‘If you are resolved, I must proceed to your initiation,’ said the rhetor, coming closer to Pierre. ‘In token of liberality I beg you to give me everything precious you have.’
‘But I have nothing with me,’ said Pierre, supposing he was being asked to give up all his possessions.
‘What you have with you: watch, money, rings . . .’
Pierre made haste to get out his purse and his watch, and was a long time trying to get his betrothal ring off his fat finger. When this had been done, the freemason said:
‘In token of obedience I beg you to undress.’ Pierre took off his coat and waistcoat and left boot at the rhetor’s instructions. The mason opened his shirt over the left sidc-of his chest and pulled up his breeches on the left leg above the knee. Pierre would hurriedly have taken off the right boot and tucked up the trouser-leg, to save this stranger the trouble of doing so, but the mason told him this was not necessary and gave him a slipper to put on his left foot. With a childish smile of embarrassment, of doubt, and of self-mockery, which would come into his face in spite of himself, Pierre stood with his legs wide apart and his hands hanging at his side, facing the rhetor and awaiting his next commands.
‘And finally, in token of candour, I beg you to disclose to me your chief temptation,’ he said.
‘My temptation! I had so many,’ said Pierre.
‘The temptation which does more than all the rest to make you stumble on the path of virtue,’ said the freemason.
Pierre paused, seeking a reply.
‘Wine? gluttony? frivolity? laziness? hasty temper? anger? women?’ he went through his vices, mentally balancing them, and not knowing to which to give the pre-eminence.
‘Women,’ said Pierre in a low, hardly audible voice. The freemason did not speak nor stir for a long while after that reply. At last he moved up to Pierre, took the handkerchief that lay on the table, and again tied it over his eyes.
‘For the last time I say to you: turn all your attention upon yourself, put a bridle on your feelings, and seek blessedness not in your passions, but in your own heart. The secret of blessing is not without but within us. . . .’
Pierre had for a long while been conscious of this refreshing fount of blessing within him, that now flooded his heart with joy and emotion.
IV
Shortly after this, there walked into the dark temple to fetch Pierre, not the rhetor, but his sponsor Villarsky, whom he recognised by his voice. In reply to fresh inquiries as to the firmness of his resolve, Pierre answered:
‘Yes, yes, I agree,’ and with a beaming, childlike smile he walked forward, stepping timidly and unevenly with one booted .and one slippered foot, while Villarsky held a sword pointed at his fat, uncovered chest. He was led out of the room along corridors, turning backwards and forwards, till at last he was brought to the doors of the lodge. Villarsky coughed; he was answered by masonic taps with hammers; the door opened before them. A bass voice (Pierre’s eyes were again bandaged) put questions to him, who he was, where and when he was born, and so on. Then he was again led away somewhere with his eyes still bandaged, and as he walked they spoke to him in allegories of the toils of his pilgrimage, and of holy love, of the Eternal Creator of the world, of the courage with which he was to endure toils and dangers. During this time Pierre noticed that he was called sometimes the seeker, sometimes the sufferer, and sometimes the postulant, and that they made various tapping sounds with hammers and with swords. While he was being led up to some object, he noticed that there was hesitation and uncertainty among his conductors. He heard a whispered dispute among the people round him, and one of them insisting that he should be made to cross a certain carpet. After this they took his right hand, laid it on something, while they bade him with the left hold a compass to his left
breast, while they made him repeat after some one who read the words aloud, the oath of fidelity to the laws of the order. Then the candles were extinguished and spirit was lighted, as Pierre knew from the smell of it, and he was told that he would see the lesser light. The bandage was taken off his eyes, and in the faint light of the burning spirit Pierre saw, as though it were in a dream, several persons who stood facing him in aprons like the rhetor’s, and held swords pointed at his breast. Among them stood a man in a white shirt stained with blood. On seeing this, Pierre moved with his chest forward towards the swords, meaning them to stab him. But the swords were drawn back, and the bandage was at once replaced on his eyes.
‘Now you have seen the lesser light,’ said a voice. Then again they lighted the candles, told him that he had now to see the full light, and again removed the bandage, and more than ten voices said all at once: ‘Sic transit gloria mundi.’
