He would tell us about the sea. He spoke about it as about a great miracle, using marvelous words, now quiet and loud; now with fear, and with love. And he glowed all over with joy which made him look like a star. When we listened to him we were silent and even heavy at heart at his stories of this vast, live beauty.
"The sea," he said with passion, "is the blue eye of earth which looks out to the far heaven and meditates on infinite space. On its waves, which are as alive and sensitive as the soul, is reflected the play of the stars and their secret path; and if you watch for a long time the ebb and the flow of the sea, then the sky, too, appears like a far-off ocean, and the stars like islands."
Grisha listened, all pale, and smiled quietly, as if a moonbeam were playing on him, and he whispered sadly:
"And before the countenance of this mystery and beauty we only barter—nothing more."
At other times Seraphim would tell us about the Caucasus. He pictured to us a land gloomy and exquisite, like a fairyland, where hell and heaven embraced, and were at peace, both equal and both proud in their majesty.
"To see the Caucasus," Seraphim said in ecstasy, "that means to see the pure countenance of the earth, on which without inconsistency there unite in a smile the delicate purity of the childlike soul and the proud audacity and wisdom of the devil. The Caucasus is the touchstone of man. Weak spirits are ground to dust there and tremble before the power of the earth; but the strong, on the other hand, feel their strength grow and become proud and exalted like the mountain whose diamond-studded summit sends down its rays into the depths of the celestial wilderness. And this summit is the throne of the thunder."
Grisha sighed and asked in a low voice:
"And who points out the path to the soul? Should one be in the world or go away from it? What should one accept and what reject?"
Seraphim smiled distractedly and luminously.
"The glory of the sun is neither augmented nor diminished because you do not look at the sky, Grisha. Don't bother about that subject, my dear friend."