The Tales of Chekhov, vol 7

The Tales of Chekhov, vol 7

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Bishop and Other Stories, by
Anton Chekhov This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no
cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give
it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
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Title: The Bishop and Other Stories
Author: Anton Chekhov
Release Date: September 9, 2004 [EBook #13419]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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BISHOP AND OTHER STORIES ***

Produced by James Rusk

THE TALES OF CHEKHOV
VOLUME 7
THE BISHOP AND OTHER STORIES
BY
ANTON TCHEKHOV
Translated by CONSTANCE GARNETT

CONTENTS
THE BISHOP THE LETTER EASTER EVE A NIGHTMARE THE

MURDER UPROOTED THE STEPPE

THE BISHOP
I
THE evening service was being celebrated on the eve of Palm Sunday
in the Old Petrovsky Convent. When they began distributing the palm it
was close upon ten o'clock, the candles were burning dimly, the wicks
wanted snuffing; it was all in a sort of mist. In the twilight of the
church the crowd seemed heaving like the sea, and to Bishop Pyotr,
who had been unwell for the last three days, it seemed that all the
faces--old and young, men's and women's--were alike, that everyone
who came up for the palm had the same expression in his eyes. In the
mist he could not see the doors; the crowd kept moving and looked as
though there were no end to it. The female choir was singing, a nun
was reading the prayers for the day.
How stifling, how hot it was! How long the service went on! Bishop
Pyotr was tired. His breathing was laboured and rapid, his throat was
parched, his shoulders ached with weariness, his legs were trembling.
And it disturbed him unpleasantly when a religious maniac uttered
occasional shrieks in the gallery. And then all of a sudden, as though in
a dream or delirium, it seemed to the bishop as though his own mother
Marya Timofyevna, whom he had not seen for nine years, or some old
woman just like his mother, came up to him out of the crowd, and, after
taking a palm branch from him, walked away looking at him all the
while good-humouredly with a kind, joyful smile until she was lost in
the crowd. And for some reason tears flowed down his face. There was
peace in his heart, everything was well, yet he kept gazing fixedly
towards the left choir, where the prayers were being read, where in the
dusk of evening you could not recognize anyone, and--wept. Tears
glistened on his face and on his beard. Here someone close at hand was
weeping, then someone else farther away, then others and still others,
and little by little the church was filled with soft weeping. And a little
later, within five minutes, the nuns' choir was singing; no one was
weeping and everything was as before.
Soon the service was over. When the bishop got into his carriage to
drive home, the gay, melodious chime of the heavy, costly bells was
filling the whole garden in the moonlight. The white walls, the white

crosses on the tombs, the white birch-trees and black shadows, and the
far-away moon in the sky exactly over the convent, seemed now living
their own life, apart and incomprehensible, yet very near to man. It was
the beginning of April, and after the warm spring day it turned cool;
there was a faint touch of frost, and the breath of spring could be felt in
the soft, chilly air. The road from the convent to the town was sandy,
the horses had to go at a walking pace, and on both sides of the carriage
in the brilliant, peaceful moonlight there were people trudging along
home from church through the sand. And all was silent, sunk in thought;
everything around seemed kindly, youthful, akin, everything--trees and
sky and even the moon, and one longed to think that so it would be
always.
At last the carriage drove into the town and rumbled along the principal
street. The shops were already shut, but at Erakin's, the millionaire
shopkeeper's, they were trying the new electric lights, which flickered
brightly, and a crowd of people were gathered round. Then came wide,
dark, deserted streets, one after another; then the highroad, the open
country, the fragrance of pines. And suddenly there rose up before the
bishop's eyes a white turreted wall, and behind it a tall belfry in the full
moonlight, and beside it five shining, golden cupolas: this was the
Pankratievsky Monastery, in which Bishop Pyotr lived. And here, too,
high above the monastery, was the silent, dreamy