and fasting, to take a special medicine. Many persons were shocked at the time and wagged their heads as they talked over it--and most of all Father Ferapont, to whom some of the censorious had hastened to report this 'extraordinary' counsel on the part of the elder.
'Go away, Father!' said Father Paissy, in a commanding voice, 'it's not for man to judge but for God. Perhaps we see here a ‘sign’ which neither you, nor I, nor anyone of us is able to comprehend. Go, Father, and do not trouble the flock!' he repeated impressively.
'He did not keep the fasts according to the rule and therefore the sign has come. That is clear and it's a sin to hide it,' the fanatic, carried away by a zeal that outstripped his reason, would not be quieted. 'He was seduced by sweetmeats, ladies brought them to him in their pockets, he sipped tea, he worshipped his belly, filling it with sweet things and his mind with haughty thoughts.... And for this he is put to shame....'
'You speak lightly, Father.' Father Paissy, too, raised his voice. 'I admire your fasting and severities, but you speak lightly like some frivolous youth, fickle and childish. Go away, Father, I command you!'
Father Paissy thundered in conclusion.
'I will go,' said Ferapont, seeming somewhat taken aback, but still as bitter. 'You learned men! You are so clever you look down upon my humbleness. I came hither with little learning and here I have forgotten what I did know; God Himself has preserved me in my weakness from your subtlety.'
Father Paissy stood over him, waiting resolutely. Father Ferapont paused and, suddenly leaning his cheek on his hand despondently, pronounced in a sing-song, voice, looking at the coffin of the dead elder:
'To-morrow they will sing over him ‘Our Helper and Defender’--a splendid anthem--and over me when I die all they'll sing will be 'What Earthly Joy’--a little cantical,'* he added with tearful regret. 'You are proud and puffed up, this is a vain place!' he shouted suddenly like a madman, and with a wave of his hand he turned quickly and quickly descended the steps. The crowd awaiting him below wavered; some followed him at once and some lingered, for the cell was still open, and Father Paissy, following Father Ferapont on to the steps, stood watching him. the excited old fanatic was not completely silenced. Walking twenty steps away, he suddenly turned towards the setting sun, raised both his arms and, as though someone had cut him down, fell to the ground with a loud scream.
When a monk's body is carried out from the cell to the church and from the church to the graveyard, the canticle 'What Earthly Joy...' is sung. If the deceased was a priest as well as a monk the canticle 'Our Helper and Defender' is sung instead.
'My God has conquered! Christ has conquered the setting sun!' he shouted frantically, stretching up his hands to the sun, and falling face downwards on the ground, he sobbed like a little child, shaken by his tears and spreading out his arms on the ground. Then all rushed up to him; there were exclamations and sympathetic sobs... a kind of frenzy seemed to take possession of them all.
'This is the one who is a saint! This is the one who is a holy man!' some cried aloud, losing their fear. 'This is he who should be an elder,' others added malignantly.
'He wouldn't be an elder... he would refuse... he wouldn't serve a cursed innovation... he wouldn't imitate their foolery,' other voices chimed in at once. And it is hard to say how far they might have gone, but at that moment the bell rang summoning them to service. All began crossing themselves at once. Father Ferapont, too, got up and crossing himself went back to his cell without looking round, still uttering exclamations which were utterly incoherent. A few followed him, but the greater number dispersed, hastening to service. Father Paissy let Father Iosif read in his place and went down. The frantic outcries of bigots could not shake him, but his heart was suddenly filled with melancholy for some special reason and he felt that. He stood still and suddenly wondered, 'Why am I sad even to dejection?' and immediately grasped with surprise that his sudden sadness was due to a very small and special cause. In the crowd thronging at the entrance to the cell, he had noticed Alyosha and he remembered that he had felt at once a pang at heart on seeing him. 'Can that boy mean so much to my heart now?' he asked himself, wondering.
At that moment Alyosha passed him, hurrying away, but not in the direction of the church. Their eyes met. Alyosha quickly turned away his eyes and dropped them to the ground, and from the boy's look alone, Father Paissy guessed what a great change was taking place in him at that moment.
'Have you, too, fallen into temptation?' cried Father Paissy. 'Can you be with those of little faith?' he added mournfully.
Alyosha stood still and gazed vaguely at Father Paissy, but quickly turned his eyes away again and again looked on the ground. He stood sideways and did not turn his face to Father Paissy, who watched him attentively.
'Where are you hastening? The bell calls to service,' he asked again, but again Alyosha gave no answer.
'Are you leaving the hermitage? What, without asking leave, without asking a blessing?'
Alyosha suddenly gave a wry smile, cast a strange, very strange, look at the Father to whom his former guide, the former sovereign of his heart and mind, his beloved elder, had confided him as he lay dying. And suddenly, still without speaking, waved his hand, as though not caring even to be respectful, and with rapid steps walked towards the gates away from the hermitage.
'You will come back again!' murmured Father Paissy, looking after him with sorrowful surprise.
Chapter 2
A Critical Moment
FATHER PAISSY, of course, was not wrong when he decided that his 'dear boy' would come back again. Perhaps indeed, to some extent, he penetrated with insight into the true meaning of Alyosha's spiritual condition. Yet I must frankly own that it would be very difficult for me to give a clear account of that strange, vague moment in the life of the young hero I love so much. To Father Paissy's sorrowful question, 'Are you too with those of little faith?' I could, of course, confidently answer for Alyosha, 'No, he is not with those of little faith. Quite the contrary.' Indeed, all his trouble came from the fact that he was of great faith. But still the trouble was there and was so agonising that even long afterwards Alyosha thought of that sorrowful day as one of the bitterest and most fatal days of his life. If the question is asked: 'Could all his grief and disturbance have been only due to the fact that his elder's body had shown signs of premature decomposition instead of at once performing miracles?' I must answer without beating about the bush, 'Yes, it certainly was.' I would only beg the reader not to be in too great a hurry to laugh at my young hero's pure heart. I am far from intending to apologise for him or to justify his innocent faith on the ground of his youth, or the little progress he had made in his studies, or any such reason. I must declare, on the contrary, that I have genuine respect for the qualities of his heart. No doubt a youth who received impressions cautiously, whose love was lukewarm, and whose mind was too prudent for his age and so of little value, such a young man might, I admit, have avoided what happened to my hero. But in some cases it is really more creditable to be carried away by an emotion, however unreasonable, which springs from a great love, than to be unmoved. And this is even truer in youth, for a young man who is always sensible is to be suspected and is of little worth-- that's my opinion!
'But,' reasonable people will exclaim perhaps, 'every young man cannot believe in such a superstition and your hero is no model for others.'
To this I reply again, 'Yes! my hero had faith, a faith holy and steadfast, but still I am not going to apologise for him.'
Though I declared above, and perhaps too hastily, that I should not explain or justify my hero, I see that some explanation is necessary for the understanding of the rest of my story. Let me say then, it was not a question of miracles. There was no frivolous and impatient expectation of miracles in his mind. And Alyosha needed no miracles at the time, for the triumph of some preconceived idea--oh no, not at all--what he saw before all was one figure--the figure of his beloved elder, the figure of that holy man whom he revered with such adoration. The fact is that all the love that lay concealed in his pure young heart for everyone and everything had, for the past year, been concentrated--and perhaps wrongly so--on one being, his beloved elder. It is true that being had for so long been accepted by him as his ideal, that all his young strength and energy could not but turn towards that ideal, even to the forgetting at the moment 'of everyone and everything.' He remembered afterwards how, on that terrible day, he had entirely forgotten his brother Dmitri, about whom he had been so anxious and troubled the day before; he had forgotten, too, to take the two hundred roubles to Ilusha's father, though he had so warmly intended to do so the preceding evening. But again it was not miracles he needed but only 'the higher justice' which had been in his belief outraged by the blow that had so suddenly and cruelly wounded his heart. And what does it signify that this 'justice' looked for by Alyosha inevitably took the shape of miracles to be wrought immediately by the ashes of his adored