ALYOSHA was roused early, before daybreak. Father Zossima woke

up feeling very weak, though he wanted to get out of bed and sit up in

a chair. His mind was quite clear; his face looked very tired, yet

bright and almost joyful. It wore an expression of gaiety, kindness

and cordiality. "Maybe I shall not live through the coming day," he

said to Alyosha. Then he desired to confess and take the sacrament

at once. He always confessed to Father Paissy. After taking the

communion, the service of extreme unction followed. The monks

assembled and the cell was gradually filled up by the inmates of the

hermitage. Meantime it was daylight. People began coming from the

monastery. After the service was over the elder desired to kiss and

take leave of everyone. As the cell was so small the earlier

visitors withdrew to make room for others. Alyosha stood beside the

elder, who was seated again in his arm-chair. He talked as much as

he could. Though his voice was weak, it was fairly steady.

    "I've been teaching you so many years, and therefore I've been

talking aloud so many years, that I've got into the habit of

talking, and so much so that it's almost more difficult for me to hold

my tongue than to talk, even now, in spite of my weakness, dear

Fathers and brothers," he jested, looking with emotion at the group

round him.

    Alyosha remembered afterwards something of what he said to them.

But though he spoke out distinctly and his voice was fairly steady,

his speech was somewhat disconnected. He spoke of many things, he

seemed anxious before the moment of death to say everything he had not

said in his life, and not simply for the sake of instructing them, but

as though thirsting to share with all men and all creation his joy and

ecstasy, and once more in his life to open his whole heart.

    "Love one another, Fathers," said Father Zossima, as far as

Alyosha could remember afterwards. "Love God's people. Because we have

come here and shut ourselves within these walls, we are no holier than

those that are outside, but on the contrary, from the very fact of

coming here, each of us has confessed to himself that he is worse than

others, than all men on earth.... And the longer the monk lives in his

seclusion, the more keenly he must recognise that. Else he would

have had no reason to come here. When he realises that he is not

only worse than others, but that he is responsible to all men for

all and everything, for all human sins, national and individual,

only then the aim of our seclusion is attained. For know, dear ones,

that every one of us is undoubtedly responsible for all men- and

everything on earth, not merely through the general sinfulness of

creation, but each one personally for all mankind and every individual

man. This knowledge is the crown of life for the monk and for every

man. For monks are not a special sort of men, but only what all men

ought to be. Only through that knowledge, our heart grows soft with

infinite, universal, inexhaustible love. Then every one of you will

have the power to win over the whole world by love and to wash away

the sins of the world with your tears....Each of you keep watch over

your heart and confess your sins to yourself unceasingly. Be not

afraid of your sins, even when perceiving them, if only there be

penitence, but make no conditions with God. Again, I say, be not

proud. Be proud neither to the little nor to the great. Hate not those

who reject you, who insult you, who abuse and slander you. Hate not

the atheists, the teachers of evil, the materialists- and I mean not

only the good ones- for there are many good ones among them,

especially in our day- hate not even the wicked ones. Remember them in

your prayers thus: Save, O Lord, all those who have none to pray for

them, save too all those who will not pray. And add: it is not in

pride that I make this prayer, O Lord, for I am lower than all men....

Love God's people, let not strangers draw away the flock, for if you

slumber in your slothfulness and disdainful pride, or worse still,

in covetousness, they will come from all sides and draw away your

flock. Expound the Gospel to the people unceasingly... be not

extortionate.... Do not love gold and silver, do not hoard them....

Have faith. Cling to the banner and raise it on high."

    But the elder spoke more disconnectedly than Alyosha reported

his words afterwards. Sometimes he broke off altogether, as though

to take breath and recover his strength, but he was in a sort of

ecstasy. They heard him with emotion, though many wondered at his

words and found them obscure.... Afterwards all remembered those

words.

    When Alyosha happened for a moment to leave the cell, he was

struck by the general excitement and suspense in the monks who were

crowding about it. This anticipation showed itself in some by anxiety,

in others by devout solemnity. All were expecting that some marvel

would happen immediately after the elder's death. Their suspense

was, from one point of view, almost frivolous, but even the most

austere of the monks were affected by it. Father Paissy's face

looked the gravest of all.

    Alyosha was mysteriously summoned by a monk to see Rakitin, who

had arrived from town with a singular letter for him from Madame

Hohlakov. In it she informed Alyosha of a strange and very opportune

incident. It appeared that among the women who had come on the

previous day to receive Father Zossima's blessing, there had been an

old woman from the town, a sergeant's widow, called Prohorovna. She

had inquired whether she might pray for the rest of the soul of her

son, Vassenka, who had gone to Irkutsk, and had sent her no news for

over a year. To which Father Zossima had answered sternly,

forbidding her to do so, and saying that to pray for the living as

though they were dead was a kind of sorcery. He afterwards forgave her

on account of her ignorance, and added, "as though reading the book of

the future" (this was Madame Hohlakov's expression), words of comfort:

"that her son Vassya was certainly alive and he would either come

himself very shortly or send a letter, and that she was to go home and

expect him." And "Would you believe it?" exclaimed Madame Hohlakov

enthusiastically, "the prophecy has been fulfilled literally indeed,

and more than that." Scarcely had the old woman reached home when they

gave her a letter from Siberia which had been awaiting her. But that

was not all; in the letter written on the road from Ekaterinenburg,

Vassya informed his mother that he was returning to Russia with an

official, and that three weeks after her receiving the letter he hoped

"to embrace his mother."

    Madame Hohlakov warmly entreated Alyosha to report this new

"miracle of prediction" to the Superior and all the brotherhood. "All,

all, ought to know of it" she concluded. The letter had been written

in haste, the excitement of the writer was apparent in every line of

it. But Alyosha had no need to tell the monks, for all knew of it

already. Rakitin had commissioned the monk who brought his message "to

inform most respectfully his reverence Father Paissy, that he,

Rakitin, has a matter to speak of with him, of such gravity that he

dare not defer it for a moment, and humbly begs forgiveness for his

presumption." As the monk had given the message to Father Paissy,

before that to Alyosha, the latter found after reading the letter,

there was nothing left for him to do but to hand it to Father Paissy

in confirmation of the story.

    And even that austere and cautious man, though he frowned as he

read the news of the "miracle," could not completely restrain some

inner emotion. His eyes gleamed, and a grave and solemn smile came

into his lips.

    "We shall see greater things!" broke from him.

    "We shall see greater things, greater things yet!" the monks

around repeated.

    But Father Paissy, frowning again, begged all of them, at least

for a time, not to speak of the matter "till it be more fully

confirmed, seeing there is so much credulity among those of this

world, and indeed this might well have chanced naturally," he added,

prudently, as it were to satisfy his conscience, though scarcely

believing his own disavowal, a fact his listeners very clearly

perceived.

    Within the hour the "miracle" was of course known to the whole

monastery, and many visitors who had come for the mass. No one

seemed more impressed by it than the monk who had come the day

before from St. Sylvester, from the little monastery of Obdorsk in the

far North. It was he who had been standing near Madame Hohlakov the

previous day and had asked Father Zossima earnestly, referring to

the "healing" of the lady's daughter, "How can you presume to do

such things?"

    He was now somewhat puzzled and did not know whom to believe.

The evening before he had visited Father Ferapont in his cell apart,

behind the apiary, and had been greatly impressed and overawed by

the visit. This Father Ferapont was that aged monk so devout in

fasting and observing silence who has been mentioned already, as

antagonistic to Father Zossima and the whole institution of

"elders," which he regarded as a pernicious and frivolous

innovation. He was a very formidable opponent, although from his

practice of silence he scarcely spoke a word to anyone. What made

him formidable was that a number of monks fully shared his feeling,

and many of the visitors looked upon him as a great saint and ascetic,

although they had no doubt that he was crazy. But it was just his

craziness attracted them.

    Father Ferapont never went to see the elder. Though he lived in

the hermitage they did not worry him to keep its regulations, and this

too because he behaved as though he were crazy. He was seventy-five or

more, and he lived in a corner beyond the apiary in an old decaying

wooden cell which had been built long ago for another great ascetic,

Father Iona, who had lived to be a hundred and five, and of whose

saintly doings many curious stories were still extant in the monastery

and the neighbourhood.

    Father Ferapont had succeeded in getting himself installed in this

same solitary cell seven years previously. It was simply a peasant's

hut, though it looked like a chapel, for it contained an extraordinary

number of ikons with lamps perpetually burning before them- which

men brought to the monastery as offerings to God. Father Ferapont

had been appointed to look after them and keep the lamps burning. It

was said (and indeed it was true) that he ate only two pounds of bread

in three days. The beekeeper, who lived close by the apiary, used to

bring him the bread every three days, and even to this man who

waited upon him, Father Ferapont rarely uttered a word. The four

pounds of bread, together with the sacrament bread, regularly sent him

on Sundays after the late mass by the Father Superior, made up his

weekly rations. The water in his jug was changed every day. He

rarely appeared at mass. Visitors who came to do him homage saw him

sometimes kneeling all day long at prayer without looking round. If he

addressed them, he was brief, abrupt, strange, and almost always rude.

On very rare occasions, however, he would talk to visitors, but for

the most part he would utter some one strange saying which was a

complete riddle, and no entreaties would induce him to pronounce a

word in explanation. He was not a priest, but a simple monk. There was

a strange belief, chiefly, however, among the most ignorant, that

Father Ferapont had communication with heavenly spirits and would only

converse with them, and so was silent with men.

    The monk from Obdorsk, having been directed to the apiary by the

beekeeper, who was also a very silent and surly monk, went to the

corner where Father Ferapont's cell stood. "Maybe he will speak as you

are a stranger and maybe you'll get nothing out of him," the beekeeper

had warned him. The monk, as he related afterwards, approached in

the utmost apprehension. It was rather late in the evening. Father

Ferapont was sitting at the door of his cell on a low bench. A huge

old elm was lightly rustling overhead. There was an evening

freshness in the air. The monk from Obdorsk bowed down before the

saint and asked his blessing.

    "Do you want me to bow down to you, monk?" said Father Ferapont.

"Get up!"

    The monk got up.

    "Blessing, be blessed! Sit beside me. Where have you come from?"

    What most struck the poor monk was the fact that in spite of his

strict fasting and great age, Father Ferapont still looked a

vigorous old man. He was tall, held himself erect, and had a thin, but

fresh and healthy face. There was no doubt he still had considerable

strength. He was of athletic build. In spite of his great age he was

not even quite grey, and still had very thick hair and a full beard,

both of which had once been black. His eyes were grey, large and

luminous, but strikingly prominent. He spoke with a broad accent. He

was dressed in a peasant's long reddish coat of coarse convict cloth

(as it used to be called) and had a stout rope round his waist. His

throat and chest were bare. Beneath his coat, his shirt of the

coarsest linen showed almost black with dirt, not having been

changed for months. They said that he wore irons weighing thirty

pounds under his coat. His stockingless feet were thrust in old

slippers almost dropping to pieces.

    "From the little Obdorsk monastery, from St. Sylvester," the

monk answered humbly, whilst his keen and inquisitive, but rather

frightened little eyes kept watch on the hermit.

    "I have been at your Sylvester's. I used to stay there. Is

Sylvester well?"

    The monk hesitated.

    "You are a senseless lot! How do you keep the fasts?"

    "Our dietary is according to the ancient conventual rules.

During Lent there are no meals provided for Monday, Wednesday, and

Friday. For Tuesday and Thursday we have white bread, stewed fruit

with honey, wild berries, or salt cabbage and whole meal stirabout. On

Saturday white cabbage soup, noodles with peas, kasha, all with hemp

oil. On weekdays we have dried fish and kasha with the cabbage soup.

From Monday till Saturday evening, six whole days in Holy Week,

nothing is cooked, and we have only bread and water, and that

sparingly; if possible not taking food every day, just the same as

is ordered for first week in Lent. On Good Friday nothing is eaten. In

the same way on the Saturday we have to fast till three o'clock, and

then take a little bread and water and drink a single cup of wine.

On Holy Thursday we drink wine and have something cooked without oil

or not cooked at all, inasmuch as the Laodicean council lays down

for Holy Thursday: "It is unseemly by remitting the fast on the Holy

Thursday to dishonour the whole of Lent!" This is how we keep the

fast. But what is that compared with you, holy Father," added the

monk, growing more confident, "for all the year round, even at Easter,

you take nothing but bread and water, and what we should eat in two

days lasts you full seven. It's truly marvellous- your great

abstinence."

    "And mushrooms?" asked Father Ferapont, suddenly.

    "Mushrooms?" repeated the surprised monk.

    "Yes. I can give up their bread, not needing it at all, and go

away into the forest and live there on the mushrooms or the berries,

but they can't give up their bread here, wherefore they are in bondage

to the devil. Nowadays the unclean deny that there is need of such

fasting. Haughty and unclean is their judgment."

    "Och, true," sighed the monk.

    "And have you seen devils among them?" asked Ferapont.

    "Among them? Among whom?" asked the monk, timidly.

    "I went to the Father Superior on Trinity Sunday last year, I

haven't been since. I saw a devil sitting on one man's chest hiding

under his cassock, only his horns poked out; another had one peeping

out of his pocket with such sharp eyes, he was afraid of me; another

settled in the unclean belly of one, another was hanging round a man's

neck, and so he was carrying him about without seeing him."

    "You- can see spirits?" the monk inquired.

    "I tell you I can see, I can see through them. When I was coming

out from the Superior's I saw one hiding from me behind the door,

and a big one, a yard and a half or more high, with a thick long

grey tail, and the tip of his tail was in the crack of the door and

I was quick and slammed the door, pinching his tail in it. He squealed

and began to struggle, and I made the sign of the cross over him three

times. And he died on the spot like a crushed spider. He must have

rotted there in the corner and be stinking, but they don't see, they

don't smell it. It's a year since I have been there. I reveal it to

you, as you are a stranger."

    "Your words are terrible! But, holy and blessed father," said

the monk, growing bolder and bolder, "is it true, as they noise abroad

even to distant lands about you, that you are in continual

communication with the Holy Ghost?"

    "He does fly down at times."

    "How does he fly down? In what form?"

    "As a bird."

    "The Holy Ghost in the form of a dove?"

    "There's the Holy Ghost and there's the Holy Spirit. The Holy

Spirit can appear as other birds- sometimes as a swallow, sometimes

a goldfinch and sometimes as a blue-tit."

    "How do you know him from an ordinary tit?"

    "He speaks."

    "How does he speak, in what language?"

    "Human language."

    "And what does he tell you?"

    "Why, to-day he told me that a fool would visit me and would ask

me unseemly questions. You want to know too much, monk."

    "Terrible are your words, most holy and blessed Father," the

monk shook his head. But there was a doubtful look in his frightened

little eyes.

    "Do you see this tree?" asked Father Ferapont, after a pause.

    "I do, blessed Father."

    "You think it's an elm, but for me it has another shape."

    "What sort of shape?" inquired the monk, after a pause of vain

expectation.

    "It happens at night. You see those two branches? In the night

it is Christ holding out His arms to me and seeking me with those

arms, I see it clearly and tremble. It's terrible, terrible!"

    "What is there terrible if it's Christ Himself?"

    "Why, He'll snatch me up and carry me away."

    "Alive?"

    "In the spirit and glory of Elijah, haven't you heard? He will

take me in His arms and bear me away."

    Though the monk returned to the cell he was sharing with one of

the brothers, in considerable perplexity of mind, he still cherished

at heart a greater reverence for Father Ferapont than for Father

Zossima. He was strongly in favour of fasting, and it was not

strange that one who kept so rigid a fast as Father Ferapont should

"see marvels." His words seemed certainly queer, but God only could

tell what was hidden in those words, and were not worse words and acts

commonly seen in those who have sacrificed their intellects for the

glory of God? The pinching of the devil's tail he was ready and

eager to believe, and not only in the figurative sense. Besides he

had, before visiting the monastery, a strong prejudice against the

institution of "elders," which he only knew of by hearsay and believed

to be a pernicious innovation. Before he had been long at the

monastery, he had detected the secret murmurings of some shallow

brothers who disliked the institution. He was, besides, a

meddlesome, inquisitive man, who poked his nose into everything.

This was why the news of the fresh "miracle" performed by Father

Zossima reduced him to extreme perplexity. Alyosha remembered

afterwards how their inquisitive guest from Obdorsk had been

continually flitting to and fro from one group to another, listening

and asking questions among the monks that were crowding within and

without the elder's cell. But he did not pay much attention to him

at the time, and only recollected it afterwards.

    He had no thought to spare for it indeed, for when Father Zossima,

feeling tired again, had gone back to bed, he thought of Alyosha as he

was closing his eyes, and sent for him. Alyosha ran at once. There was

no one else in the cell but Father Paissy, Father Iosif, and the

novice Porfiry. The elder, opening his weary eyes and looking intently

at Alyosha, asked him suddenly:

    "Are your people expecting you, my son?"

    Alyosha hesitated.

    "Haven't they need of you? Didn't you promise someone yesterday to

see them to-day?"

    "I did promise- to my father- my brothers- others too."

    "You see, you must go. Don't grieve. Be sure I shall not die

without your being by to hear my last word. To you I will say that

word, my son, it will be my last gift to you. To you, dear son,

because you love me. But now go to keep your promise."

    Alyosha immediately obeyed, though it was hard to go. But the

promise that he should hear his last word on earth, that it should

be the last gift to him, Alyosha, sent a thrill of rapture through his

soul. He made haste that he might finish what he had to do in the town

and return quickly. Father Paissy, too, uttered some words of

exhortation which moved and surprised him greatly. He spoke as they

left the cell together.

    "Remember, young man, unceasingly," Father Paissy began, without

preface, "that the science of this world, which has become a great

power, has, especially in the last century, analysed everything divine

handed down to us in the holy books. After this cruel analysis the

learned of this world have nothing left of all that was sacred of old.

But they have only analysed the parts and overlooked the whole, and

indeed their blindness is marvellous. Yet the whole still stands

steadfast before their eyes, and the gates of hell shall not prevail

against it. Has it not lasted nineteen centuries, is it not still a

living, a moving power in the individual soul and in the masses of

people? It is still as strong and living even in the souls of

atheists, who have destroyed everything! For even those who have

renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still

follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor

the ardour of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of

man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ of old. When it has

been attempted, the result has been only grotesque. Remember this

especially, young man, since you are being sent into the world by your

departing elder. Maybe, remembering this great day, you will not

forget my words, uttered from the heart for your guidance, seeing

you are young, and the temptations of the world are great and beyond

your strength to endure. Well, now go, my orphan."

    With these words Father Paissy blessed him. As Alyosha left the

monastery and thought them over, he suddenly realised that he had

met a new and unexpected friend, a warmly loving teacher, in this

austere monk who had hitherto treated him sternly. It was as though

Father Zossima had bequeathed him to him at his death, and "perhaps

that's just what had passed between them," Alyosha thought suddenly.

The philosophic reflections he had just heard so unexpectedly

testified to the warmth of Father Paissy's heart. He was in haste to

arm the boy's mind for conflict with temptation and to guard the young

soul left in his charge with the strongest defence he could imagine.