IV

Father Sergius lived as a recluse for another seven years.

At first he accepted much of what people brought him--tea, sugar, white

bread, milk, clothing, and fire-wood. But as time went on he led a more

and more austere life, refusing everything superfluous, and finally he

accepted nothing but rye-bread once a week. Everything else that was

brought to him he gave to the poor who came to him. He spent his entire

time in his cell, in prayer or in conversation with callers, who became

more and more numerous as time went on. Only three times a year did

he go out to church, and when necessary he went out to fetch water and

wood.

The episode with Makovkina had occurred after five years of his hermit

life. That occurrence soon became generally known--her nocturnal visit,

the change she underwent, and her entry into a convent. From that time

Father Sergius’s fame increased. More and more visitors came to see him,

other monks settled down near his cell, and a church was erected there

and also a hostelry. His fame, as usual exaggerating his feats, spread

ever more and more widely. People began to come to him from a distance,

and began bringing invalids to him whom they declared he cured.

His first cure occurred in the eighth year of his life as a hermit. It

was the healing of a fourteen-year-old boy, whose mother brought him

to Father Sergius insisting that he should lay his hand on the child’s

head. It had never occurred to Father Sergius that he could cure the

sick. He would have regarded such a thought as a great sin of pride; but

the mother who brought the boy implored him insistently, falling at his

feet and saying: ‘Why do you, who heal others, refuse to help my son?’

She besought him in Christ’s name. When Father Sergius assured her that

only God could heal the sick, she replied that she only wanted him to

lay his hands on the boy and pray for him. Father Sergius refused and

returned to his cell. But next day (it was in autumn and the nights were

already cold) on going out for water he saw the same mother with her

son, a pale boy of fourteen, and was met by the same petition.

He remembered the parable of the unjust judge, and though he had

previously felt sure that he ought to refuse, he now began to hesitate

and, having hesitated, took to prayer and prayed until a decision formed

itself in his soul. This decision was, that he ought to accede to the

woman’s request and that her faith might save her son. As for himself,

he would in this case be but an insignificant instrument chosen by God.

And going out to the mother he did what she asked--laid his hand on the

boy’s head and prayed.

The mother left with her son, and a month later the boy recovered, and

the fame of the holy healing power of the starets Sergius (as they now

called him) spread throughout the whole district. After that, not a week

passed without sick people coming, riding or on foot, to Father Sergius;

and having acceded to one petition he could not refuse others, and he

laid his hands on many and prayed. Many recovered, and his fame spread

more and more.

So seven years passed in the Monastery and thirteen in his hermit’s

cell. He now had the appearance of an old man: his beard was long and

grey, but his hair, though thin, was still black and curly.

V

For some weeks Father Sergius had been living with one persistent

thought: whether he was right in accepting the position in which he had

not so much placed himself as been placed by the Archimandrite and

the Abbot. That position had begun after the recovery of the

fourteen-year-old boy. From that time, with each month, week, and day

that passed, Sergius felt his own inner life wasting away and being

replaced by external life. It was as if he had been turned inside out.

Sergius saw that he was a means of attracting visitors and contributions

to the monastery, and that therefore the authorities arranged matters in

such a way as to make as much use of him as possible. For instance, they

rendered it impossible for him to do any manual work. He was supplied

with everything he could want, and they only demanded of him that he

should not refuse his blessing to those who came to seek it. For his

convenience they appointed days when he would receive. They arranged a

reception-room for men, and a place was railed in so that he should not

be pushed over by the crowds of women visitors, and so that he could

conveniently bless those who came.

They told him that people needed him, and that fulfilling Christ’s law

of love he could not refuse their demand to see him, and that to avoid

them would be cruel. He could not but agree with this, but the more he

gave himself up to such a life the more he felt that what was internal

became external, and that the fount of living water within him dried

up, and that what he did now was done more and more for men and less and

less for God.

Whether he admonished people, or simply blessed them, or prayed for the

sick, or advised people about their lives, or listened to expressions of

gratitude from those he had helped by precepts, or alms, or healing (as

they assured him)--he could not help being pleased at it, and could not

be indifferent to the results of his activity and to the influence he

exerted. He thought himself a shining light, and the more he felt this

the more was he conscious of a weakening, a dying down of the divine

light of truth that shone within him.

‘In how far is what I do for God and in how far is it for men?’ That was

the question that insistently tormented him and to which he was not so

much unable to give himself an answer as unable to face the answer.

In the depth of his soul he felt that the devil had substituted an

activity for men in place of his former activity for God. He felt this

because, just as it had formerly been hard for him to be torn from his

solitude so now that solitude itself was hard for him. He was oppressed

and wearied by visitors, but at the bottom of his heart he was glad of

their presence and glad of the praise they heaped upon him.

There was a time when he decided to go away and hide. He even planned

all that was necessary for that purpose. He prepared for himself a

peasant’s shirt, trousers, coat, and cap. He explained that he wanted

these to give to those who asked. And he kept these clothes in his cell,

planning how he would put them on, cut his hair short, and go away.

First he would go some three hundred versts by train, then he would

leave the train and walk from village to village. He asked an old man

who had been a soldier how he tramped: what people gave him, and what

shelter they allowed him. The soldier told him where people were most

charitable, and where they would take a wanderer in for the night, and

Father Sergius intended to avail himself of this information. He even

put on those clothes one night in his desire to go, but he could not

decide what was best--to remain or to escape. At first he was in doubt,

but afterwards this indecision passed. He submitted to custom and

yielded to the devil, and only the peasant garb reminded him of the

thought and feeling he had had.

Every day more and more people flocked to him and less and less time was

left him for prayer and for renewing his spiritual strength. Sometimes

in lucid moments he thought he was like a place where there had once

been a spring. ‘There used to be a feeble spring of living water which

flowed quietly from me and through me. That was true life, the time when

she tempted me!’ (He always thought with ecstasy of that night and of

her who was now Mother Agnes.) She had tasted of that pure water, but

since then there had not been time for it to collect before thirsty

people came crowding in and pushing one another aside. And they had

trampled everything down and nothing was left but mud.

So he thought in rare moments of lucidity, but his usual state of mind

was one of weariness and a tender pity for himself because of that

weariness.

It was in spring, on the eve of the mid-Pentecostal feast. Father

Sergius was officiating at the Vigil Service in his hermitage church,

where the congregation was as large as the little church could

hold--about twenty people. They were all well-to-do proprietors or

merchants. Father Sergius admitted anyone, but a selection was made by

the monk in attendance and by an assistant who was sent to the hermitage

every day from the monastery. A crowd of some eighty people--pilgrims

and peasants, and especially peasant-women--stood outside waiting for

Father Sergius to come out and bless them. Meanwhile he conducted

the service, but at the point at which he went out to the tomb of his

predecessor, he staggered and would have fallen had he not been caught

by a merchant standing behind him and by the monk acting as deacon.

‘What is the matter, Father Sergius? Dear man! O Lord!’ exclaimed the

women. ‘He is as white as a sheet!’

But Father Sergius recovered immediately, and though very pale, he waved

the merchant and the deacon aside and continued to chant the service.

Father Seraphim, the deacon, the acolytes, and Sofya Ivanovna, a lady

who always lived near the hermitage and tended Father Sergius, begged

him to bring the service to an end.

‘No, there’s nothing the matter,’ said Father Sergius, slightly smiling

from beneath his moustache and continuing the service. ‘Yes, that is the

way the Saints behave!’ thought he.

‘A holy man--an angel of God!’ he heard just then the voice of Sofya

Ivanovna behind him, and also of the merchant who had supported him.

He did not heed their entreaties, but went on with the service. Again

crowding together they all made their way by the narrow passages back

into the little church, and there, though abbreviating it slightly,

Father Sergius completed vespers.

Immediately after the service Father Sergius, having pronounced the

benediction on those present, went over to the bench under the elm tree

at the entrance to the cave. He wished to rest and breathe the fresh

air--he felt in need of it. But as soon as he left the church the crowd

of people rushed to him soliciting his blessing, his advice, and his

help. There were pilgrims who constantly tramped from one holy place to

another and from one starets to another, and were always entranced by

every shrine and every starets. Father Sergius knew this common, cold,

conventional, and most irreligious type. There were pilgrims, for

the most part discharged soldiers, unaccustomed to a settled life,

poverty-stricken, and many of them drunken old men, who tramped from

monastery to monastery merely to be fed. And there were rough peasants

and peasant-women who had come with their selfish requirements, seeking

cures or to have doubts about quite practical affairs solved for them:

about marrying off a daughter, or hiring a shop, or buying a bit

of land, or how to atone for having overlaid a child or having an

illegitimate one.

All this was an old story and not in the least interesting to him. He

knew he would hear nothing new from these folk, that they would arouse

no religious emotion in him; but he liked to see the crowd to which

his blessing and advice was necessary and precious, so while that crowd

oppressed him it also pleased him. Father Seraphim began to drive them

away, saying that Father Sergius was tired.

But Father Sergius, remembering the words of the Gospel: ‘Forbid them’

(children) ‘not to come unto me,’ and feeling tenderly towards himself

at this recollection, said they should be allowed to approach.

He rose, went to the railing beyond which the crowd had gathered, and

began blessing them and answering their questions, but in a voice so

weak that he was touched with pity for himself. Yet despite his wish to

receive them all he could not do it. Things again grew dark before his

eyes, and he staggered and grasped the railings. He felt a rush of blood

to his head and first went pale and then suddenly flushed.

‘I must leave the rest till to-morrow. I cannot do more to-day,’

and, pronouncing a general benediction, he returned to the bench. The

merchant again supported him, and leading him by the arm helped him to

be seated.

‘Father!’ came voices from the crowd. ‘Dear Father! Do not forsake us.

Without you we are lost!’

The merchant, having seated Father Sergius on the bench under the elm,

took on himself police duties and drove the people off very resolutely.

It is true that he spoke in a low voice so that Father Sergius might not

hear him, but his words were incisive and angry.

‘Be off, be off! He has blessed you, and what more do you want? Get

along with you, or I’ll wring your necks! Move on there! Get along, you

old woman with your dirty leg-bands! Go, go! Where are you shoving to?

You’ve been told that it is finished. To-morrow will be as God wills,

but for to-day he has finished!’

‘Father! Only let my eyes have a glimpse of his dear face!’ said an old

woman.

‘I’ll glimpse you! Where are you shoving to?’

Father Sergius noticed that the merchant seemed to be acting roughly,

and in a feeble voice told the attendant that the people should not be

driven away. He knew that they would be driven away all the same, and

he much desired to be left alone and to rest, but he sent the attendant

with that message to produce an impression.

‘All right, all right! I am not driving them away. I am only

remonstrating with them,’ replied the merchant. ‘You know they wouldn’t

hesitate to drive a man to death. They have no pity, they only consider

themselves.... You’ve been told you cannot see him. Go away!

To-morrow!’ And he got rid of them all.

He took all these pains because he liked order and liked to domineer

and drive the people away, but chiefly because he wanted to have Father

Sergius to himself. He was a widower with an only daughter who was an

invalid and unmarried, and whom he had brought fourteen hundred versts

to Father Sergius to be healed. For two years past he had been taking

her to different places to be cured: first to the university clinic in

the chief town of the province, but that did no good; then to a peasant

in the province of Samara, where she got a little better; then to a

doctor in Moscow to whom he paid much money, but this did no good at

all. Now he had been told that Father Sergius wrought cures, and had

brought her to him. So when all the people had been driven away he

approached Father Sergius, and suddenly falling on his knees loudly

exclaimed:

‘Holy Father! Bless my afflicted offspring that she may be healed of her

malady. I venture to prostrate myself at your holy feet.’

And he placed one hand on the other, cup-wise. He said and did all this

as if he were doing something clearly and firmly appointed by law and

usage--as if one must and should ask for a daughter to be cured in just

this way and no other. He did it with such conviction that it seemed

even to Father Sergius that it should be said and done in just that way,

but nevertheless he bade him rise and tell him what the trouble was. The

merchant said that his daughter, a girl of twenty-two, had fallen ill

two years ago, after her mother’s sudden death. She had moaned (as

he expressed it) and since then had not been herself. And now he had

brought her fourteen hundred versts and she was waiting in the hostelry

till Father Sergius should give orders to bring her. She did not go out

during the day, being afraid of the light, and could only come after

sunset.

‘Is she very weak?’ asked Father Sergius.

‘No, she has no particular weakness. She is quite plump, and is only

“nerastenic” the doctors say. If you will only let me bring her this

evening, Father Sergius, I’ll fly like a spirit to fetch her. Holy

Father! Revive a parent’s heart, restore his line, save his afflicted

daughter by your prayers!’ And the merchant again threw himself on his

knees and bending sideways, with his head resting on his clenched fists,

remained stock still. Father Sergius again told him to get up, and

thinking how heavy his activities were and how he went through with them

patiently notwithstanding, he sighed heavily and after a few seconds of

silence, said:

‘Well, bring her this evening. I will pray for her, but now I am

tired....’ and he closed his eyes. ‘I will send for you.’

The merchant went away, stepping on tiptoe, which only made his boots

creak the louder, and Father Sergius remained alone.

His whole life was filled by Church services and by people who came

to see him, but to-day had been a particularly difficult one. In

the morning an important official had arrived and had had a long

conversation with him; after that a lady had come with her son. This son

was a sceptical young professor whom the mother, an ardent believer and

devoted to Father Sergius, had brought that he might talk to him. The

conversation had been very trying. The young man, evidently not wishing

to have a controversy with a monk, had agreed with him in everything

as with someone who was mentally inferior. Father Sergius saw that the

young man did not believe but yet was satisfied, tranquil, and at ease,

and the memory of that conversation now disquieted him.

‘Have something to eat, Father,’ said the attendant.

‘All right, bring me something.’

The attendant went to a hut that had been arranged some ten paces from

the cave, and Father Sergius remained alone.

The time was long past when he had lived alone doing everything for

himself and eating only rye-bread, or rolls prepared for the Church. He

had been advised long since that he had no right to neglect his health,

and he was given wholesome, though Lenten, food. He ate sparingly,

though much more than he had done, and often he ate with much pleasure,

and not as formerly with aversion and a sense of guilt. So it was now.

He had some gruel, drank a cup of tea, and ate half a white roll.

The attendant went away, and Father Sergius remained alone under the elm

tree.

It was a wonderful May evening, when the birches, aspens, elms, wild

cherries, and oaks, had just burst into foliage.

The bush of wild cherries behind the elm tree was in full bloom and had

not yet begun to shed its blossoms, and the nightingales--one quite near

at hand and two or three others in the bushes down by the river--burst

into full song after some preliminary twitters. From the river came the

far-off songs of peasants returning, no doubt, from their work. The sun

was setting behind the forest, its last rays glowing through the leaves.

All that side was brilliant green, the other side with the elm tree was

dark. The cockchafers flew clumsily about, falling to the ground when

they collided with anything.

After supper Father Sergius began to repeat a silent prayer: ‘O Lord

Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us!’ and then he read a psalm,

and suddenly in the middle of the psalm a sparrow flew out from the

bush, alighted on the ground, and hopped towards him chirping as it

came, but then it took fright at something and flew away. He said a

prayer which referred to his abandonment of the world, and hastened to

finish it in order to send for the merchant with the sick daughter. She

interested him in that she presented a distraction, and because both she

and her father considered him a saint whose prayers were efficacious.

Outwardly he disavowed that idea, but in the depths of his soul he

considered it to be true.

He was often amazed that this had happened, that he, Stepan Kasatsky,

had come to be such an extraordinary saint and even a worker of

miracles, but of the fact that he was such there could not be the

least doubt. He could not fail to believe in the miracles he himself

witnessed, beginning with the sick boy and ending with the old woman who

had recovered her sight when he had prayed for her.

Strange as it might be, it was so. Accordingly the merchant’s daughter

interested him as a new individual who had faith in him, and also as a

fresh opportunity to confirm his healing powers and enhance his fame.

‘They bring people a thousand versts and write about it in the papers.

The Emperor knows of it, and they know of it in Europe, in unbelieving

Europe’--thought he. And suddenly he felt ashamed of his vanity and

again began to pray. ‘Lord, King of Heaven, Comforter, Soul of Truth!

Come and enter into me and cleanse me from all sin and save and bless

my soul. Cleanse me from the sin of worldly vanity that troubles me!’ he

repeated, and he remembered how often he had prayed about this and how

vain till now his prayers had been in that respect. His prayers worked

miracles for others, but in his own case God had not granted him

liberation from this petty passion.

He remembered his prayers at the commencement of his life at the

hermitage, when he prayed for purity, humility, and love, and how it

seemed to him then that God heard his prayers. He had retained his

purity and had chopped off his finger. And he lifted the shrivelled

stump of that finger to his lips and kissed it. It seemed to him now

that he had been humble then when he had always seemed loathsome to

himself on account of his sinfulness; and when he remembered the tender

feelings with which he had then met an old man who was bringing a

drunken soldier to him to ask alms; and how he had received HER, it

seemed to him that he had then possessed love also. But now? And he

asked himself whether he loved anyone, whether he loved Sofya Ivanovna,

or Father Seraphim, whether he had any feeling of love for all who had

come to him that day--for that learned young man with whom he had had

that instructive discussion in which he was concerned only to show off

his own intelligence and that he had not lagged behind the times in

knowledge. He wanted and needed their love, but felt none towards them.

He now had neither love nor humility nor purity.

He was pleased to know that the merchant’s daughter was twenty-two, and

he wondered whether she was good-looking. When he inquired whether she

was weak, he really wanted to know if she had feminine charm.

‘Can I have fallen so low?’ he thought. ‘Lord, help me! Restore me, my

Lord and God!’ And he clasped his hands and began to pray.

The nightingales burst into song, a cockchafer knocked against him and

crept up the back of his neck. He brushed it off. ‘But does He exist?

What if I am knocking at a door fastened from outside? The bar is on the

door for all to see. Nature--the nightingales and the cockchafers--is

that bar. Perhaps the young man was right.’ And he began to pray aloud.

He prayed for a long time till these thoughts vanished and he again felt

calm and confident. He rang the bell and told the attendant to say that

the merchant might bring his daughter to him now.

The merchant came, leading his daughter by the arm. He led her into the

cell and immediately left her.

She was a very fair girl, plump and very short, with a pale, frightened,

childish face and a much developed feminine figure. Father Sergius

remained seated on the bench at the entrance and when she was passing

and stopped beside him for his blessing he was aghast at himself for

the way he looked at her figure. As she passed by him he was acutely

conscious of her femininity, though he saw by her face that she was

sensual and feeble-minded. He rose and went into the cell. She was

sitting on a stool waiting for him, and when he entered she rose.

‘I want to go back to Papa,’ she said.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ he replied. ‘What are you suffering from?’

‘I am in pain all over,’ she said, and suddenly her face lit up with a

smile.

‘You will be well,’ said he. ‘Pray!’

‘What is the use of praying? I have prayed and it does no good’--and she

continued to smile. ‘I want you to pray for me and lay your hands on me.

I saw you in a dream.’

‘How did you see me?’

‘I saw you put your hands on my breast like that.’ She took his hand and

pressed it to her breast. ‘Just here.’

He yielded his right hand to her.

‘What is your name?’ he asked, trembling all over and feeling that he

was overcome and that his desire had already passed beyond control.

‘Marie. Why?’

She took his hand and kissed it, and then put her arm round his waist

and pressed him to herself.

‘What are you doing?’ he said. ‘Marie, you are a devil!’

‘Oh, perhaps. What does it matter?’

And embracing him she sat down with him on the bed.

At dawn he went out into the porch.

‘Can this all have happened? Her father will come and she will tell him

everything. She is a devil! What am I to do? Here is the axe with which

I chopped off my finger.’ He snatched up the axe and moved back towards

the cell.

The attendant came up.

‘Do you want some wood chopped? Let me have the axe.’

Sergius yielded up the axe and entered the cell. She was lying

there asleep. He looked at her with horror, and passed on beyond the

partition, where he took down the peasant clothes and put them on. Then

he seized a pair of scissors, cut off his long hair, and went out along

the path down the hill to the river, where he had not been for more than

three years.

A road ran beside the river and he went along it and walked till noon.

Then he went into a field of rye and lay down there. Towards evening

he approached a village, but without entering it went towards the cliff

that overhung the river. There he again lay down to rest.

It was early morning, half an hour before sunrise. All was damp and

gloomy and a cold early wind was blowing from the west. ‘Yes, I must end

it all. There is no God. But how am I to end it? Throw myself into the

river? I can swim and should not drown. Hang myself? Yes, just throw

this sash over a branch.’ This seemed so feasible and so easy that

he felt horrified. As usual at moments of despair he felt the need of

prayer. But there was no one to pray to. There was no God. He lay down

resting on his arm, and suddenly such a longing for sleep overcame him

that he could no longer support his head on his hand, but stretched out

his arm, laid his head upon it, and fell asleep. But that sleep lasted

only for a moment. He woke up immediately and began not to dream but to

remember.

He saw himself as a child in his mother’s home in the country. A

carriage drives up, and out of it steps Uncle Nicholas Sergeevich,

with his long, spade-shaped, black beard, and with him Pashenka, a thin

little girl with large mild eyes and a timid pathetic face. And into

their company of boys Pashenka is brought and they have to play with

her, but it is dull. She is silly, and it ends by their making fun of

her and forcing her to show how she can swim. She lies down on the floor

and shows them, and they all laugh and make a fool of her. She sees this

and blushes red in patches and becomes more pitiable than before,

so pitiable that he feels ashamed and can never forget that crooked,

kindly, submissive smile. And Sergius remembered having seen her since

then. Long after, just before he became a monk, she had married a

landowner who squandered all her fortune and was in the habit of beating

her. She had had two children, a son and a daughter, but the son had

died while still young. And Sergius remembered having seen her very

wretched. Then again he had seen her in the monastery when she was a

widow. She had been still the same, not exactly stupid, but insipid,

insignificant, and pitiable. She had come with her daughter and her

daughter’s fiance. They were already poor at that time and later on he

had heard that she was living in a small provincial town and was very

poor.

‘Why am I thinking about her?’ he asked himself, but he could not cease

doing so. ‘Where is she? How is she getting on? Is she still as unhappy

as she was then when she had to show us how to swim on the floor? But

why should I think about her? What am I doing? I must put an end to

myself.’

And again he felt afraid, and again, to escape from that thought, he

went on thinking about Pashenka.

So he lay for a long time, thinking now of his unavoidable end and now

of Pashenka. She presented herself to him as a means of salvation. At

last he fell asleep, and in his sleep he saw an angel who came to him

and said: ‘Go to Pashenka and learn from her what you have to do, what

your sin is, and wherein lies your salvation.’

He awoke, and having decided that this was a vision sent by God, he felt

glad, and resolved to do what had been told him in the vision. He knew

the town where she lived. It was some three hundred versts (two hundred

miles) away, and he set out to walk there.