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THE BISHOP
By Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860-1904; Garnett, Constance Black, 1862-1946
I
The evening service was being celebrated on the
eve of Palm Sunday in the Old Petrovsky Convent.
When they began distributing the palm it was close
upon ten o'clock, the candles were burning dimly, the
wicks wanted snuffing; it was all in a sort of mist.
In the twilight of the church the crowd seemed heav-
ing like the sea, and to Bishop Pyotr, who had been
unwell for the last three days, it seemed that all the
faces — old and young, men's and women's — were
alike, that everyone who came up for the palm had
the same expression in his eyes. In the mist he could
not see the doors; the crowd kept moving and looked
as though there were no end to it. The female
choir was singing, a nun was reading the prayers for
the day.
How stifling, how hot it was! How long the
service went on! Bishop Pyotr was tired. His
breathing was laboured and rapid, his throat was
parched, his shoulders ached with weariness, his
legs were trembling. And it disturbed him unpleas-
antly when a religious maniac uttered occasional
shrieks in the gallery. And then all of a sudden, as
though in a dream or delirium, it seemed to the
bishop as though his own mother Marya Timo-
fyevna, whom he had not seen for nine years, or
some old woman just like his mother, came up to him
out of the crowd, and, after taking a palm branch
from him, walked away looking at him all the while
good-humouredly with a kind, joyful smile until she
was lost in the crowd. And for some reason tears
flowed down his face. There was peace in his heart,
everything was well, yet he kept gazing fixedly to-
wards the left choir, where the prayers were being
read, where in the dusk of evening you could not
recognize anyone, and — wept. Tears glistened on
his face and on his beard. Here someone close at
hand was weeping, then someone else farther away,
then others and still others, and little by little
the church was filled with soft weeping. And a little
later, within five minutes, the nuns' choir was singing;
no one was weeping and everything was as before.
Soon the service was over. When the bishop got
into his carriage to drive home, the gay, melodious
chime of the heavy, costly bells was filling the whole
garden in the moonlight. The white walls, the white
crosses on the tombs, the Avhite birch-trees and black
shadows, and the far-away moon in the sky exactly
over the convent, seemed now living their own life,
apart and incomprehensible, yet very near to man.
It was the beginning of April, and after the warm
spring day it turned cool; there was a faint touch of
frost, and the breath of spring could be felt in the
soft, chilly air. The road from the convent to the
town was sandy, the horses had to go at a walking
pace, and on both sides of the carriage in the brilliant, peaceful moonlight there were people trudging
along home from church through the sand. And all
was silent, sunk in thought; everything around
seemed kindly, youthful, akin, everything — trees
and sky and even the moon, and one longed to think
that so It would be always.
At last the carriage drove into the town and
rumbled along the principal street. The shops were
already shut, but at Erakln's, the millionaire shop-
keeper's, they were trying the new electric lights,
which flickered brightly, and a crowd of people were
gathered round. Then came wide, dark, deserted
streets, one after another; then the highroad, the
open country, the fragrance of pines. And suddenly
there rose up before the bishop's eyes a white tur-
reted wall, and behind It a tall belfry In the full
moonlight, and beside It five shining, golden cupolas:
this was the Pankratlevsky Monastery, In which
Bishop Pyotr lived. And here, too, high above the
monastery, was the silent, dreamy moon. The car-
riage drove in at the gate, crunching over the sand;
here and there in the moonlight there were glimpses
of dark monastic figures, and there was the sound of
footsteps on the flag-stones. . . .
" You know, your holiness, your mamma arrived
while you were away," the lay brother Informed the
bishop as he went into his cell.
"My mother? When did she come? "
" Before the evening service. She asked first
where you were and then she went to the convent."
" Then It was her I saw in the church, just now!
I Oh, Lord!"
And the bishop .laughed with joy.
" She bade me tell your holiness," the lay brother
went on, " that she would come to-morrow. She had
a little girl with her — her grandchild, I suppose.
They are staying at Ovsyannikov's inn."
" What time is it now?"
" A Httle after eleven."
" Oh, how vexing! "
The bishop sat for a little while in the parlour, hes-
itating, and as It were refusing to believe it was so
late. His arms and legs were stiff, his head ached.
He was hot and uncomfortable. After resting a
little he went Into his bedroom, and there, too, he
sat a little, still thinking of his mother; he could
hear the lay brother going away, and Father SIsoy
coughing the other side of the wall. The monastery
clock struck a quarter.
The bishop changed his clothes and began read-
ing the prayers before sleep. He read attentively
those old, long familiar prayers, and at the same
time thought about his mother. She had nine chil-
dren and about forty grandchildren. At one time,
she had lived with her husband, the deacon, in a poor
village; she had lived there a very long time from
the age of seventeen to sixty. The bishop remem-
bered her from early childhood, almost from the age
of three, and — how he had loved her ! Sweet, pre-
cious childhood, always fondly remembered! Why
did it, that long-past time that could never return,
why did it seem brighter, fuller, and more festive
than it had really been? When In his childhood or
youth he had been 111, how tender and sympathetic
his mother had been ! And now his prayers mingled
with the memories, which gleamed more and more
brightly like a flame, and the prayers did not hinder
his thinking of his mother.
When he had finished his prayers he undressed
and lay down, and at once, as soon as it was dark,
there rose before his mind his dead father, his
mother, his native village Lesopolye . . . the creak
of wheels, the bleat of sheep, the church bells on
bright summer mornings, the gypsies under the win-
dow — oh, how sweet to think of it! He remem-
bered the priest of Lesopolye, Father Simeon —
mild, gentle, kindly; he was a lean little man, while
his son, a divinity student, was a huge fellow and
talked in a roaring bass voice. The priest's son had
flown into a rage with the cook and abused her:
"Ah, you Jehud's ass! " and Father Simeon over-
hearing it, said not a word, and was only ashamed
because he could not remember where such an ass
was mentioned in the Bible. After him the priest at
Lesopolye had been Father Demyan, who used to
drink heavily, and at times drank till he saw green
snakes, and was even nicknamed Demyan Snakeseer.
The schoolmaster at Lesopolye was Matvey Niko-
laitch, who had been a divinity student, a kind and
intelligent man, but he, too, was a drunkard; he never
beat the schoolchildren, but for some reason he al-
ways had hanging on his wall a bunch of birch-twigs,
and below it an utterly meaningless inscription in
Latin: " Betula kinderbalsamica secuta." He had
a shaggy black dog whom he called Syntax.
And his holiness laughed. Six miles from Leso-
polye was the village Obnino with a wonder-working
ikon. In the summer they used to carry the ikon in
procession about the neighbouring villages and ring
the (bells the whole day long; first in one village and
then in another, and it used to seem to the bishop
then that joy was quivering in the air, and he (in
those days his name was Pavlusha) used to follow
the ikon, bareheaded and barefoot, with naive faith,
with a naive smile, infinitely happy. In Obnino, he
remembered now, there were always a lot of people,
and the priest there. Father Alexey, to save time
during mass, used to make his deaf nephew Ilarion
read the names of those for whose health or whose
souls' peace prayers were asked. Ilarion used to
read them, now and then getting a five or ten kopeck
piece for the service, and only when he was grey and
bald, when life was nearly over, he suddenly saw
written on one of the pieces of paper: "What a
fool you are, Ilarion." Up to fifteen at least Pav-
lusha was undeveloped and idle at his lessons, so
much so that they thought of taking him away from
the clerical school and putting him into a shop; one
day, going to the post at Obnino for letters, he had
stared a long time at the post-office clerks and asked :
" Allow me to ask, how do you get your salary, every
month or every day?"
His holiness crossed himself and turned over on
the other side, trying to stop thinking and go to
sleep.
" My mother has come," he remembered and
laughed.
The moon peeped in at the window, the floor was
lighted up, and there were shadows on it. A cricket
was chirping. Through the wall Father Sisoy was
snoring in the next room, and his aged snore had a
sound that suggested loneliness, forlornness, even
vagrancy. Sisoy had once been housekeeper to the
bishop of the diocese, and was called now " the
former Father Housekeeper " ; he was seventy years
old, he lived in a monastery twelve miles from the
town and stayed sometimes in the town, too. He
had come to the Pankratievsky Monastery three days
before, and the bishop had kept him that he might
talk to him at his leisure about matters of business,
about the arrangements here. . . .
At half-past one they began ringing for matins.
Father Sisoy could be heard coughing, muttering
something in a discontented voice, then he got up
and walked barefoot about the rooms.
" Father Sisoy," the bishop called.
Sisoy went back to his room and a little later made
his appearance in his boots, with a candle; he had on
his cassock over his underclothes and on his head was
an old faded skull-cap.
" I can't sleep," said the bishop, sitting up. " I
must be unwell. And what it is I don't know.
Fever ! "
" You must have caught cold, your holiness. You
must be rubbed with tallow." Sisoy stood a little
and yawned. " O Lord, forgive me, a sinner."
" They had the electric lights on at Erakin's to-
day," he said; "I don't like it!"
Father Sisoy was old, lean, bent, always dissatis-
fied with something, and his eyes were angry-looking
and prominent as a crab's.
" I don't like it," he said, going away. " I don't
like it. Bother It! "
II
Next day, Palm Sunday, the bishop took the serv-
ice in the cathedral in the town, then he visited the
bishop of the diocese, then visited a very sick old
lady, the widow of a general, and at last drove home.
Between one and two o'clock he had welcome visitors
dining with him — his mother and his niece Katya, a
child of eight years old. All dinner-time the spring
sunshine was streaming in at the windows, throwing
bright light on the white tablecloth and on Katya's
red hair. Through the double windows they could
hear the noise of the rooks and the notes of the star-
lings in the garden.
" It is nine years since we have met," said the old
lady. " And when I looked at you in the monastery
yesterday, good Lord ! you've not changed a bit, ex-
cept maybe you are thinner and your beard is a little
longer. Holy Mother, Queen of Heaven ! Yester-
day at the evening service no one could help crying.
I, too, as I looked at you, suddenly began crying,
though I couldn't say why. His Holy Will ! "
And in spite of the affectionate tone in which she
said this, he could see she was constrained as though
she were uncertain whether to address him formally
or familiarly, to laugh or not, and that she felt her-
self more a deacon's widow than his mother. And
Katya gazed without blinking at her uncle, his holi-
ness, as though trying to discover what sort of a
person he was. Her hair sprang up from under
the comb and the velvet ribbon and stood out like a
halo: she had a turned-up nose and sly eyes. The
child had broken a glass before sitting down to din-
ner, and now her grandmother, as she talked, moved
away from Katya first a wineglass and then a tum-
bler. The bishop listened to his mother and remem-
bered how many, many years ago she used to take
him and his brothers and sisters to relations whom
she considered rich; in those days she was taken up
with the care of her children, now with her grand-
children, and she had brought Katya. . . .
" Your sister, Varenka, has four children," she
told him; " Katya, here, is the eldest. And your
brother-in-law Father Ivan fell sick, God knows of
what, and died three days before the Assumption;
and my poor Varenka is left a beggar."
"And how is Nikanor getting on?" the bishop
asked about his eldest brother.
" He is all right, thank God. Though he has
nothing much, yet he can live. Only there is one
thing: his son, my grandson Nikolasha, did not want
to go into the Church; he has gone to the university
to be a doctor. He thinks it is better; but who
knows! His Holy Will ! "
" Nikolasha cuts up dead people," said Katya,
spilling water over her knees.
" Sit still, child," her grandmother observed
calmly, and took the glass out of her hand. " Say
a prayer, and go on eating."
" How long it is since we have seen each other! "
said the bishop, and he tenderly stroked his mother's
hand and shoulder; " and I missed you abroad,
mother, I missed you dreadfully."
" Thank you."
" I used to sit in the evenings at the open window,
lonely and alone ; often there was music playing, and
all at once I used to be overcome with homesickness
and felt as though I would give everything only to be
at home and see you."
His mother smiled, beamed, but at once she made
a grave face and said:
" Thank you."
His mood suddenly changed. He looked at his
mother and could not understand how she had come
by that respectfulness, that timid expression of face :
what was it for? And he did not recognize her.
He felt sad and vexed. And then his head ached
just as it had the day before; his legs felt fearfully
tired, and the fish seemed to him stale and tasteless;
he felt thirsty all the time. . . .
After dinner two rich ladies, landowners, arrived
and sat for an hour and a half in silence with rigid
countenances; the archimandrite, a silent, rather deaf
man, came to see him about business. Then they
began ringing for vespers; the sun was setting be-
hind the wood and the day was over. When he re-
turned from church, he hurriedly said his prayers,
got into bed, and wrapped himself up as warm as
possible.
It was disagreeable to remember the fish he had
eaten at dinner. The moonlight worried him, and
then he heard talking. In an adjoining room, prob-
ably in the parlour. Father Sisoy was talking politics :
" There's war among the Japanese now. They
are fighting. The Japanese, my good soul, are the
same as the Montenegrins; they are the same race.
They were under the Turkish yoke together."
And then he heard the voice of Marya Timo-
fyevna :
" So, having said our prayers and drunk tea, we
went, you know, to Father Yegor at Novokatnoye,
so . . ."
And she kept on saying, " having had tea " or
" having drunk tea," and it seemed as though the
only thing she had done in her life was to drink tea.
The bishop slowly, languidly, recalled the sem-
inary, the academy. For three years he had been
Greek teacher in the seminary: by that time he could
not read without spectacles. Then he had become a
monk; he had been made a school inspector. Then
he had defended his thesis for his degree. When
he was thirty-two he had been made rector of the
seminary, and consecrated archimandrite: and then
his life had been so easy, so pleasant; it seemed so
long, so long, no end was in sight. Then he had be-
gun to be ill, had grown very thin and almost blind,
and by the advice of the doctors had to give up every-
thing and go abroad.
" And what then? " asked Slsoy in the next room.
" Then we drank tea . . ." answered Marya
Timofyevna.
" Good gracious, you've got a green beard," said
Katya suddenly in surprise, and she laughed.
The bishop remembered that the grey-headed Fa-
ther Sisoy's beard really had a shade of green in it,
and he laughed.
" God have mercy upon us, what we have to put
up with with this girl ! " said Sisoy, aloud, getting
angry. " Spoilt child ! Sit quiet!"
The bishop remembered the perfectly new white
church In which he had conducted the services while
living abroad, he remembered the sound of the warm
sea. In his flat he had five lofty light rooms; in his
study he had a new writing-table, lots of books. He
had read a great deal and often written. And he
remembered how he had pined for his native land,
how a bhnd beggar woman had played the guitar un-
der his window every day and sung of love, and how,
as he listened, he had always for some reason thought
of the past. But eight years had passed and he had
been called back to Russia, and now he was a suffra-
gan bishop, and all the past had retreated far away
into the mist as though it were a dream. . . .
Father SIsoy came into the bedroom with a candle.
" I say! " he said, wondering, " are you asleep al-
ready, your holiness? "
"What is it?"
" Why, it's still early, ten o'clock or less. I
bought a candle to-day; I wanted to rub you with
tallow."
" I am in a fever . . ." said the bishop, and he
sat up. " I really ought to have something. My
head is bad. . . ."
SIsoy took off the bishop's shirt and began rub-
bing his chest and back with tallow.
" That's the way . . . that's the way . . ." he
said. " Lord Jesus Christ . . . that's the way. I
walked to the town to-day; I was at what's-his-name's
— the chief priest Sidonsky's. ... I had tea with
him. I don't like him. Lord Jesus Christ. . . .
That's the way. I don't like him."
III
The bishop of the diocese, a very fat old man, was
111 with rheumatism or gout, and had been In bed for
over a month. Bishop Pyotr went to see him almost
every day, and saw all who came to ask his help.
And now that he was unwell he was struck by the
emptiness, the triviality of everything which they
asked and for which they wept; he was vexed at their
ignorance, their timidity; and all this useless, petty
business oppressed him by the mass of It, and it
seemed to him that now he understood the diocesan
bishop, who had once in his young days written on
" The Doctrines of the Freedom of the Will," and
now seemed to be all lost In trivialities, to have for-
gotten everything, and to have no thoughts of re-
ligion. The bishop must have lost touch with Rus-
sian life while he was abroad; he did not find it easy;
the peasants seemed to him coarse, the women who
sought his help dull and stupid, the seminarists and
their teachers uncultivated and at times savage.
And the documents coming in and going out were
reckoned by tens of thousands; and what documents
they were ! The higher clergy in the whole diocese
gave the priests, young and old, and even their wives
and children, marks for their behaviour — a five, a
four, and sometimes even a three; and about this he
had to talk and to read and write serious reports.
And there was positively not one minute to spare;
his soul was troubled all day long, and the bishop
was only at peace when he was in church.
He could not get used, either, to the awe which,
through no wish of his own, he inspired in people in
spite of his quiet, modest disposition. All the peo-
ple in the province seemed to him little, scared, and
guilty when he looked at them. Everyone was timid
in his presence, even the old chief priests; everyone
" flopped " at his feet, and not long previously an old
lady, a village priest's wife who had come to consult
him, was so overcome by awe that she could not utter
a single word, and went empty away. And he, who
could never in his sermons bring himself to speak
ill of people, never reproached anyone because he
was so sorry for them, was moved to fury with the
people who came to consult him, lost his temper and
flung their petitions on the floor. The whole time
he had been here, not one person had spoken to him
genuinely, simply, as to a human being; even his old
mother seemed now not the same ! And why, he
wondered, did she chatter away to Sisoy and laugh
so much; while with him, her son, she was grave and
usually silent and constrained, which did not suit
her at all. The only person who behaved freely with
him and said what he meant was old Sisoy, who had
spent his whole life in the presence of bishops and
had outlived eleven of them. And so the bishop
was at ease with him, although, of course, he was a
tedious and nonsensical man.
After the service on Tuesday, his holiness Pyotr
was in the diocesan bishop's house receiving petitions
there; he got excited and angry, and then drove
home. He was as unwell as before ; he longed to be
in bed, but he had hardly reached home when he was
informed that a young merchant called Erakin, who
subscribed liberally to charities, had come to see him
about a very important matter. The bishop had to
see him. Erakin stayed about an hour, talked very
loud, almost shouted, and it was difficult to under-
stand what he said.
" God grant it may," he said as he went away.
" Most essential ! According to circumstances, your
holiness! I trust it may ! "
After him came the Mother Superior from a dis-
tant convent. And when she had gone they began
ringing for vespers. He had to go to church.
In the evening the monks sang harmoniously, with
inspiration. A young priest with a black beard con-
ducted the service; and the bishop, hearing of the
Bridegroom who comes at midnight and of the Heav-
enly Mansion adorned for the festival, felt no re-
pentance for his sins, no tribulation, but peace at
heart and tranquillity. And he was carried back in
thought to the distant past, to his childhood and
youth, when, too, they used to sing of the Bride-
groom and of the Heavenly Mansion; and now that
past rose up before him — living, fair, and joyful as
in all likelihood it never had been. And perhaps in
the other world, in the life to come, we shall think of
the distant past, of our life here, with the same feel-
ing. Who knows? The bishop was sitting near
the altar. It was dark; tears flowed down his face.
He thought that here he had attained everything a
man in his position could attain; he had faith and yet
everything was not clear, something was lacking still.
He did not want to die; and he still felt that he had
missed what was most important, something of which
he had dimly dreamed in the past; and he was trou-
bled by the same hopes for the future as he had felt
in childhood, at the academy and abroad.
" How well they sing to-day! " he thought, listen-
ing to the singing. " How nice it is! "
IV
On Thursday he celebrated mass in the cathedral;
it was the Washing of Feet, When the service was
over and the people were going home, it was sunny,
warm; the water gurgled in the gutters, and the un-
ceasing trilling of the larks, tender, telling of peace,
rose from the fields outside the town. The trees
were already awakening and smiling a welcome, while
above them the infinite, fathomless blue sky stretched
into the distance, God knows whither.
On reaching home his holiness drank some tea,
then changed his clothes, lay down on his bed, and
told the lay brother to close the shutters on the win-
dows. The bedroom was darkened. But what
weariness, what pain in his legs and his back, a chill
heavy pain, what a noise in his ears! He had not
slept for a long time — for a very long time, as it
seemed to him now, and some trifling detail which
haunted his brain as soon as his eyes were closed
prevented him from sleeping. As on the day before,
sounds reached him from the adjoining rooms
through the walls, voices, the jingle of glasses and
teaspoons. . . . Marya Timofyevna was gaily tell-
ing Father Sisoy some story with quaint turns of
speech, while the latter answered in a grumpy, ill-
humoured voice: "Bother them! Not likely!
What next! " And the bishop again felt vexed and
then hurt that with other people his old mother be-
haved in a simple, ordinary way, while with him, her
son, she was shy, spoke little, and did not say what
she meant, and even, as he fancied, had during all
those three days kept trying in his presence to find an
excuse for standing up, because she was embarrassed
at sitting before him. And his father? He, too,
probably, if he had been living, would not have been
able to utter a word in the bishop's presence. . . .
Something fell down on the floor in the adjoining
room and was broken; Katya must have dropped a
cup or a saucer, for Father Sisoy suddenly spat and
said angrily :
" What a regular nuisance the child is ! Lord for-
give my transgressions ! One can't provide enough
for her."
Then all was quiet, the only sounds came from
outside. And when the bishop opened his eyes he
saw Katya in his room, standing motionless, staring
at him. Her red hair, as usual, stood up from under
the comb like a halo.
"Is that you, Katya?" he asked. "Who Is it
downstairs who keeps opening and shutting a door? "
" I don't hear it," answered Katya; and she lis-
tened.
" There, someone has just passed by."
" But that was a noise in your stomach, uncle."
He laughed and stroked her on the head.
" So you say Cousin Nikolasha cuts up dead peo-
ple? " he asked after a pause.
" Yes, he is studying."
"And is he kind?"
" Oh, yes, he's kind. But he drinks vodka aw-
fully."
" And what was it your father died of? "
" Papa was weak and very, very thin, and all at
once his throat was bad. I was ill then, too, and
brother Fedya; we all had bad throats. Papa died,
uncle, and we got well."
Her chin began quivering, and tears gleamed In
her eyes and trickled down her cheeks.
" Your holiness," she said in a shrill voice, by now
weeping bitterly, " uncle, mother and all of us are
left very wretched. . . . Give us a little money . . .
do be kind . . . uncle darling. . . ."
He, too, was moved to tears, and for a long time
was too much touched to speak. Then he stroked
her on the head, patted her on the shoulder and said:
" Very good, very good, my child. When the
holy Easter comes, we will talk it over. ... I will
help you. ... I will help you. . . ."
His mother came in quietly, timidly, and prayed
before the ikon. Noticing that he was not sleeping,
she said:
" Won't you have a drop of soup? "
" No, thank you," he answered, " I am not hungry."
" You seem to be unwell, now I look at you. I
should think so; you may well be ill! The whole
Jay on your legs, the whole day. . . . And, my good-
ness, it makes one's heart ache even to look at you!
Well, Easter is not far off; you will rest then, please
God. Then we will have a talk, too, but now I'm
not going to disturb you with my chatter. Come
along, Katya; let his holiness sleep a little."
And he remembered how once very long ago, when
he was a boy, she had spoken exactly like that, in
the same jestingly respectful tone, with a Church
dignitary. . . . Only from her extraordinarily kind
eyes and the timid, anxious glance she stole at him as
she went out of the room could one have guessed that
this was his mother. He shut his eyes and seemed
to sleep, but twice heard the clock strike and Father
Sisoy coughing the other side of the wall. And once
more his mother came in and looked timidly at him
for a minute. Someone drove up to the steps, as
he could hear, in a coach or in a chaise. Suddenly
a knock, the door slammed, the lay brother came into
the bedroom.
" Your holiness," he called.
"Well?"
"The horses are here; it's time for the evening
service."
"What o'clock is it?"
" A quarter past seven."
He dressed and drove to the cathedral. During
all the " Twelve Gospels " he had to stand In the
middle of the church without moving, and the first
gospel, the longest and the most beautiful, he read
himself. A mood of confidence and courage came
over him. That first gospel, " Now is the Son of
Man glorified," he knew by heart; and as he read
he raised his eyes from time to time, and saw on
both sides a perfect sea of lights and heard the
splutter of candles, but, as in past years, he could not
see the people, and it seemed as though these were
all the same people as had been round him In those
days, in his childhood and his youth ; that they would
always be the same every year and till such time as
God only knew.
His father had been a deacon, his grandfather a
priest, his great-grandfather a deacon, and his whole
family, perhaps from the days when Christianity
had been accepted in Russia, had belonged to the
priesthood; and his love for the Church services, for
the priesthood, for the peal of the bells, was deep
in him, ineradicable, innate. In church, particularly
when he took part in the service, he felt vigorous,
of good cheer, happy. So it was now. Only when
the eighth gospel had been read, he felt that his
voice had grown weak, even his cough was inaudible.
His head had begun to ache intensely, and he was
troubled by a fear that he might fall down. And
his legs were indeed quite numb, so that by degrees
he ceased to feel them and could not understand how
or on what he was standing, and why he did not
fall. . . .
It was a quarter to twelve when the service was
over. When he reached home, the bishop undressed
and went to bed at once without even saying his
prayers. He could not speak and felt that he could
not have stood up. When he had covered his head
with the quilt he felt a sudden longing to be abroad,
an insufferable longing! He felt that he would give
his life not to see those pitiful cheap shutters, those
low ceilings, not to smell that heavy monastery smell.
If only there were one person to whom he could have
talked, have opened his heart!
For a long while he heard footsteps in the next
room and could not tell whose they were. At last
the door opened, and Sisoy came In with a candle and
a tea-cup in his hand.
"You are in bed already, your holiness?" he
asked. " Here I have come to rub you with spirit
and vinegar. A thorough rubbing does a great deal
of good. Lord Jesus Christ! . . . That's the way
. . . that's the way. . . . I've just been In our mon-
astery. ... I don't like It. I'm going away from
here to-morrow, your holiness; I don't want to
stay longer. Lord Jesus Christ. . . . That's the
way. . . ."
Sisoy could never stay long in the same place, and
he felt as though he had been a whole year in the
Pankratlevsky Monastery. Above all, listening to
him it was difficult to understand where his home
was, whether he cared for anyone or anything,
whether he believed In God. . . . He did not know
himself why he was a monk, and, indeed, he did
not think about It, and the time when he had become
a monk had long passed out of his memory; It seemed
as though he had been born a monk.
" I'm going away to-morrow; God be with them
all."
" I should like to talk to you. ... I can't find
the time," said the bishop softly with an effort. " I
don't know anything or anybody here. . . ."
" I'll stay till Sunday if you like; so be it, but I
don't want to stay longer. I am sick of them ! "
" I ought not to be a bishop," said the bishop
softly. " I ought to have been a village priest, a
deacon ... or simply a monk. . . . All this op-
presses me . . . oppresses me."
"What? Lord Jesus Christ. . . . That's the
way. Come, sleep well, your holiness! . . .
What's the good of talking? It's no use. Good-
night! "
The bishop did not sleep all night. And at eight
o'clock in the morning he began to have haemorrhage
from the bowels. The lay brother was alarmed,
and ran first to the archimandrite, then for the mon-
astery doctor, Ivan Andreyitch, who lived in the
town. The doctor, a stout old man with a long grey
beard, made a prolonged examination of the bishop,
and kept shaking his head and frowning, then said:
" Do you know, your holiness, you have got
typhoid? "
After an hour or so of haemorrhage the bishop
looked much thinner, paler, and wasted; his face
looked wrinkled, his eyes looked bigger, and he
seemed older, shorter, and it seemed to him that
he was thinner, weaker, more insignificant than any-
one, that everything that had been had retreated
far, far away and would never go on again or be
repeated.
" How good," he thought, " how good! "
His old mother came. Seeing his wrinkled face
and his big eyes, she was frightened, she fell on her
knees by the bed and began kissing his face, his
shoulders, his hands. And to her, too, it seemed
that he was thinner, weaker, and more insignificant
than anyone, and now she forgot that he was a
bishop, and kissed him as though he were a child
very near and very dear to her.
" Pavlusha, darling," she said; "my own, my
darling son! . . . Why are you like this? Pav-
lusha, answer me ! "
Katya, pale and severe, stood beside her, unable
to understand what was the matter with her uncle,
why there was such a look of suffering on her grand-
mother's face, why she was saying such sad and
touching things. By now he could not utter a word,
he could understand nothing, and he imagined he was
a simple ordinary man, that he was walking quickly,
cheerfully through the fields, tapping with his stick,
while above him was the open sky bathed in sunshine,
and that he was free now as a bird and could go
where he liked !
" Pavlusha, my darling son, answer me," the old
woman was saying. " What is it? My own! "
" Don't disturb his holiness," Sisoy said angrily,
walking about the room. " Let him sleep . . .
what's the use . . . it's no goo.d. ..."
Three doctors arrived, consulted together, and
went away again. The day was long, incredibly
long, then the night came on and passed slowly,
slowly, and towards morning on Saturday the lay
brother went in to the old mother who was lying on
the sofa in the parlour, and asked her to go into the
bedroom: the bishop had just breathed his last.
Next day was Easter Sunday. There were forty-
two .churches and six monasteries in the town; the
sonorous, joyful clang of the bells hung over the
town from morning till night unceasingly, setting the
spring air aquiver; the birds were singing, the sun
was shining brightly. The big market square was
noisy, swings were going, barrel organs were playing.
accordions were squeaking, drunken voices were
shouting. After midday people began driving up
and down the principal street.
In short, all was merriment, everything was satisfactory,
just as it had been the year before, and as
it will be in all likelihood next year.
A month later a new suffragan bishop was ap-
pointed, and no one thought anything more of Bishop
Pyotr, and afterward he was completely forgotten.
And only the dead man's old mother, who is living
to-day with her son-in-law the deacon in a remote
little district town, when she goes out at night to
bring her cow in and meets other women at the
pasture begins talking of her children and her grand-
children, and says that she had a son a bishop, and
this she says timidly, afraid that she may not be believed. . . .
And, indeed, there are some who do not believe
her.
Finish