put on those clothes one night in his desire to go, but he could not
decide what was best--to remain or to escape. At first he was in doubt,
but afterwards this indecision passed. He submitted to custom and
yielded to the devil, and only the peasant garb reminded him of the
thought and feeling he had had.

Every day more and more people flocked to him and less and less time was
left him for prayer and for renewing his spiritual strength. Sometimes
in lucid moments he thought he was like a place where there had once
been a spring. 'There used to be a feeble spring of living water which
flowed quietly from me and through me. That was true life, the time when
she tempted me!' (He always thought with ecstasy of that night and of
her who was now Mother Agnes.) She had tasted of that pure water, but
since then there had not been time for it to collect before thirsty
people came crowding in and pushing one another aside. And they had
trampled everything down and nothing was left but mud.

So he thought in rare moments of lucidity, but his usual state of mind
was one of weariness and a tender pity for himself because of that
weariness.

It was in spring, on the eve of the mid-Pentecostal feast. Father
Sergius was officiating at the Vigil Service in his hermitage church,
where the congregation was as large as the little church could
hold--about twenty people. They were all well-to-do proprietors or
merchants. Father Sergius admitted anyone, but a selection was made by
the monk in attendance and by an assistant who was sent to the hermitage
every day from the monastery. A crowd of some eighty people--pilgrims
and peasants, and especially peasant-women--stood outside waiting for
Father Sergius to come out and bless them. Meanwhile he conducted