ak out and vent itself
in some movement, even in senseless jostling and shoving.

The same unaccustomed movement is striking in the Easter service
itself. The altar gates are flung wide open, thick clouds of incense
float in the air near the candelabra; wherever one looks there are
lights, the gleam and splutter of candles. . . . There is no reading;
restless and lighthearted singing goes on to the end without ceasing.
After each hymn the clergy change their vestments and come out to
burn the incense, which is repeated every ten minutes.

I had no sooner taken a place, when a wave rushed from in front and
forced me back. A tall thick-set deacon walked before me with a
long red candle; the grey-headed archimandrite in his golden mitre
hurried after him with the censer. When they had vanished from sight
the crowd squeezed me back to my former position. But ten minutes
had not passed before a new wave burst on me, and again the deacon
appeared. This time he was followed by the Father Sub-Prior, the
man who, as Ieronim had told me, was writing the history of the
monastery.

As I mingled with the crowd and caught the infection of the universal
joyful excitement, I felt unbearably sore on Ieronim's account. Why
did they not send someone to relieve him? Why could not someone of
less feeling and less susceptibility go on the ferry? 'Lift up thine
eyes, O Sion, and look around,' they sang in the choir, 'for thy
children have come to thee as to a beacon of divine light from north
and south, and from east and from the sea. . . .'

I looked at the faces; they all had a lively expression of triumph,
but not one was listening to what was being sung and taking it in,
and not one was 'holding his breath.' Why was not Ieronim released?
I could fancy Ieronim standing meekly somewhere by the wall, bending
forward and hungrily drinking in the beauty of the holy phrase. All
this that glided by the ears of the people standing by me he would
have eagerly drunk in with his delicately sensitive soul, and would
have been spell-bound to ecstasy, to holding his breath, and there
would not have been a man happier than he in all the church. Now
he was plying to and fro over the dark river and grieving for his
dead friend and brother.

The wave surged back. A stout smiling monk, playing with his rosary
and looking round behind him, squeezed sideways by me, making way
for a lady in a hat and velvet cloak. A monastery servant hurried
after the l