the bank and stopped. I thrust a five-kopeck
piece into Ieronim's hand for taking me across and jumped on land.
Immediately a cart with a boy and a sleeping woman in it drove
creaking onto the ferry. Ieronim, with a faint glow from the lights
on his figure, pressed on the rope, bent down to it, and started
the ferry back. . . .

I took a few steps through mud, but a little farther walked on a
soft freshly trodden path. This path led to the dark monastery
gates, that looked like a cavern through a cloud of smoke, through
a disorderly crowd of people, unharnessed horses, carts and chaises.
All this crowd was rattling, snorting, laughing, and the crimson
light and wavering shadows from the smoke flickered over it all
. . . . A perfect chaos! And in this hubbub the people yet found room
to load a little cannon and to sell cakes. There was no less commotion
on the other side of the wall in the monastery precincts, but there
was more regard for decorum and order. Here there was a smell of
juniper and incense. They talked loudly, but there was no sound of
laughter or snorting. Near the tombstones and crosses people pressed
close to one another with Easter cakes and bundles in their arms.
Apparently many had come from a long distance for their cakes to
be blessed and now were exhausted. Young lay brothers, making a
metallic sound with their boots, ran busily along the iron slabs
that paved the way from the monastery gates to the church door.
They were busy and shouting on the belfry, too.

"What a restless night!" I thought. "How nice!"

One was tempted to see the same unrest and sleeplessness in all
nature, from the night darkness to the iron slabs, the crosses on
the tombs and the trees under which the people were moving to and
fro. But nowhere was the excitement and restlessness so marked as
in the church. An unceasing struggle was going on in the entrance
between the inflowing stream and the outflowing stream. Some were
going in, others going out and soon coming back again to stand still
for a little and begin moving again. People were scurrying from
place to place, lounging about as though they were looking for
something. The stream flowed from the entrance all round the church,
disturbing even the front rows, where persons of weight and dignity
were standing. There could be no thought of concentrated prayer.
There were no prayers at all, but a sort of continuous, childishly
irresponsible joy, seeking a pretext to bre