FOOTNOTES

Wonderful Mother Solitude....

A monk of Varlaam had once told him: “Our island is a paradise. You might wander for three days in the woods without meeting any one, either wild beasts or outcasts! You are alone with God!”

Tichon wandered for a long time, further and further from the Monastery, till at last he lost his way. Evening came. He was afraid the boat would go without him.

To discover his whereabouts he climbed a hill. The slope was overgrown with pines. On the summit there wasa round clearing, purple with heather. A black rock stood in the middle, shaped like a pillar.

Tichon was fatigued. He found at the end of the clearing between the pines a cavity in the rock covered with soft moss. He laid down in it, as in a cradle, and fell asleep.

When he awoke again it was night. It was almost as light as in daytime, only more peaceful still. The shores of the island were reflected in the mirror of the lake to the last cross of the pine-tree tips, so that it seemed a lower island, only reversed and joined to the upper and suspended between two skies. On the rock in the middle of the glade an old man was kneeling, perhaps some hermit who lived in the forest. His black profile against the golden dawn remained motionless, as if carved from the stone on which he knelt. His face expressed such pious ecstasy as Tichon had never yet seen in a human countenance. The silence around seemed as if due to this prayer, while the sweetness of the heather rose like the smoke of incense.

Daring neither to breathe nor to move he gazed for a long time at the old man, prayed with him and in the infinite sweetness of that prayer again became drowsy and fell asleep again.

He awoke with the rising sun.

There was no one on the rock. Tichon approached it and noticed in the thick heather a narrow path. He followed it. It led into a valley surrounded by rocks. Further down was a birch grove, in the middle of it a glade overgrown with tall grass. He heard the ripple of a hidden stream.

A hermit stood in the glade. It was he whom Tichon had seen in the night. He was feeding an elk doe and her young one.

Tichon could scarcely believe his eyes. He knew how timid the elks were, especially the female with their young. Had he suddenly surprised and lit upon some eternal mystery of those ancient days when man and beast dwelt together in Paradise?

Having eaten the bread the elk began to lick the old man’s hand. He blessed her with sign of the cross, kissed her shaggy head and said:—

“May the Lord protect thee, mother!”

All at once she looked round backwards in alarm, jumped to one side and rushed with her young one into the wood. Nothing could be heard but the crackling of branches. She had probably scented Tichon.

He approached the old man.

“Give me your blessing, Father!”

The hermit blessed him gently as he had blessed the elk. “The Lord protect you, child! What is your name?”

“Tichon.”

“Tichon! Tichon is a word of peace. Whence come you? This place is but a desert and little known. It’s seldom we see pilgrims.”

“We were going to Serdobal from Ládoga,” answered Tichon, “when our vessel was driven by the storm to this island. I went into the wood yesterday and lost my way.”

“Did you spend the night in the wood?”

“Yes, in the wood.”

“Have you had any food? You must be hungry?”

The piece of bread Tichon had had with him he had eaten the night before. He was hungry now.

“Come to the cell, Tichon, I will share with you what God has sent me.”

Father Sergius (this was the hermit’s name) to judge by the greyness of his black hair was probably about fifty. Yet his walk and all his movements were as brisk and nimble as those of a young man. His face, dry and austere, was nevertheless young. His brown, short-sighted eyes were always screwed up, as though smiling with an irrepressible smile, almost frolicsome, slightly cunning: it looked as if he knew of something amusing which others did not know, and was just going to tell it and make every one laugh. But at the same time in the gaiety there was that air of assured peace Tichon had noticed during the prayer.

They came to an abrupt rocky cliff. Beds planted with vegetables were visible through a dilapidated wattle fence. On three sides the walls of the cliff here formed a natural habitation. The fourth, or front, was of wood. Logs had been placed across the entrance and provided with a window and door. Over the latter an icon of the holy patrons of Varlaam, St. Sergius and St. Herman. Theroof between the cliff walls was of turf, covered with bark and overgrown with moss, surmounted by an octagonal cross. The valley ended in a sandbank which had been deposited on the shore of the lake by the stream flowing into it at this place. Nets stretched on sticks were drying in the sun. Another old monk, clothed in a patched cassock made of coarse stuff, his naked legs up to the knees in water, was mending and tarring an overturned boat. He was a robust, square-shouldered man with a weather-beaten face and white scanty hair. “A real Apostle Peter,” thought Tichon. The air was filled with a smell of pine chips, fish and tar.

“Hilarionoushka,” Father Sergius called out. The old man turned round, left off his work, approached them and silently prostrated himself before Tichon.

“Don’t be alarmed, child,” said Father Sergius with a smile, noticing Tichon’s confusion. “He salutes everybody in this manner, even little children. He is so humble!” Continuing “Will you prepare our supper, Hilarionoushka? We must give this pilgrim of God some food.”

Father Hilarion rose and closely examined Tichon. His “humble” gaze did not lack severity. His look expressed that saying of St. Arsenius, the hermit of Thebaid, “Love all men, and flee from the face of any man.”

The cell was divided into two. The front portion, quite small, resembled the interior of a peasant’s hut; the other at the back had its walls covered with icons, which were cheerful, like Father Sergius himself. There was an icon of the Holy Virgin of the Merciful, one of the Odoriferous Flower, one of the Blessed Womb, one of the Bestower of Life, one of the Unhoped-for Joy. Before this last one, specially beloved by Father Sergius, a lamp was burning. In this part of the cave, dark and narrow as the grave, lay two coffins with stone pillows therein. In these the old men used to sleep.

They sat down to the meal. A board laid on a moss-covered pine trunk served as a table, Father Hilarion brought bread and salt, wooden bowls with sour cabbage, salted cucumbers, mushroom soup, and a dish prepared of sweet-smelling herbs.

Father Sergius and Tichon ate in silence while Father Hilarion recited a Psalm:—

“The eyes of all wait upon thee, O Lord, and thou givest them their meat in due season.”

After the meal Father Hilarion returned to his boat. Father Sergius and Tichon sat down on the stone steps which led to the cell. Before them lay the lake—another sky,—pale blue, smooth and tranquil, reflecting large round white clouds.

“Have you made a vow of pilgrimage, my child?” enquired Father Sergius.

Tichon looked at him and longed to tell him the whole truth.

“I have made a great vow, Father. I am seeking through this world for thetrue Church.”

And he recounted his whole life, beginning with his flight from Antichrist and ending with a last abjuration of the lifeless Orthodox Church of the day.

When he had ended Father Sergius remained for a long time silent, shading his face with both hands. Then he rose and laid his hand on Tichon’s head and said:—

“Thus spoke the Lord Himself: ‘and him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.’ Go then to the Lord Himself, my son, in peace. Fear nothing, you will then be in the Church again, in the true Church! in the true Church!”

Such power breathed through these words that he seemed to be prophesying.

“I implore you, Father,” exclaimed Tichon, falling at his feet, “let me be your disciple! Let me remain here with you in the forest.”

“Remain here, my child, and the Lord bless you.” Father Sergius embraced and kissed him. “You will not disturb our peace,” he added with his habitual cheerful smile.

So Tichon remained in the desert with the two old men.

Father Hilarion fasted very strictly. Sometimes for weeks he would not taste bread. He kept himself alive with pine bark, which he dried, crushed in a mortar and baked with a little flour. He drank from land-locked pools water which was tepid and tasted of rust. In the winter he prayed standing up to his knees in snow. In thesummer he would remain naked in the marshes offering his body for food to the midges. He never washed, following the precept of the Holy Isaac Sirine: “On no account uncover your members. If you feel a desire to scratch cover your hand with your shirt or trousers, and then only scratch. Never touch your bare body or privy members with your hand. If your body suffers, let it do so.”

Father Hilarion sometimes spoke to Tichon about his teacher Trifon, a monk at the Kirilo Beloserski Monastery. This Trifon had been surnamed the Sordid, because of his saintly sordidness, through which, it was said, he had the special gift of prophecy. Water had never wetted his feet nor his head; and yet he had no vermin on him, which caused him distress, “For,” said he, “in the future life I shall be overrun by fleas big as mice.” He repeated day and night the Lord’s prayer; his lips were so used to saying it that they moved now perpetually, by instinct. On his forehead, by dint of resting his fingers thereon in endlessly making signs of the cross, there was a sore. When officiating he often wept so abundantly that he used to swoon. During the eight days which preceded his death he suffered a great deal, but never complained, never moaned nor begged for a drink. When he was asked, “Father, have you much pain?” he answered, “All is well!” One day Father Hilarion had gently crept up to him and heard him murmur: “Oh for a good mouthful of water!” “Are you thirsty?” asked Hilarion. But Trifon answered aloud “No. I do not want to drink.” And by this Hilarion understood that Father Trifon was tormented by a great thirst, but that he had imposed this upon himself as a supreme privation.

“Notwithstanding all these fasts and works and prayers,” said Father Hilarion, “it is almost impossible for a man to be saved. According to a certain saint, out of thirty thousand souls which left the body only two got into Heaven; the rest went to Hell. The devil is very powerful,” Father Hilarion would sometimes sigh in great affliction: he seemed doubtful as to which was the stronger, which would conquer, God or the Devil.

At times it seemed to Tichon that should Father Hilarionpress his thought he would arrive at the same conclusion as the teachers of the Red Death.

Father Sergius differed exceedingly from Father Hilarion. “An extravagant and unreasonable abstinence,” said he, “does more harm than eating sufficient food. Every one ought to decide for himself the amount of food he should eat. It is right to taste all foods, even those which are pleasant, for to the pure all things are pure. Every creature and gift of God is good and none should be despised.”

Salvation, he said, depended not on the accomplishment of extraordinary actions, but on the inward life. Every night he prayed, standing motionless on the rock, and Tichon felt that in that motionlessness there was yet a more powerful impulse than in all the furious dance of the “Khlisti.”

“How should one pray?” Tichon one day asked Father Sergius.

“In thought,” the latter answered, “descend into your own heart and say ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me!’ You can pray while standing, sitting or lying down. Confine your reason in your own heart; and keep back, as much as possible, your breathing. At first you will discover within yourself deep darkness and great hardness; you will feel an obstacle, a kind of triple rampart of brass between God and yourself; but do not get discouraged. Pray all the more perseveringly. At last the brazen barrier will fall, and an ineffable light will fall, too, upon your heart. Words will cease, and your prayer will change into sighs, genuflections, yearnings of the heart and gentle sorrowings. This is the perfect peace. This is the great ecstasy. Man no longer knows whether he is within his body or without it. This is the awe and the vision of God.Therein Man and God are fused, and become one; and the prophet’s words, ‘God unites himself to a god, and will be known by a god,’ is accomplished. That is what mental prayer is, my child.”

Tichon noticed that in speaking to him Father Sergius had the same exalted, almost intoxicated, look the Khlisti had, only their drunkenness was momentary and frantic; his, lasting and peaceable.

Father Hilarion and Father Sergius were so different incharacter that it might have been imagined they could never get on together. Yet they lived in perfect harmony.

“Father Sergius is a chosen vessel,” Hilarion used to say; “God has chosen him for honour and me for dishonour. He is made of white ivory and I of black. To him everything will be forgiven. From me everything will be demanded. He soars like an angel, while I creep like an ant. His salvation is certain, while mine is scarcely probable. But when I feel myself perishing I will seize the hem of the skirt of Father Sergius, and he will lift me up with him, perhaps.”

“Father Hilarion is a solid rock, a pillar of orthodoxy, an impregnable wall,” Father Sergius used to say. “I am but a leaf driven by the wind. But for him I should have fallen long since, and wandered away from all the ancient traditions. He is my bulwark. I am as safe with him as in the bosom of Christ.”

Father Sergius did not repeat to Father Hilarion his conversation with Tichon, but Hilarion guessed everything. He scented a heretic, as the wolf scents the lamb. One day Tichon by chance overheard a conversation between the two hermits.

“Be patient, Hilarionoushka,” besought Sergius. “Be patient with him for Christ’s sake! Live in peace and charity with him.”

“In peace with a heretic!” retorted Hilarion, “a heretic must be fought with unto death. His pernicious spirit must be avoided. Love your own enemies, not God’s. Shun a heretic, never talk to him about the true faith, only spit on him. Truly he is worse than dogs or swine. Let him be accursed, anathema!”

“Be patient, Hilarionoushka,” repeated Father Sergius, but his voice half wavered.

Tichon went away apart. He suddenly realized that it was vain for him to expect help from Father Sergius: this great saint, strong as an angel before the Lord, was as weak as a child before men.

A few days later Tichon was again sitting with Father Sergius on the stone steps which led to the cell. They were alone. Father Hilarion had gone off fishing.

It was a hot white night, darkened by clouds. A stormhad been beating up for some days. On the earth there was absolute quiet, while on the sky heavy silent clouds were sweeping across, like dumb giants hurrying to a battle. From time to time a gentle, distant subterrannean rumbling as of thunder was heard, like the grunting of a great sleeping animal. Pale violet lightning flashed in the sky, as though the night was trembling with apprehension. And at each repeated flash the lake reflected clearly in every detail the island, even to the last cross on the pine-tree tops; all the double island suspended between two skies. And after each flash all relapsed into peace and gloom, only disturbed by the low muttering of the thunder.

Tichon remained silent, while Father Sergius gazing at the darkness sang a litany to Jesus. And the gentle words of the prayer mingled with the gentle rumbling of the thunder.

Jesus, invisible force,Jesus, infinite mercy,Jesus, luminous beauty,Jesus, unspeakable love,Jesus, Son of the living God,Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner!

Jesus, invisible force,

Jesus, infinite mercy,

Jesus, luminous beauty,

Jesus, unspeakable love,

Jesus, Son of the living God,

Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner!

Tichon felt that Father Sergius wanted to say something to him, but could not make up his mind to do it. Darkness had hidden the monk’s face from him, but the swift flashes occasionally revealed on it an unwonted sadness.

“Father!” said Tichon, at last breaking the silence, “I shall soon leave you.”

“Where are you going, my son?”

“I do not know, Father, and it does not really matter. I will go straight before me——”

Father Sergius took him by the hand and Tichon heard a trembling tender whisper:—

“Return, return, my son!”

“Where to?” asked Tichon, and he felt afraid, not knowing why.

“To the Church, to the Church of God,” whispered Father Sergius, more and more tenderly and in a more and more trembling voice.

“Into what Church, Father?”

“Oh temptation, temptation!——” sighed FatherSergius, then continued with an effort, “into the one holy apostolic Church—” but his words sounded sad and forced; as if he had not spoken them of his own free will.

“And where is this Church to be found?” groaned Tichon in great anguish.

“Ah, my poor, poor son, how is it possible to live without a church?” Father Sergius murmured, and his voice expressed sympathy and great anguish. Tichon felt that the hermit had understood him.

In the flashes of the lightning he saw the face of the old man with its trembling lips and helpless smile, its wide open eyes filled with tears, and Tichon understood what it was that filled him with such fear: the fact that this face could be so pitiable.

Tichon knelt and stretched his hands out to Father Sergius with a forlorn hope.

“Save me, help me, protect me!—— Don’t you see for yourself the Church is actually perishing, the faith is perishing, the whole of Christianity is perishing? Already the mystery of lawlessnessisbeing enacted, the abomination of desolationisin the holy places. Antichrist is being born!—— Arise, Father, for a great work! Return to the world, yourself to fight against Antichrist!”

“What are you saying, child? How can I, sinner that I am?” muttered Father Sergius, with terrified humility.

Tichon understood that all supplications would be vain, that Father Sergius had for ever cut himself off from the world, and was dead to it. Tichon remembered the terrible words, “Love all men and flee from the face of any of them.” “And what if it be truly so,” he thought, in great despair, “what if one of the two had to be chosen? Either God without the world, or the world without God?”

He fell with his face to the ground and remained there for a long time motionless, unconscious of the hermit’s caressing and comforting hand.

When he came to himself he was alone. Father Sergius had probably gone into the mountain to pray.

Tichon rose, entered the cell, slipped on his travelling habit, put round his shoulders his wallet, on his neck the icon of St. Sophia, the Wisdom of God, took up his staff, made the sign of the cross and went into the wood to continuehis endless wanderings. He wanted to go away without taking leave of the hermit, for he knew farewells would be too painful for them both.

Yet in order to have a last look at Father Sergius, if only from the distance, he went into the mountain.

There in the middle of the glade stood as usual the old man praying on his rock.

Tichon sought the cavity in the rock, the cradle lined with soft moss where he had spent the first night, lay down in it and for a long time continued to look at the motionless outline of the praying monk, the blinding, dazzling white flashes of lightning and the silent clouds which swept across the sky.

At last he fell into that slumber into which the disciples of our Lord had fallen when the Master was praying in Gethsemane and coming towards them found them asleep, being heavy with sorrow. When he awoke the sun had already risen and Father Sergius had left the stone. Tichon approached it and kissed the place where the old man had stood. Then he left the mountain and took his way along narrow paths through the woods towards the Varlaam Monastery.

After the heavy sleep he felt weak and broken, as after a swoon. He seemed to be sleeping still, wanting and yet unable to awake. He was filled with that deep anguish which used to forbode his fits. He felt dizzy. His thought grew confused. Snatches of distant memories flashed across his mind. Now it was Pastor Glück repeating Newton’s words about the end of the world: “a comet will fall into the sun and this will cause a heat so intense that the whole world will be consumed by fire. Hypotheses non fingo!” Now it was the melancholy song of the “Coffin-liers”—

Ye hollowed oak-trunks, ye will proveFit house for us....

Ye hollowed oak-trunks, ye will prove

Fit house for us....

Now it was the last cry of the victims in the blazing chapel, “The bridegroom cometh at midnight.” Now the mad whirl of the dancers and the piercing shriek:—

“Eva, Evoe! Eva, Evoe!”

Now it was the gentle cry of Ivanoushka, the stainless lamb, crying under the knife of Averian—The quietwords of Spinoza about the intellectual love of God,Amor Dei intellectualis, “Man can love God but God cannot love man”—The oath in the ecclesiastical regulations which ordained obedience to the Autocrat of Russia as to Christ Himself—The austere humility of Father Hilarion: “Love all men and flee from any man,”—The affectionate whisper of Father Sergius, “Return to the Church, the true Church, my child.”

He recovered for a moment, looking round him and saw that he had lost his way.

For a long time he searched for the path among the heather. At last he gave it up and went on at random. The storm had passed over. The clouds had dispersed; the sun was very hot. Tichon was thirsty, yet not a drop of water could he find in this stony desert. Nothing but grey mosses, lichen, stunted pines overgrown with moss as with the cobweb; their thin trunks, often broken, stretched out like the thin arms and legs of sick people, covered with a reddish inflamed and peeling skin. Between them the air trembled with heat and over all was spread an implacable sky like copper heated to white heat. The stillness was intense. Inexpressible was the terror of this dazzling, sparkling, midday stillness.

Tichon again looked round and recognised the place he had often frequented and had only passed this morning. At the very end of the long glade of the forest, a road made probably once by the Swedes, but long since abandoned and overgrown by heather, glittered the lake. This was a spot not far from the cell of Father Sergius. He had probably on his wanderings made a circle and returned to the place whence he had started. He was tired as if he had walked a thousand miles, as if he had been ever walking. He asked himself whither he was going, and why? To the unknown kingdom of Oponskoye or the invisible legendary city of Kitesh, places in whose existence he no longer believed.

He sank in exhaustion on the roots of a dry old pine, which rose solitary above the undergrowth. It was all the same, there was nowhere else he could go. Could he but lie thus with closed eyes, motionless, on, on until his death!

He remembered what he had been told by a teacher of a new religion. Those teachers were called “Deniers,” because they answered every affirmation of the Church with a negative. “There is no church, no clergy, no grace, no mystery. Everything has been taken up into heaven.” “There is nothing, there was nothing, there will be nothing,” thought Tichon. “Neither God nor the universe exist. Everything had perished, everything had come to an end. And even whether there is an end is doubtful. Nothing is sure but the eternity of nothingness.”

He remained for a long time unconscious. Suddenly he recovered, opened his eyes and saw on the west a huge black cloud spotted, as it were, with purulent white spots. Slowly like a gigantic scorpion, with fat protruding belly and hairy legs, it was creeping up almost stealthily towards the sun. It stretched out a leg, and the sun trembled and went out. Rapid grey shadows flitted across the ground and the air became dim and sticky, as with cobwebs. Warm currents of air passed as though exhaled from the mouth of an animal. Tichon was suffocating. His head throbbed, it grew dim before his eyes. Cold sweat, produced by excessive fatigue, bathed his body. He wanted to rise and creep to the cell of Father Sergius, and die in his presence, but strength failed him. He tried to cry out and could not.

Suddenly, far in the distance, quite at the end of the clearing, in the dark cloud something white appeared, and trembled like a white dove bathed in sunshine. As it drew nearer Tichon looked attentively and saw that it was a small, old man, quite white, who was coming towards him with quick movements as though floating in the air.

He came quite near and sat down next to him on the root of the pine. Tichon felt he had seen him before, only he could not remember where and when. The old man had quite an ordinary appearance. He seemed to be one of those pilgrims who wander icon in hand from village to village, town to town, collecting money for the building of a new church.

“Rejoice Tichon, rejoice!” he said with a tender smile; his voice was as gentle as the hum of bees, or the distant sound of a bell.

“Who are you?” asked Tichon.

“I am Ivanoushka. Don’t you recognise me? The Lord has sent me to you. He will soon follow me.”

The old man laid his hand on the head of Tichon, who felt appeased, as a child by the caress of its mother.

“You are weary. Poor child! I have many children like you. You wander about the world poor and abandoned. You suffer cold and famine, sorrow, privation and cruel persecutions. Yet fear not, beloved. Wait a little, I will soon unite you all in the new Church, the Church of Christ who is to Come. There was the ancient Church of Peter the indestructible rock. There will be the new Church of John, the Winged Thunder. The Thunder will strike the rock and out will gush the living waters. The first Testament was the Old, the kingdom of the Father; the second Testament, the New, or the Kingdom of the Son; the third Testament, or the last, the Kingdom of the Spirit, one in three and three in one. And the three make but one. Faithful is the Lord who promises, who is and was and is to be!”

The old man’s countenance suddenly became quite young. It was the face of an immortal. Tichon recognised John, the Son of Thunder.

The old man raised his arm towards the black sky and cried with a loud voice:—

“The Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. He which testifieth these things, saith, Surely I come quickly, Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”

“Even so, come, Lord Jesus,” repeated Tichon; he too raised his hand to the sky with great joy akin to great fear.

A lightning flashed white across the black sky; it seemed the heavens were literally rent in twain.

And Tichon saw the image of a Son of man, his head and his hair were white like wool, as white as the snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And seven thunders uttered their voices:—

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, which was and is and is to come!”

And when the thunders stopped a great silence ensued, and through the stillness sounded a voice more quiet than the stillness:—

“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. I am alive and was dead and shall live from eternity to eternity. Amen.”

“Amen,” repeated John, the Son of Thunder.

“Amen,” repeated Tichon, the first Son of the new Church of the Spirit. He fell upon his face as one dead. He was struck dumb for ever.

He recovered in the cell of Father Sergius. The hermit had been troubled about Tichon the whole day. He had a vague presentiment that some evil would befall him. Again and again he came out of his cell, calling, “Tichon, Tichon,” but no one replied, the echo alone broke the hush which precedes thunderstorms.

When the cloud spread over the sky it grew dark as night in the cell. A lighted lamp shone dimly at the far end where both monks were praying.

Father Hilarion was chanting the psalm:—

“The voice of the Lord is upon the waters: the God of glory thundereth: the Lord is upon many waters.

“The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.”

Suddenly a dazzling white light filled the cell, followed by such a deafening peal of thunder that it almost seemed as if the rock, forming the cell, had been shattered.

The two old men ran out and saw the dry pine, which rose by itself above the underwood on the border of the clearing, was burning like a candle, against the black sky. The lightning had struck it.

Father Sergius began to run, crying in a loud voice, “Tichon! Tichon!” Father Hilarion followed him. They found Tichon lying unconscious at the very foot of the burning tree. They lifted him up, and carried him into the cell, where they laid him, there being no other bed, in one of the coffins. At first they thought he had been killed by the lightning. Father Hilarion was getting ready to say the prayers for the dying, but Father Sergius stoppedhim and began to read the Gospels. When he came to the passage, “Verily, verily I say unto you, the hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live,” Tichon opened his eyes. Father Hilarion almost fell to the ground. He thought Father Sergius had raised the dead.

Tichon soon recovered. He got up and sat down on a bench. He recognised Father Sergius and Father Hilarion, understood all they said to him, but unable to speak himself, answered by signs. At last they saw that he was dumb. They surmised that the sudden shock had robbed him of his speech. His face was radiant. There was something awe-inspiring in this radiance, as though he had really risen from the dead.

They sat down to a meal. Tichon ate and drank. After the meal they prayed. For the first time Father Hilarion prayed with Tichon. He seemed to have forgotten he was a heretic and felt towards him a reverence mingled with awe.

Then they went to bed. The old men as usual in their coffins, Tichon in the front room on the stove.

The storm was raging; the wind howled; rain was pouring down. Waves were beating up on the lake; the thunder rolled and the window was illumined by an almost uninterrupted white light, which mingled with the red light of the lamp, burning in the depths of the cave before the image of the “Unhoped-for Joy.” Yet to Tichon that was no lightning but the white radiant light of the old man who was bending over him, talking to him about the Church of the Sons of Storm, caressing and loving him. He fell asleep to the noise of the storm, as a child to the lullaby of its mother.

He woke early, long before the dawn. Hurriedly dressing himself he took up his staff, went up to Father Sergius, who was yet asleep in his coffin, like Father Hilarion, knelt and kissed his forehead very gently, so as not to wake him. Father Sergius opened his eyes for a moment, raised his head, and murmured “Tichon!” Yet the next instant he let it fall back on the stone, which served him as pillow, and fell into a still deeper sleep.

Tichon went forth out of the cell. The storm hadabated. Again great silence reigned upon earth. Only from the wet branches of the trees drops were falling. The air was filled with the resinous scent of pines. Above their black tips the pallid semicircle of the moon appeared upon a sky flushed with the breaking dawn.

Tichon went on his way light of heart, vigorous and brisk, as if borne along by an over-great joy. And he knew he would walk thus, eternally dumb, till he had traversed all the ways of the world and entered the Church of John. Then would he cry aloud, “Hosanna to the coming Christ!”

In order not to get lost he walked along the high ridges of the hills whence he could see the shore of the lake. In the distance on the horizon lay a storm-cloud, still livid, black and terrible, hiding the rising sun. Suddenly the first rays pierced it like sharp spears and forth gushed shafts of fire, streams of blood. It might have been fancied that in the prophetic heavens the last battle, which would end the world, was being fought already, “Michael and his angels waged war against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,

“And prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven.

“And the great dragon, that old serpent, called the Devil, was cast out of the heavens.” The sun was emerging from behind a cloud, radiant in its force and glory like unto the face of the Coming Lord, and Heaven and earth and all creation joined in the hymn to the rising sun.

“Hosanna! Light will overcome Darkness.”

Tichon ran down from the mountain as if flying to meet the sun. His eternal dumbness was itself hymn to the Lord that was to come!

Hosanna! Christ will overcome the Antichrist!

FINIS

FOOTNOTES[1]Minors are descendants of noble families who had not yet acquired the right of alienation over their immovable property until they had served seven years in the army or ten years in a civil capacity.—Seep. 98, “A History of Russia.” W. R. Morfill.[2]Note of Fräulein Arnheim: The Tsarevitch always thus designates his father in the diary.

[1]Minors are descendants of noble families who had not yet acquired the right of alienation over their immovable property until they had served seven years in the army or ten years in a civil capacity.—Seep. 98, “A History of Russia.” W. R. Morfill.

[2]Note of Fräulein Arnheim: The Tsarevitch always thus designates his father in the diary.

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