see you for a whole month! Well, here I am! Behold your princess! And where is the archbishop? Dear God, I am burning with impatience to see him. Such a wonderful, wonderful old man! You should be proud to have such an archbishop!”
When the archbishop came to see her, the Princess uttered an excited squeal, crossed her hands over her breasts, and went up to him to receive his blessing.
“No, no! Let me kiss your hand!” she said, seizing his hand and greedily kissing it three times. “How glad I am, holy father, to see you at last! No doubt you forgot your Princess, but I assure you not a moment passed when I was not thinking about your dear monastery. How good it is to be here! This surrender of life to God, far from the vanities of the world, has a special charm of its own, holy father, and I feel this with all my soul, though I cannot put it into words!”
The Princess’s cheeks reddened, and tears came to her eyes. She went on talking fervently while the archbishop, an old man of seventy, grave, homely, and timid, remained silent, only occasionally interrupting with some abrupt soldierlike sentences: “Certainly, Your Highness … Quite so … I understand …”
“Will Your Highness deign to spend some time with us?” he asked.
“I shall stay the night with you, and tomorrow I’m going to stay with Claudia Nikolayevna—it’s a long time since I’ve visited her—and the day after tomorrow I shall come back to you for three or four days. I want to rest my soul among you, holy father.”
The Princess loved to stay at the N–– — Monastery. For the last two years it had been her favorite resort, and every summer she spent some part of every month there, sometimes staying for two or three days, sometimes for a whole week. The gentle lay brothers, the silence, the low ceilings, the smell of cypresses, the unpretentious meals, the cheap curtains on the windows—all these things touched her, moved her, and disposed her to contemplation and good thoughts. It was enough for her to spend half an hour in the hostel and then she would feel that she too was weak and unassuming and that she smelled of cypress wood; and the past vanished into the distance, losing its significance. Although she was only twenty-nine, it occurred to the Princess that she resembled the archbishop and that, like him, she was not created for the enjoyment of wealth or of love or of earthly splendors, but for the sake of a tranquil, secluded life, as full of shadows as the hostel.
So it happens that quite suddenly and unexpectedly a ray of light will gleam in the dark cell of a monk given over to fasting and absorbed in prayer, or a bird will alight on the window of his cell and sing its song, and the stern monk will find himself involuntarily smiling, and there will flow into his heart, from underneath the heavy burden of his sorrows for all the sins he has committed, a joy which is entirely without sin, just as a silent fountain will flow from beneath a stone. The Princess believed that she was the vehicle of just such consolations from the outside world as the ray of light or the bird. Her gay, inviting smile, her benignant gaze, her voice, her jokes—in fact everything about her, even her small well-formed figure in a simple black dress, was meant to arouse in simple austere people a feeling of joy and tenderness. Everyone looking at her must think: “God has sent us an angel.” And feeling that everyone must inevitably think in this way, she smiled still more invitingly and tried to look like a little bird.
After drinking tea and taking a rest, she went for a walk. The sun was already setting. From the monastery gardens there came to the Princess the moist fragrance of freshly watered mignonettes, and from the church came the soft singing of men’s voices, which seemed very charming and melancholy when heard from a distance. It was the time of vespers. In the dark windows where the flames of the icon lamps shed their gentle glow, in the shadows, and in the figure of the old monk sitting on the church porch with a collection box in his hands, there was such tranquillity and peace that the Princess felt moved to tears.
Outside the gate there were benches set along the avenue which lay between the birch trees and the monastery wall. On these the evening had already descended, and every moment the light was growing darker.… The Princess walked along the avenue, sat down on a bench, and fell to thinking.
She thought how good it would be if she could spend the rest of her days in the monastery, where life was as quiet and tranquil as a summer evening; and how wonderful if she could completely forget her dissolute and ungrateful husband, the Prince, and her vast estates, and the creditors who came to torment her every day, and her misfortunes, and her maid Dasha, who had given her a particularly impertinent look that very morning. How good it would be to sit there on the bench for the remainder of her days, looking past the birch trees to the tufts of evening mist flowing at the foot of the mountains, or watching the rooks flying away to their nests far, far above the forest like a black cloud or a veil set against the sky, and the two lay brothers–one astride a piebald horse, the other on foot—who were driving out the horses for the night, rejoicing in their freedom and frolicking like children, their young voices ringing out clearly and musically in the motionless air, so that she could distinguish every word. How good to be sitting there, listening to the silence, while the wind stirred and stroked the tops of the birch trees, and a frog rustled the leaves of another year, and the clock high on the wall struck the quarter.… One could sit there for hours without moving, thinking, thinking.…
An old woman carrying a sack over her shoulder came along the path. It occurred to the Princess that it would be good to stop her and say something friendly and sincere, to help her on her way.… But the old woman did not once turn her head, and she vanished round the corner.
Not long afterward a tall man with a gray beard and a straw hat came along the avenue. As he passed the Princess, he took off his hat and bowed, and from the large bald spot on his head and the sharp, crooked nose the Princess recognized him as the doctor, Mikhail Ivanovich, who had been in her service five years before on her estate at Dubovki. Someone had told her, she remembered, that the doctor’s wife had died the previous year, and she wanted to tender her sympathy and comfort him.
“I am sure you don’t recognize me, Doctor,” the Princess said with her inviting smile.
“Of course I recognize you, Princess,” the doctor replied, and once again he took off his hat.
“Oh, thank you, I was so afraid you had forgotten your Princess. People only remember their enemies, and forget their friends. Have you come here to pray?”
“I come here every Saturday night, because it is my duty. I’m the doctor here.”
“Well, how are you?” the Princess asked, sighing. “I heard about the death of your wife. How terrible it must have been for you!”
“Yes, Princess, it was a terrible misfortune for me.”
“What can we do? We must bear our misfortunes humbly. Not a hair falls from a man’s head but by the will of eternal Providence.”
“True, Princess.”
To the Princess’s sweet and friendly smiles and sighs the doctor answered coldly and dryly: “True, Princess.” And the expression of his face was cold and dry.
