I. Отец Ферапонт

The elder had awoken and felt himself to be very weak, yet he wished to move from the bed into his armchair.

He was in full possession of his mind; and his face, though greatly worn, was clear, almost joyful, his gaze cheerful, kindly, beckoning.

"I may not outlive this day that has come," he said to Alyosha; and then he desired to make confession and to receive communion at once.

His confessor had always been Father Paisy.

When both sacraments had been performed, the rite of unction began.

The hieromonks gathered, and little by little the cell filled with the hermits of the monastery.

Meanwhile the day had come on.

People began to come over from the monastery as well.

When the service had ended, the elder wished to take leave of them all, and he kissed each one.

The cell being cramped, those who had come earlier went out and gave place to others.

Alyosha stood beside the elder, who had again moved back into the armchair.

He spoke and taught as much as he could; his voice, though weak, was still fairly firm.

"So many years I have taught you, and have therefore spoken aloud so many years, that I have all but formed the habit of speaking — and, speaking, of teaching you — so much so that to keep silent would be almost harder for me than to speak, fathers and dear brethren, even now in my weakness," he joked, gazing with tender feeling at those crowding about him.

Alyosha afterward recalled some of what he said then.

But though he spoke distinctly, and in a voice firm enough, his speech was rather disjointed.

He spoke of many things, and it seemed he wished to say everything, to utter it all once more before the minute of his death, all that had been left unsaid in his life — and not for the sake of instruction alone, but as if thirsting to share his joy and rapture with all and everything, to pour out his heart once more in this life…

"Love one another, fathers," the elder taught (so far as Alyosha remembered afterward).

"Love the people of God.

We are no holier than those in the world for having come here and shut ourselves within these walls; on the contrary, every man who has come here, by that very coming, has acknowledged of himself that he is worse than all those in the world, and worse than all and everything on earth…

And the longer afterward a monk lives within his walls, the more keenly must he be aware of this.

For otherwise there was no reason for him to have come here at all.

But when he comes to know that he is not only worse than all those in the world, but is also guilty before all people for all and for everything, for all human sins, the world's and each man's alone — only then is the aim of our communion attained.

For know, my dear ones, that each single one of us is beyond doubt guilty for all and for everything on earth — not only by the common guilt of the world, but each man singly for all people and for every man upon this earth.

This knowledge is the crown of the monk's path, and indeed of every man's on earth.

For monks are no different sort of men, but only such as all people on earth ought to be.

Only then would our heart be moved to a love that is boundless, universal, knowing no satiety.

Then each of you will have the power to win the whole world by love, and to wash away the world's sins with his tears…

Let each man keep watch about his own heart; let each confess himself untiringly.

Do not fear your own sin, even once you have acknowledged it, so long as there is repentance; but make no conditions with God.

Again I say to you — be not proud.

Be not proud before the small, and be not proud before the great.

Hate not those who reject you, who shame you, who revile you and slander you.

Hate not the atheists, the teachers of evil, the materialists — not even the wicked among them, let alone the good, for there are many good ones among them too, the more so in our time.

Remember them in prayer thus: save all, O Lord, for whom there is no one to pray; save also those who do not wish to pray to thee.

And add this at once: it is not out of my pride that I pray for this, O Lord, for I too am viler than all and everything…

Love the people of God, do not let the flock be lured away by newcomers, for if you fall asleep in sloth and in your fastidious pride, and still more in covetousness, then they will come from every land and carry off your flock from you.

Expound the Gospel to the people untiringly…

Practice no usury…

Love not silver and gold, and keep none of it…

Have faith, and hold fast the banner.

Raise it on high…"

The elder, however, spoke more brokenly than it is set down here and than Alyosha later recorded.

At times he broke off speaking altogether, as if gathering his strength; he gasped for breath, yet he seemed to be in a state of rapture.

They listened to him with deep emotion, though many marveled at his words and saw in them an obscurity…

Afterward all these words were remembered.

When Alyosha happened to step out of the cell for a moment, he was struck by the general agitation and expectancy of the brethren crowding within the cell and around it.

The expectancy was, among some, almost anxious, and among others solemn.

Everyone was waiting for something immediate and great the instant the elder passed away.

This expectancy was, from one point of view, almost frivolous, and yet even the strictest of the elders were subject to it.

Sternest of all was the face of the hieromonk Father Paisy.

Alyosha had stepped out of the cell only because he had been mysteriously summoned, through one of the monks, by Rakitin, who had come from the town with a strange letter for Alyosha from Madame Khokhlakova.

She had passed on to Alyosha a curious piece of news that came at an exceedingly opportune moment.

The matter was this: that on the previous day, among the believing women of the common people who had come to bow before the elder and receive his blessing, there had been one old townswoman, Prokhorovna, the widow of a non-commissioned officer.

She had asked the elder whether she might commemorate her little son Vasenka — who had gone far away on service into Siberia, to Irkutsk, and from whom she had received no news whatever for a year now — in church as one departed, for the repose of his soul, as though he were dead.

To which the elder had answered her with severity, forbidding it and calling commemoration of that sort akin to sorcery.

But then, forgiving her on account of her ignorance, he had added, "as if looking into the book of the future" (so Madame Khokhlakova put it in her letter), this consolation: "that her son Vasya was certainly alive, and that he would either come to her soon himself or send a letter, and that she should go home and wait for it.

And what do you think?" Madame Khokhlakova added in rapture. "The prophecy was fulfilled even to the letter, and indeed more than that."

No sooner had the old woman returned home than a letter from Siberia, already awaiting her, was at once handed over.

But that was not all: in that letter, written on the road, from Yekaterinburg, Vasya informed his mother that he was himself on his way back to Russia, returning with a certain official, and that some three weeks after she received this letter "he hoped to embrace his mother."

Madame Khokhlakova earnestly and fervently implored Alyosha to report this freshly accomplished "miracle of prophecy" at once to the Father Superior and the whole brotherhood: "Everyone, everyone must know of it!" she exclaimed, closing her letter.

Her letter had been written in haste, hurriedly; the writer's agitation made itself felt in every line of it.

But there was already nothing for Alyosha to report to the brethren, for they all knew everything already: Rakitin, having sent the monk for him, had charged him, besides this, "most respectfully to convey to His Reverence Father Paisy as well that he, Rakitin, had a certain matter to lay before him — but one of such importance that he dared not put off communicating it even for a minute, and that for his boldness he humbly begged, bowing to the ground, to be forgiven."

Since the little monk had conveyed Rakitin's request to Father Paisy before Alyosha, it remained for Alyosha, on arriving, only to read the note through and to hand it over at once to Father Paisy as a mere document.

And even this stern and mistrustful man, reading the news of the "miracle" with a frown, could not entirely restrain a certain inward feeling of his own.

His eyes flashed, and his lips suddenly broke into a grave and penetrating smile.

"Shall we yet behold even greater things?" seemed to escape him all at once.

"Greater things shall we yet behold, greater things shall we yet behold!" the monks repeated around him; but Father Paisy, frowning again, asked them all not to speak of it aloud to anyone, at least for the time being, "until it is confirmed more fully, for there is much frivolity among worldly people, and besides, this case may have come about naturally," he added cautiously, as if to clear his conscience, yet scarcely believing his own reservation — which those listening saw very well.

That same hour, of course, the "miracle" became known to the whole monastery, and even to many of the laypeople who had come to the monastery for the liturgy.

Most struck of all by the miracle that had occurred, it seemed, was a little monk who had arrived at the hermitage the day before "from Saint Sylvester's," from one of the small Obdorsk monasteries in the far North.