s the eye could see, it was all choked up
with carts, old-fashioned coaches and chaises, vans, tilt-carts,
about which stood crowds of horses, dark and white, and horned oxen,
while people bustled about, and black long-skirted lay brothers
threaded their way in and out in all directions. Shadows and streaks
of light cast from the windows moved over the carts and the heads
of men and horses, and in the dense twilight this all assumed the
most monstrous capricious shapes: here the tilted shafts stretched
upwards to the sky, here eyes of fire appeared in the face of a
horse, there a lay brother grew a pair of black wings. . . . There
was the noise of talk, the snorting and munching of horses, the
creaking of carts, the whimpering of children. Fresh crowds kept
walking in at the gate and belated carts drove up.

The pines which were piled up on the overhanging mountain, one above
another, and leaned towards the roof of the hostel, gazed into the
courtyard as into a deep pit, and listened in wonder; in their dark
thicket the cuckoos and nightingales never ceased calling. . . .
Looking at the confusion, listening to the uproar, one fancied that
in this living hotch-potch no one understood anyone, that everyone
was looking for something and would not find it, and that this
multitude of carts, chaises and human beings could not ever succeed
in getting off.

More than ten thousand people flocked to the Holy Mountains for the
festivals of St. John the Divine and St. Nikolay the wonder-worker.
Not only the hostel buildings, but even the bakehouse, the tailoring
room, the carpenter's shop, the carriage house, were filled to
overflowing. . . . Those who had arrived towards night clustered
like flies in autumn, by the walls, round the wells in the yard,
or in the narrow passages of the hostel, waiting to be shown a
resting-place for the night. The lay brothers, young and old, were
in an incessant movement, with no rest or hope of being relieved.
By day or late at night they produced the same impression of men
hastening somewhere and agitated by something, yet, in spite of
their extreme exhaustion, their faces remained full of courage and
kindly welcome, their voices friendly, their movements rapid. . . .
For everyone who came they had to find a place to sleep, and to
provide food and drink; to those who were deaf, slow to understand,
or profuse in questions, they had to give long and wearisome
explanations, to tell them why there