Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VI).djvu/116

Rh deacons and choristers sang with astounding conscientiousness with the aid of some factory hands who had joined them; they even made an effort at part-singing! There was a moment when every one present felt something like dismay. The tenor voice (it belonged to a factory hand, Klima, a man in a galloping consumption), all alone and unsupported, broke into a chromatic series of flat minor notes; they were terrible, those notes, but if they had been cut out the whole concert would promptly have gone to pieces. However, the thing was got through somehow. Father Ciprian, a priest of the most respectable appearance, in full vestments, delivered a very edifying discourse from a manuscript book; unfortunately, the conscientious father had thought it necessary to introduce the names of some wise Assyrian kings, the pronunciation of which cost him great pains, and though he succeeded in proving some degree of erudition, he was hot and perspiring from the exertion. Nezhdanov, who had not been at church for a long while, hid himself in a corner among the peasant women; they scarcely glanced at him, crossing themselves persistently, bowing low, and discreetly wiping their babies' noses; but the little peasant girls in new coats, and strings of glass drops on their foreheads, and the boys in belted