The Tsarevitch lifted his head, opened his eyes, and saw the familiar, ordinary, human face, not in the least alarming, with little wrinkles round the brown eyes; kind and slightly cunning, a mole with three hairs on the round plump cheek, the reddish grizzled beard, the same he had once pulled in a scuffle, when in his cups. An ordinary priest, nothing remarkable about him; yet, if a thunderbolt had fallen, Alexis would have been less dumbfounded than by those simple words—“God will forgive thee, we all desired it.”
And meanwhile, the priest continued, as if nothing had happened:—
“Tell me, my son, hast thou abstained from blood, carrion, from the flesh of strangled animal, or those killed by the wolf, and smitten by the bird? Hast thou ever defiled thyself by eating what has been forbidden in the holy laws? Hast thou tasted in Lent, or on Wednesdays and Fridays, butter and cheese?”
“Father,” exclaimed the Tsarevitch, “great is my sin, the Lord knows how great it is!”
“Hast thou broken the Lenten fast?” asked Father James with anxiety.
“I did not mean that, Father; I speak of my father, the Tsar. How is it possible? I am his son, flesh of his flesh. The son prayed for the death of his father! He who longs for another person’s death is a murderer. I am a parricide in thought. I am troubled, Father James, sorely troubled. Verily, Father, I confess to thee as to Christ Himself. Judge me, help me, be gracious unto me, O Lord!”
Father James looked at him, first in astonishment, then in anger.
“You repent for having revolted against your father after the flesh, but you forget your revolt against your father after the spirit! Inasmuch as the spirit is more than the flesh, by so much is the father after the spirit greater than the father after the flesh——”
And again he talked in an empty, laboured, literary manner, insisting again and again upon the honour due to the priesthood above all. “You, my son, have rebelled. Like a frenzied man, like a mad goat you have screamed at me. May God not count this unto you! It is not your own doing, but Satan plays me false through you. He has saddled you like a sorry jade and rides you proudly like a wild boar, according to the vision of the holy Fathers, wherever he chooses, till at last he will drive you into eternal perdition.”