Page:Leskov - The Sentry and other Stories.djvu/332

 316 it is even duller to struggle against the indifference of those who instead of enlightening others have as that same Matsievich very happily expressed it, "themselves hardly any faith." Well, I suppose, you clever modern men think: "Oh! our diocesan bishops are bad! What do they do? Our bishops do nothing! Now, I do not want to defend them all; many of us have certainly become very feeble; they stumble under the crosses and fall; and not only do influential personages, but even some "popa mitratus" become authorities for them, and all this is of course, because of "What will ye give me?" Well, supposing I were to ask you: What has brought them to this? Is it not really because they, your diocesan bishops, have been converted into administrators and are unable to do anything vital now? And mark: Perhaps you owe them much gratitude for doing nothing in these times. Otherwise they might have strapped with the official thong such an unbearable load on your back, that God knows, if your back bone would not have been shattered to splinters, or the thong have been torn in two; but we are conservatives, and defend liberty as well as we can; liberty, may Christ free us thereby from such co-operation. Gentlemen, that is why we act and co-operate weakly. Do not throw up at us the former hierarchies, such