unceasing trilling of the larks, tender, telling of peace, rose
from the fields outside the town. The trees were already awakening
and smiling a welcome, while above them the infinite, fathomless
blue sky stretched into the distance, God knows whither.

On reaching home his holiness drank some tea, then changed his
clothes, lay down on his bed, and told the lay brother to close the
shutters on the windows. The bedroom was darkened. But what weariness,
what pain in his legs and his back, a chill heavy pain, what a noise
in his ears! He had not slept for a long time--for a very long
time, as it seemed to him now, and some trifling detail which haunted
his brain as soon as his eyes were closed prevented him from sleeping.
As on the day before, sounds reached him from the adjoining rooms
through the walls, voices, the jingle of glasses and teaspoons. . . .
Marya Timofyevna was gaily telling Father Sisoy some story with
quaint turns of speech, while the latter answered in a grumpy,
ill-humoured voice: "Bother them! Not likely! What next!" And the
bishop again felt vexed and then hurt that with other people his
old mother behaved in a simple, ordinary way, while with him, her
son, she was shy, spoke little, and did not say what she meant, and
even, as he fancied, had during all those three days kept trying
in his presence to find an excuse for standing up, because she was
embarrassed at sitting before him. And his father? He, too, probably,
if he had been living, would not have been able to utter a word in
the bishop's presence. . . .

Something fell down on the floor in the adjoining room and was
broken; Katya must have dropped a cup or a saucer, for Father Sisoy
suddenly spat and said angrily: