The heat and smoke were stifling him. Purple harebells on a blood-red field were beckoning to him and ringing plaintively. He felt that Sophia was nestling up and embracing him. And under her shroud, her young, innocent body was fresh as some flower, blossoming in the furnace. And still living voices continued to chant amid the groans of the dying.
“Lo, the Bridegroom cometh!”
“My Bridegroom, my beloved Christ!” whispered Sophia into Tichon’s ear. He felt that the fire which consumed him inwardly was more intense than the flames of the Red Death. They dropped together, as in one embrace the bride and bridegroom lie down upon the nuptial couch.
The burning woman, arrayed with the sun and winged with fire, carried him away into the flaming abyss.
The heat was so intense that the soldiers had to stand back; two were scorched, one had fallen in the chapel and perished.
The captain was angry.
“Fools, accursed fools! I’d rather fight the Swede or the Turk than have to do with these beggars!”
The old man’s face was paler than when he lay wounded on the battlefield of Poltava.
Fanned by the wind the flame rose higher and higher with a noise like thunder. Burning brands flew about like fiery birds. The whole chapel was a furnace, and in this furnace as in the fiery pit of hell, writhed a pile of contorted human bodies. Skins were bursting, the blood bubbled, the fat boiled, an atrocious odour filled the air. Suddenly the logs of the roof fell. A column of fire shot into the sky like a gigantic torch.