Page:Leskov - The Sentry and other Stories.djvu/282

 266 Zaysan beats, the Shaman beats, the Lama drives away reindeer."

"So that's the chief misfortune!"

"Yes, Bachka."

"You must bear the misfortune for Christ's sake."

"Why, Bachka—He is compassionate, Bachka. When I die, He Himself will be sorry for me. Why should we wrong Him?"

I wanted to tell him, that if he believed Christ would have compassion on him, he ought also to believe that He could save him too—but refrained so as not to hear again about the Zaysan and the Lama. It was evident that for this man Christ was one of his kind deities, perhaps even his kindest, but not one of the strong ones; kind, but not strong—not protective. He would not defend him from the Zaysan, nor from the Lama. What was to be done in this case? How was I to persuade the savage of this when on Christ's side there was no one to support Him, and on the other side there was much defence. A Roman Catholic priest, in the same circumstances, would have used cunning, as they had used cunning in China; he would have placed a small cross at the feet of Buddha and he would have bowed down before it assimilating Christ and Buddha, and he would have been proud of his success;