half starved, surrounded by inexhaustible wealth. In
the cities stood churches filled with gold and silver, not needed by
God, and at the entrance to the churches shivered the beggars vainly
awaiting a little copper coin to be thrust into their hands. Formerly
she had seen this, too--rich churches, priestly vestments sewed with
gold threads, and the hovels of the poor, their ignominious rags. But
at that time the thing had seemed natural; now the contrast was
irreconcilable and insulting to the poor, to whom, she knew, the
churches were both nearer and more necessary than to the rich.

From the pictures and stories of Christ, she knew also that he was a
friend of the poor, that he dressed simply. But in the churches, where
poverty came to him for consolation, she saw him nailed to the cross
with insolent gold, she saw silks and satins flaunting in the fact of
want. The words of Rybin occurred to her: "They have mutilated even
our God for us, they have turned everything in their hands against us.
In the churches they set up a scarecrow before us. They have dressed
God up in falsehood and calumny; they have distorted His face in order
to destroy our souls!"

Without being herself aware of it, she prayed less; yet, at the same
time, she meditated more and more upon Christ and the people who,
without mentioning his name, as though ignorant of him, lived, it
seemed to her, according to his will, and, like him, regarded the earth
as the kingdom of the poor, and wanted to divide all the wealth of the
earth among the poor. Her reflections grew in her soul, deepening and
embracing everything she saw and heard. They grew and assumed the
bright aspect of a prayer, suffusing an even glow over the entire dark
world, the whole of life, and all people.

And it seemed to her that Christ himself, whom she had always loved
with a perplexed love, with a complicated feeling in which fear was
closely bound up with hope, and joyful emotion with melancholy, now
came nearer to her, and was different from what he had been. His
position was loftier, and he was more clearly visible to her. His
aspect turned brighter and more cheerful. Now his eyes smiled on her
with assurance, and with a live inward power, as if he had in reality
risen to life for mankind, washed and vivified by the hot blood
lavishly shed in his name. Yet those who had lost their blood modestly
refrained from mentioning the name of the unfortunate friend of the
p