Peter and Alexis: The Romance of Peter the Great

by Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky

Tichon knelt and stretched his hands out to Father Sergius with a forlorn hope.

“Save me, help me, protect me!—— Don’t you see for yourself the Church is actually perishing, the faith is perishing, the whole of Christianity is perishing? Already the mystery of lawlessness is being enacted, the abomination of desolation is in the holy places. Antichrist is being born!—— Arise, Father, for a great work! Return to the world, yourself to fight against Antichrist!”

“What are you saying, child? How can I, sinner that I am?” muttered Father Sergius, with terrified humility.

Tichon understood that all supplications would be vain, that Father Sergius had for ever cut himself off from the world, and was dead to it. Tichon remembered the terrible words, “Love all men and flee from the face of any of them.” “And what if it be truly so,” he thought, in great despair, “what if one of the two had to be chosen? Either God without the world, or the world without God?”

He fell with his face to the ground and remained there for a long time motionless, unconscious of the hermit’s caressing and comforting hand.

When he came to himself he was alone. Father Sergius had probably gone into the mountain to pray.

Tichon rose, entered the cell, slipped on his travelling habit, put round his shoulders his wallet, on his neck the icon of St. Sophia, the Wisdom of God, took up his staff, made the sign of the cross and went into the wood to continue his endless wanderings. He wanted to go away without taking leave of the hermit, for he knew farewells would be too painful for them both.

Yet in order to have a last look at Father Sergius, if only from the distance, he went into the mountain.

There in the middle of the glade stood as usual the old man praying on his rock.

Tichon sought the cavity in the rock, the cradle lined with soft moss where he had spent the first night, lay down in it and for a long time continued to look at the motionless outline of the praying monk, the blinding, dazzling white flashes of lightning and the silent clouds which swept across the sky.