‘Why shouldn’t I marry her?’ he would say to his daughter. ‘She’d make a splendid princess!’ And as the days went by, much to her surprise and bewilderment, Princess Marya began to notice that her father really was beginning to associate more and more with the French girl. Princess Marya wrote to Prince Andrey and described their father’s reaction to the letter, but she consoled her brother with the hope that she might be able to bring him round.
Little Nikolay and his education, her brother Andrey and religion – these were Princess Marya’s pleasures and consolations. But apart from them, since everybody has to have personal hopes, Princess Marya fostered, in the secret depths of her inner being, a private dream and a hidden hope from which she drew what consolation there was in her life. The consoling dream and hope came to her from her ‘Servants of God’ – the holy fools and pilgrims who visited her behind the prince’s back. The longer Princess Marya lived, the more she observed life and experienced it, the more she marvelled at the shortsightedness of people who seek pleasure and happiness here on earth, toiling away, suffering and struggling, and doing so much harm to each other in pursuit of an impossible will-o’-the-wisp of happiness in iniquity. Prince Andrey had loved a wife and she had died, but that wasn’t enough for him; he now wanted to bind his happiness to another woman. Her father was against it because he wanted a more distinguished or a wealthier match for Andrey. And all of them were struggling and suffering, tormenting themselves and tainting their souls, their eternal souls, to find themselves blessings that were only ephemeral. We are all well aware of this, but in any case Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came down to earth and told us that this life is but for a moment, it is a trial, yet we still cling to it and think to find happiness in it. ‘Why can’t people see this?’ Princess Marya wondered. ‘Well some people can – those despised Servants of God, who come to me up the backstairs with bags on their backs, scared of being seen by the prince, not because they’re worried about persecution, but from fear of leading him into sin. To leave hearth and home, to renounce all thoughts of worldly blessings, and to wander the world, with nothing to cling to, in sackcloth and tatters, with a new name, doing no harm, but praying for people, praying equally for those who persecute and those who give succour – there is no truth and no life higher than this truth and this life!’
There was one pilgrim by the name of Theodosia, a quiet little woman of fifty, with a pockmarked faced, who had been wandering the world for over thirty years barefoot and wearing heavy chains. Princess Marya was particularly fond of her. One evening when they were sitting together in a dark room lit only by an icon-lamp, Theodosia told her life-story. Princess Marya felt such a strong intuition that Theodosia was the one person who had found the right path in life that she decided she ought to go on a pilgrimage herself. When Theodosia had gone to bed Princess Marya thought things over well into the night and eventually came to the conclusion that – however strange it might look – she must go on a pilgrimage. She confided her intention to no one but a monk, Father Akinfi, and he gave her project his blessing. On the pretext of buying presents for pilgrim women, Princess Marya built up the complete outfit of a pilgrim – a rough smock, shoes of plaited bark, a kaftan and a black scarf. She would often go over to the secret chest where these things were hidden and hover there, undecided whether the time might not have come to carry out her plan.
Often as she listened to the pilgrim-women’s stories she was so transported by their simple sayings – mechanical phrases to them, but powerful profundities to her ears – that she was more than once tempted ready to drop everything and run away from home. She could imagine herself alongside Theodosia, dressed in a rough smock, setting out on her pilgrimage with scrip and staff, trudging the dusty road, free from envy, free from earthly love, free from every desire, proceeding from one saint to another, and arriving at last where there is neither sorrow nor sighing, but everlasting joy and happiness.
‘I shall come to a place and pray, but before I can grow used to it and love it, I shall move on. And I shall walk on till my legs give way under me, then shall I lie down and die, and come at last to that eternal haven of peace and quiet, where there is neither sorrow nor sighing!’ thought Princess Marya.
But at the first sight of her father, and especially little Nikolay, she would falter, shed a few silent tears and feel like a woman of sin. Did she not love her father and her nephew more than God?
PART IV
CHAPTER 1
