a great deal and often written. And he remembered how he had pined
for his native land, how a blind beggar woman had played the guitar
under his window every day and sung of love, and how, as he listened,
he had always for some reason thought of the past. But eight years
had passed and he had been called back to Russia, and now he was a
suffragan bishop, and all the past had retreated far away into the
mist as though it were a dream. . . .

Father Sisoy came into the bedroom with a candle.

"I say!" he said, wondering, "are you asleep already, your holiness?"

"What is it?"

"Why, it's still early, ten o'clock or less. I bought a candle
to-day; I wanted to rub you with tallow."

"I am in a fever . . ." said the bishop, and he sat up. "I really
ought to have something. My head is bad. . . ."

Sisoy took off the bishop's shirt and began rubbing his chest and
back with tallow.

"That's the way . . . that's the way . . ." he said. "Lord Jesus
Christ . . . that's the way. I walked to the town to-day; I was at
what's-his-name's--the chief priest Sidonsky's. . . . I had tea
with him. I don't like him. Lord Jesus Christ. . . . That's the
way. I don't like him."

III