The body was accompanied by Turgenieff. Pushkin had more than once said
to his wife, that he desired to be buried in the monastery of the
Assumption at Sviatogorsk, where his mother had recently been interred.
This monastery is situated in the government (province) of Pskoff; and
in the riding of Opotchkoff, at about four versts from the country-house
and hamlet of _Mikhailovskoe_, where Pushkin passed several years of his
poetic life. On the 4th, at nine o'clock in the evening, the corpse
arrived at Pskoff, from whence, conformably to the excellent
arrangements made by the provincial government, it was forwarded on the
same night, and the morning of the 5th, through the town of Ostroff to
the Sviatogorsk monastery, where it arrived as early as seven o'clock in
the evening. The dead man glided to his last abode, past his own
deserted cottage, past the three beloved firs which he had planted not
long before. The body was placed upon the _holy hill_ (_sviataia gora_,
from which the monastery takes its name,) in the cathedral church of the
Assumption, and a requiem was performed in the evening. All night long
workmen were employed in digging a grave beside the spot where his
mother reposes. On the following day, as soon as it was light, at the
conclusion of divine service, the last requiem was chanted, and the
coffin was lowered into the grave, in the presence of Turgenieff and the
peasants of Pushkin's estate, who had come from the village of
Mikhailovskoe to pay the last honour to their kind landlord. Very
strangely to the ears of the bystanders sounded the words of the Bible,
accompanying the handful of earth as it was cast upon Pushkin--"_earth
thou art!_"