*
I have already mentioned that he rarely left his little wooden cell in the apiary, did not even go to church for long stretches of time, and that this was blinked at because he was supposedly a holy fool, not to be bound by the general rule. But to tell the whole truth, all this was blinked at even from a sort of necessity. For it was somehow even shameful to insist on burdening with the general rule so great an ascetic, who fasted and kept silence and prayed night and day (he even fell asleep on his knees), if he himself did not want to submit to it. “He is holier than any of us, and what he does is more difficult than following the rule,” the monks would have said in that case, “and if he does not go to church, it means he knows himself when to go, he has his own rule.” Because of the likelihood of such murmuring and temptation, Father Ferapont was left in peace. As everyone knew, Father Ferapont intensely disliked Father Zosima; and then the news reached him in his little cell that “God’s judgment is not as man’s, and that it has even forestalled nature.” We may suppose that one of the first to run and bring him the news was the Obdorsk visitor, who had been to see him the day before, and who the day before had left him in terror. I have also mentioned that Father Paissy, who stood firmly and immovably reading over the coffin, though he could not hear or see what was taking place outside the cell, had unerringly divined all its essentials in his heart, for he knew his milieu thoroughly. But he was not dismayed, and waited fearlessly for all that might still take place, with a piercing gaze looking ahead to the outcome of the disturbance, which was already present to his mental eye. Then suddenly an extraordinary noise in the front hall, which clearly violated good order, struck his ear. The door was flung open and Father Ferapont appeared on the threshold. Behind him, as one could glimpse and even plainly see from the cell, many monks who accompanied him were crowding at the foot of the porch, and many laymen along with them. This company did not enter the cell, however, and did not come up on the porch, but stopped and waited to see what Father Ferapont would say and do next, for they suspected, even with a certain fear, despite all their boldness, that he had not come for nothing. Having stopped on the threshold, Father Ferapont lifted up his arms, and from under his right arm peeped the keen and curious little eyes of the Obdorsk visitor, the only one who could not keep himself from running up the stairs after Father Ferapont, for he was greatly curious. Apart from him, all the others, on the contrary, drew further back in sudden fear the moment the door was so noisily flung open. Lifting up his hands, Father Ferapont suddenly yelled:
“Casting will I cast out!” and facing all four directions in turn, he at once began making crosses with his hand at the walls and the four corners of the cell. Those who accompanied Father Ferapont understood this action at once; for they knew that he always did the same wherever he went, and that he would not sit down or say a word before driving out the unclean spirits.
“Get thee hence, Satan! Get thee hence, Satan!” he repeated with each sign of the cross. “Casting will I cast out!” he yelled again. He was wearing his coarse habit, girded with a rope. His bare chest overgrown with gray hair appeared from under his hempen shirt. He had nothing at all on his feet. As soon as he started waving his arms, the heavy chains he wore under his habit began shaking and clanking. Father Paissy interrupted his reading, stepped forward, and stood waiting in front of him.
“Wherefore have you come, worthy father? Wherefore do you violate good order? Wherefore do you trouble the humble flock?” he said at last, looking at him sternly.
“Whyfor have I come? Whyfor do you ask? How believest thou?”[227] Father Ferapont cried in his holy folly. “I came forth to drive out your guests here, the foul devils. I want to see how many you’ve stored up without me. I want to sweep them out with a birch broom.”
“You drive out the unclean one, and it is perhaps him that you serve,” Father Paissy went on fearlessly. “And who can say of himself, ‘I am holy? Can you, father?”
“I am foul, not holy. I would not sit in an armchair, I would not desire to be , worshipped like an idol!” Father Ferapont thundered. “Now people are destroying the holy faith. The deceased, your saint here,” he turned to the crowd, pointing at the coffin with his finger, “denied devils. He gave purgatives against devils. So they’ve bred here like spiders in the corners. And on this day he got himself stunk. In this we see a great sign from God.”
Indeed, it had once happened in Father Zosima’s lifetime. One of the monks began seeing unclean spirits, at first in his dreams and then also in reality. And when, in great fear, he divulged this to the elder, the latter advised him to pray without ceasing and fast zealously. But when that did not help either, he advised him, without abandoning his fasting and prayer, to take a certain medicine. Many found this a temptation and spoke of it among themselves, shaking their heads—Father Ferapont most of all, whom some slanderers had hastened to inform at once of the “extraordinary” instructions the elder had given in this particular case.
“Get thee hence, father!” Father Paissy spoke commandingly. “It is not for men to judge, but for God. Perhaps we see here such a sign’ as neither I, nor you, nor any man is capable of understanding. Get thee hence, father, and do not trouble the flock!” he repeated insistently. “He did not keep the fasts according to his monastic rank, therefore this sign has come. That’s plain enough, it’s a sin to conceal it!” The fanatic, maddened by his zeal, got himself going and would not be still. “He loved candies, the ladies used to bring him candies in their pockets, he was a tea sipper, a glutton, filling his stomach with sweets and his mind with arrogant thoughts ... That is why he suffers this shame ...”
“Frivolous are your words, father!” Father Paissy also raised his voice. “I marvel at your fasting and ascetic life, but frivolous are your words, as if spoken by some worldly youth, callow and inconstant of mind. Therefore get thee hence, father, I command you,” Father Paissy thundered in conclusion.
“I will get hence,” said Father Ferapont, as if somewhat taken aback, but not abandoning his spite. “You learned ones! In great wisdom you exalt yourselves above my nothingness. I came here illiterate, and here forgot what I did know, the Lord himself has protected me, his little one, from your wisdom...”
Father Paissy stood over him and waited firmly. Father Ferapont was silent for a short time; then, suddenly rueful, he put his right hand to his cheek and spoke in a singsong, looking at the coffin of the deceased elder:
“Tomorrow they will sing ‘My Helper and Defender’ over him—a glorious canon—and over me when I croak just What Earthly Joy’—a little song,” he said tearfully and piteously.[228] “You are proud and puffed up! Empty is this place!” he suddenly yelled like a madman, and, waving his hand, turned quickly, and quickly went down the steps from the porch. The crowd awaiting him below hesitated: some followed him at once, but others lingered, for the cell was still open and Father Paissy, who had come out to the porch after Father Ferapont, was standing and watching. But the raging old man was not finished yet: going about twenty steps off, he suddenly turned towards the setting sun, raised both arms, and, as if he had been cut down, collapsed on the ground with a great cry: