The labourers came back from the river, and one of them riding a horse was quite near, and the light from the fire quivered upon him.  The student said good-night to the widows and went on.  And again the darkness was about him and his fingers began to be numb.  A cruel wind was blowing, winter really had come back and it did not feel as though Easter would be the day after to-morrow.

Now the student was thinking about Vasilisa:  since she had shed tears all that had happened to Peter the night before the Crucifixion must have some relation to her....

He looked round.  The solitary light was still gleaming in the darkness and no figures could be seen near it now.  The student thought again that if Vasilisa had shed tears, and her daughter had been troubled, it was evident that what he had just been telling them about, which had happened nineteen centuries ago, had a relation to the present—­to both women, to the desolate village, to himself, to all people.  The old woman had wept, not because he could tell the story touchingly, but because Peter was near to her, because her whole being was interested in what was passing in Peter’s soul.

And joy suddenly stirred in his soul, and he even stopped for a minute to take breath.  “The past,” he thought, “is linked with the present by an unbroken chain of events flowing one out of another.”  And it seemed to him that he had just seen both ends of that chain; that when he touched one end the other quivered.

When he crossed the river by the ferry boat and afterwards, mounting the hill, looked at his village and towards the west where the cold crimson sunset lay a narrow streak of light, he thought that truth and beauty which had guided human life there in the garden and in the yard of the high priest had continued without interruption to this day, and had evidently always been the chief thing in human life and in all earthly life, indeed; and the feeling of youth, health, vigour—­he was only twenty-two—­and the inexpressible sweet expectation of happiness, of unknown mysterious happiness, took possession of him little by little, and life seemed to him enchanting, marvellous, and full of lofty meaning.

IN THE RAVINE

I

The village of Ukleevo lay in a ravine so that only the belfry and the chimneys of the printed cottons factories could be seen from the high road and the railway-station.  When visitors asked what village this was, they were told: 

“That’s the village where the deacon ate all the caviare at the funeral.”

It had happened at the dinner at the funeral of Kostukov that the old deacon saw among the savouries some large-grained caviare and began eating it greedily; people nudged him, tugged at his arm, but he seemed petrified with enjoyment:  felt nothing, and only went on eating.  He ate up all the caviare, and there were four pounds in the jar.  And years had passed since then, the deacon had long been dead, but the caviare was still remembered.  Whether life was so poor here or people had not been clever enough to notice anything but that unimportant incident that had occurred ten years before, anyway the people had nothing else to tell about the village Ukleevo.