As for the peasants, they'll bind me once, twice, and then they will understand that they ought not to bind me, but listen to me.

I'll tell them: 'I don't ask you to believe me; I want you just to listen to me!' And if they listen, they will believe." Both the mother and Rybin spoke slowly, as if testing every word before uttering it.
"There's little joy for me in this, mother," said Rybin.

"I have lived here of late, and gobbled up a deal of stuff.

Yes; I understand some, too! And now I feel as if I were burying a child." "You'll perish, Mikhail Ivanych!" said the mother, shaking her head sadly.
His dark, deep eyes looked at her with a questioning, expectant look.
His powerful body bent forward, propped by his hands resting on the seat of the chair, and his swarthy face seemed pale in the black frame of his beard.
"Did you hear what Christ said about the seed?
'Thou shalt not die, but rise to life again in the new ear.' I don't regard myself as near death at all.

I am shrewd.