Up to now it seemed to me that, though slowly, still I was going toward the heights. More than once his words were like a fiery finger that pointed to my soul, and I felt that the burn and the sting were wholesome; but now my heart became suddenly heavy, and I remained standing in the middle of the road, bitterly disappointed. Many fires burned in my breast. I suffered, yet I was incomprehensibly happy. I was bewildered and afraid.
"Is it possible," I asked, "that you are speaking of the peasants?"
He answered loudly and emphatically: "Yes; of the whole working people of the earth, of all its strength—the one and eternal source of the creation of God. Soon the will of the people will awake, and that great force, divided, will unite. Many are already seeking the means by which all the powers of the earth shall be harmonized into one, and from which shall be created the holy and beautiful all-embracing God of the earth."
He spoke loudly, as if not only I, but the mountains and the woods and all that lived, watching in the night, should hear him. He spoke and quivered, like a bird which is ready to fly, and it seemed to me that all this was a dream and that this dream lowered me.
I recalled to my mind the image of my God and placed before His face the dark rows of enslaved, confused people. Did they create God? I remembered their petty meanness, their cowardly avarice, their bodies stooped with degradation and toil, their eyes which were dulled with sorrow, their spiritual stammering and their dumb thoughts, and all their superstitions, and could they, these insects, create a new God?
Wrath and bitter laughter disturbed my heart. I felt that the old man had stolen something from me, and I said to him: "Ah, father, you have done mischief in my soul, like a goat in a garden, and this is all the result of your words. Do you dare to talk with every one like that? It is a great sin in my eyes. You should have pity for people. They seek comfort, and you go about sowing doubt."
He smiled. "I think you are on the same road as I am."
His smile was offensive to me. "It's a lie!" I answered. "I will never place man side by side with God."
"You don't have to," he said. "Do not place him there, for in that way you will put a master over yourself. I am not speaking to you about a man, but of the whole strength of the spirit of the earth—about the people."
I became enraged. This "God, creator," in rags, filthy, always drunk, who was beaten and flogged, became disgusting to me.