“God’s will be done!”
“Man is like a cedar of Lebanon to look upon,” began Theodosius, chantingly in the church style, “yet he passes and no trace is left. His spirit will leave him; to earth will he return, and all his thoughts will perish with him on the same day”—he stopped short suddenly, and bringing his tiny shrunken face up to Alexis, he began to whisper in a quick, insinuating voice—“God waits a long time, yet when He visits He is severe. The Tsar’s illness has been brought about by his incessant drinking and voluptuousness. It is God’s revenge for attacking the clergy, whom he wanted to exterminate. No good can come while the Church is overawed by tyranny. Can this religion of ours be called Christianity; it might be the Turkish religion; yet even in Turkey such things do not happen. Our Russian country is doomed.”
Alexis could scarcely believe his ears. He had expected anything from Theodosius save this.
“But what were you prelates, guardians of the Russian Church, doing? Whose business is it but yours to stand up for the Church?” the Tsarevitch said, gazing intently at Theodosius.
“Ah, Tsarevitch, what power is left to us? Our prelates are so bridled that they will follow whichever way you lead them. They have as much power as the country police; they do the will of him who appoints them. They turn whichever way the wind blows. They are not prelates, but a mob.”
And hanging his head, he added in a low voice, as if to himself, and to Alexis it seemed to be the voice of the past, “We were all eagles, now we have become bats.”
His black hood, the wide sleeves of his gown, his ugly pointed face lit up by the blaze of the dying embers, all this made him look very much like a huge bat; only in his clever eyes there glowed the light of an eagle’s.
“It ill behoves you to talk and me to listen;” the Tsarevitch at last burst out. “Who has brought the Church under the State? Who is trying to introduce Lutheran customs among the people? Who has persuaded the Tsar to destroy all the chapels, defile icons, and close the monasteries? Who gives him dispensation for all this?”
He stopped. The monk continued to eye him with the same persistent, penetrating gaze. Alexis felt uneasy. Was this not after all a trap? Had Theodosius been sent to him as a spy by Ménshikoff, or by his father?
“Does your Highness remember a figure of speech called ‘the reductio ad absurdum’ in logic?” said the monk, winking with an infinitely cunning smile. “That is what I am doing. The Tsar has attacked the Church, yet dares not oppose it openly, only secretly he destroys, corrupts, and corrodes it. As for me, I had rather do a thing thoroughly, if I do it at all, and quickly if it has to be done. I prefer honest Lutheranism to a crooked orthodoxy; an avowed atheism to crooked Lutheranism. The worse the better! That is my way. What the Tsar indicates I carry out. What he whispers I openly declare to the people. I make him convict himself; let every one know that the Church of God is defiled. By dint of patience one can get used to anything; yet if this won’t work, the time will come when we, too, will have our fling. The cat will have to pay for all the tears it has caused the mice.”