Once there lived an ordinary, it seemed, man—until he read the Bible, and then something “harmful fancy” happened to him: he started living by the Scripture. He performed miracles of non-greed in civil service posts, receiving a very small, or more precisely, beggarly wage. He did not indulge in idleness, did not offend ordinary people, did not fawn on the authorities, and even—people say—scolded the governor himself, Count Lanskoy, for improper behavior in church. In short, he was a man not from this world, a bit of an oddball…