One by one the peasants advanced and kissed the gold cross
in the hands of the priest, and among them I went up and was blessed
as they were. And we were all in rapture. Standing at the threshold
afterwards, smiling peasants with wet shining eyes confessed to one
another their unworthiness and their happiness; and a girl all in
laughing tears fell down at our feet, kissing our dusty boots, and
asking our forgiveness that she had been permitted to see Jerusalem.
We were taken to the refectory and seated at many tables to a peasant
dinner: cabbage soup and porridge, bread and _kvass_, just as they are
served in Russia itself. We passed to the hostelry and were given,
at the rate of three farthings a day, beds and benches that we might
occupy as long as we wished to stay in Jerusalem. The first night we
were all to get as rested as possible, the next we were to spend in
the Sepulchre itself. I slept in a room with four hundred peasants,
on a wooden shelf covered with old pallets of straw. The shelves were
hard and dirty; there was no relaxation of our involuntary asceticism,
but we slept well. There was music in our ears. We had attained to
Jerusalem, and our dreams were with the angels. Jerusalem the earthly
had not forced itself upon our minds; we held the symbolism of the
journey lightly, and the mind read a mystery in delicate emotions.
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