The elder looked up at him and said with a smile:
“You’ve known for a long time what you should do; you have sense enough: do not give yourself up to drunkenness and verbal incontinence, do not give yourself up to sensuality, and especially to the adoration of money, and close your taverns; if you cannot close all of them then at least two or three. And above all, above everything else—do not lie.”
“About Diderot, you mean?”
“No, not exactly about Diderot. Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn’t it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea—he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility ... Do get up from your knees and sit down, I beg you, these posturings are false, too...”
“Blessed man! Let me kiss your hand,” Fyodor Pavlovich rushed up to the elder and quickly gave him a smack on his thin hand. “Precisely, precisely, it feels good to be offended. You put it so well, I’ve never heard it before. Precisely, precisely, all my life I’ve been getting offended for the pleasure of it, for the aesthetics of it, because it’s not only a pleasure, sometimes it’s beautiful to be offended—you forgot that, great elder: beautiful! I’ll make a note of that! And I’ve lied, I’ve lied decidedly all my life, every day and every hour. Verily, I am a lie and the father of a lie! Or maybe not the father of a lie, I always get my texts mixed up; let’s say the son of a lie,[36] that will do just as well! Only ... my angel ... sometimes Diderot is all right! Diderot won’t do any harm, it’s some little word that does the harm. Great elder, by the way, I almost forgot, though I did intend, as long as two years ago, to inquire here, to stop by on purpose and insistently make inquiries and to ask—only please tell Pyotr Alexandrovich not to interrupt. This I ask you: is it true, great father, that somewhere in the Lives of the Saints there is a story about some holy wonder-worker who was martyred for his faith, and when they finally cut his head off, he got up, took his head, ‘kissed it belovingly,’ and walked on for a long time carrying it in his hands and ‘kissing it belovingly’?[37] Is this true or not, honored fathers?”
“No, it is not true,” said the elder.
“There is nothing like that anywhere in the Lives of the Saints. Which saint did you say the story was about?” asked the Father Librarian.
“I don’t know which. I don’t know, I have no idea. I was led to believe, I was told. I heard it, and do you know who I heard it from? This same Pyotr Alexandrovich Miusov who just got so angry about Diderot, he told me.”
“I never told you that, I never even speak to you at all.”
“True, you didn’t tell it to me; but you told it in company when I was present; it was three years ago. I mention it because you, Pyotr Alexandrovich, shook my faith with this funny story. You didn’t know it, you had no idea, but I went home with my faith shaken, and since then I’ve been shaking more and more. Yes, Pyotr Alexandrovich, you were the cause of a great fall! Diderot nothing, sir!”
Fyodor Pavlovich was flushed with pathos, though by now it was quite clear to everyone that he was acting again. Even so, Miusov was painfully hurt.
“What nonsense, it’s all nonsense,” he muttered. “I may actually have told it once ... but not to you. It was told to me. I heard it in Paris, from a Frenchman. That it is supposedly read from the Lives of the Saints in our liturgy.[38] He was a very learned man, he made a special study of statistics about Russia . . lived in Russia for a long time ... I myself have not read the Lives of the Saints ... and do not intend to read them ... It was just table talk . . .! We were having dinner then ...”
“So you were having dinner then, and I just lost my faith!” Fyodor Pavlovich went on teasing him.
“What do I care about your faith!” Miusov almost shouted, but suddenly checked himself and said with contempt: “You literally befoul everything you touch.”
The elder suddenly rose from his seat:
“Excuse me, gentlemen, if I leave you now for just a few minutes,” he said, addressing all of his visitors, “but there are people awaiting me who came belore you. And you, all the same, do not lie,” he added, turning to Fyodor Pavlovich with a cheerful face.
He started to leave the cell. Alyosha and the novice rushed after him to help him down the stairs. Alyosha was breathless, he was glad to get away, but he was also glad that the elder was cheerful and not offended. The elder turned towards the porch in order to bless those who were awaiting him. But Fyodor Pavlovich managed to stop him at the door of the cell.
“Most blessed man!” he cried out with feeling, “let me kiss your dear hand once more. No, still you’re a man one can talk to, a man one can get along with. Do you think I always lie like this and play the buffoon? I want you to know that all the while I’ve been acting on purpose in order to test you. I’ve been getting the feel of you, seeing whether one can get along with you. Whether there’s room for my humility next to your pride. I present you with a certificate of honor: one can get along with you! And now, I am silent, from here on I’ll be silent. I’ll sit on my chair and be silent. Now it’s your turn to speak, Pyotr Alexandrovich, you are the most important man left—for the next ten minutes.”
Chapter 3: Women of Faith
Below, crowding near the wooden porch built onto the outside wall, there were only women this time, about twenty of them. They had been informed that the elder would come out at last, and had gathered in anticipation. The Khokhlakov ladies, who were also waiting for the elder, but in quarters set aside for gentlewomen, had come out to the porch as well. There were two of them, mother and daughter. Madame Khokhlakov, the mother, a wealthy woman, always tastefully dressed, was still fairly young and quite attractive, slightly pale, with very lively and almost completely black eyes. She was not more than thirty-three years old and had been a widow for about five years. Her fourteen-year-old daughter suffered from paralysis of the legs. The poor girl had been unable to walk for about half a year already, and was wheeled around in a long, comfortable chair. Hers was a lovely little face, a bit thin from illness, but cheerful. Something mischievous shone in her big, dark eyes with their long lashes. Her mother had been intending to take her abroad since spring, but was detained through the summer by the management of her estate. They had already spent about a week in our town, more for business than on pilgrimage, but had already visited the elder once, three days before. Now they suddenly came again, though they knew that the elder was almost unable to receive anyone at all, and, pleading insistently, begged once again for “the happiness of beholding the great healer.” While awaiting the elder’s appearance, the mama sat on a seat next to her daughter’s chair, and two steps away from her stood an old monk, not from our monastery, but a visitor from a little-known cloister in the far north. He, too, wanted to receive the elder’s blessing. But when the elder appeared on the porch, he first went directly to the people. The crowd started pressing towards the three steps that connected the low porch with the field. The elder stood on the top step, put on his stole, and began to bless the women who crowded towards him. A “shrieker” was pulled up to him by both hands. She no sooner saw the elder than she suddenly began somehow absurdly screeching, hiccuping, and shaking all over as if in convulsions. The elder, having covered her head with the stole, read a short prayer over her, and she at once became quiet and calmed down. I do not know how it is now, but in my childhood I often used to see and hear these “shriekers” in villages and monasteries. Taken to the Sunday liturgy, they would screech or bark like dogs so that the whole church could hear, but when the chalice was brought out, and they were led up to the chalice, the “demonic possession” would immediately cease and the sick ones would always calm down for a time. As a child, I was greatly struck and astonished by this. And it was then that I heard from some landowners and especially from my town teachers, in answer to my questions, that it was all a pretense in order to avoid work, and that it could always be eradicated by the proper severity, which they confirmed by telling various stories. But later on I was surprised to learn from medical experts that there is no pretense in it, that it is a terrible woman’s disease that seems to occur predominantly in our Russia, that it is a testimony to the hard lot of our peasant women, caused by exhausting work too soon after difficult, improper birth-giving without any medical help, and, besides that, by desperate grief, beatings, and so on, which the nature of many women, after all, as the general examples show, cannot endure. This strange and instant healing of the frenzied and struggling woman the moment she was brought to the chalice, which used to be explained to me as shamming and, moreover, almost as a trick arranged by the “clericals” themselves—this healing occurred, probably, also in a very natural way: both the women who brought her to the chalice and, above all, the sick woman herself, fully believed, as an unquestionable truth, that the unclean spirit that possessed the sick woman could not possibly endure if she, the sick woman, were brought to the chalice and made to bow before it. And therefore, in a nervous and certainly also mentally ill woman, there always occurred (and had to occur), at the moment of her bowing before the chalice, an inevitable shock, as it were, to her whole body, a shock provoked by expectation of the inevitable miracle of healing and by the most complete faith that it would occur. And it would occur, even if only for a moment. That is just what happened now, as soon as the elder covered the woman with his stole.