“What ignorance!” Father Hierotheus shrugged his shoulders, in sheer disdain for the doctrine and martyrization.
Moreover, Mother Golendoukha, who had already sought death once in the flames, but had been pulled out in time, purposely terrified everybody with her description: how the bodies are contorted in the flames, head and legs shrink together and the blood boils and foams like food in a pot; and how after the fire the bodies lay about, bloated and baked, smelling like roast meat. Some had remained whole, yet at a touch fell to pieces; dogs roamed about, with muzzles grimed with smoke, eating the corpses. A horrid stench spread around; none could pass by without holding his nose. At the time of the burning two black devils with bats’ wings appeared above the flames, rejoicing, clapping their hands and crying, “These are ours!” And for many years on that spot voices were heard at night lamenting, “We are lost, lost!”
Finally the opponents of self-burning approached Cornelius triumphantly: “Why did you not burn yourself? If it is as righteous as you say, you teachers ought to set the example. But no! You persuade poor novices into the fire. You are all alike, you teachers of self-burning. You praise it for others, not for yourselves. Are you not afraid of God’s wrath? You have burnt enough human beings, spare the remainder.”
Then, stung by the taunt, and at a sign from the old monk, Kirucha, a frantic adherent came forward. He brandished his axe, and called out in a loud voice:—
“He who is against self-burning let him come out with his axe, we two will fight it out! A trial by combat! If I am killed, the burning is not acceptable before God; should I kill, then—all we—on to the flames!”
Nobody accepted the challenge.
Then old Cornelius, coming forward, said, “All those for burning stand forth to the right; against, to the left!”
The crowd divided. One part surrounded the old monk, the other stood aside. Those who desired to be burnt numbered about eighty; those who refused about a hundred.
The old man lifted his pectoral cross and blessed those who had chosen the burning with the sign of it, and lifting his eyes to heaven prayed in a solemn voice: “For Thy sake, O Lord, and Thy faith, for the Love of God’s only begotten Son, we die. We do not spare ourselves. We return our souls to Thee. Joyfully we accept this second baptism by fire that we may not lose our faith; we seek the flames for the hate of Antichrist, dying for the love of Thee.”
“Burn, burn, begin,” the frenzied crowd again shouted. Tichon felt that he also would lose his senses if he stayed any longer among this maddened crowd.