At last he fell into that slumber into which the disciples of our Lord had fallen when the Master was praying in Gethsemane and coming towards them found them asleep, being heavy with sorrow. When he awoke the sun had already risen and Father Sergius had left the stone. Tichon approached it and kissed the place where the old man had stood. Then he left the mountain and took his way along narrow paths through the woods towards the Varlaam Monastery.
After the heavy sleep he felt weak and broken, as after a swoon. He seemed to be sleeping still, wanting and yet unable to awake. He was filled with that deep anguish which used to forbode his fits. He felt dizzy. His thought grew confused. Snatches of distant memories flashed across his mind. Now it was Pastor Glück repeating Newton’s words about the end of the world: “a comet will fall into the sun and this will cause a heat so intense that the whole world will be consumed by fire. Hypotheses non fingo!” Now it was the melancholy song of the “Coffin-liers”—
Ye hollowed oak-trunks, ye will prove
Fit house for us....
Now it was the last cry of the victims in the blazing chapel, “The bridegroom cometh at midnight.” Now the mad whirl of the dancers and the piercing shriek:—
“Eva, Evoe! Eva, Evoe!”
Now it was the gentle cry of Ivanoushka, the stainless lamb, crying under the knife of Averian—The quiet words of Spinoza about the intellectual love of God, Amor Dei intellectualis, “Man can love God but God cannot love man”—The oath in the ecclesiastical regulations which ordained obedience to the Autocrat of Russia as to Christ Himself—The austere humility of Father Hilarion: “Love all men and flee from any man,”—The affectionate whisper of Father Sergius, “Return to the Church, the true Church, my child.”
He recovered for a moment, looking round him and saw that he had lost his way.
For a long time he searched for the path among the heather. At last he gave it up and went on at random. The storm had passed over. The clouds had dispersed; the sun was very hot. Tichon was thirsty, yet not a drop of water could he find in this stony desert. Nothing but grey mosses, lichen, stunted pines overgrown with moss as with the cobweb; their thin trunks, often broken, stretched out like the thin arms and legs of sick people, covered with a reddish inflamed and peeling skin. Between them the air trembled with heat and over all was spread an implacable sky like copper heated to white heat. The stillness was intense. Inexpressible was the terror of this dazzling, sparkling, midday stillness.
Tichon again looked round and recognised the place he had often frequented and had only passed this morning. At the very end of the long glade of the forest, a road made probably once by the Swedes, but long since abandoned and overgrown by heather, glittered the lake. This was a spot not far from the cell of Father Sergius. He had probably on his wanderings made a circle and returned to the place whence he had started. He was tired as if he had walked a thousand miles, as if he had been ever walking. He asked himself whither he was going, and why? To the unknown kingdom of Oponskoye or the invisible legendary city of Kitesh, places in whose existence he no longer believed.