“You are laying the foundation of a Russian democracy,” I went on. “In England or America you would see a democracy three hundred years ahead of this. Have you heard of the London slums, or of Chicago? Are you not afraid of the responsibility?”
He smiled. “Three hundred years is a long time, brother. We teach the truth. If your people have gone wrong it was because they turned away, they took wrong turnings. It is God’s will that we preach and spread the truth.”
Ivan Savelev carried himself with the air of one who had uttered an unquestionable truism. His truths were his own, and for him indisputable. I left him and went to meditate on the secret life I had discovered.
It moves silently and unseen, like running water under snow, and on countless hillsides and valleys and plains the spring movement has begun. One day Russia will awake and find the season new. Then there will come another autumn and another harvest, and the good seed will be found to have multiplied thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and some an hundredfold.
DEVDORAK GLACIER, GORGE OF DARIEL
CHAPTER XXX
THE WOMAN WHO SAW GOD
ONE day, when I was visiting a village on the steppes, I came upon a strange comedy very typical of Russian life. I went in to a bootmaker to get one of my boots sewn up, and I overheard the following conversation.
“Marya Petrovna has seen the Anti-Christ,” says the cobbler’s wife.