trait. It was twilight; outside
the wall the bell was tolling heavily in the invisible church, calling
the believers together; in the distance, over the deserted field,
overgrown with high grass, an unknown wanderer was plodding along,
passing into the unknown distance, like a little black dot. It was as
quiet in our prison as in a sepulchre. I looked long and attentively at
the features of Jesus, which were so calm, so joyous compared with him
who looked silently and dully from the wall beside Him. And with my
habit, formed during the long years of solitude, of addressing inanimate
things aloud, I said to the motionless crucifix:

"Good evening, Jesus. I am glad to welcome You in our prison. There are
three of us here: You, I, and the one who is looking from the wall, and
I hope that we three will manage to live in peace and in harmony. He is
looking silently, and You are silent, and Your eyes are closed--I shall
speak for the three of us, a sure sign that our peace will never be
broken."

They were silent, and, continuing, I addressed my speech to the
portrait:

"Where are you looking so intently and so strangely, my unknown friend
and roommate? In your eyes I see mystery and reproach. Is it possible
that you dare reproach Him? Answer!"

And, pretending that the portrait answered, I continued in a different
voice with an expression of extreme sternness and boundless grief:

"Yes, I do reproach Him. Jesus, Jesus! Why is Your face so pure, so
blissful? You have passed only over the brink of human sufferings, as
over the brink of an abyss, and only the foam of the bloody and miry
waves have touched You. Do You command me, a human being, to sink into
the dark depth? Great is Your Golgotha, Jesus, but too reverent and
joyous, and one small but interesting stroke is missing--the horror of
aimlessness!"

Here I interrupted the speech of the Portrait, with an expression of
anger.

"How dare you," I exclaimed; "how dare you speak of aimlessness in our
prison?"

They were silent; and suddenly Jesus, without opening His eyes--He even
seemed to close them more tightly--answered:

"Who knows the mysteries of the heart of Jesus?"

I burst into laughter, and my esteemed reader will easily understand
this laughter. It turned out that I, a cool and sober mathematician,
possessed a poetic talent and could compose very interesting comedies.

I do not know how all this would have ended, for I had already prepared
a thunder