IV
Eh, how I have suffered! Formerly such thoughts never entered my head—formerly, in those happy days when I myself was wont to flame like the glow of dawn, and to sing like the nightingale.—I must confess that everything has grown obscure round about me, all life has withered. The light which gives to its colours both significance and power—that light which emanates from the heart of man—has become extinct within me.... No, it has not yet become extinct—but it is barely smouldering, without radiance and without warmth. I remember how one day, late at night, in Moscow, I stepped up to the grated window of an ancient church and leaned against the uneven glass. It was dark under the low arches; a forgotten shrine-lamp flickered with a red flame in front of an ancient holy picture, and only the lips of the holy face were visible, stern and suffering: mournful gloom closed in around and seemed to be preparing to crush with its dull weight the faint ray of unnecessary light.... And in my heart reign now the same sort of light and the same sort of gloom.