"Perhaps she is deceiving me, and I am not the first man with whom she is playing this game."
Then she told me her life story. Her father was a locksmith and her uncle was a machinist's apprentice. Her uncle drank and was cruel. In summer he worked on steamboats, in 'winter on docks. She had nowhere to live, for her father and mother were drowned while there was a fire on a boat, and she became an orphan at thirteen. At seventeen she became the mother of a child by a young nobleman.
Her low voice flowed through my soul, her warm arms were around my neck, and her head rested on my shoulder. I listened to her, but the serpent of doubt gnawed at my heart.
We have forgotten that it was a woman who gave birth to Christ and followed him humbly to Golgotha. We have forgotten that it was woman who was mother of all the saints and of all the heroes of the past. We have forgotten the value of woman in our vile lust and have degraded her for our pleasure and turned her into a household drudge. And that is why she no longer gives birth to saviors of life, but only bare, mutilated children, the fruit of our own weakness.
She told me about the monastery. She was not the only one who was sent in there by force. Suddenly she said to me, caressingly:
"I have a good friend here, a pure girl, from a rich family. And, oh, if you would only know how difficult it is for her to live here. Perhaps you could make her with child also. Then they would drive her forth from here and she would go to her godmother."
"Good God!" I thought, "another one in misery!"
And again my faith in the omniscience of God and the righteousness of his laws was broken into. How could one place man in misery that laws might triumph?
Christa whispered low in my ear: "If only you could help her also!"
Her words killed my doubts and I was ready to kiss her feet, for I understood that only a pure woman, who appreciated the value of motherhood, could speak like that.
I confessed my doubts to her. She pushed me from her and wept low in the darkness, and I dared not comfort her.
"Do you think I had no qualms or shame in calling you?" she said to me reproachfully. "You, who are so strong and handsome? Was it easy for me to beg a caress from a man as if it were alms? Why did I go to you? I saw a man who was stern, whose eyes were serious, who spoke little and had little to do with young nuns. Your temples are gray. Moreover, I do not know why, I believed you to be true and good. But when you spoke to me that first time so unkindly, I wept. 'I was mistaken,' I thought to myself. But later, thank God, I decided to call you."
"Forgive me," I said to her.
She kissed me. "God will forgive you."
Here the old woman knocked on the door and whispered:
"It is time to part. They will ring matins soon." When she led me along the corridors she said:
"Will you give me a ruble?"
I could have struck her.
I lived about five days with Christa. It was impossible to stay longer, for the choir singer and the neophyte began to bother me too much. Besides, I felt the need of being alone to reflect on this incident.
How could they forbid women to bear children if such was their wish, and if children have been and always will be the harbingers of a new life, the bearers of new strength?
There was another reason for my having to fly. Christa showed me her friend. She was a slim young girl, with blonde curly hair and blue eyes and resembled my Olga. Her little face was pure, and she looked out upon the world with profound sadness. I was drawn toward her, and Christa urged me on.
But this was a different matter. Christa was no longer a girl; but Julia was innocent, and her husband should also be innocent.
I had no longer faith in my purity nor did I know what I really was. It did not matter with Christa, but with the other my self-doubt had the power to interfere. Why, I do not know, but it had that power.
I said good-by to Christa. She wept a little and asked me to write to her; said she would want to let me know when she was with child, and I gave her an address. Soon after I wrote her. She answered with a letter of good news, and I wrote her again. She was silent.
About a year and a half later, in Zadona, I received a letter. It had lain a long time in the post-office. She told me that she gave birth to a child, a son; that she called him Matvei; that he was happy and healthy; that she lived with her aunt, and that her uncle was dead. He had drunk himself to death.
"Now," she wrote, "I am my own mistress, and if you will come you will be received with joy."
I had a desire to see my son and my accidental wife, but by this time I had found a true road for myself and I did not go to her.
"I cannot now," I wrote. "I will come later."
Afterward she married a merchant who sold books and engravings, and went to live in Ribinsk.
In Christa I saw for the first time a person who had no fear in her soul and who was ready to fight for herself with all her strength. But at that time I did not appreciate the great value of this trait.
After the incident with Christa I went to work in the city; but life there was distasteful to me. It was narrow and oppressive. I did not like the artisans. They gave their souls nakedly and openly into the power of the masters. Each one seemed to cry out by his action:
"Here, devour my body! Drink my blood! I have no room on this earth for myself!"
It was unpleasant for me to be with them. They drank, they swore at each other over a bagatelle, they sang their sad songs and burned at their labor night and day, and their masters warmed their fat marrows by them.
The bakery was close and dirty; the men slept there like dogs, and vodka and passion were their only pleasures. When I spoke to them about the false arrangement of our life they listened, grew sorrowful and agreed with me. But when I said that we had to seek God, they sighed and my words flowed past them.
At times, for some unknown reason, they made fun of me, and did it with malice.
I do not like cities. The incessant noise and traffic are unbearable to me, and the city people, with their insane business, remained strangers.
There were drinking places enough, and a superabundance of churches. The houses rose like mountains, but to live in them was difficult. The people were many, but each one lived for himself; each one was tied to his work, and his life ran along on one thread, like a dog on a string.
I heard weariness in every sound. Even the chimes rang out without hope, and I felt in my whole soul that things were not created for this. It was not right.
At times I laughed at myself. What kind of a leader is this that has arisen among you? But though I laughed, it was not with joy, for I saw only error in everything, and since I could not understand, it was all the more oppressive to me. I sank into the depths.
At night I remembered my wandering and freer life, especially my nights in the open fields. In the fields the earth is round and clear and dear to your heart. You lie on her as in the palm of a hand, small and simple like a child, clothed in a warm shadow and covered by the starry sky, floating with it past the stars. You feel your tired body filled with a strong perfume of plants and flowers, and it seems to you that you lie in a cradle, and that an unseen hand rocks it and puts you to sleep. The shadows float past and brush the tops of the plants, there is a murmuring and whispering around you, and somewhere a marmot comes out from its hole and whispers low.
Far off on the horizon a dark form arises. Perhaps it is a horse in the night. He stands for a second, then vanishes into the sea of warm darkness. Then something else arises, now in another place, another form. And so the whole night long, the guardians of earthly sleep, the loving shadows of the summer nights, silently come and go in the fields.
You feel that near you, in the whole sphere, all life has drawn back, resting in a light slumber. And your conscience hurts. Yet you continue to crush the plants with the weight of your body. A night-bird flies noiselessly, a piece of earth is broken off and becomes alive, and winged with its desires, seeks to fulfil them. Mice rustle through the grass; sometimes a small, soft thing runs quickly across your hand. You start, and you feel still deeper the abundance of life; that the earth itself is alive underneath you, is near to you and closely related to you. You hear her breathe, and you wonder what is the dream she is having, and what strength is quietly being born in her breast. How will she look upon the sun to-morrow? In what way will she rejoice him, his beautiful and beloved one?
You lie on her breast and your body grows and you drink the warm, perfumed milk of your dear mother, and you see yourself completely and forever the child of the earth. With gratitude you think of her, "Oh, my beloved earth!"
Unseen torrents of wholesome strength pour from the earth and streams of spicy perfumes float in the air. The earth is like a censer to the heavens, and you both the fire and the incense. The stars burn ardently that they may show all their beauty before the rising of the sun, and love and sleep fill and caress you. The bright light of hope passes warmly through your soul. "Somewhere there exists a sublime God."
"Seek and thou shalt find." That is well said, and we should not forget these words, for in truth they are worthy of the human mind.
As soon as spring came to the city I started out to tramp to Siberia, for I had heard that country highly praised, but on my way I was stopped by a man who strengthened my soul for the rest of my life and showed me the true path to God.
I met him on the road between Perm and Verkhotour.
I was lying on the edge of a wood and had built a fire to boil water. It was noon, very hot, and the air was filled with a rosinlike woody smell, oily and sappy. It was difficult to breathe. Even the birds felt hot, and they hid themselves in the depth of the wood and sang there happily while they arranged their lives.
It was quiet on the edge of the wood. It seemed to me that everything would soon melt underneath the sun and that the trees and the rocks and my own stultified body would flow in a many-colored, thick stream upon the earth.
A man was approaching, coming from the Perm side, singing in a loud, trembling voice. I raised my head and listened. I saw a little pilgrim, in a white cassock, with a tea-kettle at his belt and a calf-skin knapsack and a sauce-pan on his back. He walked briskly and nodded and smiled to me from afar.
He was the usual pilgrim. There are many such, and all of them are harmful. Making pilgrimages is a paying business for them. They are boorish and ignorant and are inveterate liars and drunkards, and are not beyond stealing. I disliked them from the bottom of my heart.
He came up to me, took off his cap, shook his head, and his hair danced drolly, while he chattered like a magpie.
"Peace to you, young man. What heat! It is twenty-two degrees hotter than hell."
"Are you long from there?" I asked.
"About six hundred years."
His voice was vibrant and gay, his head small, his forehead high, and his face was covered with fine wrinkles, like a spider-web. His gray beard looked clean and his brown eyes shone with gold, like a young man's.
"He is a merry dog," I thought to myself.
But he continued chattering. "The Urals; there is where you find beauty! The Lord is a great master in decorating the earth. He knows how to arrange the woods and the trees and the mountains well."
He took his tramping gear off, moving quickly and briskly. He saw that my kettle was boiling over and he lifted it off the fire, and asked like an old comrade:
"Shall I pour out my tea, or will we drink yours?" Before I had time to answer, he added: "Well, let's drink mine. I've got good tea. A merchant gave it to me. It's expensive."
I smiled. "You're spry," I said to him.
"That's nothing," he answered. "I am nearly dead from the heat. But wait till I'm rested. Then I will crease out your wrinkles for you."
There was something about him which reminded me of Savelko, and I wanted to joke with him. But in about five minutes I listened to his words open-mouthed. They were strangely familiar; yet unheard-of, and it seemed to me that my own heart, not he, was singing the joy of the sunny days:
"Look! Is this not a holiday? Is it not paradise? The mountains rise toward the sun, rejoicing, and the woods climb to the summits of the hills, and the little blades of grass under your feet strive winged up toward the light of life. All sing psalms of joy, but you, man, you, master of the earth, why do you sit here, morose?"
"What strange bird is that?" I asked myself. But I said to him, trying to draw him out:
"But what if I am filled with unhappy thoughts?" He pointed to the earth. "What is that?"
"The earth."
"No. Look higher."
"You mean the grass?"
"Higher still."
"The shadow?"
"It is the shadow of your body," he said, "and your thoughts are the shadow of our soul. What are you afraid of?"
"I am afraid of nothing."
"You are lying. If you are not afraid, your thoughts would be bold. Unhappiness gives birth to fear, and fear comes from lack of faith. That is the way it is. Drink some tea."
He poured tea into the cups and spoke without interruption:
"It seems to me that I have seen you before. Were you ever in Valaan?"
"I was."
"When? No, it was not there. It seems to me that you were red-headed when I saw you there. You have a striking face. It must have been in Solofki that I saw you."
"I was never in Solofki."
"You were never there? That is too bad. It is an ancient monastery and very beautiful. You ought to go there."
"Then you never saw me before?" I said, and it hurt me to find it so.
"What is the difference?" he cried out. "If I didn't see you before, I see you now; and at that time the other one must have resembled you. Isn't that just the same?"
I laughed. "What do you mean, 'just the same'?"
"Why not?"
"Because I am I, and the other one is the other one."
"Are you better than he?"
"I don't know."
"I don't know either."
I looked at him and was overcome with impatience. I wanted him to speak and speak without end. He poured out his tea and continued talking hastily:
"Yes, the other one was a one-eyed fellow, and it made him wretched. All the lame and the crippled, whether in body or in mind, are the essence of egoism. 'I am crippled,' they say, or 'I am lame; but you people, don't you dare notice it.' He was that kind of a fellow. He said to me,' All people are rascals. When they see that I have one eye they say to me, "you are one-eyed." That is why they are scoundrels.' 'My dear boy,' I said to him, 'you are a scoundrel and a rascal yourself, and perhaps a fool also. You can take your choice. Understand this: The important thing is not how people look at you but how you look at people. That is why, my friend, we become one-eyed or blind—because we look at other people, hunting for their dark spots and put out our own light in their darkness. If you would light up the other's darkness with your light, the world would be pleasant for you. Man sees no good in any one else but himself, that is why the whole world is a wretched wilderness for him.'"
He laughed and looked at me, and I listened to him as one who is lost in the wood at night and hears a far-off bell and is afraid that he made a mistake; that perhaps it is only the cry of an owl.
I understood that he had seen much; that he had overcome much in himself. But it seemed to me that he did not think much of me, that he was joking with me, and that his young eyes made fun of me. Since my experience with Anthony I seldom trust a man's smile any longer.
I asked him who he was.
"I am called Jehudiel. I am a cheerful idiot for others and a good friend to myself."
"Are you from the clergy?"
"I was a priest for some time, but was unfro'cked and was put in a monastery at Suzdal for six years. You want to know why? Because I preached sermons in church which the people, in the simplicity of their souls, interpreted too literally. They were whipped for it and I was convicted. And thus the affair ended. What did I preach? I don't remember now. It was a long time ago, eighteen years, and one can forget in that time. I have had various thoughts but none of them ever came to anything."
He laughed and in each wrinkle of his face the laughter played. He looked about him as if the mountains and the woods were created for him.
When it became cooler we went on farther together, and on the way he asked me about myself.
"Who are you?"
Again, like that time before Anthony, I wished to place my former days before my eyes and to look upon their checkered face. I spoke about my childhood, about Larion and Savelko, and the old man laughed and shouted.
"Eh, what good people! The Lord's fools, what! Those were dear, true flowers of the Russian soil, real God-loving ones."
I did not understand this praise and his joy looked strange to me, but he could hardly walk from laughter. He stopped, threw his head back and shouted and called straight up to heaven, as if he had a friend there with whom he wished to share his joy. I said to him kindly:
"You resemble Savelko somewhat."
"Resemble!" he cried. "It is always good," he said, "to resemble some one. Eh, dear boy, if only the orthodox church had not ruined us ages ago, how different it would be for the living ones on the Russian soil now."
His speech was dark to me.
I told him about Titoff. He seemed to see my father-in-law before his eyes and he expressed himself freely about him.
"Such a rascal! I have seen many such. They are rapacious bugs, but foolish and cowardly."
When he heard my story about Anthony, he became thoughtful and then said:
"So, that was a doubting Thomas. Well, not every Thomas is a genius. Some of them are stupidity itself."
He drove a bumble-bee from him and lectured it. "Go away, go away from here. Such impoliteness, to fly straight into the eyes. The devil take you!"
I listened to his words attentively, missing nothing. It seemed to me that they were children of deep thought. I spoke to him as before a confessor, except that I hesitated in mentioning God. I was afraid, and I regretted something. God's image had become tarnished in my soul at this time, and I wanted to polish it from the dust of the days, and I saw that I cleaned up to the hollow places and my heart shuddered with pain.
The old man nodded his head and encouraged me.
"Never mind; don't be afraid. If you keep silent you only lie to yourself, not to me. Speak. Regret nothing. For if you destroy, you will create something new."
He responded to my words like an echo and I became more and more at ease with him.
Night overtook us.
"Stop," he said, "let us find a place to rest."
We found a shelter underneath a large rock which had been torn away from its mother mountain, and the brush grew upon it, weaving itself into a dark carpet underneath. We lay down in its warm shadow and built a fire and boiled tea. I asked him: "Father, what were you telling me?"
He smiled. "I will tell you everything I know. Only don't seek for assertions in my words. I don't want to teach, but only to relate. Only those people assert who are afraid of the paths of life, for whom the growth of truth is dangerous. They see that truth burns ever more brightly since men have lit its flames more and more in their hearts, they see it and are afraid. They quickly take a little truth, as much as is advantageous to them, and press it together into a small roll and cry to the whole world: 'Here is truth; pure spiritual food, and for all ages unchangeable,' and they sit, the cursed ones, upon the face of truth and strangle it, clutching at its throat, and hinder the growth of its strength in every possible way—they are enemies to us and to all beings. I can say one thing: that is the way it is to-day; but how it will be to-morrow I don't know. For you see, to-day there is no true, lawful master in life. He has not come yet. I do not know how he will arrange things when he comes; what plans he will establish and what suppress, and what temples he will cause to be built. The apostle Paul once said, 'All is for the best,' and many have accepted these words. But they who have confirmed them are without strength, for they have remained in one place. The stone is without strength. Why? Because of its immobility, brother. It is not right to say to man, 'stand here,' but always, 'go farther and farther.'"
For the first time in my life I heard such speech and it sounded strange to me. Here was a man who negated himself while I tried to ratify myself.
"Who is this master?" I asked. "The Lord?"
The old man smiled. "No," he answered. "It is some one nearer us. I do not want to name him. It is better that you yourself divine it. They believe strongest in Christ who meet Him first and have Him in their hearts; and it is by the strength of their faith that they raised Him to the height of Godhood."
He held me as before a closed door, and did not open it, or tell me what was hidden behind it. Impatience and pain grew in me and the words of the old man seemed dark. From time to time sparks flashed from his words, but they only blinded me and did not light the darkness in my soul. The night was moonlight, and black shadows surrounded us. The wood overhead crawled silently up to the mountains, and over the mountain tops, between the branches of the trees, the stars shone like lighted birds. A nearby stream murmured. From time to time an owl called in the wood, and over all the old man's words lived quietly in the night.
A strange old man! He caught a little insect which was crawling on his cheek and he held it in the palm of his hand and asked it:
"Where are you going, fool? Go, run in the grass, little creature."
I liked it, for I, too, loved all insects, and I was interested in the secret life which they led among the grass and the flowers.
I asked several questions of the old man, for I wanted him to speak plainly and more concisely, but I noticed that he evaded my problems. In fact, he jumped over them. I liked his lively face. The red reflection of the fire played lovingly over him, and everything vibrated with the peaceful joy which I so desired.
I envied him. He had lived twice as long as I, or even more, but his soul was clear.
"One man told me," I said to him, "that faith comes from imagination. What do you say?"
"I say," he answered, "that that man did not know what he was talking about, for faith is a great creative feeling. It is born from the overflow of the life-forces in man. Its strength is enormous and it incites the youthful human spirit, driving it to action, for man is bound and narrowed by his activities, and the outside world hinders him in every way. Everything demands that he produce bread and iron, but not the live treasure which is in the lap of his soul. He does not yet understand how to take advantage of this treasure. He is afraid of the uproar in his soul. He creates monstrosities and he fears the reflection of his turbid spirit. He does not understand its being and he bows to the forms of faith, to his own shadows, I might say."
I did not understand him that minute, but for some reason I became deeply enraged, and I thought to myself: "Now, I will not let you go away from this place before you answer the root of the question." I asked him sternly:
"Why do you evade the question of God?"
He looked at me, frowned and said:
"But, my dear boy, I am speaking about Him all the time. Do you not feel it?"
He stood on his knees and the fire played on him. He held my hand and spoke low and impressively:
"Who is God, the worker of miracles? Is He our Father, or is He the child of our soul?"
I remember that I started and looked about me, for I felt uncomfortable. Insanity spoke in the old man.
Dark shadows lay about and I listened, while the murmur of the woods crept around us, drowning the weak crackle of the burning coal and the quiet sound of the river. I, too, wanted to kneel.
Then he spoke loudly, as if in argument:
"Man did not create God in weakness, no; but from an overflow of his strength. And He does not live outside of us, but within us. We have torn Him out of us in our terror at the problems of our soul, and we have placed Him above us with a desire to bind our pride, which is ever restless at this binding. I said that they have turned strength into weakness; they have hindered its growth by force. They have conceived an ideal of perfection too hurriedly, and it has resulted in harm and pain to us. Man is divided into two classes: The first are the eternal creators of God; the second are forever slaves of an overpowering desire to master the former and to reign over the whole earth. They have captured power, and it is they who maintain that God exists outside of man; that He is an enemy of the people, a judge and a master of the earth. They have disfigured the face of the soul of Christ and have falsified His commandments, for the real Christ is against them, and is against the mastering of man by his neighbor."
He spoke, and I felt that a painful tooth gnawed in my soul. I wanted to tear it out, but it hurt, and I wanted to shout, "That is not the right!"
There was a holy light in his face and he seemed intoxicated and transported with joy. I saw that his words were insane, but I loved the old man through the pain and the yearning in my heart, and I listened to his speech passionately.
"But the creators of God are alive and immortal, and within them, secretly and earnestly, they will create God anew. And it is about Him you are dreaming; about a god of beauty and wisdom, of righteousness and love."
His words agitated me and lifted me to my feet and gave me a weapon in my hands. Around me the light shadows shimmered and brushed my face with their wings. I was terrified, the earth swam about me, and I thought to myself:
"Perhaps it is true that the devil tempts man with beautiful words. Perhaps this sly old man is plaiting a noose for me, to catch me in the trap of the greatest sin of all."
"Listen," I said; "who are the creators of God? Who is the master? Whom do you await?"
He laughed caressingly, like a woman, and answered:
"The creators of God are the people. They are the great martyrs—greater than the ones the church has praised. They are God, the creators of miracles—the immortal people! I believe in their soul; I have faith in their strength. They are the one and certain basis of life; they are the father of all gods that have been and that will be."
"A mad old man," I thought to myself.
Up to now it seemed to me that, though slowly, still I was going toward the heights. More than once his words were like a fiery finger that pointed to my soul, and I felt that the burn and the sting were wholesome; but now my heart became suddenly heavy, and I remained standing in the middle of the road, bitterly disappointed. Many fires burned in my breast. I suffered, yet I was incomprehensibly happy. I was bewildered and afraid.
"Is it possible," I asked, "that you are speaking of the peasants?"
He answered loudly and emphatically: "Yes; of the whole working people of the earth, of all its strength—the one and eternal source of the creation of God. Soon the will of the people will awake, and that great force, divided, will unite. Many are already seeking the means by which all the powers of the earth shall be harmonized into one, and from which shall be created the holy and beautiful all-embracing God of the earth."
He spoke loudly, as if not only I, but the mountains and the woods and all that lived, watching in the night, should hear him. He spoke and quivered, like a bird which is ready to fly, and it seemed to me that all this was a dream and that this dream lowered me.
I recalled to my mind the image of my God and placed before His face the dark rows of enslaved, confused people. Did they create God? I remembered their petty meanness, their cowardly avarice, their bodies stooped with degradation and toil, their eyes which were dulled with sorrow, their spiritual stammering and their dumb thoughts, and all their superstitions, and could they, these insects, create a new God?
Wrath and bitter laughter disturbed my heart. I felt that the old man had stolen something from me, and I said to him: "Ah, father, you have done mischief in my soul, like a goat in a garden, and this is all the result of your words. Do you dare to talk with every one like that? It is a great sin in my eyes. You should have pity for people. They seek comfort, and you go about sowing doubt."
He smiled. "I think you are on the same road as I am."
His smile was offensive to me. "It's a lie!" I answered. "I will never place man side by side with God."
"You don't have to," he said. "Do not place him there, for in that way you will put a master over yourself. I am not speaking to you about a man, but of the whole strength of the spirit of the earth—about the people."
I became enraged. This "God, creator," in rags, filthy, always drunk, who was beaten and flogged, became disgusting to me.
"Keep still," I said. "You are a crazy old blasphemer. Who are the people? They are dirty in body and in thoughts; beggars in mind and in food, and ready to sell their souls for a kopeck."
Here something strange happened. He jumped to his feet and shouted, "Shut up!" He waved his arms, stamped his feet, and he looked as though he were ready to beat me. When he had been in a prophetic mood I stood far from him, and he seemed funny, but now the human came nearer to me.
"Shut up!" he cried. "You granary mouse! You have rotten noble's blood flowing through you, that is plain. You, who were abandoned to the people! Do you know about whom you are speaking? You are all alike. You proud, lazy land robbers! You don't know against whom you are barking, you scrofulous dogs! You have plundered and robbed the people; you have sat on their backs, and you swear at them that they don't run fast enough!"
He jumped around me and his shadow fell on me, whipping my face coldly, and I moved away from him, surprised and fearful lest he strike me. I was twice as big as he was, and ten times as strong, but somehow I had no desire to stop the man. It was evident that he forgot that night was around us, and that we were in the wilderness, and that if I misunderstood him he would lie there alone in that place, without help. I remembered how that frightened, green Archbishop swore at me that time, and crazy Misha and other people of the old faith; but here was a man who was insulting me, and his wrath burned with a different fire. The others were stronger than I, but in their words I heard fear. This man was weak, but fearless. And he shouted at me, like a child or like a mother. His wrath was strangely loving, like the first storm in spring. I was confused and did not understand the boldness of the old man, and though his anger was amusing, still it hurt me that I so enraged him. He scolded insultingly, and I did not like to be called "abandoned," but his wrath pleased me, for I understood that here was a man angered, believing truly in his own right, and such wrath does the soul good. There is much love in it, and sweet food for the heart.
I lay at his feet and he shouted at me from above. "What do you know about the people, you blind fool? Do you know their history? Read their life, and you will find them higher than all the saints, this father of ours, this greatest martyr of all—the People. Then, to your great fortune, you will understand who it is that is before you, and the strength that grows around you, you homeless vagabond, in a strange land! Do you know what Russia is? Do you know what Greece is, which is called Hellas? Do you know Rome? Do you know by whose will and by whose spirit all governments were built? Do you know on whose bones the temples were erected? Do you know with whose tongues the wise men speak? All that is on the earth and all that is in your mind was made by the People, and the nobility have only polished up that which they made."
I remained silent. I liked to see a man who was not afraid to defend his right. He sat down, damp and red in the face, and breathed heavily. I saw that there were tears in his eyes, and this surprised me, for whenever my former teachers were offended with me they did not shed tears. He cried out:
"Listen, and I will tell you about the Russian people."
"You had better rest," I said.
"Keep still," he said to me, threatening me with his hand. "Keep still, or I will kill you."
I could hardly contain myself, and laughed outright.
"Dear grandfather," I said, "you are an unspeakably marvelous old man. Pardon me, in Christ's name, if I have offended you."
"You fool! How could you offend me? But you have spoken badly about the great people, you unhappy soul. It is advantageous for the nobles to slander the people. They have to stifle their conscience, for they are strangers on this earth. But you—who are you?"
It was good to look at him when he talked thus. He became dignified and even stern. His voice grew calmer and deeper, and he spoke evenly and in cadences, as if he were reading from the Apostles. His face was turned upward, his eyes were round and big, and he was on his knees, but he seemed taller to me than when he stood. At first I listened to his words with an incredulous smile, but soon I remembered the Russian history which Anthony gave me, and it again opened before my eyes. He recited the marvelous fairy tale to me, and I compared this fairy tale with the book. The words tallied, but the sense was different. He came to the decline of the Kiev government.
"Have you heard it?"
"Yes, thank you."
"Well, then, know that those heroes never existed; that it was the people themselves who incarnated their exploits into characters by which to remember their great labor in the building up of the Russian soil." Then he continued talking about the Sudzalsky land.
I remember that somewhere behind the mountains the sun rose and the night hid itself in the woods and woke the birds. Rosy masses of clouds hung over us and we lay on the dewy grass of the rock, one resuscitating the past, the other astonished, counting up the immeasurable labors of men and hardly believing the tale about the conquest of the hostile woody soil.
The old man seemed to see everything. He heard the hammering of heavy axes in strong hands; he saw the people drain the swamps and build up cities and monasteries; he saw them go ever farther along the cold rivers, into the depths of the thick forests; he saw them conquer the savage earth; he saw them render it beautiful. The princes, the lords of the people, cut and minced this earth into little pieces and fought against each other with the fists of the people whom they afterward robbed. Then from the steppes came the Tartars, but there was no defender of the people's liberty to arise from among the princes. There was no honor, no strength, no mind. They sold the people and made merchandise of them with the Khans as if they were cattle, and they bought princely power with the blood of the peasants, to have power over these same peasants. Later, when they had taught the Tartars how to govern, they sent each other to the Khans for slaughter.
The night around us was friendly and wise like an elder sister. The voice of the old man gave out from weariness. The sun saw him, but he went still farther into the past, and showed me the truth with flaming words.
"Do you see," he asked me, "what the people have done and what they have suffered up to the very day, when you abused them with your stupid words? I have told you mostly of that which they did through another's will, but after I am rested I will tell you on what their souls have lived and how they have sought God."
He coiled up on the rock and fell asleep like a little child. I could not sleep, but sat there as if surrounded by burning coals.
It was already morning. The sun was high and the birds were singing, full-throated. The wood bathed in the dew and rustled, meeting the day friendly and green. People walked along the road; ordinary, every-day people. They walked with bowed heads and I could not see anything new in them. They had not grown in any way in my eyes. My instructor slept and snored and I sat next to him lost in thought. Men passed by one after the other, looked askance at us and did not even bow their heads to my salute.
"Is it possible," I asked myself, "that these are the offspring of those righteous ones, those builders of the earth about whom I have just heard?"
The dream and the reality became confused in my head, yet I understood that this meeting meant very much for me. The old man's words about God, the Son of the spirit of the people, disturbed me, and I could not reconcile myself to them, not knowing any other spirit except that one which was living in me. I racked my mind for all the peasants and the people I had known and tried to remember their words. They had many sayings, but their thoughts were poor. On the other hand I saw the dark exile of life, the bitter toil for bread, the winters of famine, the everlasting sadness of empty days, all the degradation which man has suffered and every outrage against his soul. Where could God be in this life? Where was there room for Him?
The old man slept. I wanted to wake him and shout "Speak!"
Soon he awoke, blinked his eyes and smiled.
"Ah," he said, "the sun is already near noon. It is time for me to go."
"Where will you go in such heat?" I asked. "We have bread, tea and sugar. Besides, I can't let you go. You must give me what you have promised."
Then he became thoughtful and said:
"Matvei, you should drop your wandering. It is too late, or perhaps too early for you. You have to learn. It is time for you to learn."
"Is it not too late?"
"Look at me," he answered. "I am fifty-three years old, and up to this day I learn from some little children."
"Whose children?" I asked.
"They are some children I know. You should live with them a year or two. You ought to go to the factory. It is not very far from here, about a hundred versts, where I have good friends."
"First tell me what you wanted to say, and then I shall think where I am to go."
We walked together on the path alongside the road and again I heard his clear voice and his strange words.
"Christ was the first true people's God, born from the soul of the people like the phoenix from the flames."
He trembled all over and waved his hands before his face as if he wanted to catch new words from the air, and continued shouting:
"For a long time the people carried various men on their shoulders. Without question they gave them of their labor and their freedom, placed them above themselves and waited humbly for them to see from their height the paths of righteousness on earth. But these chosen ones of the people, when they reached the height, became drunk and degraded by their power and remained above, forgetting who placed them there, and became a heavy burden on the earth instead of a joy. When the people saw that the children who were fed by their blood were their enemies, they lost their faith in them and abandoned these powerful ones, who had to fall and the power and the strength of their government decayed. The people understood that the law was not that one from a family should be raised and after having fed him on their liberty that they should live by his mind, but that the true law was that all should be raised to one height and that each one should look upon the paths of life with his own eyes; and the day when the consciousness of the inevitable equality of man arose in the people, that day was the birth of Christ.
"Many people have tried to realize their dreams of justice by creating one live being, a common lord over all, and more than once various people, urged on by this common thought, have tried to bind it with strong words that it might live forever. And when all these thoughts were mustered in one, a living God arose for them, the beloved child of the people, Jesus Christ."
That which he said about Christ, the Son of God, was near to me; but about the people giving birth to Christ I could not understand. I told him that, and he answered:
"If you wish to know, you will understand. If you wish to believe, you will know."
We tramped together for three days, going slowly; he, teaching me all the time and explaining the past to me. He recited the whole history of the people from the beginning up to the present day; he told me of the troubled times when the churches persecuted the jesters and of the merry men who awakened the people's memory with their jokes and sowed truth by them.
"Do you understand," he asked me, "who this Savelko of yours was?"
"Yes, I understand."
"Remember that small things come from large and that the large is made up from small pieces."
We came to Stephan Verkhatour. The old man said to me:
"We must part here. My road lies with you no longer."
I did not want to go away from him, but I understood that it was necessary. My thoughts troubled me. I was agitated to the very depths and my soul was furrowed as with a plow.
"Why have you become thoughtful?" he asked me. "Go to the factory. Work there and mix with my friends. It will be no loss to you, I assure you. The people are intelligent. I learned from them, and you see I am no fool."
He wrote a little note and gave it to me.
"Go there. I wish you no harm, believe me. The people are new-born and alive. Don't you believe me?"
"Our small eyes can see much," I answered, "but is that when they see the truth?"
"Look with all your might," he cried, "with all your heart, with all your soul! Did I tell you to believe? I told you to learn and know."
We kissed and he went away. He walked lightly, like a youth of twenty, and as if some happiness awaited him. I became sad when I looked back at this bird flying away from me, Heaven knows where, to sing his song in new parts. My head was heavy; my thoughts raced like Little Russians at market in the early morning, sleepy, awkward, slow, and in no way able to make order. Everything became strangely confused. To my thoughts there was another's conclusion and to this other's conclusion my own beginning. It hurt me, yet it was funny, and I seemed all changed within.
When I went away from Verkhotour, I asked where the road led to, and they answered to the Isetsky factory. That was where the old man had wanted me to go, but I took a side road; I did not wish to go there. I wanted to go to the villages and look around me.
The people were gloomy and haughty and seemed to wish to speak with no one. They looked about cautiously, as if they were afraid some one would rob them.
"Here are the God-creators," I said to myself, looking at some pock-marked peasants. "I will ask them where this road leads to."
"To the Isetsky factory."
"What is it? Do all roads lead to that factory?" I asked myself, and wandered through villages and woods, crawling like a beetle through the grass, and seeing the factory from a distance. It smoked, but it did not lure me. I felt as if I had lost half of myself and I did not understand what I wanted. I was unhappy. A gray, idle pain filled my soul and evil laughter and a great desire to insult everybody and myself arose in me. Suddenly, without noticing it myself, I made up my mind: "I'll enter the factory, damn it!"
I came into a filthy hell. In a hollow between mountains which were covered with stumps of felled trees, buildings arose on the earth, from the roofs of which tongues of flame shot forth. Tall chimney-stacks rose toward the sky, from which smoke and steam poured out, staining the earth with soot. There was a deafening noise of hammers, and a roar and a wild squeaking and creaking of saws shot through the smoke-laden air. Everywhere there was iron, wood, coal, smoke, steam, stench; and in this pit, filled with every kind of miscellaneous thing, men worked black as coal.
"Thank you, old man," I said to myself, "you have sent me to a nice place."
It was the first time I had seen a factory near-to. I was deafened by the extraordinary noise, and I breathed with difficulty. I went through the streets seeking for the locksmith, Peter Jagikh. Everyone I asked snarled back at me as if they had all quarreled with each other in the morning and had not yet succeeded in calming themselves. "God-creators!" I cried out to myself.
I came upon a man who looked like a bear; dirty from head to foot. His oily clothes shone with dirt in the sun, and I asked him if he knew the locksmith, Peter Jagikh.
"Who?"
"Peter Jagikh."
"Why?"
"I want to see him."
"Well, I am he."
"How do you do?"
"Well, how do you do? What do you want?"
"I have a note to you."
The man was taller than I, with a large beard, broad shoulders, and heavily set. His face was sooty and his small, gray eyes could hardly be seen from under his thick eyebrows. His cap was set far back on his head and his hair was cut short. He looked like a peasant, yet not entirely so. Evidently he read with great difficulty. His face was all wrinkled and his mustache trembled. Suddenly his face cleared, his white teeth shone, he opened his good, childish eyes and the skin in his checks smoothed out.
"Ah," he cried, "he is alive, God's bird! That's good. Go, my dear, to the end of this street and turn to the left toward the wood. At the foot of the mountain there is a house with green shutters. Ask for the teacher. He is called Mikhail. He is my nephew. Show him the note. I will come soon."
He spoke like a soldier, giving his signal on a bugle. He made the speech, waved his hand and went away.
"He is kind and funny," I thought to myself. At the house an angular boy in a cotton shirt and an apron, met me. His sleeves were rolled up; his hands were white and thin. He read through the note and asked me:
"Is Father Juna well?"
"Yes, thank God."
"Did he tell you when he will come to see us?"
"He didn't say. Is he called Juna?"
The young man looked at me suspiciously and began to read the note again.
"How then?" he asked me.
"He said his name was Jehudiel."
The young fellow smiled. "That is a nickname which I gave him."
"Oh, the devil," I thought.
His hair was straight and long like a deacons', his face pale. His eyes were a watery blue and he looked as if he did not spring from this dirty spot.
He walked up and down the room and measured me with his eyes as if I were a piece of cloth; and I did not like it.
"Have you known Juna a long time?" he asked me.
"Four days."
"Four days," he repeated. "That's good."
"Why good?" I asked.
"Just so," he answered, shrugging his shoulders. "Why do you wear an apron?"
"I am binding books," he said. "Soon my uncle will return and we will have supper. Perhaps you would like to wash yourself after your trip?"
I felt like teasing him. He was much too serious for his age.
"Do people wash here?" I asked.
He frowned. "How then?"
"I have not seen any washed ones yet," I answered.
He half closed his eyes, looked at me and answered calmly:
"People do not idle here. They work; and there is no time to wash often."
I saw that I had struck the wrong man. I wanted to answer, but he turned on his heel and went away. I felt foolish, sat down and looked about me.
The room was large and clean. In the corner there was a table set for supper, and on the walls there were shelves with books. The books were mostly secular, but there was also a Bible, the gospels and an old Slavic psalm-book.
I went out into the court and washed myself. The uncle entered, his cap still farther back on his head, and he swung his arms and held his head forward like a bull.
"Well, I will wash myself," he said. "Pump some water for me."
His voice was like that of a trumpet and both his hands together were as large as a big soup tureen. When he had washed some of the soot off his face, I saw that he had high cheek-bones and a skin like copper.
We sat down to supper. They ate, talked about their own affairs and did not ask me who I was or why I came. Still they offered me things hospitably and looked at me in a friendly way. There was something very solid about them, as if the earth was firm under their feet. I felt like shaking it for them—why were they better than I?
"Are you Old Believers?" I asked.
"We?" the uncle replied. "No."
"Then you are orthodox?"
The nephew frowned and the uncle shrugged his shoulders and laughed.
"Perhaps we have to show him our passports, Mikhail."
I understood that I had acted foolishly, but I did not want to stop.
"I did not want to see your passports," I said. "I wanted to see your thoughts."
"Thoughts? Right away, Your Excellency. Thoughts, forward!" And he laughed like a stallion.
Mikhail, who was making the tea, said calmly:
"I know why you came. You are not the first one whom Juna has sent us. He knows people and never sends empty men."
The uncle felt my forehead with his palm and laughed:
"Please look more gay. Don't show your trumps right away, or you may lose."
They evidently considered themselves men rich in soul and that I was a beggar compared to them. They did not hurry to quench my hungry heart with their wisdom. I became angry and wanted to quarrel, but I could find no reason; and that angered me still more. I asked at random:
"What do you mean by an empty man?"
The uncle answered: "A man who can fill up with anything you wish."
Suddenly Mikhail went up quietly to me and said, in a soft voice:
"You believe in God?"
"Yes."
But I became confused at my answer. It was not true. Did I really believe?
Mikhail asked again:
"And you respect people?"
"No," I answered.
"Don't you see," he said, "that they are created in the image of God?"
The uncle, the devil take him, smiled like a copper basin in the sun.
"With such people," I thought to myself, "one must argue sincerely and if I should fall asunder in little pieces, they will gather me up again."
"When I look upon people," I said, "I doubt the power of God."
Again it was not right. I doubted God before I ever saw the people.
Mikhail looked at me thoughtfully, with wise eyes, and the uncle walked heavily up and down the room, stroking his beard, and grunting low to himself.
It made me uneasy that I had to lower myself to lie before them. I saw my soul with remarkable clearness and my thoughts raced through me stupidly and alarmed like a frightened bee-hive. I began to drive them out of me, irritated. I wished to empty myself.
I spoke for a long time without connecting my words. I spoke at random on purpose. If they were such wise people, let them gather the sense themselves. I became tired and asked passionately: "How can you heal my sick soul?"
Mikhail answered low, without looking at me:
"I do not consider you sick."
The uncle laughed again, and it pealed out as if a demon had come in through the roof.
"To be sick," Mikhail continued, "is when a man is not conscious of himself, but knows only his pain and lives in it. But you, it is plain, have not lost yourself. You are seeking happiness in life, and only a healthy man does that."
"But why is there such pain in my soul then?" "Because you like it," he answered.
I gnashed my teeth. His calm was unbearable to me.
"Do you know for sure," I asked, "that I like it?"
He looked me straight in the eyes and drove his nails slowly into my breast.
"As an honest man, you ought to recognize," he said, "that your pain is necessary to your soul. It places you above others and you esteem it as something which separates you from others. Is it not so?"
His Lenten face was dry and drawn, his eyes darkened, he stroked his cheek with his hand, while he cleaned me hard, as one cleans copper with sand.
"You are evidently afraid to mingle with people for you unconsciously think to yourself, 'Though they are ulcers, they are my own, and no one has ulcers but I.'"
I wanted to contradict him, but found no words. He was younger than I, and weaker, and I did not believe that of the two I was the more stupid.
The uncle laughed like a priest in a steam-bath.
"But this does not separate you from people. You are mistaken," Mikhail went on. "Every one thinks the same. That is why life is weak and monstrous. Each one tries to go away from life and dig his own hole in the ground and look out upon the earth from it alone. From a hole, life seems low and futile, and it suits the isolated man to see life so. I say it about those people who for some reason or other cannot sit on the backs of their neighbors to drive them where they could eat tastier food."
His speech angered and offended me.
"This vile life," he said, "unworthy of human reason, began on that day when the first individual tore himself away from the miraculous strength of the people, from the masses, from his mother, and frightened by his isolation and his weakness, pitied himself and grew to be a futile and evil master of petty desires, a mass which called himself 'I.' It is this same 415 which is the worst enemy of man. In its business of defending itself and asserting itself on this earth, it has uselessly killed the strength of the soul, and its capacity of creating spiritual welfare."
It seemed to me that his speech was familiar to me and that the words were those which I had waited for.
"Poor in soul, the eye is powerless to create. It is deaf, blind and dumb in life, and its goal is only self-defense, peace and comfort. It creates the new and purely human only under compulsion, after innumerable urgings from without and with great difficulty. It not only does not value its brother 'I,' but hates him and persecutes him. It is hostile because, remembering that it was born from the whole from which it was broken off, the 'I' tries to unite the broken pieces and to create anew a great unit."
I listened, surprised. All this was clear to me; not only clear, but even near and true. It seemed to me that I had long ago thought the same, only without words. And now I had found words, and the thoughts arranged themselves before me like steps on a ladder, which led ever upward.
I remembered Juna's speeches and they lived before my eyes, clear and beautiful. But at the same time I was restless and uncomfortable, as if I were standing on a block of ice in a river in the spring.
The uncle had quietly left us alone. There was no fire in the room, the night was moonlit, and in my soul, too, there was a moonlight mist.
At midnight Mikhail stopped speaking and we went to sleep in a shed in the courtyard, where we lay in the hay. He soon fell asleep, but I went out to the gate, and sat down on some logs and gazed about me.
The moon and two large stars strode carefully across the heavens. Over the mountains against the blue sky the jagged wall of the wood could be plainly seen. On the mountains was the hewn forest, and on the earth black pits. Below, the factory greedily showed its red teeth. It hummed and smoked and tongues of fire rose over the roofs and shot upward, but could not tear themselves away and were drowned in the smoke. The air smelled burnt. It was difficult to breathe.
I thought of the bitter loneliness of man. Mikhail had spoken well. He believed his own words and I saw truth in them. But why did they leave me cold? My soul did not harmonize with the soul of this man. It stood apart, as in a wilderness.
Soon I noticed that I was thinking the thoughts of Juna and Mikhail and that their thoughts lived powerfully within me, though still on the surface, for at bottom I was still hostile and suspicious of them.
"Where am I?" I asked. "And what am I?"
I spun around in my perplexity like a top, and always faster, so that the cloud storm roared in my ears.
The whistle blew in the factory. At first it was thin and plaintive, then it became louder and masterful.
The morning looked out sleepily from the mountain and the night hurried below, taking the thin veil off the trees quietly, folding it up and hiding it in the hollows and the pits. The robbed earth stood out clear to the eye. Everything was eaten out and plundered, as if some bold giant had played in this hollow, tearing out strips of wood and giving severe wounds to the earth.
The factory was sunk in this basin, dirty, oily, covered with smoke and puffing. Dark people dragged themselves to it from all sides and it swallowed them up, one by one. "Creators of God," I thought to myself. "What have they created?"
The uncle came out into the court disheveled, stretching himself, yawning, cracking his joints, and smiling at me.
"Ah," he cried, "you are up!" Then he asked me kindly, "Or perhaps you did not go to bed at all? Well, it does not matter. You will sleep during the day. Come, let us drink tea."
At tea he said to me: "There were nights when I, too, did not sleep, brother. There was a time when I could have beaten every one I met. Even before I was a soldier my soul was troubled, but in the service they made me deaf. An officer gave me a blow on the ear. My right ear is deaf. There was onefeldscherwho helped me, thanks to—"
It was evident he wanted to say God, but he stopped, stroked his beard and smiled. He seemed to me childish and there was something childish in his eyes. They were so simple and credulous.
"He was a very good man. He looked at me. 'What is the matter?' he asked. 'Is this human life?' I answered. 'True,' he said, 'everything ought to be changed. Peter Vasilief, let me teach you political economy.' And he began. At first I did not understand anything. But suddenly I understood the daily and eternal baseness in which we lived. Then I nearly went out of my head with joy. 'Oh, you villains!' I cried. That is the way science always suddenly unfolds itself. At first you only hear new words and then there comes a moment when everything unites and comes out into the light and that moment is the true birth of man. Marvelous!"
His face became happy and his eyes smiled softly. He nodded his shorn head and said:
"That is going to happen to you, too."
It was pleasant to look at him. The child was strong in him and I envied him.
"Thirty-two years of my life I spent like a horse. It was disgraceful. Well, I will make up for it as best I can. Only my mind is not very quick. The mind is like the hands. It needs exercise. My hands are cleverer than my head."
I looked at him and thought, how is it that these people are not afraid to speak about everything?
"But for that matter," he continued, "Mishka has brains enough for two. He has read very much. You wait till he forgets himself. The factory priest called him 'an arch heretic.' Too bad his head is not clear about God. That comes from his mother. My sister was a very distinguished woman in religious matters. From Orthodox she went over to the Old Believers, but the Old Believers did not admit her."
As he spoke he got ready to go to work. He walked from one corner of the room to the other. Everything about him shook. The chairs fell and the floor bent under him as he walked. He was funny, yet pleasant to look upon.
"What kind of people are they?" I thought. Then I said aloud: "Can I remain with you three days?"
"Go ahead," he said; "three months if you wish. You are a strange fellow. You are not in our way, thank God."
Then he scratched his head and smiled apologetically.
"The word God always comes to my mouth. It is from habit."
Again the factory whistle blew, and the uncle went away. I went to sleep in the shed. Mikhail lay there. He was frowning sternly, and his hands were on his breast, his face was flushed. He was beardless and without mustache, his cheekbones were high; in fact, he was all bones.
"What kind of people are they?"
And with this thought I fell asleep.
I awoke. There was noise, whistling, hubbub, as if at a meeting of all the devils. I looked out into the court. It was full of youngsters and Mikhail was among them, in a white shirt, looking like a sailboat among small canoes. He stood laughing with his head on one side, his mouth wide open and his eyes twinkling. He in no way resembled the serious Lenten young man of the night before.
The children were dressed in blue, red and pink. They shone in the sun as they jumped and shouted. Something drew me toward them and I crawled out from the shed. One youngster noticed me and cried out:
"Look, fellows, here is a mo-onk!" Like fire that had been set to a heap of dry shavings, so the children jumped, wheeled about, looked at me and began to dance up and down.
"Wha-at a red one!"
"And such a hairy one, too!"
"He'll bite you!"
"Oh, don't tease him; he's strong."
"He's not a monk. He's a bell-tower."
"Mikhail Ivanich, who is he?"
The teacher became somewhat embarrassed, and they, the little devils, laughed. I did not know why I struck them as funny, but I caught the spirit from them, smiled and cried to them:
"Stop it, you mice!"
The sun was shining, a gay noise filled the air and everything about us fluttered and floated with it, blinding me with its light and wrapping me in its warmth.
Mikhail greeted me and shook my hand.
"We are going to the wood," he said. "Do you want to come along?"
It was a pleasant sight. There was one fat youngster who snatched my cap, put it on his head and flew about the courtyard like a butterfly.
I went to the wood with this band of madcaps, and the day remains engraven on my memory.
The children poured out into the street and fled to the mountain lightly, like feathers in the wind. I walked alongside of their shepherd, and it seemed to me that I had never seen such charming children before.
Mikhail and I walked behind them. He gave them orders, crying out to them; but the children refused to listen to him. They jostled, fought and bombarded one another with pine cones, and quarreled. When they were tired they surrounded us, crawled about our feet like beetles, pulled at their teacher's hands, asked him now about the grass, now about the flowers, and he answered each one in a friendly way, as if to an equal. He rose above them like a white sail.
The children were all alert, but some of them were more serious and thoughtful than their age warranted. Silent, they kept near their teacher.
Later the children again spread themselves out and Mikhail said to me, low:
"Are they created only for toil and drunkenness? Each one is a receptacle of a living soul. Each one could hasten the development of the thought which would free us from the bondage of confusion, yet they must travel along the same dark and narrow channel through which the days of their fathers flowed turbidly. They are ordered to work and forbidden to think. Many of them, perhaps all, pledge allegiance to dead strength and serve it. Here lies the source of earth's misery. There is no freedom for the growth of the human soul."
He talked while several young boys walked alongside of him and listened to his words. Their attentiveness was amusing. What could these young sprouts of life understand by his words? I remembered my own teacher. He beat the children on the head with a ruler and would come to school drunk.
"Life is filled with fear," Mikhail said, "and mutual hatred eats out the soul of man. A hideous life. But only give the children time to develop freely; do not transform them into beasts of burden, and free and alert, they will light up life both from within and without with the exquisite young fire of their proud souls and the great beauty of their eternal activity."
Their blond heads, their blue eyes, their red cheeks were around us like live flowers among the dark green pines. The laughter and clear voices of these gay birds rang out—these harbingers of new life. And all this vital beauty would be trampled down by greed! What sense was there in that? A delicate child is born rejoicing. He grows into a beautiful child, and then, as a grown-up man, he swears vulgarly and groans bitterly, beats his wife and drowns his sorrow in vodka. And as an answer to my thought, Mikhail said:
"They go on destroying the people—the one and true temple of the living God. And the destroyers themselves sinking in the chaos of the ruins, see their wicked work and cry out, 'Horrible!' They rush hither and thither and whine, 'Where is God?' while they themselves have killed Him."
I remembered Juna's words about the breaking up of the Russian people, and my thoughts followed Mikhail's words lightly and pleasantly. But I could not understand why he spoke low and without anger, as if this whole oppressive life was a thing of the past for him.
The earth breathed warm and friendly, with the intoxicating perfumes of the sap and the flowers. The birds pierced the air with their twitter, the children played about and conquered the stillness of the wood, and it became more and more clear to me that before this day I had not understood their strength, nor had I ever seen their beauty. It was good to see Mikhail among them, with his calm smile on his face. I said, smiling: