All laughed.
But Tichon, again, grew afraid. He saw the end of all this. He felt certain that these men were on a road which it was impossible not to follow to that end; and that sooner or later, they, the Russians, would reach the stage which had already been reached in Europe; and either stand with Christ against reason, or with reason against Christ.
He returned to the library and sat down at the window next to the wall, lined with books in uniform leather parchment bindings. He gazed at the sky, white over the black pines, the empty lifeless abyss of the sky, and remembered the words of Spinoza.
“There is as much in common between God and man as between the constellation of the Dog and the barking animal. Man can love God, but God cannot love man.”
And it seemed to him that in that lifeless sky there dwelt a lifeless God, incapable of love. It were better to know that God did not exist. “Perhaps He really does not exist,” he thought, and he felt the same terror as in the moment when the baby Ivanoushka cried and Averian, with his raised knife, had smiled.
Tichon fell on his knees and began to pray. Looking up to heaven he repeated one word again and again:—
“Lord, Lord, Lord!”
But the heavens remained silent. Silence was in Tichon’s heart. Infinite silence, infinite terror.
Suddenly out of the depths of this silence a voice replied and told him what had to be done.
Tichon straightway rose, went into his cell, pulled his sack out from under the bed, took from it his old monk’s habit, the leathern belt, the rosary, the hood, the little icon of St. Sophia, the Wisdom of God, given to him by the girl Sophia; he took off his kaftan and the rest of the foreign dress he wore, put on the religious habit, fastened round his shoulders the wallet, took the staff, made the sign of the cross and, unnoticed by any one, passed out of the house into the wood.