At last the carriage drove into the town and rumbled along the principal street.  The shops were already shut, but at Erakin’s, the millionaire shopkeeper’s, they were trying the new electric lights, which flickered brightly, and a crowd of people were gathered round.  Then came wide, dark, deserted streets, one after another; then the highroad, the open country, the fragrance of pines.  And suddenly there rose up before the bishop’s eyes a white turreted wall, and behind it a tall belfry in the full moonlight, and beside it five shining, golden cupolas:  this was the Pankratievsky Monastery, in which Bishop Pyotr lived.  And here, too, high above the monastery, was the silent, dreamy moon.  The carriage drove in at the gate, crunching over the sand; here and there in the moonlight there were glimpses of dark monastic figures, and there was the sound of footsteps on the flag-stones. . . .

“You know, your holiness, your mamma arrived while you were away,” the lay brother informed the bishop as he went into his cell.

“My mother?  When did she come?”

“Before the evening service.  She asked first where you were and then she went to the convent.”

“Then it was her I saw in the church, just now!  Oh, Lord!”

And the bishop laughed with joy.

“She bade me tell your holiness,” the lay brother went on, “that she would come to-morrow.  She had a little girl with her—­her grandchild, I suppose.  They are staying at Ovsyannikov’s inn.”

“What time is it now?”

“A little after eleven.”

“Oh, how vexing!”

The bishop sat for a little while in the parlour, hesitating, and as it were refusing to believe it was so late.  His arms and legs were stiff, his head ached.  He was hot and uncomfortable.  After resting a little he went into his bedroom, and there, too, he sat a little, still thinking of his mother; he could hear the lay brother going away, and Father Sisoy coughing the other side of the wall.  The monastery clock struck a quarter.

The bishop changed his clothes and began reading the prayers before sleep.  He read attentively those old, long familiar prayers, and at the same time thought about his mother.  She had nine children and about forty grandchildren.  At one time, she had lived with her husband, the deacon, in a poor village; she had lived there a very long time from the age of seventeen to sixty.  The bishop remembered her from early childhood, almost from the age of three, and—­how he had loved her!  Sweet, precious childhood, always fondly remembered!  Why did it, that long-past time that could never return, why did it seem brighter, fuller, and more festive than it had really been?  When in his childhood or youth he had been ill, how tender and sympathetic his mother had been!  And now his prayers mingled with the memories, which gleamed more and more brightly like a flame, and the prayers did not hinder his thinking of his mother.