sang harmoniously, with inspiration. A
young priest with a black beard conducted the service; and the
bishop, hearing of the Bridegroom who comes at midnight and of the
Heavenly Mansion adorned for the festival, felt no repentance 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 Bridegroom 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 feeling. 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
troubled 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, listening 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
unceasing 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 windows. 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 telling Father Sisoy some story with
quaint turns of speech, while the latter answered