Short Fiction by Leo Tolstoy (book reader for pc TXT) 📕

his lips and kissed it. It seemed to him now that he had been humble then when he had always seemed loathsome to himself on account of his sinfulness; and when he remembered the tender feelings with which he had then met an old man who was bringing a drunken soldier to him to ask alms; and how he had received her, it seemed to him that he had then possessed love also. But now? And he asked himself whether he loved anyone, whether he loved Sófya Ivánovna, or Father Seraphim, whether he had any feeling of love for all who had come to him that day⁠—for that learned young man with whom he had had that instructive discussion in which he was concerned only to show off his own intelligence and that he had not lagged behind the times in knowledge. He wanted and needed their love, but felt none towards them. He now had neither love nor humility nor purity.

He was pleased to know that the merchant’s daughter was twenty-two, and he wondered whether she was good-looking. When he inquired whether she was weak, he really wanted to know if she had feminine charm.

“Can I have fallen so low?” he thought. “Lord, help me! Restore me, my Lord and God!” And he clasped his hands and began to pray.

The nightingales burst into song, a cockchafer knocked against him and crept up the back of his neck. He brushed it off. “But does He exist? What if I am knocking at a door fastened from outside? The bar is on the door for all to see. Nature⁠—the nightingales and the cockchafers⁠—is that bar. Perhaps the young man was right.” And he began to pray aloud. He prayed for a long time till these thoughts vanished and he again felt calm and confident. He rang the bell and told the attendant to say that the merchant might bring his daughter to him now.

The merchant came, leading his daughter by the arm. He led her into the cell and immediately left her.

She was a very fair girl, plump and very short, with a pale, frightened, childish face and a much developed feminine figure. Father Sergius remained seated on the bench at the entrance and when she was passing and stopped beside him for his blessing he was aghast at himself for the way he looked at her figure. As she passed by him he was acutely conscious of her femininity, though he saw by her face that she was sensual and feebleminded. He rose and went into the cell. She was sitting on a stool waiting for him, and when he entered she rose.

“I want to go back to Papa,” she said.

“Don’t be afraid,” he replied. “What are you suffering from?”

“I am in pain all over,” she said, and suddenly her face lit up with a smile.

“You will be well,” said he. “Pray!”

“What is the use of praying? I have prayed and it does no good”⁠—and she continued to smile. “I want you to pray for me and lay your hands on me. I saw you in a dream.”

“How did you see me?”

“I saw you put your hands on my breast like that.” She took his hand and pressed it to her breast. “Just here.”

He yielded his right hand to her.

“What is your name?” he asked, trembling all over and feeling that he was overcome and that his desire had already passed beyond control.

“Marie. Why?”

She took his hand and kissed it, and then put her arm round his waist and pressed him to herself.

“What are you doing?” he said. “Marie, you are a devil!”

“Oh, perhaps. What does it matter?”

And embracing him she sat down with him on the bed.

At dawn he went out into the porch.

“Can this all have happened? Her father will come and she will tell him everything. She is a devil! What am I to do? Here is the axe with which I chopped off my finger.” He snatched up the axe and moved back towards the cell.

The attendant came up.

“Do you want some wood chopped? Let me have the axe.”

Sergius yielded up the axe and entered the cell. She was lying there asleep. He looked at her with horror, and passed on beyond the partition, where he took down the peasant clothes and put them on. Then he seized a pair of scissors, cut off his long hair, and went out along the path down the hill to the river, where he had not been for more than three years.

A road ran beside the river and he went along it and walked till noon. Then he went into a field of rye and lay down there. Towards evening he approached a village, but without entering it went towards the cliff that overhung the river. There he again lay down to rest.

It was early morning, half an hour before sunrise. All was damp and gloomy and a cold early wind was blowing from the west. “Yes, I must end it all. There is no God. But how am I to end it? Throw myself into the river? I can swim and should not drown. Hang myself? Yes, just throw this sash over a branch.” This seemed so feasible and so easy that he felt horrified. As usual at moments of despair he felt the need of prayer. But there was no one to pray to. There was no God. He lay down resting on his arm, and suddenly such a longing for sleep overcame him that he could no longer support his head on his hand, but stretched out his arm, laid his head upon it, and fell asleep. But that sleep lasted only for a moment. He woke up immediately and began not to dream but to remember.

He saw himself as a child in his mother’s home in the country. A carriage drives up, and out of it steps Uncle Nicholas Sergeévich, with his long, spade-shaped, black beard, and with him Páshenka, a thin little girl with