I spent the first night of my freedom in the woods. I lay long, gazed up at the sky and sang low to myself and fell asleep. In the early morning I awoke from cold, and walked on, racing to meet my new life as if on wings. Each step took me farther away, and I was ready to outrun the distance.
The people whom I met looked suspiciously at me and stepped aside. The black dress of the monk was disgusting and inimical to the peasants, but I could not take it off. My passport had expired, but the Abbot made a note under it which said that I was a novice of the monastery of Savateffsky and that I was on my way to visit holy places.
So I directed my steps to these places together with those wanderers who fill our monastery by hundreds on holidays. The brothers were indifferent or hostile to them, calling them parasites and robbing them of every penny they had. They forced them to do the monastery work and imposed on them and treated them with contempt. I was always busied with my own affairs and seldom met the newcomers. I did not seek to meet them, for I considered myself something quite extraordinary and placed my own inner self above everything else.
I saw gray figures with knapsacks on their backs and staffs in their hands creeping and swaying along the roads and paths, going not hurriedly but depressed, with heads bent low, walking humbly and thoughtfully, with credulous, opened hearts. They flowed together in one place, looked about them, prayed silently and worked a bit. If a wise and virtuous man happened to be there they talked with him low about something, and again spread out upon the paths going to other places with sad steps.
They walked, old and young, women and children, as if one voice called them, and I felt from this crossing and recrossing of the earth a strength arise from the paths which caught me also, and alarmed me and promised to open my soul. This restless and humble wandering seemed strange to me after my motionless life.
It was as if earth herself tore man from her breast and pushed him forth, ordering him imperiously, "Go, find out, learn." And man goes obediently and carefully, seeks and looks and listens attentively, then goes on farther again. The earth resounds under the feet of the searchers and drives them farther over streams and mountains and through forests and over seas, still farther wherever the monasteries stand solitary, offering some miracle, and wherever a hope breathes of something other than this bitter, difficult and narrow life.
The quiet agitation of the lonely souls surprised me and made me human, and I began to wonder,
"What are these people seeking?" Everything about me swayed, frightened and wandering like myself.
Many like myself sought God, but did not know where to go and strewed their souls on the paths of their seeking, and were going on only because they did not have strength enough to stop, acting like the seed of the dandelion in the wind, light and purposeless.
Others unable to shake off their laziness carried it on their shoulders, lowering themselves and living by lies, while still others were enthralled by the desire to see everything, but had no strength in them to love.