Within its narrow wall
I’ll await the judgment call.
And again, as on the rafts at Petersburg on the night of the Venus festival, the talk turned upon the end of the world, and Antichrist:
“Soon, soon! He is already at the door,” began Vitalia. “Now we just manage to get along; but when Antichrist has come our lips will be sealed, and only in our hearts shall we be able to cling to God.”
“It is terrible, terrible,” moaned Kilikeya.
“I have heard,” continued Vitalia Avilka, “a runaway Cossack from the Don, relate a vision he had in the steppe: three men came to his hut, all exactly alike in countenance, they spoke Russian, but with a Greek accent. ‘Whence come ye,’ he asked, ‘and whither do ye go?’ ‘From Jerusalem,’ they answered, ‘and from the Lord’s Sepulchre to Petersburg, to see the Antichrist.’ ‘What Antichrist?’ he asked. ‘He whom you call Tsar Peter; he is the Antichrist. He will conquer Constantinople, and collect the Jews and take them to Jerusalem where he will reign. And the Jews know he is the real Antichrist. And with him has come the end of the world.’”
Again all remained silent, as though in expectation. All at once from the dark forest there came a long cry, like that of a weeping child; it probably was a night-bird. A tremor passed through them.
“Friends, friends,” stuttered Petka, his voice shaking with gasps, “I am afraid. We speak of him, the Antichrist, and perhaps he is here in the wood near us! See how we all are troubled.”
“Fools, fools, blockheads!” suddenly cried a voice like the angry growl of a bear. They turned round and saw a man whom they had not noticed before. He had probably come out of the wood while they were talking, had sat down on one side in the shade, and had remained silent. He was a tall stooping man, with grizzled red hair. His face could hardly be discerned in the morning twilight.
“The Tsar Peter makes a poor kind of Antichrist; he is a drunkard, a vagabond, a profligate,” continued the old man; “a pitiful Antichrist! The Last of the Devils will go about his work differently; he will have more brain than Peter.”