Father Olympus felt his hair stand on end. It seemed to stick out on all sides, and become stiff and painful as if turning into steel wire. And at that moment his memory recalled with extraordinary clearness the tender words of the story[1] he had read the previous night:
“Rousing himself, Yeroshka raised his head and watched the moths fluttering around the flickering flame of his candle and falling therein.
“‘Fool! fool!’ said he to one. ‘Whither are you flying? Fool! fool!’ He got up and drove the moths away with his clumsy fingers.
“‘You’ll burn yourself, little fool; come, fly away, there’s plenty of room here,’ said he, coaxing one of them with gentle voice, and striving to catch hold of it by the wings and send it away. ‘You’ll destroy yourself, and then I shall be sorry for you.’”
[1] Evidently, “The Cossacks,” by Tolstoy.—(ED.)
“Good Lord! Who is it I am to curse?” said the deacon to himself in terror. “Is it possibly he—he who made me feel so much, and weep all last night for joy and rapture?”
But, obedient to a thousand-year-old custom, he repeated the terribly moving words of cursing and excommunication, and they resounded among the crowd like blows upon a large church bell.
So the curse went on: “The ex-priest Nikita, the monks Sergei, Sabatius—yes, Sabatius—Dorofei, Gabriel—blasphemers, impenitent and stubborn in their heresy—and all who act contrary to the will of God, be they accursed!...”
He waited a moment to take breath. His face was red and perspiring. The arteries on both sides of his throat were swollen, each a finger’s thickness. And all the while he proclaimed the curse, Tolstoy’s thoughts were in his mind. He remembered another passage:
“Once as I sat beside a stream I saw a little cradle come floating bottom upwards towards me. It was quite whole, only the edges a little broken. And I thought—whose cradle is it? Those devils of soldiers have been to a hamlet and taken away all the stores; one of them must have killed a little child and cut the cradle down from its corner with his knife. How can people do such things? Ah, people have no souls! And at such thoughts I became very sad. I thought—they threw the cradle away and drove out the mother and burned the home, and by and by they’ll come to us....”
Still he went on with the curse:
“Those sinning against the Holy Ghost, like Simon the sorcerer and Ananias and Sapphira. As the dog returns to its own vomit again, may their days be few and evil, and may their prayers be turned into sin; may Satan stand at their right hand; when they are judged let them be condemned, let their names be blotted out and the memory of them perish from the earth ... and may the curses and anathemas [hat fall upon them be manifold. May there come upon them the trembling of Cain, the leprosy of Gehazi, the strangling of Judas, the destruction of Simon the sorcerer, the bursting of Arius, the sudden death of Ananias and Sapphira ... be they anathema and excommunicate, and unforgiven even in their death; may their bones be scattered and not buried in the earth; may they be in eternal torment, and tortured by day and night....”