Chekhov 1902 bishop one On the eve of Palm Sunday vespers were being held in the old Petrovsky monastery.By the time the willow branches were distributed in the church, it was nearly ten o'clock, the candles were dimmed, the wicks were flowered, and everything seemed to be in a mist.In the dimness of the church the crowd floated like an ocean.Bishop Peter has been unwell for three days. In his eyes, the faces of all these people, whether they are old or young, male or female, are all alike. The same expression appeared in the eyes of the people with branches.In this mist the doorway was invisible, and the crowd was always moving about, as if not only now, but forever.The women's choir sang and a nun chanted a hymn.

How stuffy and hot it was!How long is this Vespers!Bishop Peter was tired.His breathing was heavy and rapid, his throat was dry, his shoulders were sore from fatigue, and his legs were shaking.Occasionally a fanatic from the chorus would yell, which made him uncomfortable.And, suddenly, as if in a dream or in a stupor, the bishop felt as though his own mother, Marya Timofeevna, whom he had not seen for nine years, was coming towards him in the middle of the crowd, or perhaps it was An old woman with a face resembling his mother's, the woman walked away after taking the willow branch from him, but kept looking at him happily, with a good-natured and happy smile on her face, and then she disappeared in the crowd.For unknown reasons, tears rolled down his face.He was at peace, everything was going well, but he fixed his eyes on the choir on the left, where the reading was going on, and no one could be seen in the dim twilight, and he looked and looked and wept.Tears were on his face and his beard was shiny.Then someone near him began to cry, and then another person in the distance cried, and then more and more people cried, and the church gradually filled with soft weeping.But after a while, like five minutes or so, the nuns' choir starts to sing, and no one cries anymore, and everything goes back to the way it was.

After a while, the prayers ended.The bishop was getting into the carriage to go home. At this time, the whole garden was full of moonlight, and those expensive and heavy clocks were chiming cheerfully and pleasantly.Those white walls, those white crosses on the tombs, those white birches and black shadows, that distant moon that just hung over the monastery, seemed to be living a life of their own at this time, which human beings could not understand. And close to the special life of human beings.It was the beginning of April, and after the warm days of spring, the weather was cool and slightly chilly, and at the same time, there was a breath of spring in the soft, cool air.From the monastery to the city was a sandy road, and the carriage had to go slowly; on both sides of the carriage, in the bright and peaceful moonlight, some devout prayers walked slowly on the sandy soil.No one spoke, they were all deep in thought.Everything around, the trees, the sky, even the moon, looked kind, young, and kind, and one could not help wishing that it would remain so forever.

Finally, the carriage drove into the city and galloped down one of the main streets.The shop was closed, only the rich merchant Elagin's shop was experimenting with electric lights, and the lights flickered vigorously, attracting a group of people to watch.Then came the wide, dark streets, one after the other, with no one in sight, and then the Zemstvo road outside the city, open fields, with the scent of pine trees blowing in your face.Suddenly, a white wall with crenelated walls rises in front of you, and a tall bell tower rises inside the wall, completely immersed in the moonlight. Beside the bell tower, there are five large golden domes gleaming. This is Pankracheyev. Ski Monastery, where Bishop Peter lived.Here, too, the quiet, brooding moon hung high over the monastery.The carriage drove into the gate, making a creaking sound on the sandy road. Under the moonlight, black figures of monks flashed here and there, and footsteps sounded on the stone-paved road. ... "My lord, your mother came here while you were away," reported the waiter when the bishop entered his apartment.

"My mother? When did she come?" "Before vespers. The old lady first asked where you were, and then drove to the convent." "So it was she I saw in church just now! O Lord!" The bishop laughed happily. "Her old man told me to tell you, my lord," went on the monk. "She's coming to-morrow. She's bringing a little girl, probably her granddaughter. She lives at the Ovsiannikov Inn." "What time is it now?" "It was just after eleven o'clock." "Oh, how bad!" The Bishop sat for a while longer in the drawing-room, hesitating, as if he could not believe it was so late.His arms and legs were a little sore, and the back of his head ached.He feels hot and uncomfortable.He rested for a while, then went to his bedroom, and sat for a while, thinking of his mother all the time.The monk could be heard going out, and the monk-priest, Father Sisoy, was coughing next door.The Abbey clock struck a quarter past eleven.

The bishop changed his clothes and began to say his bedtime prayers.He concentrated on saying the old, long-familiar prayer, thinking of his mother.She has nine children and nearly forty grandchildren.She and her husband, a deacon, had lived a long time in a poor village.Live from seventeen to sixty.The Bishop remembered what she had been like in his childhood, when he was almost three years old, and how he loved her!Lovely, precious and unforgettable childhood!Why does it, the time that is forever past and never return, seem brighter, happier, richer than it really was then?How tender and considerate his mother had been in his childhood and youth when he was ill!Now his prayer was mingled with his memory, which was burning like a flame, and his prayer did not prevent him from thinking of his mother.

After praying, he took off his clothes and lay down on the bed; as soon as it became dark around him, his dead father, his mother, and his native village of Lesopolie appeared before his eyes. ... the creaking of the wheels, the bleating of the sheep, the ringing of the church bell on a bright summer morning, the gypsies at the windows, oh, how sweet it is to think of these!He couldn't help thinking of Father Simeon, the priest of Lesoporiye, a gentle, quiet, and kind-hearted man, who himself was not tall and thin, but his son, a madrasa student, was of great stature. , speaking in a vicious low voice, the priest's son once lost his temper with the cook at home, and scolded her: "Well, you Jehu's ass!" He didn't say anything, but was ashamed secretly, because he couldn't remember where this female donkey was mentioned in the Bible.After he left, Father Demyan came to be the priest in the village of Lesoporiye. He was a heavy drinker, and sometimes he got so drunk that he even got the nickname "Drunk Demyan". .The teacher in the village of Lesopoliye was Matvey Nikolaitch, a student of a religious school, a good-hearted man, not stupid, but also a drunkard.He never beat his pupils, but for some reason he always had on his wall a small bundle of birch branches with the meaningless Latin words underneath: Betula kinder balsamica secuta.He had a black, shaggy dog, which he named Syndaxis.

The bishop laughed.In the village of Obnino, eight versts away from the village of Lesoporiye, there is a miraculous icon.In the summer, when people formed a religious procession and carried this icon from the village of Obernino to the neighboring villages, ringing the bells all day long, going from one village to another, the bishop felt the air in the air. Rippling with joy, he (at that time, his name was Pavlusha) was barefoot, barefoot, walking around following the icon, with simple faith, showing a simple smile, infinite happiness.He remembered now that there were always many people in the village of Obernino, where the priest Alexei, in order to have time for devotional prayers, asked his deaf nephew Ilarion to read the words on the wafer. A list of "Pray for blessings" and "Pray for the rest of the soul".Ilarion read it, and sometimes got fifty kopecks or ten kopecks for it, until his hair was gray and his head was bald, and his life was over, when he suddenly saw a note saying: "You are a big man. Fool, Ilarion!" Pavlusha was still stupid until at least fifteen years old, and his academic performance was not good, so the family even planned to take him back from the religious school and send him to a small shop as an apprentice.Once, when he went to collect letters in the village of Obernino, he looked at the clerks in the post office for a long time and asked: "May I ask, how do you get paid: is it monthly or daily?"

The bishop crossed himself, turned over, tried not to think, and settled down to sleep. "My mother is here..." He smiled as he remembered. The moon shone through the window, and the floor was full of moonlight and shadows.A cricket is chirping.In the adjoining room Father Sisoy was snoring, and in his old snores one could hear the tone of a lonely, helpless, even wanderer.Sisoy had once been steward of the bishop of the diocese, and now he was called "the former steward priest."He was seventy years old, and lived in a monastery sixteen versts from the city, and sometimes in the city.He had stopped by the Pankracheyevsky Monastery three days before, and the bishop had kept him with him in order to talk to him about business and the state of affairs here at his leisure. . . . At half past one, the bells of the monastery were rung for morning prayers.Father Sisoy could be heard coughing, muttering in disapproving tones, getting up, and walking barefoot from room to room.

"Father Sisoy!" cried the bishop. Hisoi returned to his room, and after a while came wearing boots and holding a candle.A cassock over his underclothes, and an old faded miter on his head. "I can't sleep," said the bishop, sitting up. "I must be sick. I don't know what. I have a fever!" "You must have caught a cold, Archbishop. You should be rubbed with candle oil." Sisoi stood for a while, yawned, and said, "O Lord, forgive me, a sinner!" "The lights are on in Yelakin's shop today," he said. "I do not like!"

Father Sisoy was old, thin, a little stooped, always dissatisfied with something, and his angry, bulging eyes were like those of a shrimp. "I don't like it!" he repeated, and walked out. "If you don't like it, go to it forever!"