nt with having made so many necessary. How can the
government of a Christian country kill men?

Everybody looked at everybody else, thinking of the bad taste of the
sermon, and how unpleasant it must be for the Emperor to listen to it;
but nobody expressed these thoughts aloud.

When Isidor had said Amen, the metropolitan approached, and asked him to
call on him.

After Isidor had had a talk with the metropolitan and with the
attorney-general, he was immediately sent away to a friary, not his own,
but one at Suzdal, which had a prison attached to it; the prior of that
friary was now Father Missael.

XIV

EVERY one tried to look as if Isidor's sermon contained nothing
unpleasant, and nobody mentioned it. It seemed to the Czar that the
hermit's words had not made any impression on himself; but once or twice
during that day he caught himself thinking of the two peasants who had
been hanged, and the widow of Sventizky who had asked an amnesty for
them. That day the Emperor had to be present at a parade; after which he
went out for a drive; a reception of ministers came next, then dinner,
after dinner the theatre. As usual, the Czar fell asleep the moment his
head touched the pillow. In the night an awful dream awoke him: he saw
gallows in a large field and corpses dangling on them; the tongues
of the corpses were protruding, and their bodies moved and shook. And
somebody shouted, "It is you--you who have done it!" The Czar woke up
bathed in perspiration and began to think. It was the first time that he
had ever thought of the responsibilities which weighed on him, and the
words of old Isidor came back to his mind. . . .

But only dimly could he see himself as a mere human being, and he could
not consider his mere human wants and duties, because of all that was
required of him as Czar. As to acknowledging that human duties were more
obligatory than those of a Czar--he had not strength for that.

XV

HAVING served his second term in the prison, Prokofy, who had formerly
worked on the Sventizky estate, was no longer the brisk, ambitious,
smartly dressed fellow he had been. He seemed, on the contrary, a
complete wreck. When sober he would sit idle and would refuse to do any
work, however much his father scolded him; moreover, he was continually
seeking to get hold of something secretly, and take it to the
public-house for a drink. When he came home he would continue to sit
idle, coughing and spitting all the time.