He sprang up and stood before her with trembling jaws, pale as death. He now remembered how the Emperor, meeting him on the Névsky, had amiably congratulated him.
“O God, what have I done! Stíva!”
“Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me! Oh, how it pains!”
He turned away and went to the house. There he met her mother.
“What is the matter, Prince? I …” She became silent on seeing his face. The blood had suddenly rushed to his head.
“You knew it, and used me to shield them! If you weren’t a woman … !” he cried, lifting his enormous fist, and turning aside he ran away.
Had his fiancée’s lover been a private person he would have killed him, but it was his beloved Tsar.
Next day he applied both for furlough and his discharge, and professing to be ill, so as to see no one, he went away to the country.
He spent the summer at his village arranging his affairs. When summer was over he did not return to Petersburg, but entered a monastery and there became a monk.
His mother wrote to try to dissuade him from this decisive step, but he replied that he felt God’s call which transcended all other considerations. Only his sister, who was as proud and ambitious as he, understood him.
She understood that he had become a monk in order to be above those who considered themselves his superiors. And she understood him correctly. By becoming a monk he showed contempt for all that seemed most important to others and had seemed so to him while he was in the service, and he now ascended a height from which he could look down on those he had formerly envied. …