When Heroes Fall from Grace — The Brothers Karamazov

The body of Father Zossima was prepared for burial according to the established ritual. Dead monks are not washed. The monk whose office it is shall wipe the body with warm water, making the sign of the cross with a sponge on the forehead, the breast, the hands, the feet, and the knees, and that is enough. Father Païssy did all this. He clothed the dead man in his monastic garb and wrapped him in his cloak, slit so that it could be folded about him in the form of a cross. On his head he put a hood with an eight-cornered cross. The hood was left open, and the face was covered with black gauze. An icon of the Saviour was put in his hands. Because he had been a priest and a monk of the strictest rule, the Gospel, not the Psalter, had to be read over him by monks in holy orders. Father Iosif began the reading immediately after the requiem. Towards morning they laid the body in the coffin and brought it into the front room, and the question of opening the windows was raised.

Father Païssy found Alyosha and saw that he was weeping quietly but bitterly, his face hidden in his hands, his whole frame shaking. Enough, dear son, he said. Why do you weep? Rejoice and weep not. Don't you know that this is the greatest of his days? Think only where he is now, at this moment. Alyosha uncovered a face swollen with crying, like a child's, and turned away without a word. The narrator says that this day would be a crisis in the boy's spiritual development, a shock to his intellect that would strengthen it for the rest of his life and give it a definite aim. Then he returns to the coffin.

A smell of decomposition began to come from the coffin, growing gradually more marked, and by three o'clock it was quite unmistakable. In all the past history of the monastery, nothing of the kind had been expected of this man. Believers and unbelievers seized on it. Some rejoiced. The deceased elder had said himself that men love the downfall and disgrace of the righteous. After three o'clock the rush of worldly visitors at the gates of the hermitage greatly increased, owing to the shocking news. One memory particularly cherished in the monastery was an old monk, Job, who had died seventy years before at the age of a hundred and five, a celebrated ascetic, rigid in fasting and silence. His tomb was pointed out to visitors with peculiar respect and with mysterious hints of great hopes connected with it. Father Iosif, gentle and sober, spoke of the bones of ascetics at Athos, and of how little flesh there is to decay when a man has dried up in fasting. The opinion that this was a sign from heaven was adopted at once. If the decomposition had been natural, as in every dead sinner, it would have come later, after at least twenty-four hours.

Father Ferapont had rarely left his wooden cell by the apiary. He came now, as though on purpose to increase the confusion. Someone had already said that Father Ferapont was right in his judgment of the day before. He wore his coarse gown girt with a rope. His bare chest showed under the hempen shirt. His feet were bare, and the irons under the gown clanked when he waved his arms. Casting out I cast out, he roared. He turned to the crowd and pointed at the coffin. The dead man, your saint, did not believe in devils. He gave medicine to keep off the devils. And so they have become as common as spiders in the corners. And now he has begun to stink himself. In that we see a great sign from God. Father Païssy paused in the reading, stepped forward, and stood before him. Ferapont was not turned out by argument. He went on until he fell. My God has conquered, he shouted, stretching his hands to the sun. Christ has conquered the setting sun. He fell face downwards on the ground and sobbed like a little child. The crowd rushed to him. In the press at the entrance to the cell, Father Païssy noticed Alyosha, and felt a pang at once. Can that boy mean so much to my heart now? Alyosha passed him, hurrying, but not in the direction of the church. Their eyes met. Alyosha went out through the gates, away from the hermitage. You will come back again, murmured Father Païssy, looking after him with sorrowful surprise.