he coffin,
growing gradually more marked, and by three o'clock it was quite
unmistakable. In all the past history of our monastery, no such scandal
could be recalled, and in no other circumstances could such a scandal have
been possible, as showed itself in unseemly disorder immediately after
this discovery among the very monks themselves. Afterwards, even many
years afterwards, some sensible monks were amazed and horrified, when they
recalled that day, that the scandal could have reached such proportions.
For in the past, monks of very holy life had died, God-fearing old men,
whose saintliness was acknowledged by all, yet from their humble coffins,
too, the breath of corruption had come, naturally, as from all dead
bodies, but that had caused no scandal nor even the slightest excitement.
Of course there had been, in former times, saints in the monastery whose
memory was carefully preserved and whose relics, according to tradition,
showed no signs of corruption. This fact was regarded by the monks as
touching and mysterious, and the tradition of it was cherished as
something blessed and miraculous, and as a promise, by God's grace, of
still greater glory from their tombs in the future.

One such, whose memory was particularly cherished, was an old monk, Job,
who had died seventy years before at the age of a hundred and five. He had
been a celebrated ascetic, rigid in fasting and silence, and his tomb was
pointed out to all visitors on their arrival with peculiar respect and
mysterious hints of great hopes connected with it. (That was the very tomb
on which Father Paissy had found Alyosha sitting in the morning.) Another
memory cherished in the monastery was that of the famous Father Varsonofy,
who was only recently dead and had preceded Father Zossima in the
eldership. He was reverenced during his lifetime as a crazy saint by all
the pilgrims to the monastery. There was a tradition that both of these
had lain in their coffins as though alive, that they had shown no signs of
decomposition when they were buried and that there had been a holy light
in their faces. And some people even insisted that a sweet fragrance came
from their bodies.

Yet, in spite of these edifying memories, it would be difficult to explain
the frivolity, absurdity and malice that were manifested beside the coffin
of Father Zossima. It is my private opinion that several different causes
were simultaneously at work, one of which was the deeply-rooted