Then the idea of God occurred to me, and I asked Him boldly why He had punished me thus, seeing that I had never forgotten to say my prayers, either morning or evening.  Indeed, I can positively declare that it was during that hour in the store-room that I took the first step towards the religious doubt which afterwards assailed me during my youth (not that mere misfortune could arouse me to infidelity and murmuring, but that, at moments of utter contrition and solitude, the idea of the injustice of Providence took root in me as readily as bad seed takes root in land well soaked with rain).  Also, I imagined that I was going to die there and then, and drew vivid pictures of St. Jerome’s astonishment when he entered the store-room and found a corpse there instead of myself!  Likewise, recollecting what Natalia Savishna had told me of the forty days during which the souls of the departed must hover around their earthly home, I imagined myself flying through the rooms of Grandmamma’s house, and seeing Lubotshka’s bitter tears, and hearing Grandmamma’s lamentations, and listening to Papa and St. Jerome talking together.  “He was a fine boy,” Papa would say with tears in his eyes.  “Yes,” St. Jerome would reply, “but a sad scapegrace and good-for-nothing.”  “But you should respect the dead,” would expostulate Papa.  “You were the cause of his death; you frightened him until he could no longer bear the thought of the humiliation which you were about to inflict upon him.  Away from me, criminal!” Upon that St. Jerome would fall upon his knees and implore forgiveness, and when the forty days were ended my soul would fly to Heaven, and see there something wonderfully beautiful, white, and transparent, and know that it was Mamma.

And that something would embrace and caress me.  Yet, all at once, I should feel troubled, and not know her.  “If it be you,” I should say to her, “show yourself more distinctly, so that I may embrace you in return.”  And her voice would answer me, “Do you not feel happy thus?” and I should reply, “Yes, I do, but you cannot really caress me, and I cannot really kiss your hand like this.”  “But it is not necessary,” she would say.  “There can be happiness here without that,”—­and I should feel that it was so, and we should ascend together, ever higher and higher, until—­Suddenly I feel as though I am being thrown down again, and find myself sitting on the trunk in the dark store-room (my cheeks wet with tears and my thoughts in a mist), yet still repeating the words, “Let us ascend together, higher and higher.”  Indeed, it was a long, long while before I could remember where I was, for at that moment my mind’s eye saw only a dark, dreadful, illimitable void.  I tried to renew the happy, consoling dream which had been thus interrupted by the return to reality, but, to my surprise, I found that, as soon as ever I attempted to re-enter former dreams, their continuation became impossible, while—­which astonished me even more—­they no longer gave me pleasure.