"It was not Thy existence that I doubted, but Thy mercy; for it seemed to me that we are all abandoned by Thee without help and without guidance."
My soul was unbearably tortured; I could not sleep; I could do nothing. At night dark shadows tried to strangle me. Olga appeared before me. My heart was overcome with fear and I had no more strength to live.
I decided to hang myself.
It was night. I lay dressed on my bed. I glanced about me. I could see my poor, innocent wife before me, her blue eyes shining with a quiet light and calling me. The moon shone through the window and its bright reflection lay upon the floor and only increased the darkness in my soul.
I jumped up, took the rope from my bird snare, hammered a nail into the beam of the roof, made a noose and fixed the chair. I had already taken off my coat and tom off my collar, when suddenly I saw a little face appear indistinctly and mysteriously on the wall. I could have screamed with fear, though I understood that it was my own face which looked back at me from Olga's round mirror. I looked insane—so distracted and wretched, with my hair wild, my cheeks sunken in, my nose sharp, my mouth half open as with asthma, and my eyes agonized, full of a deep, great pain.
I pitied this human face; I pitied it for the beauty that had gone out of it, and I sat down on the bench and wept over myself, as a child who is hurt. After those tears the noose seemed something to be ashamed of, like a joke against myself. And in wrath I tore it down and threw it into the corner of the room. Death was also a riddle, but I had not yet answered the riddle of life!
What should I do? Some more days passed. It was as if I were seeking peace. I must do penance, I thought, and I gritted my teeth and went to the priest.
I visited him one Sunday evening, just as he and his wife were at table drinking tea. Four children sat around them. Drops of sweat shone on the dark face of the priest, as scales on a fish.
"Sit down," he said, good-naturedly, "and drink some tea with us."
The room was warm and dry; everything was clean and in order. It occurred to me how negligent this priest was in the performance of his church duties, and the thought came to me, "This, then, is his church."