"H'm--that's fine! I've listened to lots of letters, because in the gold-mines different people wrote letters for me and others. And even here, though Z---- no doubt writes very well, he writes so learnedly, like a printed book, that you don't understand a word when you listen to it. For he puts in so many words folks don't use, you can see in a moment that he comes from a Jewish or a big family, and that he has never had much to do with the people. Now, your letter goes straight to one's heart, for it's human. Oh, poor fellow! He'll cry like an old woman at a sermon when he reads it. If you would also--but I daren't ask"--and his voice sounded really very shy--"if you would write a short letter like that to my people too, oh how my old woman would cry,--she would cry!"
While I read the letter to the priest, Maciej kept quiet, listening and possibly also beginning to consider what I was to write to his wife, if I answered to the hopes he had placed in me. But when I came to the passage in which I asked the priest about the Mass for the shoemaker's dead parents, there was a violent crash in the entrance to the kitchen, and Maciej stood before us in all his impressiveness. His appearance was so unexpected, and made with so much noise, that we looked at him in astonishment. Maciej was strangely altered, and even seemed to me to be trembling all over. He came out in silence, and standing just in front of us, with his feet wide apart as usual, he began to search for his pocket; but whether it was difficult to find in the folds of his baggy trousers, or whether for some other reason, he was a long time about it. Having found it, he drew out a small purse, and, after a long process of untying, for which he also used his teeth, he took out a crumpled three-rouble note. He stood a while holding this. At last he laid it on the table with a shaking hand, and began in an imploring, broken voice:
"If that's so--when he says the Mass, let him pray for us unhappy folks too: write that, sir. Let him pray to Almighty God and to the Holy Virgin--if it's only to bring our bones back there--and perhaps--perhaps They'll have mercy."
"Perhaps They'll have mercy," the shoemaker repeated like an echo, as he stood beside Maciej.