Page 278 - the-brothers-karamazov

bage soup. From Monday till Saturday evening, six whole
days in Holy Week, nothing is cooked, and we have only
bread and water, and that sparingly; if possible not taking
food every day, just the same as is ordered for first week in
Lent. On Good Friday nothing is eaten. In the same way on
the Saturday we have to fast till three o’clock, and then take
a little bread and water and drink a single cup of wine. On
Holy Thursday we drink wine and have something cooked
without oil or not cooked at all, inasmuch as the Laodicean
council lays down for Holy Thursday: ‘It is unseemly by
remitting the fast on the Holy Thursday to dishonour the
whole of Lent!’ This is how we keep the fast. But what is that
compared with you, holy Father,’ added the monk, growing
more confident, ‘for all the year round, even at Easter, you
take nothing but bread and water, and what we should eat
in two days lasts you full seven. It’s truly marvellous — your
great abstinence.’
‘And mushrooms?’ asked Father Ferapont, suddenly.
‘Mushrooms?’ repeated the surprised monk.
‘Yes. I can give up their bread, not needing it at all, and
go away into the forest and live there on the mushrooms or
the berries, but they can’t give up their bread here, where-
fore they are in bondage to the devil. Nowadays the unclean
deny that there is need of such fasting. Haughty and un-
clean is their judgment.’
‘Och, true,’ sighed the monk.
‘And have you seen devils among them?’ asked Ferapont.
‘Among them? Among whom?’ asked the monk, timidly.
‘I went to the Father Superior on Trinity Sunday last year,