May 9.
I have no news. The weather is most exquisite, and in the foliage near the
house a nightingale is building and shouting incessantly. About twelve
miles from me there is the village of Pokrovskoe-Meshtcherskoe; the old
manor house there is now the lunatic asylum of the province. The Zemsky
doctors from the whole Moscow province met there on the fourth of May, to
the number of about seventy-five; I was there too. There are a great many
patients but all that is interesting material for alienists and not for
psychologists. One patient, a mystic, preaches that the Holy Trinity has
come upon earth in the form of the metropolitan of Kiev, Ioannikiy. “A
limit of ten years has been given us; eight have passed, only two years are
left. If we do not want Russia to fall into ruins like Sodom, all Russia
must go in a procession with the Cross to Kiev, as Moscow went to Troitsa,
and pray there to the divine martyr in the noble form of the metropolitan
Ioannikiy.” This queer fellow is convinced that the doctors in the asylum
are poisoning him, and that he is being saved by the miraculous
intervention of Christ in the form of the metropolitan. He is continually
praying to the East and singing, and, addressing himself to God, invariably
adds the words, “in the noble form of the metropolitan Ioannikiy.” He has a
lovely expression of face....
From the madhouse I returned late at night in my troika. Two-thirds of the
way I had to drive through the forest in the moonlight, and I had a
wonderful feeling such as I have not had for a long time, as though I had
come back from a tryst. I think that nearness to nature and idleness are
essential elements of happiness; without them it is impossible....