“His Tsar he honourably served, His neighbour cordially loved, And was revered of men.”
And these verses struck Tikhon Ilitch as hypocritical. But in this place even a lie was touching. For—where is truth? Yonder in the bushes lies a human jawbone, neglected, looking as if it were made of dirty wax—all that remains of a man. But is it all? Flowers, ribbons, crosses, coffins, and bones in the earth decay—all is death and corruption. But Tikhon Ilitch walked on further and read: “Thus it is in the resurrection of the dead; it is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption.”—“Our darling son, thy memory will never die in our hearts to all eternity!”
His brow furrowed even more severely; he removed his cap and made the sign of the cross. He was pale, and still weak from his illness. He recalled his childhood—his youth—Kuzma. He walked to the far corner of the cemetery where all his relatives were buried—father, mother, the sister who had died when a little girl. The inscriptions spoke touchingly and peacefully of rest, repose; of tenderness towards fathers, mothers, husbands and wives; of a love which, apparently, does not exist and never will exist on this earth; of that devotion to one another and submission to God, that fervent faith in a future life, that meeting once more in another and blessed land, in which one believes only here; and of that equality which death alone confers—of those moments when folk bestow the last kiss upon the lips of the dead beggar as on a brother’s, compare him with kings and prelates, say over him the loftiest and most solemn words.
And there in a distant corner of the enclosure, among bushes of elder which dozed in the parching heat—there where formerly had been graves, but now were only mounds and hollows, overgrown with grass and white flowers—Tikhon Ilitch saw a fresh little grave, the grave of a child, and on the cross a couplet: