his otherwise ugly face a more disgusting expression.
"Aha, caught!" he cried out, running up to Volódya with mincing steps, getting hold of his head, and beginning carefully to examine his crown. Then he walked away from him with an entirely solemn expression on his face, stepped to the table, and began to blow under the oilcloth and to make the sign of the cross over it.
"Oh, a pity! Oh, painful! Dear ones — will fly away," said he then, in a voice quivering with tears, feelingly looking at Volódya, and beginning with his sleeves to wipe off the tears which had really started to fall.
His voice was rough and hoarse, his motions hasty and uneven, his speech senseless and incoherent (he never used any pronouns), but the accents were so touching, and his yellow, maimed face at times assumed such an expres-
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