You lie on her breast and your body grows and you drink the warm, perfumed milk of your dear mother, and you see yourself completely and forever the child of the earth. With gratitude you think of her, "Oh, my beloved earth!"
Unseen torrents of wholesome strength pour from the earth and streams of spicy perfumes float in the air. The earth is like a censer to the heavens, and you both the fire and the incense. The stars burn ardently that they may show all their beauty before the rising of the sun, and love and sleep fill and caress you. The bright light of hope passes warmly through your soul. "Somewhere there exists a sublime God."
"Seek and thou shalt find." That is well said, and we should not forget these words, for in truth they are worthy of the human mind.
[CHAPTER XVIII]
As soon as spring came to the city I started out to tramp to Siberia, for I had heard that country highly praised, but on my way I was stopped by a man who strengthened my soul for the rest of my life and showed me the true path to God.
I met him on the road between Perm and Verkhotour.
I was lying on the edge of a wood and had built a fire to boil water. It was noon, very hot, and the air was filled with a rosinlike woody smell, oily and sappy. It was difficult to breathe. Even the birds felt hot, and they hid themselves in the depth of the wood and sang there happily while they arranged their lives.
It was quiet on the edge of the wood. It seemed to me that everything would soon melt underneath the sun and that the trees and the rocks and my own stultified body would flow in a many-colored, thick stream upon the earth.
A man was approaching, coming from the Perm side, singing in a loud, trembling voice. I raised my head and listened. I saw a little pilgrim, in a white cassock, with a tea-kettle at his belt and a calf-skin knapsack and a sauce-pan on his back. He walked briskly and nodded and smiled to me from afar.