A thin and grey old man appeared, looked at those present, and said:  “In the name of God, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” and began to speak.

At first all went well, but the longer he spoke the worse it became.  “Il devient de plus en plus aggressif,” as the Empress put it afterwards.  He fulminated against every one.  He spoke about the executions and charged the government with having made so many necessary.  How can the government of a Christian country kill men?

Everybody looked at everybody else, thinking of the bad taste of the sermon, and how unpleasant it must be for the Emperor to listen to it; but nobody expressed these thoughts aloud.

When Isidor had said Amen, the metropolitan approached, and asked him to call on him.

After Isidor had had a talk with the metropolitan and with the attorney-general, he was immediately sent away to a friary, not his own, but one at Suzdal, which had a prison attached to it; the prior of that friary was now Father Missael.

XIV

Every one tried to look as if Isidor’s sermon contained nothing unpleasant, and nobody mentioned it.  It seemed to the Czar that the hermit’s words had not made any impression on himself; but once or twice during that day he caught himself thinking of the two peasants who had been hanged, and the widow of Sventizky who had asked an amnesty for them.  That day the Emperor had to be present at a parade; after which he went out for a drive; a reception of ministers came next, then dinner, after dinner the theatre.  As usual, the Czar fell asleep the moment his head touched the pillow.  In the night an awful dream awoke him:  he saw gallows in a large field and corpses dangling on them; the tongues of the corpses were protruding, and their bodies moved and shook.  And somebody shouted, “It is you—­you who have done it!” The Czar woke up bathed in perspiration and began to think.  It was the first time that he had ever thought of the responsibilities which weighed on him, and the words of old Isidor came back to his mind. . . .

But only dimly could he see himself as a mere human being, and he could not consider his mere human wants and duties, because of all that was required of him as Czar.  As to acknowledging that human duties were more obligatory than those of a Czar—­he had not strength for that.

XV

Having served his second term in the prison, Prokofy, who had formerly worked on the Sventizky estate, was no longer the brisk, ambitious, smartly dressed fellow he had been.  He seemed, on the contrary, a complete wreck.  When sober he would sit idle and would refuse to do any work, however much his father scolded him; moreover, he was continually seeking to get hold of something secretly, and take it to the public-house for a drink.  When he came home he would continue to sit idle, coughing and spitting all the time.  The doctor on whom he called, examined his chest and shook his head.