ow. 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 monastery. . . . 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 Pankratievsky 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 oppresses me . . . oppresse