章节正文
gruel, drank a cup of tea, and ate half a white roll.
The attendant went away, and Father Sergius remained alone under
the elm tree.
It was a wonderful May evening, when the birches, aspens, elms,
wild cherries, and oaks, had just burst into foliage.
The bush of wild cherries behind the elm tree was in full bloom
and had not yet begun to shed its blossoms, and the
nightingales--one quite near at hand and two or three others in
the bushes down by the river--burst into full song after some
preliminary twitters. From the river came the far-off songs of
peasants returning, no doubt, from their work. The sun was
setting behind the forest, its last rays glowing through the
leaves. All that side was brilliant green, the other side with
the elm tree was dark. The cockchafers flew clumsily about,
falling to the ground when they collided with anything.
After supper Father Sergius began to repeat a silent prayer: 'O
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us!' and then he
read a psalm, and suddenly in the middle of the psalm a sparrow
flew out from the bush, alighted on the ground, and hopped
towards him chirping as it came, but then it took fright at
something and flew away. He said a prayer which referred to his
abandonment of the world, and hastened to finish it in order to
send for the merchant with the sick daughter. She interested him
in that she presented a distraction, and because both she and her
father considered him a saint whose prayers were efficacious.
Outwardly he disavowed that idea, but in the depths of his soul
he considered it to be true.
He was often amazed that this had happened, that he, Stepan
Kasatsky, had come to be such an extraordinary saint and even a
worker of miracles, but of the fact that he was such there could
not be the least doubt. He could not fail to believe in the
miracles he himself witnessed, beginning with the sick boy and
ending with the old woman who had recovered her sight when he had
prayed for her.
Strange as it might be, it was so. Accordingly the merchant's
daughter interested him as a new individual who had faith in him,
and also as a fresh opportunity to confirm his healing powers and
enhance his fame. 'They bring people a thousand versts and write
about it in the papers. The Emperor knows of it, and they know of
it in Europe, in unbelieving Europe'--thought he. And suddenly
he felt ashamed of his vanity and again began to pray. 'Lord,
King of Heaven, Comforter, Soul of Truth! Come and enter into me
and cleanse me from all sin and save and bless my soul. Cleanse
me from the sin of worldlyvanity that troubles me!' he repeated,
and he remembered how often he had prayed about this and how vain
till now his prayers had been in that respect. His prayers
worked miracles for others, but in his own case God had not
granted him liberation from this petty passion.
He remembered his prayers at the commencement of his life at the
hermitage, when he prayed for purity, humility, and love, and how
it seemed to him then that God heard his prayers. He had
retained his purity and had chopped off his finger. And he
lifted the shrivelled stump of that finger to his lips and kissed
it. It seemed to him now that he had been humble then when he
had always seemed loathsome to himself on account of his
sinfulness; and when he remembered the tender feelings with which
he had then met an old man who was bringing a drunken soldier to
him to ask alms; and how he had received HER, it seemed to him
that he had then possessed love also. But now? And he asked
himself whether he loved anyone, whether he loved Sofya Ivanovna,
or Father Seraphim, whether he had any feeling of love for all
who had come to him that day--for that learned young man with
whom he had had that instructivediscussion in which he was
concerned only to show off his own intelligence and that he had
not lagged behind the times in knowledge. He wanted and needed
their love, but felt none towards them. He now had neither love
nor humility nor purity.
He was pleased to know that the merchant's daughter was
twenty-two, and he wondered whether she was good-looking. When
he inquired whether she was weak, he really wanted to know if she
had feminine charm.
'Can I have fallen so low?' he thought. 'Lord, help me! Restore
me, my Lord and God!' And he clasped his hands and began to
pray.
The nightingales burst into song, a cockchafer knocked against
him and crept up the back of his neck. He brushed it off. 'But
does He exist? What if I am knocking at a door fastened from
outside? The bar is on the door for all to see. Nature--the
nightingales and the cockchafers--is that bar. Perhaps the young
man was right.' And he began to pray aloud. He prayed for a
long time till these thoughts vanished and he again felt calm and
confident. He rang the bell and told the attendant to say that
the merchant might bring his daughter to him now.
The merchant came, leading his daughter by the arm. He led her
into the cell and immediately left her.
She was a very fair girl, plump and very short, with a pale,
frightened, childish face and a much developed feminine figure.
Father Sergius remained seated on the bench at the entrance and
when she was passing and stopped beside him for his blessing he
was aghast at himself for the way he looked at her figure. As
she passed by him he was acutely conscious of her femininity,
though he saw by her face that she was sensual and feeble-minded.
He rose and went into the cell. She was sitting on a stool
waiting for him, and when he entered she rose.
'I want to go back to Papa,' she said.
'Don't be afraid,' he replied. 'What are you suffering from?'
'I am in pain all over,' she said, and suddenly her face lit up
with a smile.
'You will be well,' said he. 'Pray!'
'What is the use of praying? I have prayed and it does no
good'--and she continued to smile. 'I want you to pray for me
and lay your hands on me. I saw you in a dream.'
'How did you see me?'
'I saw you put your hands on my breast like that.' She took his
hand and pressed it to her breast. 'Just here.'
He yielded his right hand to her.
'What is your name?' he asked, trembling all over and feeling
that he was overcome and that his desire had already passed
beyond control.
'Marie. Why?'
She took his hand and kissed it, and then put her arm round his
waist and pressed him to herself.
'What are you doing?' he said. 'Marie, you are a devil!'
'Oh, perhaps. What does it matter?'
And embracing him she sat down with him on the bed.
At dawn he went out into the porch.
'Can this all have happened? Her father will come and she will
tell him everything. She is a devil! What am I to do? Here is
the axe with which I chopped off my finger.' He snatched up the
axe and moved back towards the cell.
The attendant came up.
'Do you want some wood chopped? Let me have the axe.'
Sergius yielded up the axe and entered the cell. She was lying
there asleep. He looked at her with horror, and passed on beyond
the partition, where he took down the peasant clothes and put
them on. Then he seized a pair of scissors, cut off his long
hair, and went out along the path down the hill to the river,
where he had not been for more than three years.
A road ran beside the river and he went along it and walked till
noon. Then he went into a field of rye and lay down there.
Towards evening he approached a village, but without entering it
went towards the cliff that overhung the river. There he again
lay down to rest.
It was early morning, half an hour before sunrise. All was damp
and gloomy and a cold early wind was blowing from the west.
'Yes, I must end it all. There is no God. But how am I to end
it? Throw myself into the river? I can swim and should not
drown. Hang myself? Yes, just throw this sash over a branch.'
This seemed so feasible and so easy that he felt horrified. As
usual at moments of despair he felt the need of prayer. But
there was no one to pray to. There was no God. He lay down
resting on his arm, and suddenly such a longing for sleep
overcame him that he could no longer support his head on his
hand, but stretched out his arm, laid his head upon it, and fell
asleep. But that sleep lasted only for a moment. He woke up
immediately and began not to dream but to remember.
He saw himself as a child in his mother's home in the country. A
carriage drives up, and out of it steps Uncle Nicholas
Sergeevich, with his long, spade-shaped, black beard, and with
him Pashenka, a thin little girl with large mild eyes and a timid
pathetic face. And into their company of boys Pashenka is
brought and they have to play with her, but it is dull. She is
silly, and it ends by their making fun of her and forcing her to
show how she can swim. She lies down on the floor and shows
them, and they all laugh and make a fool of her. She sees this
and blushes red in patches and becomes more pitiable than before,
so pitiable that he feels ashamed and can never forget that
crooked, kindly, submissive smile. And Sergius remembered having
seen her since then. Long after, just before he became a monk,
she had married a landowner who squandered all her fortune and
was in the habit of beating her. She had had two children, a son
and a daughter, but the son had died while still young. And
Sergius remembered having seen her very wretched. Then again he
had seen her in the monastery when she was a widow. She had been
still the same, not exactly stupid, but insipid, insignificant,
and pitiable. She had come with her daughter and her daughter's
fiance. They were already poor at that time and later on he had
heard that she was living in a small provincial town and was very
poor.
'Why am I thinking about her?' he asked himself, but he could not
cease doing so. 'Where is she? How is she getting on? Is she
still as unhappy as she was then when she had to show us how to
swim on the floor? But why should I think about her? What am I
doing? I must put an end to myself.'
And again he felt afraid, and again, to escape from that thought,
he went on thinking about Pashenka.
So he lay for a long time, thinking now of his unavoidable end
and now of Pashenka. She presented herself to him as a means of
salvation. At last he fell asleep, and in his sleep he saw an
angel who came to him and said: 'Go to Pashenka and learn from
her what you have to do, what your sin is, and wherein lies your
salvation.'
He awoke, and having decided that this was a vision sent by God,
he felt glad, and resolved to do what had been told him in the
vision. He knew the town where she lived. It was some three
hundred versts (two hundred miles) away, and he set out to walk
there.
VI
Pashenka had already long ceased to be Pashenka and had become
old, withered, wrinkled Praskovya Mikhaylovna, mother-in-law of
that failure, the drunken official Mavrikyev. She was living in
the country town where he had had his last appointment, and there
she was supporting the family: her daughter, her ailing
neurasthenic son-in-law, and her five grandchildren. She did
this by giving music lessons to tradesmen's daughters, giving
four and sometimes five lessons a day of an hour each, and
earning in this way some sixty rubles (6 pounds) a month. So
they lived for the present, in expectation of another
appointment. She had sent letters to all her relations and
acquaintances asking them to obtain a post for her son-in-law,
and among the rest she had written to Sergius, but that letter
The attendant went away, and Father Sergius remained alone under
the elm tree.
It was a wonderful May evening, when the birches, aspens, elms,
wild cherries, and oaks, had just burst into foliage.
The bush of wild cherries behind the elm tree was in full bloom
and had not yet begun to shed its blossoms, and the
nightingales--one quite near at hand and two or three others in
the bushes down by the river--burst into full song after some
preliminary twitters. From the river came the far-off songs of
peasants returning, no doubt, from their work. The sun was
setting behind the forest, its last rays glowing through the
leaves. All that side was brilliant green, the other side with
the elm tree was dark. The cockchafers flew clumsily about,
falling to the ground when they collided with anything.
After supper Father Sergius began to repeat a silent prayer: 'O
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us!' and then he
read a psalm, and suddenly in the middle of the psalm a sparrow
flew out from the bush, alighted on the ground, and hopped
towards him chirping as it came, but then it took fright at
something and flew away. He said a prayer which referred to his
abandonment of the world, and hastened to finish it in order to
send for the merchant with the sick daughter. She interested him
in that she presented a distraction, and because both she and her
father considered him a saint whose prayers were efficacious.
Outwardly he disavowed that idea, but in the depths of his soul
he considered it to be true.
He was often amazed that this had happened, that he, Stepan
Kasatsky, had come to be such an extraordinary saint and even a
worker of miracles, but of the fact that he was such there could
not be the least doubt. He could not fail to believe in the
miracles he himself witnessed, beginning with the sick boy and
ending with the old woman who had recovered her sight when he had
prayed for her.
Strange as it might be, it was so. Accordingly the merchant's
daughter interested him as a new individual who had faith in him,
and also as a fresh opportunity to confirm his healing powers and
enhance his fame. 'They bring people a thousand versts and write
about it in the papers. The Emperor knows of it, and they know of
it in Europe, in unbelieving Europe'--thought he. And suddenly
he felt ashamed of his vanity and again began to pray. 'Lord,
King of Heaven, Comforter, Soul of Truth! Come and enter into me
and cleanse me from all sin and save and bless my soul. Cleanse
me from the sin of worldlyvanity that troubles me!' he repeated,
and he remembered how often he had prayed about this and how vain
till now his prayers had been in that respect. His prayers
worked miracles for others, but in his own case God had not
granted him liberation from this petty passion.
He remembered his prayers at the commencement of his life at the
hermitage, when he prayed for purity, humility, and love, and how
it seemed to him then that God heard his prayers. He had
retained his purity and had chopped off his finger. And he
lifted the shrivelled stump of that finger to his lips and kissed
it. It seemed to him now that he had been humble then when he
had always seemed loathsome to himself on account of his
sinfulness; and when he remembered the tender feelings with which
he had then met an old man who was bringing a drunken soldier to
him to ask alms; and how he had received HER, it seemed to him
that he had then possessed love also. But now? And he asked
himself whether he loved anyone, whether he loved Sofya Ivanovna,
or Father Seraphim, whether he had any feeling of love for all
who had come to him that day--for that learned young man with
whom he had had that instructivediscussion in which he was
concerned only to show off his own intelligence and that he had
not lagged behind the times in knowledge. He wanted and needed
their love, but felt none towards them. He now had neither love
nor humility nor purity.
He was pleased to know that the merchant's daughter was
twenty-two, and he wondered whether she was good-looking. When
he inquired whether she was weak, he really wanted to know if she
had feminine charm.
'Can I have fallen so low?' he thought. 'Lord, help me! Restore
me, my Lord and God!' And he clasped his hands and began to
pray.
The nightingales burst into song, a cockchafer knocked against
him and crept up the back of his neck. He brushed it off. 'But
does He exist? What if I am knocking at a door fastened from
outside? The bar is on the door for all to see. Nature--the
nightingales and the cockchafers--is that bar. Perhaps the young
man was right.' And he began to pray aloud. He prayed for a
long time till these thoughts vanished and he again felt calm and
confident. He rang the bell and told the attendant to say that
the merchant might bring his daughter to him now.
The merchant came, leading his daughter by the arm. He led her
into the cell and immediately left her.
She was a very fair girl, plump and very short, with a pale,
frightened, childish face and a much developed feminine figure.
Father Sergius remained seated on the bench at the entrance and
when she was passing and stopped beside him for his blessing he
was aghast at himself for the way he looked at her figure. As
she passed by him he was acutely conscious of her femininity,
though he saw by her face that she was sensual and feeble-minded.
He rose and went into the cell. She was sitting on a stool
waiting for him, and when he entered she rose.
'I want to go back to Papa,' she said.
'Don't be afraid,' he replied. 'What are you suffering from?'
'I am in pain all over,' she said, and suddenly her face lit up
with a smile.
'You will be well,' said he. 'Pray!'
'What is the use of praying? I have prayed and it does no
good'--and she continued to smile. 'I want you to pray for me
and lay your hands on me. I saw you in a dream.'
'How did you see me?'
'I saw you put your hands on my breast like that.' She took his
hand and pressed it to her breast. 'Just here.'
He yielded his right hand to her.
'What is your name?' he asked, trembling all over and feeling
that he was overcome and that his desire had already passed
beyond control.
'Marie. Why?'
She took his hand and kissed it, and then put her arm round his
waist and pressed him to herself.
'What are you doing?' he said. 'Marie, you are a devil!'
'Oh, perhaps. What does it matter?'
And embracing him she sat down with him on the bed.
At dawn he went out into the porch.
'Can this all have happened? Her father will come and she will
tell him everything. She is a devil! What am I to do? Here is
the axe with which I chopped off my finger.' He snatched up the
axe and moved back towards the cell.
The attendant came up.
'Do you want some wood chopped? Let me have the axe.'
Sergius yielded up the axe and entered the cell. She was lying
there asleep. He looked at her with horror, and passed on beyond
the partition, where he took down the peasant clothes and put
them on. Then he seized a pair of scissors, cut off his long
hair, and went out along the path down the hill to the river,
where he had not been for more than three years.
A road ran beside the river and he went along it and walked till
noon. Then he went into a field of rye and lay down there.
Towards evening he approached a village, but without entering it
went towards the cliff that overhung the river. There he again
lay down to rest.
It was early morning, half an hour before sunrise. All was damp
and gloomy and a cold early wind was blowing from the west.
'Yes, I must end it all. There is no God. But how am I to end
it? Throw myself into the river? I can swim and should not
drown. Hang myself? Yes, just throw this sash over a branch.'
This seemed so feasible and so easy that he felt horrified. As
usual at moments of despair he felt the need of prayer. But
there was no one to pray to. There was no God. He lay down
resting on his arm, and suddenly such a longing for sleep
overcame him that he could no longer support his head on his
hand, but stretched out his arm, laid his head upon it, and fell
asleep. But that sleep lasted only for a moment. He woke up
immediately and began not to dream but to remember.
He saw himself as a child in his mother's home in the country. A
carriage drives up, and out of it steps Uncle Nicholas
Sergeevich, with his long, spade-shaped, black beard, and with
him Pashenka, a thin little girl with large mild eyes and a timid
pathetic face. And into their company of boys Pashenka is
brought and they have to play with her, but it is dull. She is
silly, and it ends by their making fun of her and forcing her to
show how she can swim. She lies down on the floor and shows
them, and they all laugh and make a fool of her. She sees this
and blushes red in patches and becomes more pitiable than before,
so pitiable that he feels ashamed and can never forget that
crooked, kindly, submissive smile. And Sergius remembered having
seen her since then. Long after, just before he became a monk,
she had married a landowner who squandered all her fortune and
was in the habit of beating her. She had had two children, a son
and a daughter, but the son had died while still young. And
Sergius remembered having seen her very wretched. Then again he
had seen her in the monastery when she was a widow. She had been
still the same, not exactly stupid, but insipid, insignificant,
and pitiable. She had come with her daughter and her daughter's
fiance. They were already poor at that time and later on he had
heard that she was living in a small provincial town and was very
poor.
'Why am I thinking about her?' he asked himself, but he could not
cease doing so. 'Where is she? How is she getting on? Is she
still as unhappy as she was then when she had to show us how to
swim on the floor? But why should I think about her? What am I
doing? I must put an end to myself.'
And again he felt afraid, and again, to escape from that thought,
he went on thinking about Pashenka.
So he lay for a long time, thinking now of his unavoidable end
and now of Pashenka. She presented herself to him as a means of
salvation. At last he fell asleep, and in his sleep he saw an
angel who came to him and said: 'Go to Pashenka and learn from
her what you have to do, what your sin is, and wherein lies your
salvation.'
He awoke, and having decided that this was a vision sent by God,
he felt glad, and resolved to do what had been told him in the
vision. He knew the town where she lived. It was some three
hundred versts (two hundred miles) away, and he set out to walk
there.
VI
Pashenka had already long ceased to be Pashenka and had become
old, withered, wrinkled Praskovya Mikhaylovna, mother-in-law of
that failure, the drunken official Mavrikyev. She was living in
the country town where he had had his last appointment, and there
she was supporting the family: her daughter, her ailing
neurasthenic son-in-law, and her five grandchildren. She did
this by giving music lessons to tradesmen's daughters, giving
four and sometimes five lessons a day of an hour each, and
earning in this way some sixty rubles (6 pounds) a month. So
they lived for the present, in expectation of another
appointment. She had sent letters to all her relations and
acquaintances asking them to obtain a post for her son-in-law,
and among the rest she had written to Sergius, but that letter
- attendant [ə´tendənt]
n.随员 a.伴随的 (初中英语单词) - brilliant [´briliənt] a.灿烂的；杰出的 (初中英语单词)
- christ [kraist] n.基督 int.天啊! (初中英语单词)
- fright [frait] n.惊吓；恐怖；怪人 (初中英语单词)
- extraordinary [ik´strɔ:dinəri] a.非常的；额外的 (初中英语单词)
- beginning [bi´giniŋ] n.开始，开端；起源 (初中英语单词)
- accordingly [ə´kɔ:diŋli] ad.因此；从而；依照 (初中英语单词)
- confirm [kən´fə:m] vt.证实；认可；加强 (初中英语单词)
- emperor [´empərə] n.皇帝 (初中英语单词)
- ashamed [ə´ʃeimd] a.惭愧；不好意思 (初中英语单词)
- vanity [´væniti] n.虚荣；自负；空虚 (初中英语单词)
- purity [´pjuəriti] n.纯净；贞洁 (初中英语单词)
- humble [´hʌmbəl] a.谦卑的 vt.贬抑 (初中英语单词)
- account [ə´kaunt] vi.说明 vt.认为 n.帐目 (初中英语单词)
- drunken [´drʌŋkən] a.喝醉的；常醉的 (初中英语单词)
- instructive [in´strʌktiv] a.有益的 (初中英语单词)
- discussion [di´skʌʃən] n.讨论；辩论 (初中英语单词)
- intelligence [in´telidʒəns] n.智力；消息 (初中英语单词)
- childish [´tʃaildiʃ] a.孩子的；幼稚的 (初中英语单词)
- blessing [´blesiŋ] n.祝福 (初中英语单词)
- conscious [´kɔnʃəs] a.意识的；自觉的 (初中英语单词)
- suffering [´sʌfəriŋ] n.痛苦；灾害 (初中英语单词)
- overcome [,əuvə´kʌm] vt.战胜，克服 (初中英语单词)
- horror [´hɔrə] n.恐怖；战栗 (初中英语单词)
- peasant [´pezənt] n.农民；庄稼人 (初中英语单词)
- despair [di´speə] vi.&n.绝望 (初中英语单词)
- wretched [´retʃid] a.可怜的；倒霉的 (初中英语单词)
- stupid [´stju:pid] a.愚蠢的；糊涂的 (初中英语单词)
- unhappy [ʌn´hæpi] a.不幸的；不快乐的 (初中英语单词)
- vision [´viʒən] n.视觉；想象力；幻影 (初中英语单词)
- failure [´feiljə] n.失败；衰竭；破产 (初中英语单词)
- obtain [əb´tein] v.获得；买到；得到承认 (初中英语单词)
- cleanse [klenz] vt.使清洁；净化 (高中英语单词)
- learned [´lə:nid] a.有学问的，博学的 (高中英语单词)
- partition [pɑ:´tiʃən] n.分割；划分 (高中英语单词)
- sunrise [´sʌnraiz] n.日出，黎明 (高中英语单词)
- gloomy [´glu:mi] a.昏暗的；忧郁的 (高中英语单词)
- longing [´lɔŋiŋ] n.&a.渴望(的) (高中英语单词)
- monastery [´mɔnəstri] n.修道院；庙宇 (高中英语单词)
- wherein [weər´in] ad.那里面 (高中英语单词)
- decided [di´saidid] a.明显的；决定的 (高中英语单词)
- expectation [,ekspek´teiʃən] n.期待(望)；预期 (高中英语单词)
- far-off [´fɑ:rɔ:f] a.远方的，遥远的 (英语四级单词)
- comforter [´kʌmfətə] n.慰问者；毛围巾；圣灵 (英语四级单词)
- worldly [´wə:ldli] a.现世的；世俗的 (英语四级单词)
- humility [hju:´militi] n.谦逊，谦让 (英语四级单词)
- feminine [´feminin] a.女性的 (英语四级单词)
- scissors [´sizəz] n.剪刀，剪子 (英语四级单词)
- provincial [prə´vinʃəl] a.省的 n.外省人 (英语四级单词)
- resolved [ri´zɔlvd] a.决心的；坚定的 (英语四级单词)
- commencement [kə´mensmənt] n.开始；毕业典礼(日) (英语六级单词)
- loathsome [´ləuðsəm] a.讨厌的，令人作呕的 (英语六级单词)
- good-looking [] a.漂亮的，美貌的 (英语六级单词)
- aghast [ə´gɑ:st] a.吓呆的，吃惊的 (英语六级单词)
- feasible [´fi:zibəl] a.可行的，可实行的 (英语六级单词)
- landowner [´lændəunə] n.土地的主人 (英语六级单词)
- beating [´bi:tiŋ] n.敲；搅打；失败 (英语六级单词)
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