But at this point the real Yegor Semyonitch, suddenly coming to himself, would make a terrible face, would clutch his head and cry: 

“The devils!  They have spoilt everything!  They have ruined everything!  They have spoilt everything!  The garden’s done for, the garden’s ruined!”

Kovrin, meanwhile, worked with the same ardour as before, and did not notice the general commotion.  Love only added fuel to the flames.  After every talk with Tanya he went to his room, happy and triumphant, took up his book or his manuscript with the same passion with which he had just kissed Tanya and told her of his love.  What the black monk had told him of the chosen of God, of eternal truth, of the brilliant future of mankind and so on, gave peculiar and extraordinary significance to his work, and filled his soul with pride and the consciousness of his own exalted consequence.  Once or twice a week, in the park or in the house, he met the black monk and had long conversations with him, but this did not alarm him, but, on the contrary, delighted him, as he was now firmly persuaded that such apparitions only visited the elect few who rise up above their fellows and devote themselves to the service of the idea.

One day the monk appeared at dinner-time and sat in the dining-room window.  Kovrin was delighted, and very adroitly began a conversation with Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya of what might be of interest to the monk; the black-robed visitor listened and nodded his head graciously, and Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya listened, too, and smiled gaily without suspecting that Kovrin was not talking to them but to his hallucination.

Imperceptibly the fast of the Assumption was approaching, and soon after came the wedding, which, at Yegor Semyonitch’s urgent desire, was celebrated with “a flourish”—­that is, with senseless festivities that lasted for two whole days and nights.  Three thousand roubles’ worth of food and drink was consumed, but the music of the wretched hired band, the noisy toasts, the scurrying to and fro of the footmen, the uproar and crowding, prevented them from appreciating the taste of the expensive wines and wonderful delicacies ordered from Moscow.

VII

One long winter night Kovrin was lying in bed, reading a French novel.  Poor Tanya, who had headaches in the evenings from living in town, to which she was not accustomed, had been asleep a long while, and, from time to time, articulated some incoherent phrase in her restless dreams.

It struck three o’clock.  Kovrin put out the light and lay down to sleep, lay for a long time with his eyes closed, but could not get to sleep because, as he fancied, the room was very hot and Tanya talked in her sleep.  At half-past four he lighted the candle again, and this time he saw the black monk sitting in an arm-chair near the bed.

“Good-morning,” said the monk, and after a brief pause he asked:  “What are you thinking of now?”