Tichon recalled a distant pale, white night, a group of people on a raft upon the glassy surface of the Neva, between two skies, two abysses, and the gentle languid music wafted across from the Summer Garden, kisses and sighs from the kingdom of Venus:
’Tis time to cast thy bow away.
Cupid! we all are in thy sway.
Thy golden love-awaking dart
Has reached and wounded every heart.
Before dawn, Minei, a man eighty years old, tried to escape. Kirucha caught him, they had a fight. Minei nearly killed Kirucha with his axe. The old man was seized by the throat and locked in a closet, where he went on screaming and reviling Cornelius with all his might.
At daybreak Tichon looked out to see whether the soldiers had arrived; he saw nothing but the empty glade flooded with sunshine, the dreamy, friendly, but gloomy pines, and dewdrops sparkling in iridescent hues. He felt the fresh perfume of the pinewood, the gentle warmth of the rising sun, the peace of the blue heavens; and again all that was going on in the chapel seemed a madman’s delirium.
Another long summer’s day began. The weariness of waiting grew unbearable. Famine threatened. There was but little water and bread: a bag of rye biscuits, and two baskets of sacramental loaves.
On the other hand there was a quantity of red wine. They drank it eagerly. Some one, being drunk, suddenly started a coarse song. It sounded sadder than the wildest moan.
The people began to murmur, they whispered together in corners and looked angrily at old Cornelius. What if the soldiers do not appear at all. Will they have to die of hunger? Some demanded that the door should be opened and bread sent for. Yet their eyes expressed but one thought, escape. Others wished to burn at once without waiting for the persecutors. Others prayed, but their face proclaimed they would rather have blasphemed. Others again, having eaten the dark balls, which the monk distributed more and more freely, raved, laughing and weeping. One lad in a fit of madness seized a candle burning before an icon and began to set the straw on fire. It was quenched with difficulty. Some sat for hours without a word in a kind of waking trance, not daring to look into one another’s eyes.