The Green Book Part 60

Whereupon the Czar dismissed Prince Galitzin, and the education of the people was left in the hands of the Sacred Synod. Russians always have their "living saints," some of them miraculous.

Photios, standing at the door of the mausoleum, called to Araktseieff within, in language unmistakably plain.

"Abandoned criminal, come out!"

The cries within were silenced.

"Come out from there!"

Araktseieff staggered out. He was scarcely recognizable. His beard, untouched for several days, stood out in gray bristles round his face; his eyes were bloodshot with weeping; his lips swollen; his hair lay wildly matted on his forehead; his general's uniform was streaked with green mould.

"What seek you in that grave?"

"Death."

"Of course you will die, we all shall do so, as penalty for our sins.

But do you desire to crown your evil deeds by dying unrepentant? Do you desire to die beside the coffin of her for the loss of whose soul you are guilty? You were the cause of her sin; will you drag her down to h.e.l.l? Instead of thinking of repentance, would you follow her to condemnation? Defiantly would you burst the barriers of that fearful next world instead of entreating admission with bended head? Of course you will die, but not when it pleases you; rather when it pleases your Maker to grant you death as a reward for penance.

"Your place is in the deep catacombs," continued Photios; "not by the side of your concubine. Under the rays of the burning sun, in storm, in the roar of the tempest, under drenching rain, shall you seek repentance! Stand up! follow me!"

Araktseieff crawled towards him on his knees.

"Now eat!" commanded Photios, throwing him a couple of turnips.

Picking them up, Araktseieff obeyed.

"Now put on these!" And he threw a dilapidated monk's dress towards him, faded out of all color by sun and rain. Araktseieff, taking off his general's uniform, put it on. And as saints on this earth do not drive in carriages, he followed the saint on foot and barefooted to the gates of the Monastery of St. George.

St. George's is one of the wealthiest monasteries in all Russia. It is situated near Grusino, at the end of the long peninsula formed by the river Volkhov and Lake Ilmer. Its gilded cupolas, green from the verdigris which centuries have brought out on the copper, tend to spread its fame far and wide. But entrance within the walls of the monastery oppresses the spirits. Silver dais upon silver dais reach to the dome; the organ towers aloft, with its pipes of gold; there are pictures of saints dazzling with rubies; mosaics composed entirely of precious stones. Upon the elaborately decorated altars lie costly Bibles bound in silver, and enamelled books of the ma.s.s. Over one of the altars is a picture of St. George in beaten silver. But it is only when we come to the "treasure chamber," with its priceless store of mitres, crooks, crowns, pearl-embroidered stoles, golden monstrances, that we realize how rich is Heaven's vicegerent--the Church. While the priests who guard all these treasures wander in among them in coa.r.s.e ca.s.socks and bare feet, that the world may see how poor is man.

But the most jealously guarded of all the treasures stood before the altar. It was a granite pillar enclosed within silver rails.

On the granite was engraven: "Upon this spot knelt Czar Alexander, attended by his faithful servants, the Archimandrite Photios and Alexis Andreovitch Araktseieff, in the year 1818."

Thither Photios brought the statesman, that he might see his name perpetuated beside that of the Czar.

"So high you had raised yourself. Now come and see how low you have sunk!"

The Archimandrite led the penitent back to the cloister and showed him his, the Archimandrite's, cell. It was a s.p.a.ce six feet broad by eight feet long. But there was one luxury in it: it had a window through which suns.h.i.+ne penetrated. His bed was a coffin roughly put together; his _prie-dieu_ a stone hollowed out by constant kneeling; a jug and a bowl for the daily _kwas_ the sole furniture of the cell. Yet all this was luxury compared with what awaited the penitent.

In the catacombs of the cloister were caves hewn out of solid rock, just large enough to contain a man kneeling or rec.u.mbent; a small hole in the heavy iron door let in air. Total darkness reigned. These caves were inhabited by the whilom great, powerful aristocrats, masters over hundreds of thousands, now no longer masters of their own souls. It is not tyranny, not the power of the sacred hierarchy which holds them bound here, but their own blind zeal. Despising, hating the world, they are self-condemned to the awful imprisonment. The catacombs of the cloisters of St. George and of Solowetshk ever harbor numbers thus self-condemned to a living death.

It pleased Araktseieff.

Lying upon his straw he pa.s.sed days and weeks. His door was kept locked by day, only to be opened at sound of the vesper bell, when he went to seek for food, for food is not brought to penitents. Only at dusk may they steal into the cloister garden to seek for mangel-wurzel, samphire, potatoes, and such like produce of the earth, their sole sustenance. One day Araktseieff came across a still more remarkable penitent than himself.

He, too, had once been a distinguished bojar; but none knew what his real name was. Here he was only known as "Little Father Nahum."

Nahum did not even allow himself the luxury of a ragged ca.s.sock. His sole covering is a rush mat woven by himself, his white hair and gray beard flow wildly down over his dirt-begrimed limbs. Nahum does not allow himself lodging in a cave. In summer he sleeps in pools, in winter he creeps into a dung-heap. To kneel day after day in his cave is not humiliation enough for him; he prostrates himself across the threshold of the church door, that those who enter may walk over him, kick him, spit on him. To gather fresh roots out of the earth and eat them Little Father Nahum looks upon as sinful gluttony. He seeks his evening meal from the dust-heap; what is thrown there is his sustenance.

Araktseieff had been doing penance three weeks in the catacombs when, one evening, as he was returning with a bundle of leeks in his hand, he came upon Nahum feasting off his self-laid dinner-table, the dust-heap.

"Ah," said Little Father Nahum, accosting the new-comer, "I have found so much to eat here to-night I can share with a friend."

"What has Providence provided for you?"

"Mouldy cheese."

"All right. Give me some."

"Here it is. Take it all," returned Nahum. "He who hankers after a penitent's food should have it all given up to him."

And he handed him the mouldy cheese, with the paper in which it had been wrapped and thrown upon the dust-heap. Truly, loathsome food! But Araktseieff's attention was not so much arrested by the contents as by the paper in which the cheese was enclosed. It was a letter, and in it Araktseieff at once recognized the handwriting of the Czar. His blood surged within him. The Czar's writing a cover for stale cheese! And then the contents! It was a letter addressed to Photios.

"Call him to you. Speak to him in the name of holy religion; strengthen him in the faith. Admonish him to preserve his life for the good of his country, which is beyond all other considerations. Thus will you preserve to the empire a servant of inestimable loyalty, and to me a faithful friend whom I sincerely honor and esteem."

And this was the paper chosen as a cover for mouldy cheese and thrown upon a dust-heap!

"Well, eat away, man," murmured Little Father Nahum, and, taking up the cheese which Araktseieff had let fall on the dust-heap, offered it him in the flat of his dirty hand.

Thrusting his fellow-penitent aside, Araktseieff hastened to Photios.

Photios was in the act of reading vespers. Araktseieff did not suffer him to come to an end.

"Was this letter from the Czar addressed to you?"

"To me."

"And you threw it on the dust-heap?"

"That you might find it there."

"I have found it. My penance is over. I return to St. Petersburg."

"Just what I wished to accomplish."

"You have accomplished it. But you do not yet know what you were doing when you brought Alexis Araktseieff forth from the grave? You constrained him back to life and the world, once more to prove the stuff that is in him. Well may you tremble before a resuscitated Araktseieff!"

"A blessing be upon all your actions!" stammered the Archimandrite, and continued his vespers.

Araktseieff left the monastery that very hour. He left it with the same wild frenzy of destruction with which he had entered it, only that then his desire was for self-destruction; now had returned the old desire for the destruction of others.

When Araktseieff, after those three weeks, was seen again in St.

Petersburg, every one started back in terror at his appearance. His face was emaciated, his hair had turned quite white. It was plain to see that he had risen from the grave.