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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Father Sergius, by Leo Tolstoy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Father Sergius
+
+Author: Leo Tolstoy
+
+Translator: Louise and Aylmer Maude
+
+Release Date: July, 1997  [Etext #985]
+Posting Date: July 9, 2009
+Last Updated: September 10, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FATHER SERGIUS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Judith Boss
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FATHER SERGIUS
+
+By Leo Tolstoy
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+In Petersburg in the eighteen-forties a surprising event occurred. An
+officer of the Cuirassier Life Guards, a handsome prince who everyone
+predicted would become aide-de-camp to the Emperor Nicholas I and have
+a brilliant career, left the service, broke off his engagement to a
+beautiful maid of honour, a favourite of the Empress’s, gave his small
+estate to his sister, and retired to a monastery to become a monk.
+
+This event appeared extraordinary and inexplicable to those who did not
+know his inner motives, but for Prince Stepan Kasatsky himself it all
+occurred so naturally that he could not imagine how he could have acted
+otherwise.
+
+His father, a retired colonel of the Guards, had died when Stepan was
+twelve, and sorry as his mother was to part from her son, she entered
+him at the Military College as her deceased husband had intended.
+
+The widow herself, with her daughter, Varvara, moved to Petersburg to be
+near her son and have him with her for the holidays.
+
+The boy was distinguished both by his brilliant ability and by his
+immense self-esteem. He was first both in his studies--especially in
+mathematics, of which he was particularly fond--and also in drill and in
+riding. Though of more than average height, he was handsome and agile,
+and he would have been an altogether exemplary cadet had it not been for
+his quick temper. He was remarkably truthful, and was neither dissipated
+nor addicted to drink. The only faults that marred his conduct were
+fits of fury to which he was subject and during which he lost control of
+himself and became like a wild animal. He once nearly threw out of the
+window another cadet who had begun to tease him about his collection
+of minerals. On another occasion he came almost completely to grief
+by flinging a whole dish of cutlets at an officer who was acting as
+steward, attacking him and, it was said, striking him for having broken
+his word and told a barefaced lie. He would certainly have been reduced
+to the ranks had not the Director of the College hushed up the whole
+matter and dismissed the steward.
+
+By the time he was eighteen he had finished his College course and
+received a commission as lieutenant in an aristocratic regiment of the
+Guards.
+
+The Emperor Nicholas Pavlovich (Nicholas I) had noticed him while he
+was still at the College, and continued to take notice of him in the
+regiment, and it was on this account that people predicted for him an
+appointment as aide-de-camp to the Emperor. Kasatsky himself strongly
+desired it, not from ambition only but chiefly because since his cadet
+days he had been passionately devoted to Nicholas Pavlovich. The Emperor
+had often visited the Military College and every time Kasatsky saw
+that tall erect figure, with breast expanded in its military overcoat,
+entering with brisk step, saw the cropped side-whiskers, the moustache,
+the aquiline nose, and heard the sonorous voice exchanging greetings
+with the cadets, he was seized by the same rapture that he experienced
+later on when he met the woman he loved. Indeed, his passionate
+adoration of the Emperor was even stronger: he wished to sacrifice
+something--everything, even himself--to prove his complete devotion.
+And the Emperor Nicholas was conscious of evoking this rapture and
+deliberately aroused it. He played with the cadets, surrounded himself
+with them, treating them sometimes with childish simplicity, sometimes
+as a friend, and then again with majestic solemnity. After that affair
+with the officer, Nicholas Pavlovich said nothing to Kasatsky, but when
+the latter approached he waved him away theatrically, frowned, shook his
+finger at him, and afterwards when leaving, said: ‘Remember that I know
+everything. There are some things I would rather not know, but they
+remain here,’ and he pointed to his heart.
+
+When on leaving College the cadets were received by the Emperor, he did
+not again refer to Kasatsky’s offence, but told them all, as was his
+custom, that they should serve him and the fatherland loyally, that he
+would always be their best friend, and that when necessary they might
+approach him direct. All the cadets were as usual greatly moved, and
+Kasatsky even shed tears, remembering the past, and vowed that he would
+serve his beloved Tsar with all his soul.
+
+When Kasatsky took up his commission his mother moved with her daughter
+first to Moscow and then to their country estate. Kasatsky gave half his
+property to his sister and kept only enough to maintain himself in the
+expensive regiment he had joined.
+
+To all appearance he was just an ordinary, brilliant young officer
+of the Guards making a career for himself; but intense and complex
+strivings went on within him. From early childhood his efforts had
+seemed to be very varied, but essentially they were all one and the
+same. He tried in everything he took up to attain such success and
+perfection as would evoke praise and surprise. Whether it was his
+studies or his military exercises, he took them up and worked at them
+till he was praised and held up as an example to others. Mastering one
+subject he took up another, and obtained first place in his studies. For
+example, while still at College he noticed in himself an awkwardness in
+French conversation, and contrived to master French till he spoke it
+as well as Russian, and then he took up chess and became an excellent
+player.
+
+Apart from his main vocation, which was the service of his Tsar and
+the fatherland, he always set himself some particular aim, and however
+unimportant it was, devoted himself completely to it and lived for it
+until it was accomplished. And as soon as it was attained another
+aim would immediately present itself, replacing its predecessor. This
+passion for distinguishing himself, or for accomplishing something
+in order to distinguish himself, filled his life. On taking up his
+commission he set himself to acquire the utmost perfection in knowledge
+of the service, and very soon became a model officer, though still with
+the same fault of ungovernable irascibility, which here in the service
+again led him to commit actions inimical to his success. Then he took to
+reading, having once in conversation in society felt himself deficient
+in general education--and again achieved his purpose. Then, wishing
+to secure a brilliant position in high society, he learnt to dance
+excellently and very soon was invited to all the balls in the best
+circles, and to some of their evening gatherings. But this did not
+satisfy him: he was accustomed to being first, and in this society was
+far from being so.
+
+The highest society then consisted, and I think always consist, of
+four sorts of people: rich people who are received at Court, people
+not wealthy but born and brought up in Court circles, rich people who
+ingratiate themselves into the Court set, and people neither rich nor
+belonging to the Court but who ingratiate themselves into the first and
+second sets.
+
+Kasatsky did not belong to the first two sets, but was readily welcomed
+in the others. On entering society he determined to have relations with
+some society lady, and to his own surprise quickly accomplished this
+purpose. He soon realized, however, that the circles in which he moved
+were not the highest, and that though he was received in the highest
+spheres he did not belong to them. They were polite to him, but showed
+by their whole manner that they had their own set and that he was not of
+it. And Kasatsky wished to belong to that inner circle. To attain that
+end it would be necessary to be an aide-de-camp to the Emperor--which
+he expected to become--or to marry into that exclusive set, which he
+resolved to do. And his choice fell on a beauty belonging to the
+Court, who not merely belonged to the circle into which he wished to be
+accepted, but whose friendship was coveted by the very highest people
+and those most firmly established in that highest circle. This was
+Countess Korotkova. Kasatsky began to pay court to her, and not merely
+for the sake of his career. She was extremely attractive and he soon
+fell in love with her. At first she was noticeably cool towards him,
+but then suddenly changed and became gracious, and her mother gave him
+pressing invitations to visit them. Kasatsky proposed and was accepted.
+He was surprised at the facility with which he attained such happiness.
+But though he noticed something strange and unusual in the behaviour
+towards him of both mother and daughter, he was blinded by being
+so deeply in love, and did not realize what almost the whole town
+knew--namely, that his fiancee had been the Emperor Nicholas’s mistress
+the previous year.
+
+Two weeks before the day arranged for the wedding, Kasatsky was at
+Tsarskoe Selo at his fiancee’s country place. It was a hot day in May.
+He and his betrothed had walked about the garden and were sitting on
+a bench in a shady linden alley. Mary’s white muslin dress suited her
+particularly well, and she seemed the personification of innocence and
+love as she sat, now bending her head, now gazing up at the very tall
+and handsome man who was speaking to her with particular tenderness and
+self-restraint, as if he feared by word or gesture to offend or sully
+her angelic purity.
+
+Kasatsky belonged to those men of the eighteen-forties (they are now no
+longer to be found) who while deliberately and without any conscientious
+scruples condoning impurity in themselves, required ideal and angelic
+purity in their women, regarded all unmarried women of their circle as
+possessed of such purity, and treated them accordingly. There was much
+that was false and harmful in this outlook, as concerning the laxity the
+men permitted themselves, but in regard to the women that old-fashioned
+view (sharply differing from that held by young people to-day who see in
+every girl merely a female seeking a mate) was, I think, of value. The
+girls, perceiving such adoration, endeavoured with more or less success
+to be goddesses.
+
+Such was the view Kasatsky held of women, and that was how he regarded
+his fiancee. He was particularly in love that day, but did not
+experience any sensual desire for her. On the contrary he regarded her
+with tender adoration as something unattainable.
+
+He rose to his full height, standing before her with both hands on his
+sabre.
+
+‘I have only now realized what happiness a man can experience! And it is
+you, my darling, who have given me this happiness,’ he said with a timid
+smile.
+
+Endearments had not yet become usual between them, and feeling himself
+morally inferior he felt terrified at this stage to use them to such an
+angel.
+
+‘It is thanks to you that I have come to know myself. I have learnt that
+I am better than I thought.’
+
+‘I have known that for a long time. That was why I began to love you.’
+
+Nightingales trilled near by and the fresh leafage rustled, moved by a
+passing breeze.
+
+He took her hand and kissed it, and tears came into his eyes.
+
+She understood that he was thanking her for having said she loved him.
+He silently took a few steps up and down, and then approached her again
+and sat down.
+
+‘You know... I have to tell you... I was not disinterested when I
+began to make love to you. I wanted to get into society; but later...
+how unimportant that became in comparison with you--when I got to know
+you. You are not angry with me for that?’
+
+She did not reply but merely touched his hand. He understood that this
+meant: ‘No, I am not angry.’
+
+‘You said...’ He hesitated. It seemed too bold to say. ‘You said that
+you began to love me. I believe it--but there is something that troubles
+you and checks your feeling. What is it?’
+
+‘Yes--now or never!’ thought she. ‘He is bound to know of it anyway. But
+now he will not forsake me. Ah, if he should, it would be terrible!’ And
+she threw a loving glance at his tall, noble, powerful figure. She loved
+him now more than she had loved the Tsar, and apart from the Imperial
+dignity would not have preferred the Emperor to him.
+
+‘Listen! I cannot deceive you. I have to tell you. You ask what it is?
+It is that I have loved before.’
+
+She again laid her hand on his with an imploring gesture. He was silent.
+
+‘You want to know who it was? It was--the Emperor.’
+
+‘We all love him. I can imagine you, a schoolgirl at the Institute...’
+
+‘No, it was later. I was infatuated, but it passed... I must tell
+you...’
+
+‘Well, what of it?’
+
+‘No, it was not simply--’ She covered her face with her hands.
+
+‘What? You gave yourself to him?’
+
+She was silent.
+
+‘His mistress?’
+
+She did not answer.
+
+He sprang up and stood before her with trembling jaws, pale as death. He
+now remembered how the Emperor, meeting him on the Nevsky, had amiably
+congratulated him.
+
+‘O God, what have I done! Stiva!’
+
+‘Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me! Oh, how it pains!’
+
+He turned away and went to the house. There he met her mother.
+
+‘What is the matter, Prince? I...’ She became silent on seeing his
+face. The blood had suddenly rushed to his head.
+
+‘You knew it, and used me to shield them! If you weren’t a woman...!’
+he cried, lifting his enormous fist, and turning aside he ran away.
+
+Had his fiancee’s lover been a private person he would have killed him,
+but it was his beloved Tsar.
+
+Next day he applied both for furlough and his discharge, and professing
+to be ill, so as to see no one, he went away to the country.
+
+He spent the summer at his village arranging his affairs. When summer
+was over he did not return to Petersburg, but entered a monastery and
+there became a monk.
+
+His mother wrote to try to dissuade him from this decisive step, but
+he replied that he felt God’s call which transcended all other
+considerations. Only his sister, who was as proud and ambitious as he,
+understood him.
+
+She understood that he had become a monk in order to be above those who
+considered themselves his superiors. And she understood him correctly.
+By becoming a monk he showed contempt for all that seemed most important
+to others and had seemed so to him while he was in the service, and
+he now ascended a height from which he could look down on those he had
+formerly envied.... But it was not this alone, as his sister Varvara
+supposed, that influenced him. There was also in him something else--a
+sincere religious feeling which Varvara did not know, which intertwined
+itself with the feeling of pride and the desire for pre-eminence,
+and guided him. His disillusionment with Mary, whom he had thought
+of angelic purity, and his sense of injury, were so strong that they
+brought him to despair, and the despair led him--to what? To God, to his
+childhood’s faith which had never been destroyed in him.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Kasatsky entered the monastery on the feast of the Intercession of the
+Blessed Virgin. The Abbot of that monastery was a gentleman by birth, a
+learned writer and a starets, that is, he belonged to that succession
+of monks originating in Walachia who each choose a director and teacher
+whom they implicitly obey. This Superior had been a disciple of the
+starets Ambrose, who was a disciple of Makarius, who was a disciple of
+the starets Leonid, who was a disciple of Paussy Velichkovsky.
+
+To this Abbot Kasatsky submitted himself as to his chosen director. Here
+in the monastery, besides the feeling of ascendency over others that
+such a life gave him, he felt much as he had done in the world: he found
+satisfaction in attaining the greatest possible perfection outwardly
+as well as inwardly. As in the regiment he had been not merely an
+irreproachable officer but had even exceeded his duties and widened the
+borders of perfection, so also as a monk he tried to be perfect, and was
+always industrious, abstemious, submissive, and meek, as well as
+pure both in deed and in thought, and obedient. This last quality in
+particular made life far easier for him. If many of the demands of life
+in the monastery, which was near the capital and much frequented, did
+not please him and were temptations to him, they were all nullified by
+obedience: ‘It is not for me to reason; my business is to do the task
+set me, whether it be standing beside the relics, singing in the choir,
+or making up accounts in the monastery guest-house.’ All possibility of
+doubt about anything was silenced by obedience to the starets. Had
+it not been for this, he would have been oppressed by the length and
+monotony of the church services, the bustle of the many visitors, and
+the bad qualities of the other monks. As it was, he not only bore it
+all joyfully but found in it solace and support. ‘I don’t know why it is
+necessary to hear the same prayers several times a day, but I know that
+it is necessary; and knowing this I find joy in them.’ His director told
+him that as material food is necessary for the maintenance of the life
+of the body, so spiritual food--the church prayers--is necessary for
+the maintenance of the spiritual life. He believed this, and though the
+church services, for which he had to get up early in the morning, were
+a difficulty, they certainly calmed him and gave him joy. This was the
+result of his consciousness of humility, and the certainty that whatever
+he had to do, being fixed by the starets, was right.
+
+The interest of his life consisted not only in an ever greater and
+greater subjugation of his will, but in the attainment of all the
+Christian virtues, which at first seemed to him easily attainable. He
+had given his whole estate to his sister and did not regret it, he had
+no personal claims, humility towards his inferiors was not merely easy
+for him but afforded him pleasure. Even victory over the sins of the
+flesh, greed and lust, was easily attained. His director had specially
+warned him against the latter sin, but Kasatsky felt free from it and
+was glad.
+
+One thing only tormented him--the remembrance of his fiancee; and not
+merely the remembrance but the vivid image of what might have been.
+Involuntarily he recalled a lady he knew who had been a favourite of the
+Emperor’s, but had afterwards married and become an admirable wife and
+mother. The husband had a high position, influence and honour, and a
+good and penitent wife.
+
+In his better hours Kasatsky was not disturbed by such thoughts, and
+when he recalled them at such times he was merely glad to feel that the
+temptation was past. But there were moments when all that made up his
+present life suddenly grew dim before him, moments when, if he did not
+cease to believe in the aims he had set himself, he ceased to see them
+and could evoke no confidence in them but was seized by a remembrance
+of, and--terrible to say--a regret for, the change of life he had made.
+
+The only thing that saved him in that state of mind was obedience and
+work, and the fact that the whole day was occupied by prayer. He went
+through the usual forms of prayer, he bowed in prayer, he even prayed
+more than usual, but it was lip-service only and his soul was not in it.
+This condition would continue for a day, or sometimes for two days, and
+would then pass of itself. But those days were dreadful. Kasatsky felt
+that he was neither in his own hands nor in God’s, but was subject
+to something else. All he could do then was to obey the starets, to
+restrain himself, to undertake nothing, and simply to wait. In general
+all this time he lived not by his own will but by that of the starets,
+and in this obedience he found a special tranquillity.
+
+So he lived in his first monastery for seven years. At the end of the
+third year he received the tonsure and was ordained to the priesthood by
+the name of Sergius. The profession was an important event in his inner
+life. He had previously experienced a great consolation and spiritual
+exaltation when receiving communion, and now when he himself officiated,
+the performance of the preparation filled him with ecstatic and deep
+emotion. But subsequently that feeling became more and more deadened,
+and once when he was officiating in a depressed state of mind he felt
+that the influence produced on him by the service would not endure. And
+it did in fact weaken till only the habit remained.
+
+In general in the seventh year of his life in the monastery Sergius grew
+weary. He had learnt all there was to learn and had attained all there
+was to attain, there was nothing more to do and his spiritual drowsiness
+increased. During this time he heard of his mother’s death and his
+sister Varvara’s marriage, but both events were matters of indifference
+to him. His whole attention and his whole interest were concentrated on
+his inner life.
+
+In the fourth year of his priesthood, during which the Bishop had been
+particularly kind to him, the starets told him that he ought not to
+decline it if he were offered an appointment to higher duties. Then
+monastic ambition, the very thing he had found so repulsive in other
+monks, arose within him. He was assigned to a monastery near the
+metropolis. He wished to refuse but the starets ordered him to accept
+the appointment. He did so, and took leave of the starets and moved to
+the other monastery.
+
+The exchange into the metropolitan monastery was an important event in
+Sergius’s life. There he encountered many temptations, and his whole
+will-power was concentrated on meeting them.
+
+In the first monastery, women had not been a temptation to him, but
+here that temptation arose with terrible strength and even took definite
+shape. There was a lady known for her frivolous behaviour who began to
+seek his favour. She talked to him and asked him to visit her. Sergius
+sternly declined, but was horrified by the definiteness of his desire.
+He was so alarmed that he wrote about it to the starets. And in
+addition, to keep himself in hand, he spoke to a young novice and,
+conquering his sense of shame, confessed his weakness to him, asking him
+to keep watch on him and not let him go anywhere except to service and
+to fulfil his duties.
+
+Besides this, a great pitfall for Sergius lay in the fact of his extreme
+antipathy to his new Abbot, a cunning worldly man who was making a
+career for himself in the Church. Struggle with himself as he might, he
+could not master that feeling. He was submissive to the Abbot, but in
+the depths of his soul he never ceased to condemn him. And in the second
+year of his residence at the new monastery that ill-feeling broke out.
+
+The Vigil service was being performed in the large church on the eve of
+the feast of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin, and there were many
+visitors. The Abbot himself was conducting the service. Father Sergius
+was standing in his usual place and praying: that is, he was in that
+condition of struggle which always occupied him during the service,
+especially in the large church when he was not himself conducting the
+service. This conflict was occasioned by his irritation at the presence
+of fine folk, especially ladies. He tried not to see them or to notice
+all that went on: how a soldier conducted them, pushing the
+common people aside, how the ladies pointed out the monks to one
+another--especially himself and a monk noted for his good looks. He
+tried as it were to keep his mind in blinkers, to see nothing but
+the light of the candles on the altar-screen, the icons, and those
+conducting the service. He tried to hear nothing but the prayers
+that were being chanted or read, to feel nothing but self-oblivion in
+consciousness of the fulfilment of duty--a feeling he always experienced
+when hearing or reciting in advance the prayers he had so often heard.
+
+So he stood, crossing and prostrating himself when necessary, and
+struggled with himself, now giving way to cold condemnation and now to
+a consciously evoked obliteration of thought and feeling. Then the
+sacristan, Father Nicodemus--also a great stumbling-block to Sergius
+who involuntarily reproached him for flattering and fawning on the
+Abbot--approached him and, bowing low, requested his presence behind the
+holy gates. Father Sergius straightened his mantle, put on his biretta,
+and went circumspectly through the crowd.
+
+‘Lise, regarde a droite, c’est lui!’ he heard a woman’s voice say.
+
+‘Ou, ou? Il n’est pas tellement beau.’
+
+He knew that they were speaking of him. He heard them and, as always
+at moments of temptation, he repeated the words, ‘Lead us not into
+temptation,’ and bowing his head and lowering his eyes went past the
+ambo and in by the north door, avoiding the canons in their cassocks who
+were just then passing the altar-screen. On entering the sanctuary he
+bowed, crossing himself as usual and bending double before the icons.
+Then, raising his head but without turning, he glanced out of the corner
+of his eye at the Abbot, whom he saw standing beside another glittering
+figure.
+
+The Abbot was standing by the wall in his vestments. Having freed his
+short plump hands from beneath his chasuble he had folded them over
+his fat body and protruding stomach, and fingering the cords of his
+vestments was smilingly saying something to a military man in the
+uniform of a general of the Imperial suite, with its insignia
+and shoulder-knots which Father Sergius’s experienced eye at once
+recognized. This general had been the commander of the regiment in which
+Sergius had served. He now evidently occupied an important position, and
+Father Sergius at once noticed that the Abbot was aware of this and that
+his red face and bald head beamed with satisfaction and pleasure. This
+vexed and disgusted Father Sergius, the more so when he heard that the
+Abbot had only sent for him to satisfy the general’s curiosity to see a
+man who had formerly served with him, as he expressed it.
+
+‘Very pleased to see you in your angelic guise,’ said the general,
+holding out his hand. ‘I hope you have not forgotten an old comrade.’
+
+The whole thing--the Abbot’s red, smiling face amid its fringe of grey,
+the general’s words, his well-cared-for face with its self-satisfied
+smile and the smell of wine from his breath and of cigars from his
+whiskers--revolted Father Sergius. He bowed again to the Abbot and said:
+
+‘Your reverence deigned to send for me?’--and stopped, the whole
+expression of his face and eyes asking why.
+
+‘Yes, to meet the General,’ replied the Abbot.
+
+‘Your reverence, I left the world to save myself from temptation,’ said
+Father Sergius, turning pale and with quivering lips. ‘Why do you expose
+me to it during prayers and in God’s house?’
+
+‘You may go! Go!’ said the Abbot, flaring up and frowning.
+
+Next day Father Sergius asked pardon of the Abbot and of the brethren
+for his pride, but at the same time, after a night spent in prayer, he
+decided that he must leave this monastery, and he wrote to the starets
+begging permission to return to him. He wrote that he felt his weakness
+and incapacity to struggle against temptation without his help and
+penitently confessed his sin of pride. By return of post came a letter
+from the starets, who wrote that Sergius’s pride was the cause of all
+that had happened. The old man pointed out that his fits of anger were
+due to the fact that in refusing all clerical honours he humiliated
+himself not for the sake of God but for the sake of his pride. ‘There
+now, am I not a splendid man not to want anything?’ That was why he
+could not tolerate the Abbot’s action. ‘I have renounced everything for
+the glory of God, and here I am exhibited like a wild beast!’ ‘Had you
+renounced vanity for God’s sake you would have borne it. Worldly pride
+is not yet dead in you. I have thought about you, Sergius my son, and
+prayed also, and this is what God has suggested to me. At the Tambov
+hermitage the anchorite Hilary, a man of saintly life, has died. He had
+lived there eighteen years. The Tambov Abbot is asking whether there is
+not a brother who would take his place. And here comes your letter. Go
+to Father Paissy of the Tambov Monastery. I will write to him about you,
+and you must ask for Hilary’s cell. Not that you can replace Hilary, but
+you need solitude to quell your pride. May God bless you!’
+
+Sergius obeyed the starets, showed his letter to the Abbot, and having
+obtained his permission, gave up his cell, handed all his possessions
+over to the monastery, and set out for the Tambov hermitage.
+
+There the Abbot, an excellent manager of merchant origin, received
+Sergius simply and quietly and placed him in Hilary’s cell, at first
+assigning to him a lay brother but afterwards leaving him alone, at
+Sergius’s own request. The cell was a dual cave, dug into the hillside,
+and in it Hilary had been buried. In the back part was Hilary’s grave,
+while in the front was a niche for sleeping, with a straw mattress, a
+small table, and a shelf with icons and books. Outside the outer door,
+which fastened with a hook, was another shelf on which, once a day, a
+monk placed food from the monastery.
+
+And so Sergius became a hermit.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+At Carnival time, in the sixth year of Sergius’s life at the hermitage,
+a merry company of rich people, men and women from a neighbouring town,
+made up a troyka-party, after a meal of carnival-pancakes and wine. The
+company consisted of two lawyers, a wealthy landowner, an officer, and
+four ladies. One lady was the officer’s wife, another the wife of
+the landowner, the third his sister--a young girl--and the fourth a
+divorcee, beautiful, rich, and eccentric, who amazed and shocked the
+town by her escapades.
+
+The weather was excellent and the snow-covered road smooth as a floor.
+They drove some seven miles out of town, and then stopped and consulted
+as to whether they should turn back or drive farther.
+
+‘But where does this road lead to?’ asked Makovkina, the beautiful
+divorcee.
+
+‘To Tambov, eight miles from here,’ replied one of the lawyers, who was
+having a flirtation with her.
+
+‘And then where?’
+
+‘Then on to L----, past the Monastery.’
+
+‘Where that Father Sergius lives?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Kasatsky, the handsome hermit?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Mesdames et messieurs, let us drive on and see Kasatsky! We can stop at
+Tambov and have something to eat.’
+
+‘But we shouldn’t get home to-night!’
+
+‘Never mind, we will stay at Kasatsky’s.’
+
+‘Well, there is a very good hostelry at the Monastery. I stayed there
+when I was defending Makhin.’
+
+‘No, I shall spend the night at Kasatsky’s!’
+
+‘Impossible! Even your omnipotence could not accomplish that!’
+
+‘Impossible? Will you bet?’
+
+‘All right! If you spend the night with him, the stake shall be whatever
+you like.’
+
+‘A DISCRETION!’
+
+‘But on your side too!’
+
+‘Yes, of course. Let us drive on.’
+
+Vodka was handed to the drivers, and the party got out a box of pies,
+wine, and sweets for themselves. The ladies wrapped up in their white
+dogskins. The drivers disputed as to whose troyka should go ahead, and
+the youngest, seating himself sideways with a dashing air, swung his
+long knout and shouted to the horses. The troyka-bells tinkled and the
+sledge-runners squeaked over the snow.
+
+The sledge swayed hardly at all. The shaft-horse, with his tightly bound
+tail under his decorated breechband, galloped smoothly and briskly; the
+smooth road seemed to run rapidly backwards, while the driver dashingly
+shook the reins. One of the lawyers and the officer sitting opposite
+talked nonsense to Makovkina’s neighbour, but Makovkina herself sat
+motionless and in thought, tightly wrapped in her fur. ‘Always the same
+and always nasty! The same red shiny faces smelling of wine and cigars!
+The same talk, the same thoughts, and always about the same things! And
+they are all satisfied and confident that it should be so, and will
+go on living like that till they die. But I can’t. It bores me. I want
+something that would upset it all and turn it upside down. Suppose
+it happened to us as to those people--at Saratov was it?--who kept on
+driving and froze to death.... What would our people do? How would
+they behave? Basely, for certain. Each for himself. And I too should act
+badly. But I at any rate have beauty. They all know it. And how about
+that monk? Is it possible that he has become indifferent to it? No! That
+is the one thing they all care for--like that cadet last autumn. What a
+fool he was!’
+
+‘Ivan Nikolaevich!’ she said aloud.
+
+‘What are your commands?’
+
+‘How old is he?’
+
+‘Who?’
+
+‘Kasatsky.’
+
+‘Over forty, I should think.’
+
+‘And does he receive all visitors?’
+
+‘Yes, everybody, but not always.’
+
+‘Cover up my feet. Not like that--how clumsy you are! No! More,
+more--like that! But you need not squeeze them!’
+
+So they came to the forest where the cell was.
+
+Makovkina got out of the sledge, and told them to drive on. They tried
+to dissuade her, but she grew irritable and ordered them to go on.
+
+When the sledges had gone she went up the path in her white dogskin
+coat. The lawyer got out and stopped to watch her.
+
+It was Father Sergius’s sixth year as a recluse, and he was now
+forty-nine. His life in solitude was hard--not on account of the fasts
+and the prayers (they were no hardship to him) but on account of an
+inner conflict he had not at all anticipated. The sources of that
+conflict were two: doubts, and the lust of the flesh. And these two
+enemies always appeared together. It seemed to him that they were two
+foes, but in reality they were one and the same. As soon as doubt was
+gone so was the lustful desire. But thinking them to be two different
+fiends he fought them separately.
+
+‘O my God, my God!’ thought he. ‘Why dost thou not grant me faith? There
+is lust, of course: even the saints had to fight that--Saint Anthony and
+others. But they had faith, while I have moments, hours, and days, when
+it is absent. Why does the whole world, with all its delights, exist
+if it is sinful and must be renounced? Why hast Thou created this
+temptation? Temptation? Is it not rather a temptation that I wish to
+abandon all the joys of earth and prepare something for myself there
+where perhaps there is nothing?’ And he became horrified and filled with
+disgust at himself. ‘Vile creature! And it is you who wish to become a
+saint!’ he upbraided himself, and he began to pray. But as soon as he
+started to pray he saw himself vividly as he had been at the Monastery,
+in a majestic post in biretta and mantle, and he shook his head. ‘No,
+that is not right. It is deception. I may deceive others, but not myself
+or God. I am not a majestic man, but a pitiable and ridiculous one!’ And
+he threw back the folds of his cassock and smiled as he looked at his
+thin legs in their underclothing.
+
+Then he dropped the folds of the cassock again and began reading the
+prayers, making the sign of the cross and prostrating himself. ‘Can
+it be that this couch will be my bier?’ he read. And it seemed as if a
+devil whispered to him: ‘A solitary couch is itself a bier. Falsehood!’
+And in imagination he saw the shoulders of a widow with whom he had
+lived. He shook himself, and went on reading. Having read the precepts
+he took up the Gospels, opened the book, and happened on a passage
+he often repeated and knew by heart: ‘Lord, I believe. Help thou my
+unbelief!’--and he put away all the doubts that had arisen. As one
+replaces an object of insecure equilibrium, so he carefully replaced his
+belief on its shaky pedestal and carefully stepped back from it so as
+not to shake or upset it. The blinkers were adjusted again and he felt
+tranquillized, and repeating his childhood’s prayer: ‘Lord, receive me,
+receive me!’ he felt not merely at ease, but thrilled and joyful. He
+crossed himself and lay down on the bedding on his narrow bench, tucking
+his summer cassock under his head. He fell asleep at once, and in his
+light slumber he seemed to hear the tinkling of sledge bells. He did not
+know whether he was dreaming or awake, but a knock at the door aroused
+him. He sat up, distrusting his senses, but the knock was repeated. Yes,
+it was a knock close at hand, at his door, and with it the sound of a
+woman’s voice.
+
+‘My God! Can it be true, as I have read in the Lives of the Saints, that
+the devil takes on the form of a woman? Yes--it is a woman’s voice.
+And a tender, timid, pleasant voice. Phui!’ And he spat to exorcise the
+devil. ‘No, it was only my imagination,’ he assured himself, and he
+went to the corner where his lectern stood, falling on his knees in the
+regular and habitual manner which of itself gave him consolation and
+satisfaction. He sank down, his hair hanging over his face, and pressed
+his head, already going bald in front, to the cold damp strip of drugget
+on the draughty floor. He read the psalm old Father Pimon had told him
+warded off temptation. He easily raised his light and emaciated body
+on his strong sinewy legs and tried to continue saying his prayers, but
+instead of doing so he involuntarily strained his hearing. He wished
+to hear more. All was quiet. From the corner of the roof regular drops
+continued to fall into the tub below. Outside was a mist and fog eating
+into the snow that lay on the ground. It was still, very still. And
+suddenly there was a rustling at the window and a voice--that
+same tender, timid voice, which could only belong to an attractive
+woman--said:
+
+‘Let me in, for Christ’s sake!’
+
+It seemed as though his blood had all rushed to his heart and settled
+there. He could hardly breathe. ‘Let God arise and let his enemies be
+scattered...’
+
+‘But I am not a devil!’ It was obvious that the lips that uttered this
+were smiling. ‘I am not a devil, but only a sinful woman who has lost
+her way, not figuratively but literally!’ She laughed. ‘I am frozen and
+beg for shelter.’
+
+He pressed his face to the window, but the little icon-lamp was
+reflected by it and shone on the whole pane. He put his hands to both
+sides of his face and peered between them. Fog, mist, a tree, and--just
+opposite him--she herself. Yes, there, a few inches from him, was the
+sweet, kindly frightened face of a woman in a cap and a coat of long
+white fur, leaning towards him. Their eyes met with instant recognition:
+not that they had ever known one another, they had never met before,
+but by the look they exchanged they--and he particularly--felt that they
+knew and understood one another. After that glance to imagine her to be
+a devil and not a simple, kindly, sweet, timid woman, was impossible.
+
+‘Who are you? Why have you come?’ he asked.
+
+‘Do please open the door!’ she replied, with capricious authority. ‘I am
+frozen. I tell you I have lost my way.’
+
+‘But I am a monk--a hermit.’
+
+‘Oh, do please open the door--or do you wish me to freeze under your
+window while you say your prayers?’
+
+‘But how have you...’
+
+‘I shan’t eat you. For God’s sake let me in! I am quite frozen.’
+
+She really did feel afraid, and said this in an almost tearful voice.
+
+He stepped back from the window and looked at an icon of the Saviour
+in His crown of thorns. ‘Lord, help me! Lord, help me!’ he exclaimed,
+crossing himself and bowing low. Then he went to the door, and opening
+it into the tiny porch, felt for the hook that fastened the outer door
+and began to lift it. He heard steps outside. She was coming from the
+window to the door. ‘Ah!’ she suddenly exclaimed, and he understood
+that she had stepped into the puddle that the dripping from the roof had
+formed at the threshold. His hands trembled, and he could not raise the
+hook of the tightly closed door.
+
+‘Oh, what are you doing? Let me in! I am all wet. I am frozen! You are
+thinking about saving your soul and are letting me freeze to death...’
+
+He jerked the door towards him, raised the hook, and without considering
+what he was doing, pushed it open with such force that it struck her.
+
+‘Oh--PARDON!’ he suddenly exclaimed, reverting completely to his old
+manner with ladies.
+
+She smiled on hearing that PARDON. ‘He is not quite so terrible, after
+all,’ she thought. ‘It’s all right. It is you who must pardon me,’ she
+said, stepping past him. ‘I should never have ventured, but such an
+extraordinary circumstance...’
+
+‘If you please!’ he uttered, and stood aside to let her pass him. A
+strong smell of fine scent, which he had long not encountered, struck
+him. She went through the little porch into the cell where he lived. He
+closed the outer door without fastening the hook, and stepped in after
+her.
+
+‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner! Lord, have
+mercy on me a sinner!’ he prayed unceasingly, not merely to himself but
+involuntarily moving his lips. ‘If you please!’ he said to her again.
+She stood in the middle of the room, moisture dripping from her to the
+floor as she looked him over. Her eyes were laughing.
+
+‘Forgive me for having disturbed your solitude. But you see what a
+position I am in. It all came about from our starting from town for a
+sledge-drive, and my making a bet that I would walk back by myself from
+the Vorobevka to the town. But then I lost my way, and if I had not
+happened to come upon your cell...’ She began lying, but his face
+confused her so that she could not continue, but became silent. She had
+not expected him to be at all such as he was. He was not as handsome
+as she had imagined, but was nevertheless beautiful in her eyes: his
+greyish hair and beard, slightly curling, his fine, regular nose,
+and his eyes like glowing coal when he looked at her, made a strong
+impression on her.
+
+He saw that she was lying.
+
+‘Yes... so,’ said he, looking at her and again lowering his eyes. ‘I
+will go in there, and this place is at your disposal.’
+
+And taking down the little lamp, he lit a candle, and bowing low to her
+went into the small cell beyond the partition, and she heard him begin
+to move something about there. ‘Probably he is barricading himself in
+from me!’ she thought with a smile, and throwing off her white dogskin
+cloak she tried to take off her cap, which had become entangled in her
+hair and in the woven kerchief she was wearing under it. She had not
+got at all wet when standing under the window, and had said so only as
+a pretext to get him to let her in. But she really had stepped into the
+puddle at the door, and her left foot was wet up to the ankle and her
+overshoe full of water. She sat down on his bed--a bench only covered by
+a bit of carpet--and began to take off her boots. The little cell seemed
+to her charming. The narrow little room, some seven feet by nine, was as
+clean as glass. There was nothing in it but the bench on which she
+was sitting, the book-shelf above it, and a lectern in the corner.
+A sheepskin coat and a cassock hung on nails by the door. Above the
+lectern was the little lamp and an icon of Christ in His crown of
+thorns. The room smelt strangely of perspiration and of earth. It all
+pleased her--even that smell. Her wet feet, especially one of them, were
+uncomfortable, and she quickly began to take off her boots and stockings
+without ceasing to smile, pleased not so much at having achieved her
+object as because she perceived that she had abashed that charming,
+strange, striking, and attractive man. ‘He did not respond, but what of
+that?’ she said to herself.
+
+‘Father Sergius! Father Sergius! Or how does one call you?’
+
+‘What do you want?’ replied a quiet voice.
+
+‘Please forgive me for disturbing your solitude, but really I could not
+help it. I should simply have fallen ill. And I don’t know that I shan’t
+now. I am all wet and my feet are like ice.’
+
+‘Pardon me,’ replied the quiet voice. ‘I cannot be of any assistance to
+you.’
+
+‘I would not have disturbed you if I could have helped it. I am only
+here till daybreak.’
+
+He did not reply and she heard him muttering something, probably his
+prayers.
+
+‘You will not be coming in here?’ she asked, smiling. ‘For I must
+undress to dry myself.’
+
+He did not reply, but continued to read his prayers.
+
+‘Yes, that is a man!’ thought she, getting her dripping boot off with
+difficulty. She tugged at it, but could not get it off. The absurdity of
+it struck her and she began to laugh almost inaudibly. But knowing that
+he would hear her laughter and would be moved by it just as she wished
+him to be, she laughed louder, and her laughter--gay, natural, and
+kindly--really acted on him just in the way she wished.
+
+‘Yes, I could love a man like that--such eyes and such a simple noble
+face, and passionate too despite all the prayers he mutters!’ thought
+she. ‘You can’t deceive a woman in these things. As soon as he put his
+face to the window and saw me, he understood and knew. The glimmer of it
+was in his eyes and remained there. He began to love me and desired me.
+Yes--desired!’ said she, getting her overshoe and her boot off at last
+and starting to take off her stockings. To remove those long stockings
+fastened with elastic it was necessary to raise her skirts. She felt
+embarrassed and said:
+
+‘Don’t come in!’
+
+But there was no reply from the other side of the wall. The steady
+muttering continued and also a sound of moving.
+
+‘He is prostrating himself to the ground, no doubt,’ thought she.
+‘But he won’t bow himself out of it. He is thinking of me just as I
+am thinking of him. He is thinking of these feet of mine with the same
+feeling that I have!’ And she pulled off her wet stockings and put her
+feet up on the bench, pressing them under her. She sat a while like that
+with her arms round her knees and looking pensively before her. ‘But it
+is a desert, here in this silence. No one would ever know....’
+
+She rose, took her stockings over to the stove, and hung them on the
+damper. It was a queer damper, and she turned it about, and then,
+stepping lightly on her bare feet, returned to the bench and sat down
+there again with her feet up.
+
+There was complete silence on the other side of the partition. She
+looked at the tiny watch that hung round her neck. It was two o’clock.
+‘Our party should return about three!’ She had not more than an hour
+before her. ‘Well, am I to sit like this all alone? What nonsense! I
+don’t want to. I will call him at once.’
+
+‘Father Sergius, Father Sergius! Sergey Dmitrich! Prince Kasatsky!’
+
+Beyond the partition all was silent.
+
+‘Listen! This is cruel. I would not call you if it were not necessary.
+I am ill. I don’t know what is the matter with me!’ she exclaimed in a
+tone of suffering. ‘Oh! Oh!’ she groaned, falling back on the bench. And
+strange to say she really felt that her strength was failing, that
+she was becoming faint, that everything in her ached, and that she was
+shivering with fever.
+
+‘Listen! Help me! I don’t know what is the matter with me. Oh! Oh!’ She
+unfastened her dress, exposing her breast, and lifted her arms, bare to
+the elbow. ‘Oh! Oh!’
+
+All this time he stood on the other side of the partition and prayed.
+Having finished all the evening prayers, he now stood motionless, his
+eyes looking at the end of his nose, and mentally repeated with all his
+soul: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me!’
+
+But he had heard everything. He had heard how the silk rustled when she
+took off her dress, how she stepped with bare feet on the floor, and had
+heard how she rubbed her feet with her hand. He felt his own weakness,
+and that he might be lost at any moment. That was why he prayed
+unceasingly. He felt rather as the hero in the fairy-tale must have felt
+when he had to go on and on without looking round. So Sergius heard and
+felt that danger and destruction were there, hovering above and
+around him, and that he could only save himself by not looking in that
+direction for an instant. But suddenly the desire to look seized him. At
+the same instant she said:
+
+‘This is inhuman. I may die....’
+
+‘Yes, I will go to her, but like the Saint who laid one hand on the
+adulteress and thrust his other into the brazier. But there is no
+brazier here.’ He looked round. The lamp! He put his finger over the
+flame and frowned, preparing himself to suffer. And for a rather long
+time, as it seemed to him, there was no sensation, but suddenly--he
+had not yet decided whether it was painful enough--he writhed all over,
+jerked his hand away, and waved it in the air. ‘No, I can’t stand that!’
+
+‘For God’s sake come to me! I am dying! Oh!’
+
+‘Well--shall I perish? No, not so!’
+
+‘I will come to you directly,’ he said, and having opened his door, he
+went without looking at her through the cell into the porch where he
+used to chop wood. There he felt for the block and for an axe which
+leant against the wall.
+
+‘Immediately!’ he said, and taking up the axe with his right hand he
+laid the forefinger of his left hand on the block, swung the axe, and
+struck with it below the second joint. The finger flew off more lightly
+than a stick of similar thickness, and bounding up, turned over on the
+edge of the block and then fell to the floor.
+
+He heard it fall before he felt any pain, but before he had time to be
+surprised he felt a burning pain and the warmth of flowing blood. He
+hastily wrapped the stump in the skirt of his cassock, and pressing it
+to his hip went back into the room, and standing in front of the woman,
+lowered his eyes and asked in a low voice: ‘What do you want?’
+
+She looked at his pale face and his quivering left cheek, and suddenly
+felt ashamed. She jumped up, seized her fur cloak, and throwing it round
+her shoulders, wrapped herself up in it.
+
+‘I was in pain... I have caught cold... I... Father Sergius...
+I...’
+
+He let his eyes, shining with a quiet light of joy, rest upon her, and
+said:
+
+‘Dear sister, why did you wish to ruin your immortal soul? Temptations
+must come into the world, but woe to him by whom temptation comes. Pray
+that God may forgive us!’
+
+She listened and looked at him. Suddenly she heard the sound of
+something dripping. She looked down and saw that blood was flowing from
+his hand and down his cassock.
+
+‘What have you done to your hand?’ She remembered the sound she had
+heard, and seizing the little lamp ran out into the porch. There on the
+floor she saw the bloody finger. She returned with her face paler than
+his and was about to speak to him, but he silently passed into the back
+cell and fastened the door.
+
+‘Forgive me!’ she said. ‘How can I atone for my sin?’
+
+‘Go away.’
+
+‘Let me tie up your hand.’
+
+‘Go away from here.’
+
+She dressed hurriedly and silently, and when ready sat waiting in her
+furs. The sledge-bells were heard outside.
+
+‘Father Sergius, forgive me!’
+
+‘Go away. God will forgive.’
+
+‘Father Sergius! I will change my life. Do not forsake me!’
+
+‘Go away.’
+
+‘Forgive me--and give me your blessing!’
+
+‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost!’--she
+heard his voice from behind the partition. ‘Go!’
+
+She burst into sobs and left the cell. The lawyer came forward to meet
+her.
+
+‘Well, I see I have lost the bet. It can’t be helped. Where will you
+sit?’
+
+‘It is all the same to me.’
+
+She took a seat in the sledge, and did not utter a word all the way
+home.
+
+A year later she entered a convent as a novice, and lived a strict life
+under the direction of the hermit Arseny, who wrote letters to her at
+long intervals.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+Father Sergius lived as a recluse for another seven years.
+
+At first he accepted much of what people brought him--tea, sugar, white
+bread, milk, clothing, and fire-wood. But as time went on he led a more
+and more austere life, refusing everything superfluous, and finally he
+accepted nothing but rye-bread once a week. Everything else that was
+brought to him he gave to the poor who came to him. He spent his entire
+time in his cell, in prayer or in conversation with callers, who became
+more and more numerous as time went on. Only three times a year did
+he go out to church, and when necessary he went out to fetch water and
+wood.
+
+The episode with Makovkina had occurred after five years of his hermit
+life. That occurrence soon became generally known--her nocturnal visit,
+the change she underwent, and her entry into a convent. From that time
+Father Sergius’s fame increased. More and more visitors came to see him,
+other monks settled down near his cell, and a church was erected there
+and also a hostelry. His fame, as usual exaggerating his feats, spread
+ever more and more widely. People began to come to him from a distance,
+and began bringing invalids to him whom they declared he cured.
+
+His first cure occurred in the eighth year of his life as a hermit. It
+was the healing of a fourteen-year-old boy, whose mother brought him
+to Father Sergius insisting that he should lay his hand on the child’s
+head. It had never occurred to Father Sergius that he could cure the
+sick. He would have regarded such a thought as a great sin of pride; but
+the mother who brought the boy implored him insistently, falling at his
+feet and saying: ‘Why do you, who heal others, refuse to help my son?’
+She besought him in Christ’s name. When Father Sergius assured her that
+only God could heal the sick, she replied that she only wanted him to
+lay his hands on the boy and pray for him. Father Sergius refused and
+returned to his cell. But next day (it was in autumn and the nights were
+already cold) on going out for water he saw the same mother with her
+son, a pale boy of fourteen, and was met by the same petition.
+
+He remembered the parable of the unjust judge, and though he had
+previously felt sure that he ought to refuse, he now began to hesitate
+and, having hesitated, took to prayer and prayed until a decision formed
+itself in his soul. This decision was, that he ought to accede to the
+woman’s request and that her faith might save her son. As for himself,
+he would in this case be but an insignificant instrument chosen by God.
+
+And going out to the mother he did what she asked--laid his hand on the
+boy’s head and prayed.
+
+The mother left with her son, and a month later the boy recovered, and
+the fame of the holy healing power of the starets Sergius (as they now
+called him) spread throughout the whole district. After that, not a week
+passed without sick people coming, riding or on foot, to Father Sergius;
+and having acceded to one petition he could not refuse others, and he
+laid his hands on many and prayed. Many recovered, and his fame spread
+more and more.
+
+So seven years passed in the Monastery and thirteen in his hermit’s
+cell. He now had the appearance of an old man: his beard was long and
+grey, but his hair, though thin, was still black and curly.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+For some weeks Father Sergius had been living with one persistent
+thought: whether he was right in accepting the position in which he had
+not so much placed himself as been placed by the Archimandrite and
+the Abbot. That position had begun after the recovery of the
+fourteen-year-old boy. From that time, with each month, week, and day
+that passed, Sergius felt his own inner life wasting away and being
+replaced by external life. It was as if he had been turned inside out.
+
+Sergius saw that he was a means of attracting visitors and contributions
+to the monastery, and that therefore the authorities arranged matters in
+such a way as to make as much use of him as possible. For instance, they
+rendered it impossible for him to do any manual work. He was supplied
+with everything he could want, and they only demanded of him that he
+should not refuse his blessing to those who came to seek it. For his
+convenience they appointed days when he would receive. They arranged a
+reception-room for men, and a place was railed in so that he should not
+be pushed over by the crowds of women visitors, and so that he could
+conveniently bless those who came.
+
+They told him that people needed him, and that fulfilling Christ’s law
+of love he could not refuse their demand to see him, and that to avoid
+them would be cruel. He could not but agree with this, but the more he
+gave himself up to such a life the more he felt that what was internal
+became external, and that the fount of living water within him dried
+up, and that what he did now was done more and more for men and less and
+less for God.
+
+Whether he admonished people, or simply blessed them, or prayed for the
+sick, or advised people about their lives, or listened to expressions of
+gratitude from those he had helped by precepts, or alms, or healing (as
+they assured him)--he could not help being pleased at it, and could not
+be indifferent to the results of his activity and to the influence he
+exerted. He thought himself a shining light, and the more he felt this
+the more was he conscious of a weakening, a dying down of the divine
+light of truth that shone within him.
+
+‘In how far is what I do for God and in how far is it for men?’ That was
+the question that insistently tormented him and to which he was not so
+much unable to give himself an answer as unable to face the answer.
+
+In the depth of his soul he felt that the devil had substituted an
+activity for men in place of his former activity for God. He felt this
+because, just as it had formerly been hard for him to be torn from his
+solitude so now that solitude itself was hard for him. He was oppressed
+and wearied by visitors, but at the bottom of his heart he was glad of
+their presence and glad of the praise they heaped upon him.
+
+There was a time when he decided to go away and hide. He even planned
+all that was necessary for that purpose. He prepared for himself a
+peasant’s shirt, trousers, coat, and cap. He explained that he wanted
+these to give to those who asked. And he kept these clothes in his cell,
+planning how he would put them on, cut his hair short, and go away.
+First he would go some three hundred versts by train, then he would
+leave the train and walk from village to village. He asked an old man
+who had been a soldier how he tramped: what people gave him, and what
+shelter they allowed him. The soldier told him where people were most
+charitable, and where they would take a wanderer in for the night, and
+Father Sergius intended to avail himself of this information. He even
+put on those clothes one night in his desire to go, but he could not
+decide what was best--to remain or to escape. At first he was in doubt,
+but afterwards this indecision passed. He submitted to custom and
+yielded to the devil, and only the peasant garb reminded him of the
+thought and feeling he had had.
+
+Every day more and more people flocked to him and less and less time was
+left him for prayer and for renewing his spiritual strength. Sometimes
+in lucid moments he thought he was like a place where there had once
+been a spring. ‘There used to be a feeble spring of living water which
+flowed quietly from me and through me. That was true life, the time when
+she tempted me!’ (He always thought with ecstasy of that night and of
+her who was now Mother Agnes.) She had tasted of that pure water, but
+since then there had not been time for it to collect before thirsty
+people came crowding in and pushing one another aside. And they had
+trampled everything down and nothing was left but mud.
+
+So he thought in rare moments of lucidity, but his usual state of mind
+was one of weariness and a tender pity for himself because of that
+weariness.
+
+It was in spring, on the eve of the mid-Pentecostal feast. Father
+Sergius was officiating at the Vigil Service in his hermitage church,
+where the congregation was as large as the little church could
+hold--about twenty people. They were all well-to-do proprietors or
+merchants. Father Sergius admitted anyone, but a selection was made by
+the monk in attendance and by an assistant who was sent to the hermitage
+every day from the monastery. A crowd of some eighty people--pilgrims
+and peasants, and especially peasant-women--stood outside waiting for
+Father Sergius to come out and bless them. Meanwhile he conducted
+the service, but at the point at which he went out to the tomb of his
+predecessor, he staggered and would have fallen had he not been caught
+by a merchant standing behind him and by the monk acting as deacon.
+
+‘What is the matter, Father Sergius? Dear man! O Lord!’ exclaimed the
+women. ‘He is as white as a sheet!’
+
+But Father Sergius recovered immediately, and though very pale, he waved
+the merchant and the deacon aside and continued to chant the service.
+
+Father Seraphim, the deacon, the acolytes, and Sofya Ivanovna, a lady
+who always lived near the hermitage and tended Father Sergius, begged
+him to bring the service to an end.
+
+‘No, there’s nothing the matter,’ said Father Sergius, slightly smiling
+from beneath his moustache and continuing the service. ‘Yes, that is the
+way the Saints behave!’ thought he.
+
+‘A holy man--an angel of God!’ he heard just then the voice of Sofya
+Ivanovna behind him, and also of the merchant who had supported him.
+He did not heed their entreaties, but went on with the service. Again
+crowding together they all made their way by the narrow passages back
+into the little church, and there, though abbreviating it slightly,
+Father Sergius completed vespers.
+
+Immediately after the service Father Sergius, having pronounced the
+benediction on those present, went over to the bench under the elm tree
+at the entrance to the cave. He wished to rest and breathe the fresh
+air--he felt in need of it. But as soon as he left the church the crowd
+of people rushed to him soliciting his blessing, his advice, and his
+help. There were pilgrims who constantly tramped from one holy place to
+another and from one starets to another, and were always entranced by
+every shrine and every starets. Father Sergius knew this common, cold,
+conventional, and most irreligious type. There were pilgrims, for
+the most part discharged soldiers, unaccustomed to a settled life,
+poverty-stricken, and many of them drunken old men, who tramped from
+monastery to monastery merely to be fed. And there were rough peasants
+and peasant-women who had come with their selfish requirements, seeking
+cures or to have doubts about quite practical affairs solved for them:
+about marrying off a daughter, or hiring a shop, or buying a bit
+of land, or how to atone for having overlaid a child or having an
+illegitimate one.
+
+All this was an old story and not in the least interesting to him. He
+knew he would hear nothing new from these folk, that they would arouse
+no religious emotion in him; but he liked to see the crowd to which
+his blessing and advice was necessary and precious, so while that crowd
+oppressed him it also pleased him. Father Seraphim began to drive them
+away, saying that Father Sergius was tired.
+
+But Father Sergius, remembering the words of the Gospel: ‘Forbid them’
+(children) ‘not to come unto me,’ and feeling tenderly towards himself
+at this recollection, said they should be allowed to approach.
+
+He rose, went to the railing beyond which the crowd had gathered, and
+began blessing them and answering their questions, but in a voice so
+weak that he was touched with pity for himself. Yet despite his wish to
+receive them all he could not do it. Things again grew dark before his
+eyes, and he staggered and grasped the railings. He felt a rush of blood
+to his head and first went pale and then suddenly flushed.
+
+‘I must leave the rest till to-morrow. I cannot do more to-day,’
+and, pronouncing a general benediction, he returned to the bench. The
+merchant again supported him, and leading him by the arm helped him to
+be seated.
+
+‘Father!’ came voices from the crowd. ‘Dear Father! Do not forsake us.
+Without you we are lost!’
+
+The merchant, having seated Father Sergius on the bench under the elm,
+took on himself police duties and drove the people off very resolutely.
+It is true that he spoke in a low voice so that Father Sergius might not
+hear him, but his words were incisive and angry.
+
+‘Be off, be off! He has blessed you, and what more do you want? Get
+along with you, or I’ll wring your necks! Move on there! Get along, you
+old woman with your dirty leg-bands! Go, go! Where are you shoving to?
+You’ve been told that it is finished. To-morrow will be as God wills,
+but for to-day he has finished!’
+
+‘Father! Only let my eyes have a glimpse of his dear face!’ said an old
+woman.
+
+‘I’ll glimpse you! Where are you shoving to?’
+
+Father Sergius noticed that the merchant seemed to be acting roughly,
+and in a feeble voice told the attendant that the people should not be
+driven away. He knew that they would be driven away all the same, and
+he much desired to be left alone and to rest, but he sent the attendant
+with that message to produce an impression.
+
+‘All right, all right! I am not driving them away. I am only
+remonstrating with them,’ replied the merchant. ‘You know they wouldn’t
+hesitate to drive a man to death. They have no pity, they only consider
+themselves.... You’ve been told you cannot see him. Go away!
+To-morrow!’ And he got rid of them all.
+
+He took all these pains because he liked order and liked to domineer
+and drive the people away, but chiefly because he wanted to have Father
+Sergius to himself. He was a widower with an only daughter who was an
+invalid and unmarried, and whom he had brought fourteen hundred versts
+to Father Sergius to be healed. For two years past he had been taking
+her to different places to be cured: first to the university clinic in
+the chief town of the province, but that did no good; then to a peasant
+in the province of Samara, where she got a little better; then to a
+doctor in Moscow to whom he paid much money, but this did no good at
+all. Now he had been told that Father Sergius wrought cures, and had
+brought her to him. So when all the people had been driven away he
+approached Father Sergius, and suddenly falling on his knees loudly
+exclaimed:
+
+‘Holy Father! Bless my afflicted offspring that she may be healed of her
+malady. I venture to prostrate myself at your holy feet.’
+
+And he placed one hand on the other, cup-wise. He said and did all this
+as if he were doing something clearly and firmly appointed by law and
+usage--as if one must and should ask for a daughter to be cured in just
+this way and no other. He did it with such conviction that it seemed
+even to Father Sergius that it should be said and done in just that way,
+but nevertheless he bade him rise and tell him what the trouble was. The
+merchant said that his daughter, a girl of twenty-two, had fallen ill
+two years ago, after her mother’s sudden death. She had moaned (as
+he expressed it) and since then had not been herself. And now he had
+brought her fourteen hundred versts and she was waiting in the hostelry
+till Father Sergius should give orders to bring her. She did not go out
+during the day, being afraid of the light, and could only come after
+sunset.
+
+‘Is she very weak?’ asked Father Sergius.
+
+‘No, she has no particular weakness. She is quite plump, and is only
+“nerastenic” the doctors say. If you will only let me bring her this
+evening, Father Sergius, I’ll fly like a spirit to fetch her. Holy
+Father! Revive a parent’s heart, restore his line, save his afflicted
+daughter by your prayers!’ And the merchant again threw himself on his
+knees and bending sideways, with his head resting on his clenched fists,
+remained stock still. Father Sergius again told him to get up, and
+thinking how heavy his activities were and how he went through with them
+patiently notwithstanding, he sighed heavily and after a few seconds of
+silence, said:
+
+‘Well, bring her this evening. I will pray for her, but now I am
+tired....’ and he closed his eyes. ‘I will send for you.’
+
+The merchant went away, stepping on tiptoe, which only made his boots
+creak the louder, and Father Sergius remained alone.
+
+His whole life was filled by Church services and by people who came
+to see him, but to-day had been a particularly difficult one. In
+the morning an important official had arrived and had had a long
+conversation with him; after that a lady had come with her son. This son
+was a sceptical young professor whom the mother, an ardent believer and
+devoted to Father Sergius, had brought that he might talk to him. The
+conversation had been very trying. The young man, evidently not wishing
+to have a controversy with a monk, had agreed with him in everything
+as with someone who was mentally inferior. Father Sergius saw that the
+young man did not believe but yet was satisfied, tranquil, and at ease,
+and the memory of that conversation now disquieted him.
+
+‘Have something to eat, Father,’ said the attendant.
+
+‘All right, bring me something.’
+
+The attendant went to a hut that had been arranged some ten paces from
+the cave, and Father Sergius remained alone.
+
+The time was long past when he had lived alone doing everything for
+himself and eating only rye-bread, or rolls prepared for the Church. He
+had been advised long since that he had no right to neglect his health,
+and he was given wholesome, though Lenten, food. He ate sparingly,
+though much more than he had done, and often he ate with much pleasure,
+and not as formerly with aversion and a sense of guilt. So it was now.
+He had some gruel, drank a cup of tea, and ate half a white roll.
+
+The attendant went away, and Father Sergius remained alone under the elm
+tree.
+
+It was a wonderful May evening, when the birches, aspens, elms, wild
+cherries, and oaks, had just burst into foliage.
+
+The bush of wild cherries behind the elm tree was in full bloom and had
+not yet begun to shed its blossoms, and the nightingales--one quite near
+at hand and two or three others in the bushes down by the river--burst
+into full song after some preliminary twitters. From the river came the
+far-off songs of peasants returning, no doubt, from their work. The sun
+was setting behind the forest, its last rays glowing through the leaves.
+All that side was brilliant green, the other side with the elm tree was
+dark. The cockchafers flew clumsily about, falling to the ground when
+they collided with anything.
+
+After supper Father Sergius began to repeat a silent prayer: ‘O Lord
+Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us!’ and then he read a psalm,
+and suddenly in the middle of the psalm a sparrow flew out from the
+bush, alighted on the ground, and hopped towards him chirping as it
+came, but then it took fright at something and flew away. He said a
+prayer which referred to his abandonment of the world, and hastened to
+finish it in order to send for the merchant with the sick daughter. She
+interested him in that she presented a distraction, and because both she
+and her father considered him a saint whose prayers were efficacious.
+Outwardly he disavowed that idea, but in the depths of his soul he
+considered it to be true.
+
+He was often amazed that this had happened, that he, Stepan Kasatsky,
+had come to be such an extraordinary saint and even a worker of
+miracles, but of the fact that he was such there could not be the
+least doubt. He could not fail to believe in the miracles he himself
+witnessed, beginning with the sick boy and ending with the old woman who
+had recovered her sight when he had prayed for her.
+
+Strange as it might be, it was so. Accordingly the merchant’s daughter
+interested him as a new individual who had faith in him, and also as a
+fresh opportunity to confirm his healing powers and enhance his fame.
+‘They bring people a thousand versts and write about it in the papers.
+The Emperor knows of it, and they know of it in Europe, in unbelieving
+Europe’--thought he. And suddenly he felt ashamed of his vanity and
+again began to pray. ‘Lord, King of Heaven, Comforter, Soul of Truth!
+Come and enter into me and cleanse me from all sin and save and bless
+my soul. Cleanse me from the sin of worldly vanity that troubles me!’ he
+repeated, and he remembered how often he had prayed about this and how
+vain till now his prayers had been in that respect. His prayers worked
+miracles for others, but in his own case God had not granted him
+liberation from this petty passion.
+
+He remembered his prayers at the commencement of his life at the
+hermitage, when he prayed for purity, humility, and love, and how it
+seemed to him then that God heard his prayers. He had retained his
+purity and had chopped off his finger. And he lifted the shrivelled
+stump of that finger to his lips and kissed it. It seemed to him now
+that he had been humble then when he had always seemed loathsome to
+himself on account of his sinfulness; and when he remembered the tender
+feelings with which he had then met an old man who was bringing a
+drunken soldier to him to ask alms; and how he had received HER, it
+seemed to him that he had then possessed love also. But now? And he
+asked himself whether he loved anyone, whether he loved Sofya Ivanovna,
+or Father Seraphim, whether he had any feeling of love for all who had
+come to him that day--for that learned young man with whom he had had
+that instructive discussion in which he was concerned only to show off
+his own intelligence and that he had not lagged behind the times in
+knowledge. He wanted and needed their love, but felt none towards them.
+He now had neither love nor humility nor purity.
+
+He was pleased to know that the merchant’s daughter was twenty-two, and
+he wondered whether she was good-looking. When he inquired whether she
+was weak, he really wanted to know if she had feminine charm.
+
+‘Can I have fallen so low?’ he thought. ‘Lord, help me! Restore me, my
+Lord and God!’ And he clasped his hands and began to pray.
+
+The nightingales burst into song, a cockchafer knocked against him and
+crept up the back of his neck. He brushed it off. ‘But does He exist?
+What if I am knocking at a door fastened from outside? The bar is on the
+door for all to see. Nature--the nightingales and the cockchafers--is
+that bar. Perhaps the young man was right.’ And he began to pray aloud.
+He prayed for a long time till these thoughts vanished and he again felt
+calm and confident. He rang the bell and told the attendant to say that
+the merchant might bring his daughter to him now.
+
+The merchant came, leading his daughter by the arm. He led her into the
+cell and immediately left her.
+
+She was a very fair girl, plump and very short, with a pale, frightened,
+childish face and a much developed feminine figure. Father Sergius
+remained seated on the bench at the entrance and when she was passing
+and stopped beside him for his blessing he was aghast at himself for
+the way he looked at her figure. As she passed by him he was acutely
+conscious of her femininity, though he saw by her face that she was
+sensual and feeble-minded. He rose and went into the cell. She was
+sitting on a stool waiting for him, and when he entered she rose.
+
+‘I want to go back to Papa,’ she said.
+
+‘Don’t be afraid,’ he replied. ‘What are you suffering from?’
+
+‘I am in pain all over,’ she said, and suddenly her face lit up with a
+smile.
+
+‘You will be well,’ said he. ‘Pray!’
+
+‘What is the use of praying? I have prayed and it does no good’--and she
+continued to smile. ‘I want you to pray for me and lay your hands on me.
+I saw you in a dream.’
+
+‘How did you see me?’
+
+‘I saw you put your hands on my breast like that.’ She took his hand and
+pressed it to her breast. ‘Just here.’
+
+He yielded his right hand to her.
+
+‘What is your name?’ he asked, trembling all over and feeling that he
+was overcome and that his desire had already passed beyond control.
+
+‘Marie. Why?’
+
+She took his hand and kissed it, and then put her arm round his waist
+and pressed him to herself.
+
+‘What are you doing?’ he said. ‘Marie, you are a devil!’
+
+‘Oh, perhaps. What does it matter?’
+
+And embracing him she sat down with him on the bed.
+
+At dawn he went out into the porch.
+
+‘Can this all have happened? Her father will come and she will tell him
+everything. She is a devil! What am I to do? Here is the axe with which
+I chopped off my finger.’ He snatched up the axe and moved back towards
+the cell.
+
+The attendant came up.
+
+‘Do you want some wood chopped? Let me have the axe.’
+
+Sergius yielded up the axe and entered the cell. She was lying
+there asleep. He looked at her with horror, and passed on beyond the
+partition, where he took down the peasant clothes and put them on. Then
+he seized a pair of scissors, cut off his long hair, and went out along
+the path down the hill to the river, where he had not been for more than
+three years.
+
+A road ran beside the river and he went along it and walked till noon.
+Then he went into a field of rye and lay down there. Towards evening
+he approached a village, but without entering it went towards the cliff
+that overhung the river. There he again lay down to rest.
+
+It was early morning, half an hour before sunrise. All was damp and
+gloomy and a cold early wind was blowing from the west. ‘Yes, I must end
+it all. There is no God. But how am I to end it? Throw myself into the
+river? I can swim and should not drown. Hang myself? Yes, just throw
+this sash over a branch.’ This seemed so feasible and so easy that
+he felt horrified. As usual at moments of despair he felt the need of
+prayer. But there was no one to pray to. There was no God. He lay down
+resting on his arm, and suddenly such a longing for sleep overcame him
+that he could no longer support his head on his hand, but stretched out
+his arm, laid his head upon it, and fell asleep. But that sleep lasted
+only for a moment. He woke up immediately and began not to dream but to
+remember.
+
+He saw himself as a child in his mother’s home in the country. A
+carriage drives up, and out of it steps Uncle Nicholas Sergeevich,
+with his long, spade-shaped, black beard, and with him Pashenka, a thin
+little girl with large mild eyes and a timid pathetic face. And into
+their company of boys Pashenka is brought and they have to play with
+her, but it is dull. She is silly, and it ends by their making fun of
+her and forcing her to show how she can swim. She lies down on the floor
+and shows them, and they all laugh and make a fool of her. She sees this
+and blushes red in patches and becomes more pitiable than before,
+so pitiable that he feels ashamed and can never forget that crooked,
+kindly, submissive smile. And Sergius remembered having seen her since
+then. Long after, just before he became a monk, she had married a
+landowner who squandered all her fortune and was in the habit of beating
+her. She had had two children, a son and a daughter, but the son had
+died while still young. And Sergius remembered having seen her very
+wretched. Then again he had seen her in the monastery when she was a
+widow. She had been still the same, not exactly stupid, but insipid,
+insignificant, and pitiable. She had come with her daughter and her
+daughter’s fiance. They were already poor at that time and later on he
+had heard that she was living in a small provincial town and was very
+poor.
+
+‘Why am I thinking about her?’ he asked himself, but he could not cease
+doing so. ‘Where is she? How is she getting on? Is she still as unhappy
+as she was then when she had to show us how to swim on the floor? But
+why should I think about her? What am I doing? I must put an end to
+myself.’
+
+And again he felt afraid, and again, to escape from that thought, he
+went on thinking about Pashenka.
+
+So he lay for a long time, thinking now of his unavoidable end and now
+of Pashenka. She presented herself to him as a means of salvation. At
+last he fell asleep, and in his sleep he saw an angel who came to him
+and said: ‘Go to Pashenka and learn from her what you have to do, what
+your sin is, and wherein lies your salvation.’
+
+He awoke, and having decided that this was a vision sent by God, he felt
+glad, and resolved to do what had been told him in the vision. He knew
+the town where she lived. It was some three hundred versts (two hundred
+miles) away, and he set out to walk there.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Pashenka had already long ceased to be Pashenka and had become old,
+withered, wrinkled Praskovya Mikhaylovna, mother-in-law of that failure,
+the drunken official Mavrikyev. She was living in the country town
+where he had had his last appointment, and there she was supporting the
+family: her daughter, her ailing neurasthenic son-in-law, and her five
+grandchildren. She did this by giving music lessons to tradesmen’s
+daughters, giving four and sometimes five lessons a day of an hour each,
+and earning in this way some sixty rubles (6 pounds) a month. So they
+lived for the present, in expectation of another appointment. She had
+sent letters to all her relations and acquaintances asking them to
+obtain a post for her son-in-law, and among the rest she had written to
+Sergius, but that letter had not reached him.
+
+It was a Saturday, and Praskovya Mikhaylovna was herself mixing dough
+for currant bread such as the serf-cook on her father’s estate used
+to make so well. She wished to give her grandchildren a treat on the
+Sunday.
+
+Masha, her daughter, was nursing her youngest child, the eldest boy and
+girl were at school, and her son-in-law was asleep, not having slept
+during the night. Praskovya Mikhaylovna had remained awake too for a
+great part of the night, trying to soften her daughter’s anger against
+her husband.
+
+She saw that it was impossible for her son-in-law, a weak creature, to
+be other than he was, and realized that his wife’s reproaches could do
+no good--so she used all her efforts to soften those reproaches and to
+avoid recrimination and anger. Unkindly relations between people caused
+her actual physical suffering. It was so clear to her that bitter
+feelings do not make anything better, but only make everything worse.
+She did not in fact think about this: she simply suffered at the sight
+of anger as she would from a bad smell, a harsh noise, or from blows on
+her body.
+
+She had--with a feeling of self-satisfaction--just taught Lukerya how
+to mix the dough, when her six-year-old grandson Misha, wearing an
+apron and with darned stockings on his crooked little legs, ran into the
+kitchen with a frightened face.
+
+‘Grandma, a dreadful old man wants to see you.’
+
+Lukerya looked out at the door.
+
+‘There is a pilgrim of some kind, a man...’
+
+Praskovya Mikhaylovna rubbed her thin elbows against one another, wiped
+her hands on her apron and went upstairs to get a five-kopek piece
+[about a penny] out of her purse for him, but remembering that she had
+nothing less than a ten-kopek piece she decided to give him some bread
+instead. She returned to the cupboard, but suddenly blushed at the
+thought of having grudged the ten-kopek piece, and telling Lukerya to
+cut a slice of bread, went upstairs again to fetch it. ‘It serves you
+right,’ she said to herself. ‘You must now give twice over.’
+
+She gave both the bread and the money to the pilgrim, and when doing
+so--far from being proud of her generosity--she excused herself for
+giving so little. The man had such an imposing appearance.
+
+Though he had tramped two hundred versts as a beggar, though he was
+tattered and had grown thin and weatherbeaten, though he had cropped his
+long hair and was wearing a peasant’s cap and boots, and though he bowed
+very humbly, Sergius still had the impressive appearance that made him
+so attractive. But Praskovya Mikhaylovna did not recognize him. She
+could hardly do so, not having seen him for almost twenty years.
+
+‘Don’t think ill of me, Father. Perhaps you want something to eat?’
+
+He took the bread and the money, and Praskovya Mikhaylovna was surprised
+that he did not go, but stood looking at her.
+
+‘Pashenka, I have come to you! Take me in...’
+
+His beautiful black eyes, shining with the tears that started in them,
+were fixed on her with imploring insistence. And under his greyish
+moustache his lips quivered piteously.
+
+Praskovya Mikhaylovna pressed her hands to her withered breast, opened
+her mouth, and stood petrified, staring at the pilgrim with dilated
+eyes.
+
+‘It can’t be! Stepa! Sergey! Father Sergius!’
+
+‘Yes, it is I,’ said Sergius in a low voice. ‘Only not Sergius, or
+Father Sergius, but a great sinner, Stepan Kasatsky--a great and lost
+sinner. Take me in and help me!’
+
+‘It’s impossible! How have you so humbled yourself? But come in.’
+
+She reached out her hand, but he did not take it and only followed her
+in.
+
+But where was she to take him? The lodging was a small one. Formerly
+she had had a tiny room, almost a closet, for herself, but later she had
+given it up to her daughter, and Masha was now sitting there rocking the
+baby.
+
+‘Sit here for the present,’ she said to Sergius, pointing to a bench in
+the kitchen.
+
+He sat down at once, and with an evidently accustomed movement slipped
+the straps of his wallet first off one shoulder and then off the other.
+
+‘My God, my God! How you have humbled yourself, Father! Such great fame,
+and now like this...’
+
+Sergius did not reply, but only smiled meekly, placing his wallet under
+the bench on which he sat.
+
+‘Masha, do you know who this is?’--And in a whisper Praskovya
+Mikhaylovna told her daughter who he was, and together they then carried
+the bed and the cradle out of the tiny room and cleared it for Sergius.
+
+Praskovya Mikhaylovna led him into it.
+
+‘Here you can rest. Don’t take offence... but I must go out.’
+
+‘Where to?’
+
+‘I have to go to a lesson. I am ashamed to tell you, but I teach music!’
+
+‘Music? But that is good. Only just one thing, Praskovya Mikhaylovna,
+I have come to you with a definite object. When can I have a talk with
+you?’
+
+‘I shall be very glad. Will this evening do?’
+
+‘Yes. But one thing more. Don’t speak about me, or say who I am. I have
+revealed myself only to you. No one knows where I have gone to. It must
+be so.’
+
+‘Oh, but I have told my daughter.’
+
+‘Well, ask her not to mention it.’
+
+And Sergius took off his boots, lay down, and at once fell asleep after
+a sleepless night and a walk of nearly thirty miles.
+
+When Praskovya Mikhaylovna returned, Sergius was sitting in the little
+room waiting for her. He did not come out for dinner, but had some soup
+and gruel which Lukerya brought him.
+
+‘How is it that you have come back earlier than you said?’ asked
+Sergius. ‘Can I speak to you now?’
+
+‘How is it that I have the happiness to receive such a guest? I have
+missed one of my lessons. That can wait... I had always been planning
+to go to see you. I wrote to you, and now this good fortune has come.’
+
+‘Pashenka, please listen to what I am going to tell you as to a
+confession made to God at my last hour. Pashenka, I am not a holy man,
+I am not even as good as a simple ordinary man; I am a loathsome,
+vile, and proud sinner who has gone astray, and who, if not worse than
+everyone else, is at least worse than most very bad people.’
+
+Pashenka looked at him at first with staring eyes. But she believed what
+he said, and when she had quite grasped it she touched his hand, smiling
+pityingly, and said:
+
+‘Perhaps you exaggerate, Stiva?’
+
+‘No, Pashenka. I am an adulterer, a murderer, a blasphemer, and a
+deceiver.’
+
+‘My God! How is that?’ exclaimed Praskovya Mikhaylovna.
+
+‘But I must go on living. And I, who thought I knew everything, who
+taught others how to live--I know nothing and ask you to teach me.’
+
+‘What are you saying, Stiva? You are laughing at me. Why do you always
+make fun of me?’
+
+‘Well, if you think I am jesting you must have it as you please. But
+tell me all the same how you live, and how you have lived your life.’
+
+‘I? I have lived a very nasty, horrible life, and now God is punishing
+me as I deserve. I live so wretchedly, so wretchedly...’
+
+‘How was it with your marriage? How did you live with your husband?’
+
+‘It was all bad. I married because I fell in love in the nastiest way.
+Papa did not approve. But I would not listen to anything and just
+got married. Then instead of helping my husband I tormented him by my
+jealousy, which I could not restrain.’
+
+‘I heard that he drank...’
+
+‘Yes, but I did not give him any peace. I always reproached him, though
+you know it is a disease! He could not refrain from it. I now remember
+how I tried to prevent his having it, and the frightful scenes we had!’
+
+And she looked at Kasatsky with beautiful eyes, suffering from the
+remembrance.
+
+Kasatsky remembered how he had been told that Pashenka’s husband used
+to beat her, and now, looking at her thin withered neck with prominent
+veins behind her ears, and her scanty coil of hair, half grey half
+auburn, he seemed to see just how it had occurred.
+
+‘Then I was left with two children and no means at all.’
+
+‘But you had an estate!’
+
+‘Oh, we sold that while Vasya was still alive, and the money was all
+spent. We had to live, and like all our young ladies I did not know how
+to earn anything. I was particularly useless and helpless. So we spent
+all we had. I taught the children and improved my own education a
+little. And then Mitya fell ill when he was already in the fourth
+form, and God took him. Masha fell in love with Vanya, my son-in-law.
+And--well, he is well-meaning but unfortunate. He is ill.’
+
+‘Mamma!’--her daughter’s voice interrupted her--‘Take Mitya! I can’t be
+in two places at once.’
+
+Praskovya Mikhaylovna shuddered, but rose and went out of the room,
+stepping quickly in her patched shoes. She soon came back with a boy of
+two in her arms, who threw himself backwards and grabbed at her shawl
+with his little hands.
+
+‘Where was I? Oh yes, he had a good appointment here, and his chief
+was a kind man too. But Vanya could not go on, and had to give up his
+position.’
+
+‘What is the matter with him?’
+
+‘Neurasthenia--it is a dreadful complaint. We consulted a doctor, who
+told us he ought to go away, but we had no means.... I always hope it
+will pass of itself. He has no particular pain, but...’
+
+‘Lukerya!’ cried an angry and feeble voice. ‘She is always sent away
+when I want her. Mamma...’
+
+‘I’m coming!’ Praskovya Mikhaylovna again interrupted herself. ‘He has
+not had his dinner yet. He can’t eat with us.’
+
+She went out and arranged something, and came back wiping her thin dark
+hands.
+
+‘So that is how I live. I always complain and am always dissatisfied,
+but thank God the grandchildren are all nice and healthy, and we can
+still live. But why talk about me?’
+
+‘But what do you live on?’
+
+‘Well, I earn a little. How I used to dislike music, but how useful it
+is to me now!’ Her small hand lay on the chest of drawers beside which
+she was sitting, and she drummed an exercise with her thin fingers.
+
+‘How much do you get for a lesson?’
+
+‘Sometimes a ruble, sometimes fifty kopeks, or sometimes thirty. They
+are all so kind to me.’
+
+‘And do your pupils get on well?’ asked Kasatsky with a slight smile.
+
+Praskovya Mikhaylovna did not at first believe that he was asking
+seriously, and looked inquiringly into his eyes.
+
+‘Some of them do. One of them is a splendid girl--the butcher’s
+daughter--such a good kind girl! If I were a clever woman I ought, of
+course, with the connexions Papa had, to be able to get an appointment
+for my son-in-law. But as it is I have not been able to do anything, and
+have brought them all to this--as you see.’
+
+‘Yes, yes,’ said Kasatsky, lowering his head. ‘And how is it,
+Pashenka--do you take part in Church life?’
+
+‘Oh, don’t speak of it. I am so bad that way, and have neglected it so!
+I keep the fasts with the children and sometimes go to church, and then
+again sometimes I don’t go for months. I only send the children.’
+
+‘But why don’t you go yourself?’
+
+‘To tell the truth’ (she blushed) ‘I am ashamed, for my daughter’s
+sake and the children’s, to go there in tattered clothes, and I haven’t
+anything else. Besides, I am just lazy.’
+
+‘And do you pray at home?’
+
+‘I do. But what sort of prayer is it? Only mechanical. I know it should
+not be like that, but I lack real religious feeling. The only thing is
+that I know how bad I am...’
+
+‘Yes, yes, that’s right!’ said Kasatsky, as if approvingly.
+
+‘I’m coming! I’m coming!’ she replied to a call from her son-in-law, and
+tidying her scanty plait she left the room.
+
+But this time it was long before she returned. When she came back,
+Kasatsky was sitting in the same position, his elbows resting on his
+knees and his head bowed. But his wallet was strapped on his back.
+
+When she came in, carrying a small tin lamp without a shade, he raised
+his fine weary eyes and sighed very deeply.
+
+‘I did not tell them who you are,’ she began timidly. ‘I only said that
+you are a pilgrim, a nobleman, and that I used to know you. Come into
+the dining-room for tea.’
+
+‘No...’
+
+‘Well then, I’ll bring some to you here.’
+
+‘No, I don’t want anything. God bless you, Pashenka! I am going now. If
+you pity me, don’t tell anyone that you have seen me. For the love of
+God don’t tell anyone. Thank you. I would bow to your feet but I know
+it would make you feel awkward. Thank you, and forgive me for Christ’s
+sake!’
+
+‘Give me your blessing.’
+
+‘God bless you! Forgive me for Christ’s sake!’
+
+He rose, but she would not let him go until she had given him bread and
+butter and rusks. He took it all and went away.
+
+It was dark, and before he had passed the second house he was lost to
+sight. She only knew he was there because the dog at the priest’s house
+was barking.
+
+‘So that is what my dream meant! Pashenka is what I ought to have been
+but failed to be. I lived for men on the pretext of living for God,
+while she lived for God imagining that she lives for men. Yes, one good
+deed--a cup of water given without thought of reward--is worth more
+than any benefit I imagined I was bestowing on people. But after all was
+there not some share of sincere desire to serve God?’ he asked himself,
+and the answer was: ‘Yes, there was, but it was all soiled and overgrown
+by desire for human praise. Yes, there is no God for the man who lives,
+as I did, for human praise. I will now seek Him!’
+
+And he walked from village to village as he had done on his way to
+Pashenka, meeting and parting from other pilgrims, men and women, and
+asking for bread and a night’s rest in Christ’s name. Occasionally some
+angry housewife scolded him, or a drunken peasant reviled him, but for
+the most part he was given food and drink and even something to take
+with him. His noble bearing disposed some people in his favour, while
+others on the contrary seemed pleased at the sight of a gentleman who
+had come to beggary.
+
+But his gentleness prevailed with everyone.
+
+Often, finding a copy of the Gospels in a hut he would read it aloud,
+and when they heard him the people were always touched and surprised, as
+at something new yet familiar.
+
+When he succeeded in helping people, either by advice, or by his
+knowledge of reading and writing, or by settling some quarrel, he did
+not wait to see their gratitude but went away directly afterwards. And
+little by little God began to reveal Himself within him.
+
+Once he was walking along with two old women and a soldier. They were
+stopped by a party consisting of a lady and gentleman in a gig and
+another lady and gentleman on horseback. The husband was on horseback
+with his daughter, while in the gig his wife was driving with a
+Frenchman, evidently a traveller.
+
+The party stopped to let the Frenchman see the pilgrims who, in accord
+with a popular Russian superstition, tramped about from place to place
+instead of working.
+
+They spoke French, thinking that the others would not understand them.
+
+‘Demandez-leur,’ said the Frenchman, ‘s’ils sont bien sur de ce que leur
+pelerinage est agreable a Dieu.’
+
+The question was asked, and one old woman replied:
+
+‘As God takes it. Our feet have reached the holy places, but our hearts
+may not have done so.’
+
+They asked the soldier. He said that he was alone in the world and had
+nowhere else to go.
+
+They asked Kasatsky who he was.
+
+‘A servant of God.’
+
+‘Qu’est-ce qu’il dit? Il ne repond pas.’
+
+‘Il dit qu’il est un serviteur de Dieu. Cela doit etre un fils de
+preetre. Il a de la race. Avez-vous de la petite monnaie?’
+
+The Frenchman found some small change and gave twenty kopeks to each of
+the pilgrims.
+
+‘Mais dites-leur que ce n’est pas pour les cierges que je leur donne,
+mais pour qu’ils se regalent de the. Chay, chay pour vous, mon vieux!’
+he said with a smile. And he patted Kasatsky on the shoulder with his
+gloved hand.
+
+‘May Christ bless you,’ replied Kasatsky without replacing his cap and
+bowing his bald head.
+
+He rejoiced particularly at this meeting, because he had disregarded the
+opinion of men and had done the simplest, easiest thing--humbly accepted
+twenty kopeks and given them to his comrade, a blind beggar. The less
+importance he attached to the opinion of men the more did he feel the
+presence of God within him.
+
+For eight months Kasatsky tramped on in this manner, and in the ninth
+month he was arrested for not having a passport. This happened at a
+night-refuge in a provincial town where he had passed the night with
+some pilgrims. He was taken to the police-station, and when asked who he
+was and where was his passport, he replied that he had no passport and
+that he was a servant of God. He was classed as a tramp, sentenced, and
+sent to live in Siberia.
+
+In Siberia he has settled down as the hired man of a well-to-do peasant,
+in which capacity he works in the kitchen-garden, teaches children, and
+attends to the sick.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Father Sergius, by Leo Tolstoy
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