It was Palm Sunday and Christ’s entry into Jerusalem was being solemnised. Arrayed in regal robes, with the golden mantle and crown and barma of Monomachus, he leads by the reins the ass on which sits the patriarch, a white-bearded old man, all in white and radiant in his whiteness. But looking more closely, Alexis perceives that the figure is no longer an old man, but a youth, in robes whiter than snow, with a face luminous as the sun—Christ Himself. The crowd does not see or cannot recognise Him. They all have terrible, lurid, corpse-like faces. All are silent, so silent that Alexis can hear his own heart beat. And the sky is also terrible, a livid grey, as if before an eclipse of the sun. At his feet there lolls a hunchback, in a three-cornered hat and a clay pipe in his mouth, who puffs straight into his face stinking Dutch tobacco. He babbles something, grins insolently, and points with his finger to a place whence comes a noise growing nearer and louder, like the rumbling of an approaching storm. And Alexis perceives that it comes from a procession. The Archdeacon of the ‘Most Drunken Convocation of Tsar Peter’ leads by the reins not an ass but some outlandish beast. Some one with a dark face rides on the beast. Alexis cannot distinguish it but it seems to resemble, only more terrible and repulsive than they, the scoundrel Theodosius and Peter the thief. Before them walks a shameless wench, naked; it might be Afrossinia or else the Petersburg Venus. All the bells are ringing, including the great bell of the John tower, called the Roarer, and the people shout as they had done some time before at the wedding of the Kniaz-Pope:—
“The Patriarch is married! The Patriarch is married!” Falling on their knees, they worshipped the beast, the wench and the low scoundrel.
“Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is he that cometh!”
Abandoned by every one, Alexis remains alone with Christ, alone amidst the maddened throng. The wild procession hurries straight upon them, with shouts, shrieks, bringing with it smoke and stench, which tarnish the gold of the royal robes and even dims the very sunlight of Christ’s face. Now the roysterers will be upon them, trampling, crushing, sweeping all before them, and great will be the abomination of desolation in the holy place.
And all disappears. He stands on the banks of a wide dreary river, it seems to be the highway from Poland to the Ukraine. It is late in a mid-autumn day. Wet snow and black mud. The wind sweeps the last leaves from the trembling aspens. A beggar in tattered rags, blue with the cold, plaintively asks a kopeck for Christ’s sake; some branded one too, thinks Alexis, as he notices his hands and feet covered with bloody wounds, probably a recruit who has deserted. He pities the youth and decides to give him, not merely a kopeck but a seven gulden piece. And he remembers in his dream, how he had entered in his diary along with other expenses: “November 22. For transport across the river three gulden, for quarters at a Jewish tavern five gulden, for a young lad starving seven gulden.” Already he is holding out the coins to the beggar when suddenly a rough hand is laid on his shoulder and a gruff voice, probably that of the sentinel, speaks, “For bestowing alms, a fine of five roubles; the beggar after due castigation and torture to be sent off to the Rogerwick.”
“Have pity!” pleads Alexis. “Foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head.” And looking closer at the deserter, the shivering lad, he perceived that his face is like the sun. The lad he dreamed was Christ Himself.
CHAPTER IV
“My Son,—When I said good-bye to you, and asked about your resolution concerning a certain matter, on which you always gave me the reply that owing to your weakness you were not fit for the throne, but would prefer the monastery, I again told you to think it well over, and communicate to me your decision. I have waited for it these seven months, but to this day you have written me nothing. Now, therefore, as you have had ample time for consideration, on receipt of this letter, decide at once one way or the other. Should you choose the throne, do not tarry longer than a week, but come to me here, for you will yet be in time to take part in the campaign. But should you choose the monastery, write me when and where and what day, so that knowing what I may have to expect from you, my heart may be at rest. To this messenger entrust the final answer. Should it be the first, state the day of your departure from Petersburg; should it be the second, the date of your entry into the cloister. And again we emphasize that this choice must be final, for I perceive that, as usual, you are spending your time to no purpose.”