THE HERMIT
Only when Araktseieff had left the Czar did the emperor realize how
completely alone he was in the world.
There was not a man in whom he could place confidence; in every one he
saw an enemy, a conspirator; and his true friends, if he still possessed
any, he had imbittered by Araktseieff's recall. His generals were
disaffected by his not supporting the Greeks. Secret treaties were
directed against him. Those who were already apprised of his declaration
of war, and had sufficient energy to act counter to him, had left the
field at the beginning of operations.
On Araktseieff's return to Grusino he had hurried without delay to the
mausoleum, and, barring the door behind him, had cast himself down
beside Daimona's coffin, and for two whole days nothing was heard within
but his bitter sobs. He would eat nothing, would make no answer to words
or entreaties. "Daimona" was the only sound he uttered.
He had loved that woman as only giant beasts love their mates; when the
hunter has shot the female he may shoot the male, for it will not leave
its dead. For two whole days Araktseieff's household in vain besieged
the door of the mausoleum; Chevalier Galban's representations also that
he should come out and take care of his valuable life were fruitless; he
paid no heed to his faithful followers. In vain they called him their
sweet, good master, "sweet friend," "Alexis Andreovitch"; he was deaf to
their voices.
On the third day Photios, the Archimandrite of the Monastery of St.
George, came to the mausoleum. He is the holy man, to receive whose
blessing hundreds of thousands make the yearly pilgrimage to the
monastery from all parts of Russia. The decree of the saint is as much
esteemed as is a papal bull.
When Czar Alexander I. gave into the hands of Prince Galitzin, the
freethinker, the portfolio of Public Instruction, the Archimandrite,
going up to the Czar, exclaimed threateningly:
"If you take the ancient faith from your people you will shake your
empire to its foundations."
Whereupon the Czar dismissed Prince Galitzin, and the education of the
people was left in the hands of the Sacred Synod. Russians always have
their "living saints," some of them miraculous.
Photios, standing at the door of the mausoleum, called to Araktseieff
within, in language unmistakably plain.
"Abandoned criminal, come out!"
The cries within were silenced.
"Come out from there!"
Araktseieff staggered out. He was scarcely recognizable. His beard,
untouched for several days, stood out in gray bristles round his face;
his eyes were bloodshot with weeping; his lips swollen; his hair lay
wildly matted on his forehead; his general's uniform was streaked with
green mould.
"What seek you in that grave?"
"Death."
"Of course you will die, we all shall do so, as penalty for our sins.
But do you desire to crown your evil deeds by dying unrepentant? Do you
desire to die beside the coffin of her for the loss of whose soul you
are guilty? You were the cause of her sin; will you drag her down to
hell? Instead of thinking of repentance, would you follow her to
condemnation? Defiantly would you burst the barriers of that fearful
next world instead of entreating admission with bended head? Of course
you will die, but not when it pleases you; rather when it pleases your
Maker to grant you death as a reward for penance.
"Your place is in the deep catacombs," continued Photios; "not by the
side of your concubine. Under the rays of the burning sun, in storm, in
the roar of the tempest, under drenching rain, shall you seek
repentance! Stand up! follow me!"
Araktseieff crawled towards him on his knees.
"Now eat!" commanded Photios, throwing him a couple of turnips.
Picking them up, Araktseieff obeyed.
"Now put on these!" And he threw a dilapidated monk's dress towards him,
faded out of all color by sun and rain. Araktseieff, taking off his
general's uniform, put it on. And as saints on this earth do not drive
in carriages, he followed the saint on foot and barefooted to the gates
of the Monastery of St. George.
St. George's is one of the wealthiest monasteries in all Russia. It is
situated near Grusino, at the end of the long peninsula formed by the
river Volkhov and Lake Ilmer. Its gilded cupolas, green from the
verdigris which centuries have brought out on the copper, tend to
spread its fame far and wide. But entrance within the walls of the
monastery oppresses the spirits. Silver dais upon silver dais reach to
the dome; the organ towers aloft, with its pipes of gold; there are
pictures of saints dazzling with rubies; mosaics composed entirely of
precious stones. Upon the elaborately decorated altars lie costly Bibles
bound in silver, and enamelled books of the mass. Over one of the altars
is a picture of St. George in beaten silver. But it is only when we come
to the "treasure chamber," with its priceless store of mitres, crooks,
crowns, pearl-embroidered stoles, golden monstrances, that we realize
how rich is Heaven's vicegerent--the Church. While the priests who guard
all these treasures wander in among them in coarse cassocks and bare
feet, that the world may see how poor is man.
But the most jealously guarded of all the treasures stood before the
altar. It was a granite pillar enclosed within silver rails.
On the granite was engraven: "Upon this spot knelt Czar Alexander,
attended by his faithful servants, the Archimandrite Photios and Alexis
Andreovitch Araktseieff, in the year 1818."
Thither Photios brought the statesman, that he might see his name
perpetuated beside that of the Czar.
"So high you had raised yourself. Now come and see how low you have
sunk!"
The Archimandrite led the penitent back to the cloister and showed him
his, the Archimandrite's, cell. It was a space six feet broad by eight
feet long. But there was one luxury in it: it had a window through which
sunshine penetrated. His bed was a coffin roughly put together; his
_prie-dieu_ a stone hollowed out by constant kneeling; a jug and a bowl
for the daily _kwas_ the sole furniture of the cell. Yet all this was
luxury compared with what awaited the penitent.
In the catacombs of the cloister were caves hewn out of solid rock, just
large enough to contain a man kneeling or recumbent; a small hole in the
heavy iron door let in air. Total darkness reigned. These caves were
inhabited by the whilom great, powerful aristocrats, masters over
hundreds of thousands, now no longer masters of their own souls. It is
not tyranny, not the power of the sacred hierarchy which holds them
bound here, but their own blind zeal. Despising, hating the world, they
are self-condemned to the awful imprisonment. The catacombs of the
cloisters of St. George and of Solowetshk ever harbor numbers thus
self-condemned to a living death.
It pleased Araktseieff.
Lying upon his straw he passed days and weeks. His door was kept locked
by day, only to be opened at sound of the vesper bell, when he went to
seek for food, for food is not brought to penitents. Only at dusk may
they steal into the cloister garden to seek for mangel-wurzel, samphire,
potatoes, and such like produce of the earth, their sole sustenance. One
day Araktseieff came across a still more remarkable penitent than
himself.
He, too, had once been a distinguished bojar; but none knew what his
real name was. Here he was only known as "Little Father Nahum."
Nahum did not even allow himself the luxury of a ragged cassock. His
sole covering is a rush mat woven by himself, his white hair and gray
beard flow wildly down over his dirt-begrimed limbs. Nahum does not
allow himself lodging in a cave. In summer he sleeps in pools, in
winter he creeps into a dung-heap. To kneel day after day in his cave is
not humiliation enough for him; he prostrates himself across the
threshold of the church door, that those who enter may walk over him,
kick him, spit on him. To gather fresh roots out of the earth and eat
them Little Father Nahum looks upon as sinful gluttony. He seeks his
evening meal from the dust-heap; what is thrown there is his sustenance.
Araktseieff had been doing penance three weeks in the catacombs when,
one evening, as he was returning with a bundle of leeks in his hand, he
came upon Nahum feasting off his self-laid dinner-table, the dust-heap.
"Ah," said Little Father Nahum, accosting the new-comer, "I have found
so much to eat here to-night I can share with a friend."
"What has Providence provided for you?"
"Mouldy cheese."
"All right. Give me some."
"Here it is. Take it all," returned Nahum. "He who hankers after a
penitent's food should have it all given up to him."
And he handed him the mouldy cheese, with the paper in which it had been
wrapped and thrown upon the dust-heap. Truly, loathsome food! But
Araktseieff's attention was not so much arrested by the contents as by
the paper in which the cheese was enclosed. It was a letter, and in it
Araktseieff at once recognized the handwriting of the Czar. His blood
surged within him. The Czar's writing a cover for stale cheese! And then
the contents! It was a letter addressed to Photios.
"Call him to you. Speak to him in the name of holy religion; strengthen
him in the faith. Admonish him to preserve his life for the good of his
country, which is beyond all other considerations. Thus will you
preserve to the empire a servant of inestimable loyalty, and to me a
faithful friend whom I sincerely honor and esteem."
And this was the paper chosen as a cover for mouldy cheese and thrown
upon a dust-heap!
"Well, eat away, man," murmured Little Father Nahum, and, taking up the
cheese which Araktseieff had let fall on the dust-heap, offered it him
in the flat of his dirty hand.
Thrusting his fellow-penitent aside, Araktseieff hastened to Photios.
Photios was in the act of reading vespers. Araktseieff did not suffer
him to come to an end.
"Was this letter from the Czar addressed to you?"
"To me."
"And you threw it on the dust-heap?"
"That you might find it there."
"I have found it. My penance is over. I return to St. Petersburg."
"Just what I wished to accomplish."
"You have accomplished it. But you do not yet know what you were doing
when you brought Alexis Araktseieff forth from the grave? You
constrained him back to life and the world, once more to prove the stuff
that is in him. Well may you tremble before a resuscitated Araktseieff!"
"A blessing be upon all your actions!" stammered the Archimandrite, and
continued his vespers.
Araktseieff left the monastery that very hour. He left it with the same
wild frenzy of destruction with which he had entered it, only that then
his desire was for self-destruction; now had returned the old desire
for the destruction of others.
When Araktseieff, after those three weeks, was seen again in St.
Petersburg, every one started back in terror at his appearance. His face
was emaciated, his hair had turned quite white. It was plain to see that
he had risen from the grave.