The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories

Father Sergius

I

IN PETERSBURG in the forties an event took place which astonished everyone: a handsome man, a prince, commander of the life squadron of a cuirassier regiment, who everyone predicted would be made an imperial adjutant and have a brilliant career around the emperor Nikolai I,¹ sent in his resignation a month before his wedding with a lady-in-waiting, a beauty who enjoyed the special favor of the empress, broke with his fiancée, gave his small estate to his sister, and went off to a monastery with the intention of becoming a monk. The event seemed extraordinary and inexplicable to people who did not know its inner causes; but for Prince Stepan Kasatsky himself it all happened so naturally that he could not even imagine how he could have acted otherwise.

Stepan Kasatsky’s father, a retired colonel of the guards, had died when his son was twelve. Sorry as the mother was to send her son away from home, she did not dare not to carry out her late husband’s will, which was that in case of his death his son should not be kept at home but should be sent to the Corps,² and so she sent him to the Corps. The widow herself, with her daughter Varvara, moved to Petersburg, so as to live where her son was and take him home on holidays.

The boy was distinguished by his brilliant abilities and enormous self-esteem, owing to which he was first both in sciences, especially mathematics, for which he had a special predilection, and in drill and horseback riding. Despite his more than usual height, he was handsome and adroit. In his conduct as well he would have been an exemplary cadet, had it not been for his hot temper. He did not drink, was not dissolute, and was remarkably truthful. The one thing that kept him from being exemplary was the fits of anger that used to come over him, during which he lost all self-control and turned into a beast. Once he nearly threw a cadet out the window when he began to make fun of his mineral collection. Another time it was nearly the end of him: he flung a whole platter of cutlets at the steward, fell upon the officer, and, it was said, struck him for going back on his word and lying right in his face. He would certainly have been reduced to the ranks if the director of the Corps had not concealed the whole affair and expelled the steward.

At the age of eighteen he was graduated as an officer in an aristocratic guards regiment. The emperor Nikolai Pavlovich had known him while still in the Corps and had singled him out later in the regiment, so that an imperial adjutantship was predicted for him. And Kasatsky strongly desired that, not only out of ambition, but chiefly because, ever since his time in the Corps, he had passionately, precisely passionately, loved Nikolai Pavlovich. Every time Nikolai Pavlovich visited the Corps—and he often came to them—when this tall figure in a military tunic, with his thrust-out chest, his hooked nose over his mustaches, and his trimmed side-whiskers, came in stepping briskly and greeted the cadets in a powerful voice, Kasatsky experienced the rapture of a lover, the same that he experienced later when he met the object of his love. Only his amorous rapture for Nikolai Pavlovich was stronger. He wanted to show him his boundless devotion, to sacrifice something to him, even his whole self. And Nikolai Pavlovich knew that he aroused this rapture and deliberately evoked it. He played with the cadets, surrounded himself with them, treating them now with childlike simplicity, now amicably, now with solemn majesty. After Kasatsky’s last episode with the officer, Nikolai Pavlovich said nothing to him, but when Kasatsky came near him, he pushed him away theatrically and, frowning, shook his finger at him, and then, as he was leaving, said:

“Know that I am informed of everything, but there are certain things I do not want to know. But I have them here.”

He pointed to his heart.

When the cadets appeared before him at graduation, he made no mention of it, said, as usual, that they could all turn to him directly, that they should be faithful servants to him and the fatherland, and that he would always remain their best friend. Everyone was moved, as always, and Kasatsky, recalling the past, wept real tears and vowed to serve his beloved tsar with all his powers.

When Kasatsky entered the regiment, his mother first moved to Moscow with her daughter, then to the country. Kasatsky gave up half his fortune to his sister. What remained to him was enough to maintain him in that magnificent regiment in which he served.

From the outside Kasatsky seemed like a most ordinary brilliant young guards officer making his career, but inside him complex and intense work was going on. The work that had been going on in him since childhood was, in appearance, most varied, but in essence was all one and the same, consisting in attaining perfection and success in every task that came his way, earning people’s praise and astonishment. If it was learning, studies, he seized upon them and worked until he was praised and held up as an example to others. Having achieved one thing, he would seize upon another. Thus he achieved first place in his studies; thus, while still in the Corps, having noticed once an awkwardness in his spoken French, he worked until his command of French equaled his Russian; thus, later on, taking up chess, he worked until, while still in the Corps, he became an excellent player.

Besides his general vocation in life, which consisted in serving the tsar and the fatherland, he always set himself some sort of goal, and, however insignificant it was, he gave himself to it entirely and lived only for it until he achieved it. But as soon as he achieved the appointed goal, another at once emerged in his consciousness and replaced the previous one. This striving to distinguish himself, and to achieve a set goal in order to distinguish himself, filled his life. Thus, on becoming an officer, he set himself as a goal the greatest possible perfection in knowledge of the service and very soon became an exemplary officer, though again with that fault of an uncontrollable temper, which in the service as well involved him in bad actions harmful to his success. Then, having felt once in social conversation his deficiency of general education, he set his mind on making it up and sat down to his books, and achieved what he wanted. Then he set his mind on attaining a brilliant position in high society, learned to dance excellently, and very soon was invited to all high-society balls and to certain soirées. But that position did not satisfy him. He was used to being first, and in this case he was far from being so.

High society consisted then and, I think, has always and everywhere consisted of four sorts of people: (1) rich courtiers, (2) people who are not rich but were born and raised at court, (3) rich people who curry favor with courtiers, and (4) people who are neither rich nor courtiers, but curry favor with the first and the second. Kasatsky did not belong to the first. Kasatsky was willingly received in the last two circles. Even on entering society, he set himself the goal of a liaison with a woman of society—and unexpectedly for himself he soon attained it. But very soon he saw that the circles in which he turned were lower circles, and that there were higher circles, and that in those higher court circles, though he was received, he was an outsider; they were polite to him, but all their manners showed that some were their own and he was not one of them. And Kasatsky wanted to be one of them. For that he had either to be an imperial adjutant—and he was waiting for that—or to marry into that circle. And he resolved to do so. And he chose the girl, a beauty, of the court, not only at home in that society which he wanted to enter, but such as all the most highly and firmly established people in the highest circle strove to become close to. This was Countess Korotkov. It was not only for the sake of his career that Kasatsky began to court Countess Korotkov; she was extraordinarily attractive, and he soon fell in love with her. At first she was peculiarly cold towards him, but then everything suddenly changed, and she became affectionate, and her mother invited him to call with peculiar insistence.

Kasatsky proposed and was accepted. He was surprised by the ease with which he had attained such happiness, and by something peculiar, strange, in the manner of both mother and daughter. He was very much in love, and blinded, and therefore did not notice what almost everyone in town knew, that a year ago his fiancée had been Nikolai Pavlovich’s mistress.

II

TWO WEEKS before the day appointed for the wedding, Kasatsky was staying at his fiancée’s dacha in Tsarskoe Selo.³ It was a hot May day. The fiancés strolled through the garden and sat down on a bench in a shady linden alley. Mary⁴ was especially beautiful in her white muslin dress. She seemed the embodiment of innocence and love. She sat, now with her head bent, now looking up at the enormous, handsome man, who talked to her with special tenderness and care, fearing with his every gesture or word to offend, to defile the angelic purity of his fiancée. Kasatsky was one of those men of the forties who no longer exist, men who, consciously allowing an impurity of sexual behavior for themselves and not inwardly condemning it, demanded of a wife an ideal, heavenly purity, and saw that same heavenly purity in every girl of their circle, and treated them accordingly. In such a view and in the licentiousness that men allowed themselves there was much that was incorrect and harmful, but in relation to women such a view, sharply distinguished from that of presentday young men, who see every woman as a female looking for a mate—such a view was, I think, useful. Girls, seeing such deification, even tried more or less to be goddesses. Kasatsky also held such a view of women and looked at his fiancée in that way. He was especially in love that day and did not experience the slightest sensual feeling for his fiancée; on the contrary, he looked at her with tender emotion as something unattainable.

He rose to all his great height and stood before her, leaning with both hands on his saber.

“Only now have I come to know all the happiness which a man can experience. And it is you, it is you, dearest,” he said, smiling timidly, “who have given it to me!”

He was at that stage when endearments were not yet habitual, and, looking up to her morally, he felt frightened of saying “dearest” to this angel.

“I have come to know myself, thanks to you … dearest, to know that I am better than I thought.”

“I have long known it. That is why I love you.”

A nightingale trilled nearby, the fresh foliage rustled in the wafting breeze.

He took her hand and kissed it, and tears came to his eyes. She understood that he was thanking her for having said she loved him. He stepped away, fell silent, then came back and sat down.

“You know, miss, you know, my dearest—well, it’s all the same. I was not disinterested when I sought your acquaintance, I wanted to establish connections with high society, but then … How insignificant that became in comparison with you, when I came to know you. You’re not angry with me for that?”

She did not reply and only touched his hand with hers.

He understood that this meant “No, I’m not angry.”

“Yes, you were just saying …” he hesitated, it seemed all too bold to him, “you were saying that you were in love with me, but, forgive me, I believe you, but, besides that, there’s something that disturbs and inhibits you. What is it?”

“Yes, it’s now or never,” she thought. “He’ll find out anyway. But now he won’t leave. Oh, if he left, it would be terrible!”

And she took in his whole big, noble, powerful figure with a loving glance. She now loved him more than Nikolai and, were it not for his emperorship, would not have exchanged this one for that.

“Listen. I cannot be untruthful. I must tell all. You ask what it is? It’s that I have loved.”

She placed her hand on his in a pleading gesture.

He was silent.

“You want to know whom? Yes, him, the sovereign.”

“We all love him. I imagine you, in girls’ school …”

“No, afterwards. It was an infatuation, but then it passed. But I must tell you …”

“Well, so what?”

“No, it wasn’t simply …”

She covered her face with her hands.

“What? You gave yourself to him?”

She was silent.

“As a mistress?”

She was silent.

He jumped up and, pale as death, with twitching cheekbones, stood before her. He remembered how Nikolai Pavlovich, meeting him on Nevsky Prospect, had congratulated him affectionately.

“My God, what have I done, Stiva?”

“Don’t, don’t touch me. Oh, how it hurts!”

He turned and walked to the house. In the house he met her mother.

“What’s wrong, Prince? I …” She fell silent, seeing his face. The blood had suddenly rushed to his face.

“You knew it and wanted to use me to cover it up. If you weren’t women,” he cried, raising an enormous fist over her, and, turning, ran away.

If the one who had been his fiancée’s lover had been a private person, he would have killed him, but it was his adored tsar.

The next day he applied for leave and his discharge, and, declaring himself sick so as to avoid seeing anyone, left for the country.

He spent the summer on his estate, settling his affairs. When summer was over, he did not return to Petersburg, but went to a monastery and entered it as a monk.

His mother wrote to him, trying to dissuade him from such a decisive step. He replied that the call of God was higher than any other considerations, and he felt it. Only his sister, as proud and ambitious as her brother, understood him.

She understood that he had become a monk in order to be higher than those who wanted to show him that they stood higher than he. And she understood him correctly. By becoming a monk, he showed that he scorned all that seemed so important to others and to himself at the time of his service, and that he had risen to a new height, from which he could look down on the people he had envied before. But it was not that feeling alone, as his sister thought, that guided him. There was in him another, genuinely religious feeling, which Varenka did not know about, and which, bound up with the feeling of pride and the desire for preeminence, guided him. His disappointment with Mary (his fiancée), whom he had imagined to be such an angel, and his feeling of offense were so strong that they led him to despair, and despair to what?—to God, to his childhood faith, which was still unbroken in him.

III

ON THE DAY of the Protection,⁵ Kasatsky entered the monastery.

The abbot of the monastery was a nobleman, a learned writer, and an elder, that is, he belonged to that succession of monks, originating in Wallachia, who submit without murmur to a chosen guide and teacher. The abbot was a disciple of the famous elder Amvrosy, the disciple of Makary, the disciple of the elder Leonid, the disciple of Paissy Velich-kovsky.⁶ Kasatsky submitted himself to this abbot as his elder.

Besides the sense of awareness of his superiority over others, which Kasatsky experienced in the monastery, Kasatsky, as in all things he did, also found joy in the monastery in attaining to the greatest outer as well as inner perfection. As in the regiment he was not only an irreproachable officer, but such as would do more than was demanded and thus widen the boundaries of perfection, so as a monk he strove to be perfect: always hardworking, abstemious, humble, meek, pure not only in deed but in thought, and obedient. This last quality in particular made life easier for him. If many of the demands of monastic life in a monastery close to the capital and much visited displeased him and became temptations for him, that was all annulled by obedience: it is not my business to reason, my business is to bear the assigned obedience, whether it is standing by the relics, singing in the choir, or keeping the accounts for the guest house. Any possibility of doubting anything at all was removed by the same obedience to the elder. Had it not been for this obedience, he would have been burdened by the length and monotony of the church services, and the bustle of the visitors, and the bad qualities of the brothers, but now all this was not only joyfully endured, but constituted a comfort and support in life. “I don’t know why one must hear the same prayers several times a day, but I know it’s necessary. And knowing that it’s necessary, I find joy in them.” The elder told him that as material food is necessary to maintain life, so spiritual food—church prayer—is necessary to maintain spiritual life. He believed in that, and, indeed, church services, for which he sometimes had difficulty getting up in the morning, gave him an unquestionable tranquillity and joy. Joy was given by the consciousness of humility and the unquestionableness of his actions, which were all determined by the elder. Yet the interest of life did not consist only in an ever increasing submission of his will, in an ever increasing humility, but also in the attaining of all Christian virtues, which at first had seemed easily attainable to him. He gave all his property to the monastery and did not regret it. There was no sloth in him. Humility before his inferiors was not only easy for him, but gave him joy. Even the triumph over the sin of lust, both as greed and as lewdness, came easily to him. The elder warned him particularly about this sin, but Kasatsky rejoiced at being free of it.

The only thing that tormented him was the memory of his fiancée. And not only the memory, but the vivid picturing of what might have been. Involuntarily, he pictured to himself an acquaintance of his, one of the sovereign’s favorites, who later married and became an excellent wife and mother of a family. Her husband occupied an important post, had power, respect, and a good, repentant wife.

In good moments, Kasatsky was not troubled by these thoughts. When he remembered these things in good moments, he rejoiced at having rid himself of those temptations. But there were moments when everything he lived by suddenly went dim before him; not that he ceased to believe in what he lived by, but he ceased to see it, could not call it up before him, and the memory of and—terrible to say—the regret for his conversion seized hold of him.

In this situation, salvation lay in obedience—work and prayer throughout the busy day. He prayed and made bows as usual, prayed even more than usual, but prayed with his body, his soul was not in it. And this would last for a day, sometimes two, and then go away of itself. But that day or two were terrible. Kasatsky felt that he was neither in his own nor in God’s power, but in someone else’s. And all he could do and did do at those times was what his elder advised—endure, undertake nothing during that time, and wait. In general Kasatsky lived all that time not by his own will, but by his elder’s, and there was a special tranquillity in that obedience.

So Kasatsky spent seven years in the first monastery he entered. At the end of the third year he was tonsured a hieromonk⁷ under the name of Sergius. The tonsuring was an important inner event for Sergius. Before, too, he had experienced a great comfort and spiritual uplift when he took communion; but now, when he happened to serve himself, the celebrating of the proskomedia⁸ brought him to a state of rapturous tenderness. But then this feeling became more and more blunted, and once, when he happened to serve in that oppressed state of spirit which used to come over him, he sensed that this feeling, too, would pass. And indeed the feeling weakened, but the habit remained.

Generally, in the seventh year of his life in the monastery, Sergius became bored. All that he had had to learn, all that he had had to attain, he had attained, and there was nothing more to do.

Instead his state of apathy kept growing stronger. During that time he learned of his mother’s death and Mary’s marriage. He received both pieces of news with indifference. All his attention, all his interests were concentrated on his inner life.

In the fourth year after his tonsuring, the bishop showed him particular kindness, and the elder told him that he should not refuse if he were appointed to higher duties. And then monastic ambition, the very thing that is so repulsive in monks, arose in him. He was appointed to a monastery near the capital. He wanted to refuse, but the elder told him to accept the appointment. He accepted the appointment, took leave of the elder, and moved to the new monastery.

This transfer to the monastery near the capital was an important event in Sergius’s life. There were many temptations of every sort, and all of Sergius’s forces were directed at that.

In his former monastery Sergius had suffered little from the temptation of women, but here this temptation rose up with dreadful force and went so far that it even received a definite form. There was a lady known for her bad behavior who began to ingratiate herself with Sergius. She struck up a conversation with him and asked him to visit her. Sergius sternly refused, but was horrified at the definiteness of his desire. He was so frightened that he wrote to his elder about it, and not only that but, in order to tether himself, he summoned a young novice and, overcoming his shame, confessed his weakness, asking him to keep watch on him and not let him go anywhere except to services and obediences.

Besides that, there was a great temptation for Sergius in the fact that the abbot of this monastery, a worldly, clever man embarked on a churchly career, was antipathetic to him in the highest degree. No matter how Sergius struggled with himself, he could not overcome this antipathy. He humbled himself, but in the depths of his soul he never ceased to judge him. And this bad feeling broke out.

This was during the second year of his residence in the new monastery. And here is how it happened. On the feast of the Protection, the all-night vigil was served in the big church. There were many visitors. The abbot himself celebrated. Father Sergius stood in his usual place and prayed, that is, was in that state of struggle which he was always in during services, especially in the big church, when he was not celebrating himself. The struggle was against the irritation caused by the visitors, the gentlemen and especially the ladies. He tried not to see them, not to notice all that was going on: not to see how the soldier escorting them pushed his way through the people, or how the ladies pointed out monks to each other—often even himself and another monk known for being handsome. He tried, as if putting blinkers on his attention, to see nothing except the shining of candles by the iconostasis, the icons, and the celebrants; to hear nothing except the words of the prayers, spoken or sung, and to experience no other feelings except that self-forgetfulness in the consciousness of the fulfillment of his duty which he always experienced when listening to and repeating prayers heard so many times before.

So he stood, bowing, crossing himself where necessary, and struggled, giving himself now to cold condemnation, now to a consciously evoked suspension of thoughts and feelings, when the sacristan, Father Nicodemus—also a great temptation for Father Sergius—Nicodemus, whom he involuntarily reproached for currying favor and flattering the abbot—came over to him and, bending double as he bowed, said that the abbot was summoning him to the altar. Father Sergius straightened his mantle, put on his cowl, and walked warily through the crowd.

“Lise, regardez à droite, c’est lui,”* he heard a woman’s voice say.

“Où, où? Il n’est pas tellement beau.”†

He knew they were talking about him. He heard it and, as always in moments of temptation, repeated the words: “And lead us not into temptation,” and, lowering his head and eyes, walked past the ambo and, going around the choir leaders in their cassocks, who were just then passing in front of the iconostasis, entered through the north door. Going into the sanctuary, he crossed himself and bowed as was customary, bending double before the icon, then raised his head and glanced at the abbot, whose figure he saw out of the corner of his eye, standing next to another figure in something glittering, without turning to them.

The abbot stood in his vestments by the wall and, having freed his short, plump arms from under the chasuble that covered his fat body and stomach, was fingering the gold trimming, smiling and saying something to a military man in the uniform of a general of the imperial suite with a monogram and aglets, which Father Sergius noticed at once with his practiced military eye. This general was his former regimental commander. He now obviously occupied an important position, and Father Sergius noticed at once that the abbot knew it and was glad of it, and that was why his fat, red face with its bald brow was beaming so. This offended and distressed Father Sergius, and this feeling increased still more when he heard from the abbot that he had summoned him, Father Sergius, out of no other need than to satisfy the general’s curiosity to see his former colleague, as he put it.

“Very glad to see you in angelic guise,”⁹ said the general, holding out his hand. “I hope you haven’t forgotten your old comrade.”

The abbot’s whole face, red and smiling amidst its white hair, as if approving of what the general had said, the general’s pampered face with its self-satisfied smile, the smell of wine from the general’s mouth and of cigars from his side-whiskers—all this made Father Sergius explode. He bowed once more to his superior and said:

“Your Reverence was pleased to summon me?” And he stopped, the whole expression of his face and posture asking: Why?

The abbot said:

“Yes, to meet the general.”

“Your Reverence, I left the world to save myself from temptations,” he said, turning pale and with trembling lips. “Why do you subject me to them here? In a time of prayer and in God’s church?”

“Go, go,” the abbot said, flaring up and frowning.

The next day Father Sergius asked forgiveness of the abbot and the brothers for his pride, but along with that, after a night spent in prayer, decided that he had to leave that monastery, and wrote a letter about it to his elder, begging to be allowed to go back to the elder’s monastery. He wrote that he felt his weakness and inability to fight against temptations alone, without the elder’s help. And he confessed to his sin of pride. With the next mail came a letter from the elder, in which he wrote that the cause of it all was his pride. The elder explained to him that his fit of anger came from the fact that his humility in refusing churchly honors was not for the sake of God but for the sake of his own pride: just see how I am, I don’t need anything. Because of that, he could not bear what the abbot had done. I spurned everything for God, and they exhibit me like a wild beast. “If you had spurned glory for God, you would have borne it. Worldly pride has not yet been extinguished in you. I have thought about you, Sergius my child, and prayed, and this is what God has inspired me with concerning you: live as before and submit. Just now it has become known that Hilarion, a recluse of holy life, has died in his cell. He lived in it for eighteen years. The abbot of Tambino is asking if there is a monk who would like to live there. And here your letter comes. Go to Father Paissy in the monastery of Tambino, I will write to him, and ask to occupy Hilarion’s cell. Not so that you can replace Hilarion, but you need solitude in order to humble your pride. May God bless you.”

Sergius obeyed the elder, showed his letter to the abbot, and, having obtained his permission, gave up his cell and all his possessions to the monastery and left for the Tambino hermitage.

In the Tambino hermitage the superior, an excellent manager, of merchant stock, received Sergius simply and calmly and placed him in Hilarion’s cell, at first giving him an attendant, but later, at Sergius’s request, leaving him by himself. The cell was a cave dug into a hillside. Hilarion was buried in it. In the back part of it Hilarion was buried, and in the front part was a niche for sleeping, with a straw mattress, a little table, and a shelf with icons and books. Outside the door, which could be locked, there was a shelf; on this shelf once a day a monk placed food from the monastery.

And so Father Sergius became a recluse.

IV

DURING MEATFARE WEEK in the sixth year of Sergius’s life in reclusion, a merry company of rich people, men and women, from the neighboring town, after pancakes and drink, went for a troika ride.¹⁰ The company consisted of two lawyers, a rich landowner, an officer, and four women. One was the officer’s wife, another the landowner’s wife, the third was a young lady, the landowner’s sister, and the fourth was a divorced woman, a beauty, rich and whimsical, who astonished and stirred up the town with her escapades.

The weather was beautiful, the road like a smooth floor. They drove some seven miles out of town, stopped, and began to discuss where to go: back or further on.

“Where does this road lead to?” asked Mrs. Makovkin, the divorced lady, the beauty.

“To Tambino, eight miles from here,” said the lawyer, who was courting Mrs. Makovkin.

“Well, and then?”

“And then to L——, past the monastery.”

“The one where this Father Sergius lives?”

“Yes.”

“Kasatsky? The handsome hermit?”

“Yes.”

“Mesdames! Gentlemen! Let’s go to see Kasatsky. We can rest and have something to eat in Tambino.”

“But we won’t make it home before nightfall.”

“Never mind, we’ll spend the night at Kasatsky’s.”

“We could, there’s a guest house at the monastery, and a very good one. I stayed there when I defended Makhin.”

“No, I’ll spend the night at Kasatsky’s.”

“Well, that’s impossible, even with your almightiness.”

“Impossible? Let’s bet.”

“You’re on. If you spend the night at his place, ask whatever you like.”

“À discrétion.”*

“And you, too!”

“Of course. Let’s go.”

The drivers were offered drink. The travelers themselves took out the box with pirozhki, wine, sweets. The ladies wrapped themselves in white dog-fur coats. The drivers argued over who would go first, and one of them, a young fellow, turned dashingly sideways, brandished the long whip handle, shouted—and the bells rang out and the runners squealed.

The sleigh shook and swayed slightly, the outrunner galloped steadily and merrily with his tail tied up tightly over the laminated breeching, the smooth, buttery road raced quickly past, the driver dashingly flourished the reins, the lawyer and the officer, sitting opposite, babbled something to Mrs. Makovkin’s neighbor, and she herself, wrapped tightly in her fur coat, sat motionless and thought: “It’s all the same, and all vile: shiny red faces with a smell of drink and tobacco, the same talk, the same thoughts, and it all turns around that very vileness. And they’re all satisfied and convinced that it has to be so, and can go on living like that till they die. But I can’t. I’m bored. I want something to upset it all, overturn it. Well, even if it’s like those people in Saratov, was it, who went off and froze to death. Well, what would ours do? How would they behave? Meanly, I’m sure. Every man for himself. And I’d also behave meanly myself. But, anyhow, I’m a good one. They know it. Well, and this monk? Can it be he no longer understands such things? Not true. It’s the one thing they do understand. Like with that cadet last fall. And what a fool he was …”

“Ivan Nikolaich!” she said.

“What can I do for you?”

“How old is he?”

“Who?”

“This Kasatsky.”

“Over forty, I think.”

“And what, does he receive everybody?”

“Everybody, but not always.”

“Cover my legs. Not like that. How clumsy you are! No, more, more, like that. And there’s no need to squeeze my legs.”

So they reached the forest where the cell was.

She got out and told them to go on. They tried to talk her out of it, but she became angry and told them to keep going. Then the sleigh drove off, and she, in her white dog-fur coat, went down the path. The lawyer got out and stayed to watch.

V

FATHER SERGIUS WAS SPENDING his sixth year as a recluse. He was forty-nine. His life was difficult. Not the work of fasting and prayer, that was not difficult, but the inner struggle, which he had not expected. The sources of the struggle were two: doubt and fleshly lust. These two enemies always rose up together. It seemed to him that they were two different enemies, whereas they were one and the same. As soon as doubt was crushed, lust was crushed. But he thought they were two different devils and struggled with them separately.

“My God! My God!” he thought. “Why do you not give me faith? Lust, yes, St. Anthony¹¹ and others struggled with it—but faith. They had it, while for me there are moments, hours, days when I don’t have it. Why the whole world, all its delight, if it is sinful and one must renounce it? Why did you create this temptation? Temptation? But isn’t it a temptation that I want to leave the world’s joys and prepare something there where there may be nothing?” he said to himself and felt horror and loathing for his own self. “Vile creature! Vile creature! And you want to be a saint,” he began to denounce himself. And he stood up to pray. But as soon as he began to pray, he vividly imagined himself as he had been in the monastery: in a cowl, a mantle, looking majestic. And he shook his head. “No, that’s not it. That’s a deception. I can deceive others, but not myself or God. I’m not a majestic man, but pathetic, ridiculous.” And he opened the skirts of his cassock and looked at his pathetic legs in their drawers. And smiled.

Then he lowered the skirts and started to recite prayers, cross himself, and bow. “Shall this bed be to me a coffin?” he recited. And it was as if some devil whispered to him: “A solitary bed, too, is a coffin. Lies!” And he saw in imagination the shoulders of the widow with whom he used to live. He shook himself and went on reciting. Having recited the rule,¹² he picked up the Gospel, opened it, and came upon a place which he often repeated and knew by heart: “Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief.”¹³ He drove back all his emerging doubts. As one steadies a poorly balanced object, he steadied his faith again on its shaky pedestal and carefully stepped back so as not to knock it over. The blinkers were put in place again, and he calmed down. He repeated his childhood prayer: “Lord, take me, take me”—and felt not only lightness but a joyful tenderness. He crossed himself and lay down on his pallet on its narrow bench, putting his summer cassock under his head. And he fell asleep. In his light sleep he seemed to hear harness bells. He did not know whether it was in reality or in dream. But a knock on the door awakened him. He got up, not believing his ears. But the knock was repeated. Yes, there was a knock close by, on his door, and a woman’s voice.

“My God, is it really true what I’ve read in the Lives,¹⁴ that the devil takes the form of a woman … Yes, that’s a woman’s voice. And a gentle, timid, and sweet voice! Pah!” he spat. “No, I’m imagining it,” he said and went to the corner, where a little lectern stood, and lowered himself to his knees in that habitual, regular movement, in which, in the movement itself, he found comfort and pleasure. He lowered himself, his hair hanging over his face, and pressed his already balding brow to the damp, cold matting. (There was a draft through the floor.)

… he was reading a psalm which old Father Pimen had told him would help against hauntings. He lightly raised his emaciated, light body on his strong, nervous legs and wanted to go on reading, but he did not read, but involuntarily strained his ears in order to hear. He wanted to hear. It was perfectly quiet. The same drops from the roof fell into the tub placed under the corner. Outside there was murk, fog, which ate up the snow. It was quiet, quiet. And suddenly there was a rustling by the window, and what was clearly a voice—the same gentle, timid voice, a voice that could belong only to an attractive woman—said:

“Let me in. For Christ’s sake …”

All his blood seemed to rush to his heart and stop there. He could not breathe. “Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered …”¹⁵

“I’m not a devil …” and he could hear that the lips pronouncing it were smiling. “I’m not a devil, I’m simply a sinful woman, lost, not figuratively but literally” (she laughed), “freezing, and asking for shelter …”

He put his face to the windowpane. The reflection of the icon lamp shone all over the pane. He put his palms to both sides of his face and peered out. Fog, murk, a tree, and there to the right. She. Yes, she, a woman in a coat with long white fur, in a hat, with a sweet, sweet, kind, frightened face, there, three inches from his face, leaning towards him. Their eyes met and they recognized each other. Not that they had ever seen each other: they never had, but in the glance they exchanged, they (he especially) felt that they knew each other, understood each other. To suspect, after that glance, that this was a devil and not a simple, kind, sweet, timid woman was impossible.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Open up,” she said with capricious imperiousness. “I’m freezing. I’ve lost my way, I tell you.”

“But I’m a monk, a hermit.”

“Well, open up anyway. Or do you want me to freeze to death under your window while you pray.”

“But how did you …”

“I won’t eat you. For God’s sake, let me in. I’m just plain cold.”

She was getting scared herself. She said it in an almost tearful voice.

He left the window, glanced at the icon of Christ in a crown of thorns. “Lord, help me, Lord, help me,” he said, crossing himself and bowing to the ground, and he went to the door and opened it to the little front hall. In the hall he felt for the hook and began to lift it. He heard footsteps outside. She was moving from the window to the door. “Aie!” she suddenly cried. He realized that her foot had landed in the puddle that had formed by the doorway. His hands trembled, and he could not lift the tight hook that held the door shut.

“What’s the matter? Let me in. I’m all wet. I’m freezing to death. You think about saving your soul, while I’m freezing.”

He pulled the door towards him, lifted the hook, and, without intending it, shoved the door outwards so that it pushed her.

“Ah, I beg your pardon!” he said, suddenly shifting over completely to his old, habitual way with ladies.

She smiled, hearing this “I beg your pardon.” “Well, he’s not all that frightening,” she thought.

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing. Forgive me,” she said, stepping past him. “I’d never have dared. But this is such a special case.”

“Come in, please,” he said, letting her pass. The strong scent of fine perfume, which he had not smelled for a long time, struck him. She passed through the front hall into the room. He slammed the outside door without hooking it, crossed the hall, and went into the room.

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner, Lord, have mercy on me a sinner,”¹⁶ he prayed without ceasing, not only inwardly, but even outwardly, moving his lips involuntarily.

“Please come in,” he said.

She stood in the middle of the room, dripping water on the floor, and studied him. Her eyes were laughing.

“Forgive me for trespassing on your solitude. But you see what situation I’m in. It came about because we went for a sleigh ride out of town, and I made a bet that I could walk back alone from Vorobyevka, but I lost my way here, and now, if I hadn’t happened upon your cell …” she began to lie. But his face confused her, so that she could not go on and fell silent. She had expected him to be quite different. He was not such a handsome man as she had imagined him, but he was beautiful in her eyes. His curly hair and beard shot with gray, his thin, fine nose, and his eyes burning like coals when he looked at her directly, struck her.

He saw that she was lying.

“Well, so,” he said, glancing at her and lowering his eyes again. “I’ll go there, and you make yourself comfortable.”

And, taking down a little lamp, he lit the candle and, bowing low to her, went to a tiny room behind a partition, and she heard him start moving something there. “Probably barricading himself from me with something,” she thought, smiling, and, throwing off her white dog-fur rotonde, she began to remove her hat, which got caught in her hair, and the knitted kerchief that was under it. She had not been soaking wet at all when she was standing at the window and had only said it as a pretext, so that he would let her in. But at the door she had in fact stepped in a puddle, and her left leg was wet to the calf, and her shoe and overshoe were full of water. She sat on his cot—a plank covered only with a rug—and began to take her shoes off. This little cell seemed charming to her. The narrow room, some seven feet wide by nine feet long, was clean as a whistle. There was nothing in it but the cot she was sitting on and a shelf of books above it. In the corner a little lectern. On nails by the door a fur coat and a cassock. Above the lectern an icon of Christ with the crown of thorns and an icon lamp. There was a strange smell of oil, sweat, and earth. She liked everything. Even that smell.

Her wet feet, one especially, worried her, and she hurriedly began taking her shoes off, not ceasing to smile, glad not so much of having attained her goal as of seeing that she embarrassed him—this charming, striking, strange, attractive man. “Well, he didn’t respond, but there’s no harm in that,” she said to herself.

“Father Sergius! Father Sergius! That’s your name, isn’t it?”

“What do you want?” a soft voice responded.

“Forgive me, please, for trespassing on your solitude. But, truly, I couldn’t do anything else. I’d have fallen ill straight off. Even now I don’t know. I’m all wet, my feet are like ice.”

“Forgive me,” the soft voice replied, “I cannot be of any service to you.”

“I wouldn’t have troubled you for anything. I’ll only stay till daybreak.”

He did not respond. And she heard him whispering something—he was evidently praying.

“You won’t come in here?” she asked, smiling. “Because I’ll have to undress in order to get dry.”

He did not respond, but went on reciting prayers in an even voice behind the wall.

“Yes, there’s a man,” she thought, pulling off her squelching overshoe with effort. She tugged at it and could not get it off, and that became funny to her. And she laughed barely audibly, but, knowing that he could hear her laughter and that this laughter would affect him in precisely the way she wanted, she laughed louder, and this merry, natural, kindly laughter indeed affected him, and in precisely the way she wanted.

“Yes, one could fall in love with such a man. Those eyes. And that simple, noble, and—no matter how he murmurs prayers—and passionate face!” she thought. “We women can’t be fooled. Already then, when he put his face to the windowpane and looked at me, and understood, and recognized me. There was a flash in his eyes, and that sealed it. He loved, he desired me. Yes, desired,” she said, having finally taken off her overshoe and shoe and setting to work on her stockings. To take them off, those long stockings on elastics, she had to lift her skirts. She felt ashamed and said:

“Don’t come in.”

But there was no reply from behind the wall. The even murmuring went on and sounds of movement as well. “He’s probably bowing to the ground,” she thought. “But he won’t bow out,” she said. “He’s thinking about me. Just as I am about him. He’s thinking with the same feeling about these legs,” she said, as she pulled off her wet stockings, stepping onto the cot with her bare feet and tucking them under her. She sat like that for a short time, clasping her knees with her arms and looking pensively before her. “Yes, this solitude, this silence. And nobody would ever know …”

She got up, took her stockings to the stove, and hung them on the damper. It was some special kind of damper. She turned it and then, stepping lightly on her bare feet, went back to the cot and again sat on it with her feet up. Behind the wall there was total silence. She looked at the tiny watch that hung on her neck. It was two o’clock. “Our people should be here around three.” There was no more than an hour left.

“What is it, me sitting here alone like this. What nonsense! I don’t want to. I’ll call him right now.”

“Father Sergius! Father Sergius! Sergei Dmitrich, Prince Kasatsky!”

There was silence behind the door.

“Listen, this is cruel. I wouldn’t be calling you if I didn’t need to. I’m sick. I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” she said in a suffering voice. “Ohh, ohh!” she moaned, falling on the cot. And, strangely enough, she really felt that she was faint, quite faint, that she ached all over and was trembling with fever.

“Listen, help me! I don’t know what’s the matter with me. Ohh! Ohh!” She unbuttoned her dress, exposed her breast, and threw back her arms, which were bared to the elbow. “Ohh! Ohh!”

All this time he stood in his closet and prayed. Having recited all the evening prayers, he now stood motionless, his eyes fixed on the tip of his nose, mentally repeating the prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.”

But he heard everything. He heard how she rustled the silk fabric, taking off her dress, how she stepped barefoot across the floor; he heard her rub her feet with her hand. He felt that he was weak and might perish at any moment, and therefore he prayed without ceasing. He experienced something like what a folktale hero must experience, having to walk on without looking back.¹⁷ So, too, Sergius heard, felt, that danger, perdition, was here, over him, around him, and he could save himself only by not turning to look at her even for a minute. But suddenly the desire to look came over him. At that moment she said:

“Listen, this is inhuman. I may die.”

“Yes, I’ll go, but the way that elder did, who laid one hand on the harlot and put the other into a brazier. But there’s no brazier.” He looked around. The icon lamp. He put his finger over the flame and frowned, preparing to endure, and for quite a long time he seemed not to feel it, but suddenly—he had not yet decided whether it was painful and how much—he winced all over and pulled his hand back, waving it. “No, I can’t do it.”

“For God’s sake! Ohh, come to me! I’m dying! Ohh!”

“So, what, am I to perish? No, I won’t!”

“I’ll come to you at once,” he said, and, opening his door, not looking at her, he went past her to the door of the front hall, where he usually chopped wood, felt for the block on which he chopped wood, and for the axe leaning against the wall.

“At once,” he said, and, taking the axe in his right hand, he put the index finger of his left hand on the block, swung the axe, and struck it below the second joint. The finger bounced off more easily than a stick of the same thickness, spun in the air, and plopped onto the edge of the block and then onto the floor.

He heard that sound before he felt any pain. But he had no time to be surprised that there was no pain before he felt a sharp pain and the warmth of flowing blood. He quickly covered the cut joint with the skirt of his cassock and, pressing it to his hip, came back through the door, and, stopping before the woman, his eyes lowered, quietly asked:

“What is it?”

She looked at his pale face with its twitching left cheek and suddenly felt ashamed. She jumped up, seized her fur coat, and, throwing it on, wrapped herself in it.

“Yes, I was in pain … I’ve caught cold … I … Father Sergius … I …”

He raised his eyes, shining with a quiet, joyful light, to her and said:

“Dear sister, why did you want to destroy your immortal soul? It is necessary that temptations come into the world, but woe to the man by whom the temptation comes …¹⁸ Pray that God may forgive us.”

She listened to him and looked at him. Suddenly she heard drops of liquid falling. She glanced and saw that blood was flowing down his cassock from his hand.

“What have you done to your hand?” She remembered the sound she had heard and, seizing the lamp, ran to the front hall, where she saw a bloody finger on the floor. She came back paler than he was and wanted to say something to him; but he quietly went to the closet and shut the door behind him.

“Forgive me,” she said. “How can I redeem my sin?”

“Go.”

“Let me bandage your wound.”

“Go away.”

She dressed hurriedly and silently. And sat ready, in her fur coat, waiting. The sound of bells came from outside.

“Father Sergius. Forgive me.”

“Go. God will forgive.”

“Father Sergius. I’ll change my life. Don’t abandon me.”

“Go.”

“Forgive me and bless me.”

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” came from behind the partition. “Go.”

She burst into sobs and left the cell. The lawyer was coming to meet her.

“Well, I lost, no help for it. Where are you going to sit?”

“It makes no difference.”

She got into the sleigh and did not say a word all the way home.

• • •

A YEAR LATER she was tonsured a nun and lived a strict life in a convent under the guidance of the recluse Arseny, who occasionally wrote her letters.

VI

FATHER SERGIUS LIVED as a recluse for another seven years. At first he accepted much of what people brought him: tea, and sugar, and white bread, and milk, and clothing, and firewood. But as more and more time passed, he made his life stricter and stricter, renouncing all that was superfluous, and finally reached the point of not accepting anything except black bread once a week. All that was brought to him he gave to the poor who came to see him.

Father Sergius spent all his time in his cell at prayer or in conversation with visitors, who became more and more numerous. He went out only three times a year to church, and for water and firewood when they were needed.

After five years of such life, the event with Mrs. Makovkin took place—known soon enough everywhere—her night visit, the change that came over her after that, and her entering the convent. After that the fame of Father Sergius began to grow. More and more visitors began to come, and monks settled around his cell, a church and a guest house were built. Father Sergius’s fame, exaggerating his deeds, as usual, spread further and further. People began flocking to him from far away, and began bringing sick people to him, declaring that he could heal the sick.

The first healing took place in the eighth year of his life as a recluse. It was the healing of a fourteen-year-old boy, whose mother brought him to Father Sergius, asking that he lay his hands on him. The thought that he could heal the sick had never occurred to Father Sergius. He would have considered such a thought a great sin of pride; but the mother who brought the boy entreated him insistently, lying at his feet, saying why, when he healed others, did he not want to help her son, begging him for Christ’s sake. To Father Sergius’s assertion that only God heals, she said that she asked him only to lay his hand on him and pray. Father Sergius refused and went to his cell. But the next day (it was autumn and the nights were already cold) he left his cell to fetch water and saw the mother with her son, a pale, emaciated fourteen-year-old boy, and heard the same pleas. Father Sergius remembered the parable of the unrighteous judge¹⁹ and, while previously he had felt no doubts that he should refuse, he now felt some doubts, and, feeling those doubts, he began to pray and prayed until a decision formed in his soul. The decision was that he must fulfill what the woman asked, that her faith would save her son; he himself, Father Sergius, would in that case be nothing but an insignificant instrument chosen by God.

And, going out to the mother, Father Sergius fulfilled her wish, laid his hand on the boy’s head, and began to pray.

The mother and son left, and a month later the boy recovered, and the rumor spread throughout the district about the holy healing power of the elder Sergius, as they now called him. Since then a week did not pass without sick people coming on foot or in carriages to see Father Sergius. And, having not refused one, he could not refuse others, and so he laid his hand on them and prayed, and many were healed, and the fame of Father Sergius spread further and further.

Thus he spent nine years in the monastery and thirteen in solitude. Father Sergius had the look of an elder: his beard was long and gray, but his hair, though sparse, was still black and curly.

VII

FOR SOME WEEKS now Father Sergius had been living with one persistent thought: whether he had done well in submitting to the position in which he had been placed not so much by himself as by the archimandrite and the abbot.²⁰ It had begun after the recovery of the fourteen-year-old boy, and since then with every month, week, and day Sergius had felt that his inner life was being destroyed and replaced by external life. As if he were being turned inside out.

Sergius saw that he was a means of attracting visitors and donors to the monastery, and that the monastery authorities therefore surrounded him with conditions in which he could be of greatest use. For instance, they no longer gave him any opportunity to work. They supplied him with everything he might need and asked of him only that he not deny his blessing to the visitors who came to him. For his convenience, they arranged the days when he would receive. They arranged an anteroom for men and a place surrounded by railings so that he would not be knocked off his feet by the visiting ladies who rushed to him—a place where he could bless those who came to him. If they said that people needed him, that, fulfilling Christ’s law of love, he could not refuse people who asked to see him, that to withdraw from these people would be cruel, he could not help agreeing with them, but insofar as he gave himself to that life, he felt that the internal was turning into the external, that the source of living water was drying up in him, that everything he did was done more and more for people and not for God.

Whether he admonished people, or simply gave them a blessing, or prayed for the sick, or gave people advice about directing their lives, or listened to the thanks of people he had helped either by healing them, as they said, or by instruction, he could not help rejoicing over it, could not help being concerned with the consequences of his activity, with the way it affected people. He thought of himself as a shining light, and the more he felt that, the more he felt the weakening, the dying out of the divine light of truth burning in him. “How much of what I do is for God and how much for people?” was the question which constantly tormented him and to which he never not so much could as dared to give himself an answer. He felt in the depths of his soul that the devil had changed all his activity for God into activity for people. He felt it because, as he had been oppressed before when his solitude was disturbed, so now he was oppressed by his solitude. He was burdened by his visitors, wearied by them, but in the depths of his soul he was glad of them, glad of the praise with which they surrounded him.

There was even a time when he decided to go away, to hide himself. He even kept thinking over how to do it. He prepared a peasant shirt for himself, breeches, a kaftan, and a hat. He explained that he wanted them so as to give them to the needy. And he kept these clothes with him, planning how he would put them on, cut his hair, and leave. First he would take a train, go two hundred miles, get off, and go about the villages. He asked an old soldier how he went about, how people gave to him and took him in. The soldier told him how and where it was best for giving and taking in, and that was what Father Sergius wanted to do. One night he even got dressed and was about to go, but he did not know which was good: to stay or to flee. At first he was undecided, then the indecision went away, he got used to the devil and submitted to him, and the peasant clothes only reminded him of his thoughts and feelings.

With every day more and more people came to him and less and less time remained for spiritual fortification and prayer. Occasionally, in his brighter moments, he thought he had become like a place where there used to be a spring. “There was a slender spring of living water that quietly flowed from me, through me. That was true life, when ‘she’” (he always remembered with rapture that night and her—now Mother Agnia) “tempted me. She tasted that pure water. But since then, before the water can gather, the thirsty ones have come, crowding and jostling each other. And they’ve churned it up, so that only mud is left.” So he thought in his rare brighter moments; but his most usual state was weariness and a tender feeling for himself on account of that weariness.

IT WAS SPRING, the eve of the feast of Mid-Pentecost.²¹ Father Sergius served the vigil in his cave church. There were as many people as could find room, around twenty. They were all gentry and merchants—rich people. Father Sergius admitted everyone, but the selection was made by the monk attached to him and by the attendant sent daily to his hermitage from the monastery. A crowd of people, some eighty pilgrims, peasant women in particular, crowded outside, waiting for Father Sergius to come out and give them his blessing. Father Sergius served, and when he came out, singing praises, to the tomb of his predecessor, he staggered and would have fallen, if a merchant standing behind him and the monk who served as deacon had not supported him.

“What’s the matter? Little father! Father Sergius! Dearest! Lord!” women’s voices said. “You’re white as a sheet!”

But Father Sergius recovered at once and, though very pale, pushed the merchant and the deacon away and went on singing. Father Serapion, the deacon, and the attendants, and Sofya Ivanovna, a lady who lived permanently near the hermitage and took care of Father Sergius, began begging him to stop serving.

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing,” said Father Sergius, smiling almost imperceptibly under his mustaches, “don’t disrupt the service.”

“Yes,” he thought, “this is how saints do it.”

“A saint! God’s angel!” he at once heard behind him the voice of Sofya Ivanovna and also of the merchant who had supported him. He did not heed their entreaties and went on serving. Pressing together again, they all went back down the narrow corridors to the small church, and there, abbreviating it a little, Father Sergius finished serving the vigil.

Immediately after the service Father Sergius blessed those who were present and went out to sit on the bench under the elm tree by the entrance to the cave. He wanted to rest, to breathe the fresh air, he felt it was necessary for him, but as soon as he came out, the crowd of people rushed to him, asking for his blessing and seeking advice and help. There were pilgrim women there, who always go from holy place to holy place, from elder to elder, and always feel a tender emotion before every relic and every elder—Father Sergius knew this ordinary, most unreligious, cold, conventional type; there were pilgrim men, for the most part retired soldiers, unaccustomed to sedentary life, poverty-stricken and for the most part tippling old men, who dragged themselves from monastery to monastery only in order to be fed; there were also coarse peasant men and women with their egocentric demands for healing or the resolving of their doubts concerning the most practical matters: getting a daughter married, renting a shop, buying a plot of land, or taking away the sin of overlying a baby or begetting one out of wedlock. All this was long familiar to Father Sergius and did not interest him. He knew that he would learn nothing new from these persons, that they would not call up any religious feeling in him, but he liked to see them as a crowd who needed and cherished him, his blessing, his words, and therefore he was burdened by this crowd and at the same time found it pleasing. Father Serapion started driving them away, saying that Father Sergius was tired, but he, recalling the words of the Gospel, “Suffer them [the children] to come unto me,”²² and waxing tender towards himself at this recollection, told him to let them stay.

He stood up, went to the railing where they crowded, and began to bless them and to answer their questions in a weak voice, feeling a tenderness for the weakness of its sound. But, despite his wish to receive them all, he could not do it: again there was darkness in his eyes, he staggered and grasped the railing. Again he felt the blood rush to his head, and at first he turned pale and then suddenly flushed.

“Yes, it will have to be tomorrow. I cannot now,” he said and, giving them all a general blessing, went to the bench. The merchant again supported him, led him by the arm, and sat him down.

“Father!” came from the crowd. “Father! Dearest! Don’t abandon us! We’ll perish without you!”

The merchant, having sat Father Sergius down on the bench under the elm, took upon himself the duty of a policeman and resolutely undertook to drive the people away. True, he spoke very softly, so that Father Sergius could not hear him, but he spoke resolutely and angrily:

“Get out, get out. He blessed you, well, what more do you want? Off with you. Or else you’ll really get it in the neck. Well? Well? You, auntie, in the black leggings, clear off, clear off! Where do you think you’re going? That’s it, I told you. Tomorrow as God wills, but it’s finished for today.”

“Dearie, just let me have a peek at his sweet face,” said a little old woman.

“I’ll give you a peek! Where are you going?”

Father Sergius noticed that the merchant was being rather severe and told his cell attendant in a weak voice that the people should not be driven away. Father Sergius knew that he would drive them away in any case, and he wished very much to be left alone and rest, but he sent the attendant so as to make an impression.

“All right, all right. I’m not driving them away, I’m admonishing them,” the merchant replied. “Oh, they’re glad to finish a man off. They have no pity, they’re only mindful of themselves. Impossible, I said. Go away. Come tomorrow.”

And the merchant drove them all away.

The merchant was so zealous both because he liked order and liked shoving people around, making them obey, and, above all, because he had need of Father Sergius. He was a widower, and he had an only daughter, sick, unmarried, and he had brought her to Father Sergius from a thousand miles away so that Father Sergius could heal her. In the two years of her illness, he had had this daughter treated in various places. First in a clinic in a provincial university town—no help; then he had taken her to a muzhik in Samara province—she got slightly better; then he had taken her to a doctor in Moscow, paid him a lot of money—no help at all. Now he had been told that Father Sergius could heal people, and he had brought her. So, once the merchant had driven all the people away, he went up to Father Sergius and, without any preliminaries, going on his knees, said in a loud voice:

“Holy father, bestow your blessing upon my ailing daughter, that she be healed of the pain of illness. I make so bold as to seek refuge at your holy feet.” And he held out his cupped hands. He did and said all this as if he was doing something clearly and firmly defined by law and custom, as if it was precisely in this way and not in any other that one had to ask for the healing of one’s daughter. He did it with such assurance that it even seemed to Father Sergius that it all had to be said and done in precisely that way. But even so he ordered him to stand up and tell him what was the matter. The merchant told him that his daughter, a girl of twentytwo, had fallen ill two years ago, after her mother’s sudden death, had gasped, as he put it, and since then had not been right. And so he had brought her from a thousand miles away, and she was waiting at the guest house until Father Sergius ordered her brought to him. She did not go out in the daytime, she was afraid of the light, and could only go out after sunset.

“What, is she very weak?” asked Father Sergius.

“No, she has no special weakness, and she’s got flesh on her, only she’s a neerastheniac, as the doctor said. If you ordered her brought now, Father Sergius, I’d fly there in no time. Holy father, revive a parent’s heart, restore his generation—save his ailing daughter with your prayers.”

And the merchant again dropped to his knees and, bowing his head sideways over his two cupped hands, froze. Father Sergius again ordered him to stand up and, reflecting on how difficult his activity was and how, despite that, he humbly endured it, sighed deeply and, after a few seconds of silence, said:

“Very well, bring her in the evening. I will pray for her, but now I’m tired.” And he closed his eyes. “I’ll send for you then.”

The merchant withdrew, tiptoeing over the sand in his boots, which made them creak even more loudly, and Father Sergius remained alone.

Father Sergius’s whole life was filled with services and visitors, but that day had been especially difficult. In the morning there had been a visit from an important dignitary, who had had a long conversation with him. After that a lady had come with her son. This son was a young professor, an unbeliever, whom his mother, an ardent believer and devoted to Father Sergius, had brought to him, begging him to have a talk with him. The conversation had been very difficult. The young man, obviously not wishing to get into an argument with a monk, had agreed with him in everything, as with a weak person, but Father Sergius had seen that the young man did not believe and, in spite of that, was quite well, calm, and at ease. Father Sergius now recalled that conversation with displeasure.

“Would you care to eat, dear father?” asked the cell attendant.

“Yes, bring me something.”

The attendant went to his cell, built some ten paces from the entrance to the cave, and Father Sergius remained alone.

The time was long past when Father Sergius lived alone and did everything for himself and ate only prosphora²³ and bread. It had long since been demonstrated to him that he had no right to neglect his health, and he was given lenten but healthful things to eat. He consumed little, but much more than before, and often with great pleasure, and not, as before, with revulsion and an awareness of sin. And so it was now. He had some gruel, drank a cup of tea, and ate half a loaf of white bread.

The cell attendant left, and he remained alone on the bench under the elm tree.

It was a wonderful May day; the leaves were just barely unfurling on the birches, aspens, elms, bird cherries, and oaks. The bird cherry bushes behind the elm were in full bloom and had not yet begun to lose their petals. Nightingales, one quite near, another two or three below in the bushes by the river, twittered and trilled. From far down the river one could hear the songs of workmen, probably coming back from work; the sun was setting behind the forest, and its broken rays sprayed through the greenery. This whole side was pale green, the other, with the elm, was dark. Beetles flew about and bumped and fell.

After supper Father Sergius began to repeat the mental prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us,” and then began to recite a psalm, and suddenly, in the middle of the psalm, out of nowhere, a sparrow flew down from a bush onto the ground and, chirping and hopping, jumped up to him, became frightened at something, and flew away. He recited a prayer which spoke of his renouncing the world, and hastened to finish reciting it, so as to send for the merchant and his sick daughter: she interested him. She interested him in that she was a new person, a diversion, and also in that she and her father considered him a saintly man, one whose prayers were fulfilled. He denied it, but in the depths of his soul he considered himself such.

He was often surprised at how it happened that he, Stepan Kasatsky, had come to be such an extraordinarily saintly man and an outright miracle worker, but there could be no doubt that he was that: he could not help believing in the miracles he had seen himself, beginning with the paralyzed boy and down to the latest old woman, who had recovered her sight through his prayers.

Strange as it was, it was so. And so the merchant’s daughter interested him in that she was a new person, that she had faith in him, and also in that he was about to confirm once again on her his power of healing and his fame. “They come from thousands of miles away, it is written up in newspapers, the sovereign knows, in Europe, in unbelieving Europe, they know,” he thought. And suddenly he became ashamed of his vanity, and he started praying to God again. “Lord, heavenly king, the comforter, the spirit of truth, come and abide in us, cleanse us of every impurity, and save our souls, O good one.²⁴ Cleanse me of the defilement of human fame that afflicts me,” he repeated and recalled how many times he had prayed for that and how useless his prayers had so far been in this regard: his prayer performed miracles for others, but for himself he could not obtain God’s deliverance from this paltry passion.

He recalled his prayers in the early time of his life as a recluse, when he had prayed to be granted purity, humility, and love, and how it had seemed to him then that God had heard his prayers, that he had been pure and had chopped off his finger, and he raised the wrinkled stub of the cut-off finger and kissed it; it seemed to him that he had been humble then, when he had constantly considered himself vile in his sinfulness, and it seemed to him that he had also had love then, when he recalled with what tender emotion he had received an old man who had come to him, a drunken soldier, asking for money, and also her. But now? And he asked himself: did he love anyone? Did he love Sofya Ivanovna, Father Serapion, had he experienced a feeling of love for all those persons who had come to him that day, for that learned young man with whom he had discoursed so instructively, anxious only to show his own intelligence and up-to-date education? Their love was pleasant and necessary for him, but he felt no love for them. There was no love in him now, nor humility, nor purity.

He had been pleased to learn that the merchant’s daughter was twenty-two, and he would have liked to know if she was beautiful. And, in asking about her weakness, he had precisely wanted to know whether she had feminine charm or not.

“Can it be that I’ve fallen so low?” he thought. “Lord, help me, restore me, my Lord and my God.” And he put his hands together and began to pray. The nightingales trilled. A beetle flew at him and crawled on the back of his neck. He brushed it off. “But does He exist? What if I’m knocking at a house locked from outside … There’s a padlock on the door, and I could see it. That padlock is the nightingales, the beetles, nature. Maybe the young man was right.” And he started praying aloud and prayed for a long time, until these thoughts disappeared and he again felt calm and assured. He rang the bell, and when the cell attendant appeared, told him to let the merchant and his daughter come now.

The merchant came, holding his daughter under the arm, led her into the cell, and left at once.

The daughter was a blond, extremely white, pale, plump, and extremely short girl, with a frightened, childish face and very developed feminine forms. Father Sergius remained on the bench by the door. As the girl passed and stopped near him, and he blessed her, he was horrified at himself for the way he looked her body over. She passed by, and he felt stung. He saw by her face that she was sensual and feebleminded. He got up and went into the cell. She was sitting on a stool waiting for him.

When he came in, she stood up.

“I want to go to papa,” she said.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “What is it that ails you?”

“Everything ails me,” she said, and her face suddenly lit up with a smile.

“You’ll get well,” he said. “Pray.”

“What use is praying? I prayed, and it didn’t help at all.” And she went on smiling. “You should pray and lay your hands on me. I had a dream about you.”

“What did you dream?”

“I dreamed that you put your hand on my breast like this.” She took his hand and pressed it to her breast. “Just here.”

He let her have his right hand.

“What is your name?” he asked, trembling all over and feeling that he was defeated, that his lust had already gone beyond his control.

“Marya. Why?”

She took his hand and kissed it, then put one arm around his waist and pressed herself to him.

“What are you doing?” he said. “Marya. You’re the devil.”

“Well, maybe it’s no matter.”

And, embracing him, she sat with him on the bed.

AT DAWN he went out to the porch.

“Can all this really have happened? Her father will come. She’ll tell him. She’s the devil. What am I to do? Here’s the axe with which I cut off my finger.” He seized the axe and went into the cell.

His cell attendant met him.

“Do you want me to cut some wood? Give me the axe.”

He gave him the axe. Went into the cell. She lay there asleep. He glanced at her with horror. Went on into the cell, took down his peasant clothes, put them on, picked up the scissors, cut his hair, and went by a path down to the river, where he had not been for four years.

A road went along the river. He followed it and walked until dinnertime. At dinnertime he went into a rye field and lay down there. Towards evening he came to a village on the river. He did not go into the village, but to the river, to the steep bank.

It was early morning, about half an hour before sunrise. Everything was gray and bleak, and the cold predawn wind blew from the west. “Yes, I must put an end to it. There is no God. End it how? Throw myself down? I can swim, I won’t drown. Hang myself? Yes, my sash there, on that branch.” This seemed so possible and close at hand that he was horrified. He wanted to pray, as usual in moments of despair. But there was no one to pray to. There was no God. He lay with his head propped on his hand. And suddenly he felt such a need for sleep that he could no longer support his head with his hand, straightened his arm, lay his head on it, and fell asleep at once. But this sleep lasted only a moment; he wakes up at once and begins not quite to daydream, not quite to recall.

And here he sees himself almost a child, in his mother’s home in the country. And a carriage drives up to them, and out of this carriage steps Uncle Nikolai Sergeevich with his enormous, black spade beard, and with him the thin little girl Pashenka, with large, meek eyes and a pathetic, timid face. And here to them, to their company of boys, this Pashenka is brought. And they have to play with her, but it’s boring. She’s stupid. It ends with them making fun of her, forcing her to show that she knows how to swim. She lies on the floor and gives a dry demonstration. And they all guffaw and make a fool of her. And she sees it and turns a blotchy red and becomes pathetic, so pathetic that it is shameful and it is impossible ever to forget that crooked, kindly, submissive smile. And Sergius remembers seeing her again after that. He had seen her long afterwards, just before he became a monk. She was married to some landowner who squandered all her fortune and beat her. She had two children: a son and a daughter. The son died young.

Sergius remembered seeing her unhappy. Then he saw her in the monastery as a widow. She was the same—not to say stupid, but insipid, insignificant, and pathetic. She came with her daughter and the daughter’s fiancé. And they were already poor. Then he heard that she was living somewhere in a district capital and was very poor. “Why am I thinking about her?” he kept asking himself. But he could not stop thinking about her. “Where is she? How is it with her? Is she still as unhappy as she was when she showed us how to swim on the floor? But why am I thinking about her? What am I doing? I must put an end to it.”

And again he felt frightened, and again, to save himself from this thought, he began to think about Pashenka.

He lay like that for a long time, thinking now about his necessary end, now about Pashenka. Pashenka appeared to him as his salvation. Finally he fell asleep. And in his sleep he saw an angel, who came to him and said: “Go to Pashenka and find out from her what you should do, and where your sin lies, and where lies your salvation.”

He woke up and, deciding that this had been a vision from God, rejoiced and decided to do as he had been told. He knew the town she lived in—it was two hundred miles away—and he went there.

VIII

PASHENKA HAD long since been not Pashenka, but old, withered, wrinkled Praskovya Mikhailovna, the mother-in-law of a failed official, the drunkard Mavrikyev. She lived in a district town where her son-in-law had had his last post, and there she fed the family: her daughter, and her ailing, neurasthenic son-in-law, and five grandchildren. She fed them by giving music lessons to merchants’ daughters at fifty kopecks an hour. She had sometimes four, sometimes five lessons a day, so that she made about sixty roubles a month. They lived on that, while waiting for a post. Praskovya Mikhailovna had sent letters soliciting a post to all her relations and acquaintances, including Sergius. But the letter had not found him there.

It was Saturday, and Praskovya Mikhailovna herself was mixing short dough with raisins, which her father’s serf cook used to do so well. Praskovya Mikhailovna wanted to give her grandchildren a treat on Sunday.

Masha, her daughter, was dandling her youngest; the eldest, a boy and a girl, were at school. The son-in-law had not slept all night and was now asleep. Praskovya Mikhailovna had gone to sleep late that night, after trying to soften her daughter’s anger against her husband.

She saw that her son-in-law—a weak being—could not speak or live any other way, and she saw that her daughter’s reproaches would not help, and she tried all she could to soften them, so that there would be no reproaches, no ill will. She was almost physically unable to endure unkindly relations between people. It was so clear to her that nothing could be improved by it, but everything would be made worse. She did not even think of it, she simply suffered from the sight of anger, as from a bad smell, a sharp noise, blows to the body.

She was just self-contentedly teaching Lukerya how to mix the leavened dough, when Misha, her six-year-old grandson, in a pinafore, bandy-legged, in darned stockings, ran into the kitchen with a frightened face.

“Grandma, a scary old man is looking for you.”

Lukerya peeked outside.

“That’s right, ma’am, it’s some pilgrim.”

Praskovya Mikhailovna wiped her skinny elbows against each other and her hands on her apron and went inside to fetch her purse and give five kopecks in alms, but then remembered that she had nothing smaller than ten-kopeck pieces, and decided to give bread and went back to the cupboard, but suddenly blushed at the thought that she had grudged the money, and, telling Lukerya to cut a chunk of bread, went back to fetch a ten-kopeck piece on top of it. “There’s a punishment for you,” she said to herself, “giving twice as much.”

She gave both to the pilgrim, with an apology, and, as she was giving it, no longer felt proud, but, on the contrary, was ashamed to be giving so little. Such an imposing look the pilgrim had.

Though he had walked two hundred miles begging in the name of Christ, and was ragged, and thin, and wind-burned, had cropped hair, a peasant’s hat and boots to match, and though he bowed humbly, Sergius had that imposing look that so attracted people to him. But Praskovya Mikhailovna did not recognize him. Nor could she have recognized him, not having seen him in almost thirty years.

“Don’t scorn it, dear man. Maybe you’d like to eat something?”

He took the bread and the money. And Praskovya Mikhailovna was surprised that he did not go away, but went on looking at her.

“Pashenka. I’ve come to you. Take me in.”

And dark, beautiful eyes looked at her attentively and entreatingly, glistening with the tears that welled up in them. And the lips twitched pathetically under graying mustaches.

Praskovya Mikhailovna clutched her withered breast, opened her mouth, and fixed her staring eyes on the pilgrim’s face.

“It can’t be! Styopa! Sergius! Father Sergius!”

“Yes, himself,” Sergius said softly. “Only not Sergius, not Father Sergius, but the great sinner Stepan Kasatsky, a lost man, a great sinner. Take me in, help me.”

“No, it can’t be, how is it you’ve humbled yourself so? Come in, then.”

She held out her hand; but he did not take it and walked behind her.

But where was she to take him? The apartment was small. There had been a tiny room, almost a closet, set apart for her, but then she had given up even that closet to her daughter. And now Masha was sitting there rocking the nursling to sleep.

“Sit down here, one moment,” she said to Sergius, pointing to a bench in the kitchen.

Sergius sat down at once and took off his sack, with what was obviously an already habitual gesture, first from one shoulder, then from the other.

“My God, my God, how you’ve humbled yourself, dear father! Such fame, and suddenly so …”

Sergius did not reply and only smiled meekly, setting his sack down next to him.

“Masha, do you know who this is?”

And Praskovya Mikhailovna told her daughter in a whisper who Sergius was, and together they carried the bedding and cradle out of the closet, vacating it for Sergius.

Praskovya Mikhailovna brought Sergius to the closet.

“Here, get some rest. Don’t scorn it. And I must go out.”

“Where to?”

“I give lessons here, I’m ashamed to say—I teach music.”

“Music—that’s good. There’s just one thing, Praskovya Mikhailovna, you see, I’ve come to you on business. When can I speak with you?”

“I shall account it my good fortune. Can it be this evening?”

“Yes, only I have another request: don’t talk about me, about who I am. I’ve revealed myself only to you. No one knows where I’ve gone. It has to be that way.”

“Ah, but I told my daughter.”

“Well, ask her not to speak of it.”

Sergius took off his boots, lay down, and fell asleep at once after a sleepless night and walking twenty-five miles.

WHEN PRASKOVYA MIKHAILOVNA CAME BACK, Sergius was sitting in his closet waiting for her. He did not come out for dinner, but ate the soup and kasha that Lukerya brought him there.

“Why is it you came earlier than you promised?” said Sergius. “Can we talk now?”

“And how is it I’m so fortunate as to have such a visitor? I skipped the lesson. After … I was dreaming all the time of going to you, I wrote to you, and suddenly such good fortune.”

“Pashenka! Please take the words I say to you now as a confession, as the words I shall speak before God in the hour of death. Pashenka! I’m not a holy man, not even a simple, ordinary man: I’m a sinner, a dirty, vile, lost, proud sinner, whether worse than all, I don’t know, but worse than the worst people.”

Pashenka first stared wide-eyed at him. She believed him. Then, when she fully believed him, she touched his hand with hers and, smiling pityingly, said:

“Stiva, maybe you’re exaggerating?”

“No, Pashenka. I’m a fornicator, I’m a murderer, I’m a blasphemer and deceiver.”

“My God! What is this?” said Praskovya Mikhailovna.

“But one must live. And I, who thought I knew everything, who taught others how to live—I know nothing, and I ask you to teach me.”

“What are you saying, Stiva? You’re making fun of me. Why must people always make fun of me?”

“Well, all right, I’m making fun: only tell me, how do you live and how have you lived your life?”

“Me? Oh, I’ve lived the most vile, nasty life, and now God is punishing me, and it serves me right. I live so badly, so badly …”

“How did you get married? How did you live with your husband?”

“It was all bad. I married—I fell in love in the most vile way. Papa didn’t want it. I disregarded everything and got married anyway. And, once I was married, instead of helping my husband, I tormented him with jealousy, which I couldn’t overcome in myself.”

“He drank, I heard.”

“Yes, but I was unable to give him peace. I reproached him. But it’s an illness, he couldn’t control himself, and I remember how I wouldn’t let him. And we had terrible scenes.”

And she looked at Kasatsky with her beautiful eyes, suffering from the memory.

Kasatsky remembered being told that Pashenka’s husband beat her. And now, looking at her thin, withered neck with the veins bulging behind her ears, and at her knot of scanty hair, half gray, half blond, it was as if he could see how it had happened.

“Then I was left alone with two children and without any means.”

“But you had an estate.”

“We sold it while Vasya was still alive and … spent it all. We had to live, and I couldn’t do anything—like all of us young ladies. But I was especially bad, quite helpless. So we lived through the last we had, I taught the children—and learned a little myself. And then Mitya fell ill when he was in the fourth grade, and God took him. Manechka fell in love with Vanya—my son-in-law. And why not, he’s a good man, only unfortunate. He’s ill.”

“Mother,” her daughter interrupted. “Take Misha, I can’t do everything at once.”

Praskovya Mikhailovna gave a start, got up, and, stepping quickly in her down-at-heel shoes, went out and came back at once with a two-year-old boy in her arms, who threw himself back and snatched at her shawl with his little hands.

“Now, where did I leave off? Ah, yes, so he had a good post here—and his superior was so nice, but Vanya couldn’t do it and resigned.”

“What is he sick with?”

“Neurasthenia, it’s a terrible illness. We got advice, but it meant having to travel, and we have no means. But I keep hoping it will just go away. He has no particular pains, but …”

“Lukerya!” came a man’s voice, angry and weak. “They always send her somewhere when she’s needed. Mother!”

“Coming,” Praskovya Mikhailovna interrupted herself again. “He hasn’t had dinner yet. He can’t eat with us.”

She stepped out, took care of something there, and came back wiping her thin, sunburnt hands.

“That’s how I live. And we keep complaining, we keep being displeased, but, thank God, our grandchildren are all fine, healthy, and we can still live. But why talk about me?”

“And what do you live on?”

“I earn a little. I used to get bored with music, but how useful it is to me now.”

She placed her small hand on the chest she was sitting next to and moved her thin fingers, as if playing an exercise.

“How much are you paid for your lessons?”

“Sometimes a rouble, or fifty kopecks, or else thirty. They’re all so kind to me.”

“And do they make any progress?” Kasatsky asked, his eyes smiling slightly.

Praskovya Mikhailovna did not believe at first that the question was serious and looked inquiringly into his eyes.

“Some make progress. There’s one nice girl, the butcher’s daughter. A kind, good girl. If I’d been a proper woman, then, of course, I could have used my father’s connections to find my son-in-law a post. But I never knew how to do anything and so I’ve brought them all to this.”

“Yes, yes,” said Kasatsky, bowing his head. “Well, Pashenka, and do you take any part in church life?” he asked.

“Oh, don’t speak of it. I’m so bad, I’ve let it all go. I do prepare for communion²⁵ and go to church with the children, but then for months I don’t go. I send the children.”

“And why don’t you go yourself?”

“To tell the truth,” she blushed, “I’m ashamed to go in tatters in front of my daughter and grandchildren, and I haven’t anything new. I’m also lazy.”

“Well, and do you pray at home?”

“I do, but what sort of prayer is it—just mechanical. I know it shouldn’t be like that, but I have no real feeling, the only thing is that I know all my vileness …”

“Yes, yes, so, so,” Kasatsky murmured as if in approval.

“Coming, coming,” she responded to her son-in-law’s call and, straightening the little braid on her head, she left the room.

This time it was long before she returned. When she did, Kasatsky was sitting in the same position, his elbows resting on his knees, his head bowed. But his sack was on his back.

When she came in carrying a tin lamp without a shade, he raised his beautiful, weary eyes to her and sighed very deeply.

“I didn’t tell them who you were,” she began timidly, “I only said you were a pilgrim, a nobleman, and that I used to know you. Let’s go to the dining room and have tea.”

“No …”

“Then I’ll bring it here.”

“No, I don’t need anything. God save you, Pashenka. I’m leaving. If you have pity, don’t tell anyone you saw me. As God lives, I adjure you, don’t tell anyone. I thank you. I would bow to your feet, but I know it would embarrass you. Thank you, and forgive me for Christ’s sake.”

“Bless me.”

“God will bless you. Forgive me for Christ’s sake.”

And he was about to leave, but she would not let him and brought him some bread, hard rolls, and butter. He took it all and left.

It was dark, and before he had passed two houses she lost sight of him and knew he was walking on only because the archpriest’s dog barked at him.

• • •

“SO THAT’S WHAT my dream meant. Pashenka is precisely what I should have been and was not. I lived for people under the pretext of God, she lives for God, fancying she’s living for people. Yes, one good deed, a cup of water given without thought of reward, is worth more than all my benefactions for people. But wasn’t there a portion of sincere desire to serve God?” he asked himself, and the answer was: “Yes, but it was all soiled, overgrown by human glory. Yes, there is no God for someone who lives, as I did, for human glory. I will seek Him.”

And he walked from village to village, as he had done before Pashenka, meeting and parting with pilgrims, men and women, and begging for bread and a night’s lodging for Christ’s sake. Occasionally an angry housewife would scold him, a drunken muzhik would abuse him, but for the most part he was given food and drink and even more for the road. His gentlemanly looks disposed some in his favor. Some, on the contrary, were as if glad to see a gentleman reduced to such poverty. But his meekness won them all over.

Often, finding the Gospels in a house, he would read from them, and everywhere people were moved and surprised, as if they were listening to something new and at the same time long familiar.

If he succeeded in serving people by advice, or by his being literate, or by settling a quarrel, he did not see their gratitude, because he was gone. And gradually God began to be revealed in him.

Once he was walking with two old women and a soldier. A gentleman and lady in a charabanc drawn by a trotter and a man and woman on horseback stopped him. The lady’s husband and daughter were on horseback; the lady herself rode in the charabanc with, obviously, a traveling Frenchman.

They stopped to show him les pélérins,* who, following Russian superstition, go from place to place instead of working.

They spoke in French, thinking they would not be understood.

“Demandez-leur,” said the Frenchman, “s’ils sont bien sûrs de ce que leur pélérinage est agréable à Dieu.”†

They were asked. One old woman said:

“As God takes it. Our feet have been there, but what of our hearts?”

They asked the soldier. He said he was alone and had nowhere to go.

They asked Kasatsky who he was.

“A servant of God.”

“Qu’est-ce qu’il dit? Il ne répond pas.”*

“Il dit qu’il est un serviteur de Dieu.”†

“Cela doit être un fils de prêtre. Il a de la race. Avez-vous de la petite monnaie?”‡

The Frenchman happened to have some small change. And he gave them twenty kopecks each.

“Mais dites-leur que ce n’est pas pour des cierges que je leur donne, mais pour qu’ils se régalent de thé—tea, tea,” he smiled, “pour vous, mon vieux,” he said, patting Kasatsky on the shoulder with his gloved hand.§

“Christ save you,” replied Kasatsky, not putting his hat back on and bowing his bald head.

And this meeting gave Kasatsky special joy, because he disdained people’s opinion and did the most trifling and easy thing—humbly took the twenty kopecks and gave it to his companion, a blind beggar. The less significance people’s opinion had, the stronger was the feeling of God.

Kasatsky walked about like this for eight months; in the ninth month he was arrested in a provincial capital, in a shelter where he was spending the night with other pilgrims, and, as he had no passport,²⁶ he was taken to the police. To the questions of where his papers were and who he was, he replied that he had no papers and that he was a servant of God. He was reckoned a vagabond, tried, and sent to Siberia.

In Siberia he settled on a rich muzhik’s farmstead, and is living there now. He works in the owner’s kitchen garden, teaches the children, and looks after the sick.

1890–98

* Lise, look to the right, it’s him.

† Where, where? He’s not so handsome.

* As much as I want.

* The pilgrims.

† Ask them … if they are quite sure their pilgrimage is pleasing to God.

* What does he say? He doesn’t answer.

† He says he is a servant of God.

‡ That one must be a priest’s son. He has some breeding. Do you have any small change?

§ But tell them I’m not giving it to them for candles, but so that they can treat themselves to tea … for you, old fellow.