op 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 day on your legs, the whole day. . . .
And, my goodness, 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 n