concept
Anticlerical jab: poets, abbots, and embassy churchgoers
Embassy-churchgoers jab
also: поэты, аббаты и особы, исправно посещающие посольские церкви
an ironic anticlerical aside (\S6) in which Chekhov names the fictional Sixte and the real chemist Mendeleev as examples of scientific men wrongly suspected of depravity, then contrasts them favorably against "poets, abbots, and persons who assiduously attend the embassy churches" as the truly depraved -- a barbed dig at clergy and pious society churchgoers. Translated as written, not softened.