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Again had I encountered the man when I had had supper at the workmen’s barraque, and then proceeded to the monastery’s guest- chamber. Seated at a table under a circle of light falling from a lamp suspended from the ceiling, he had gathered around him a knot of pilgrims and their women, and was holding forth in low, cheerful tones that yet had in them the telling, incisive note of the preacher, of the man who frequently converses with his fellow men.

“One thing it may be best always to disclose,” he was saying, “and another thing to conceal. If aught in ourselves seems harmful or senseless, let us put to ourselves the question: ‘Why is this so?’ Contrariwise ought a prudent man never to thrust himself forward and say: ‘How discreet am I!’ while he who makes a parade of his hard lot, and says, ‘Good folk, see ye and hear how bitter my life is,’ also does wrong.”

Here a pilgrim with a black beard, a brigand’s dark eyes, and the wasted features of an ascetic rose from the further side of the table, straightened his virile frame, and said in a dull voice:

“My wife and one of my children were burnt to death through the falling of an oil lamp. On THAT ought I to keep silence?”

No answer followed. Only someone muttered to himself:

“What? Again?”: until the first speaker, the speaker seated near the corner of the table, launched into the oppressive lull the unhesitating reply:

“That of which you speak may be taken to have been a punishment by God for sin.”

“What? For a sin committed by one three years of age (for, indeed, my little son was no more)? The accident happened of his pulling down a lamp upon himself, and of my wife seizing him, and herself being burnt to death. She was weak, too, for but eleven days had passed since her confinement.”

“No. What I mean is that in that accident you see a punishment for sins committed by the child’s father and mother.”

This reply from the corner came with perfect confidence. The black-bearded man, however, pretended not to hear it, but spread out his hands as though parting the air before him, and proceeded hurriedly, breathlessly to detail the manner in which his wife and little one had met their deaths. And all the time that he was doing so one had an inkling that often before had he recounted his narrative of horror, and that often again would he repeat it. His shaggy black eyebrows, as he delivered his speech, met in a single strip, while the whites of his eyes grew bloodshot, and their dull, black pupils never ceased their nervous twitching.

Presently the gloomy recital was once more roughly, unceremoniously broken in upon by the cheerful voice of the Christ-loving pilgrim.

“It is not right, brother,” the voice said, “to blame God for untoward accidents, or for mistakes and follies committed by ourselves.”

“But if God be God, He is responsible for all things.”

“Not so. Concede to yourself the faculty of reason.”

“Pah! What avails reason if it cannot make me understand?”

“Cannot make you understand WHAT?”

“The main point, the point why MY wife had to be burnt rather than my neighbour’s?”

Somewhere an old woman commented in spitefully distinct tones:

“Oh ho, ho! This man comes to a monastery, and starts railing as soon as he gets there!”

Flashing his eyes angrily, the black-bearded man lowered his head like a bull. Then, thinking better of his position, and contenting himself with a gesture, he strode swiftly, heavily towards the door. Upon this the Christ-loving pilgrim rose with a swaying motion, bowed to everyone present, and set about following his late interlocutor.

“It has all come of a broken heart,” he said with a smile as he passed me. Yet somehow the smile seemed to lack sympathy.

With a disapproving air someone else remarked:

“That fellow’s one thought is to enlarge and to enlarge upon his tale.”