XII -- GRISHA

WE all felt a little uneasy in the thick darkness, so we pressed close
to one another and said nothing. Before long Grisha arrived with his
soft tread, carrying in one hand his staff and in the other a tallow
candle set in a brass candlestick. We scarcely ventured to breathe.

"Our Lord Jesus Christ! Holy Mother of God! Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost!" he kept repeating, with the different intonations and
abbreviations which gradually become peculiar to persons who are
accustomed to pronounce the words with great frequency.

Still praying, he placed his staff in a corner and looked at the bed;
after which he began to undress. Unfastening his old black girdle, he
slowly divested himself of his torn nankeen kaftan, and deposited
it carefully on the back of a chair. His face had now lost its usual
disquietude and idiocy. On the contrary, it had in it something restful,
thoughtful, and even grand, while all his movements were deliberate and
intelligent.

Next, he lay down quietly in his shirt on the bed, made the sign of the
cross towards every side of him, and adjusted his chains beneath his
shirt--an operation which, as we could see from his face, occasioned him
considerable pain. Then he sat up again, looked gravely at his ragged
shirt, and rising and taking the candle, lifted the latter towards the
shrine where the images of the saints stood. That done, he made the sign
of the cross again, and turned the candle upside down, when it went out
with a hissing noise.