Not more than a yard from me lay a homeless wanderer; in the rooms
of the hostels and by the carts in the courtyard among the pilgrims
some hundreds of such homeless wanderers were waiting for the
morning, and further away, if one could picture to oneself the whole
of Russia, a vast multitude of such uprooted creatures was pacing
at that moment along highroads and side-tracks, seeking something
better, or were waiting for the dawn, asleep in wayside inns and
little taverns, or on the grass under the open sky. . . . As I fell
asleep I imagined how amazed and perhaps even overjoyed all these
people would have been if reasoning and words could be found to
prove to them that their life was as little in need of justification
as any other. In my sleep I heard a bell ring outside as plaintively
as though shedding bitter tears, and the lay brother calling out
several times:

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us! Come to mass!"

When I woke up my companion was not in the room. It was sunny and
there was a murmur of the crowds through the window. Going out, I
learned that mass was over and that the procession had set off for
the Hermitage some time before. The people were wandering in crowds
upon the river bank and, feeling at liberty, did not know what to
do with themselves: they could not eat or drink, as the late mass
was not yet over at the Hermitage; the Monastery shops where pilgrims
are so fond of crowding and asking prices were still shut. In spite
of their exhaustion, many of them from sheer boredom were trudging
to the Hermitage. The path from the Monastery to the Hermitage,
towards which I directed my steps, twined like a snake along the
high steep bank, going up and down and threading in and out among