Not more than a yard from me lay a homeless wanderer; in the rooms of the hostels and by the carts in the courtyard among the pilgrims some hundreds of such homeless wanderers were waiting for the morning, and further away, if one could picture to oneself the whole of Russia, a vast multitude of such uprooted creatures was pacing at that moment along highroads and side-tracks, seeking something better, or were waiting for the dawn, asleep in wayside inns and little taverns, or on the grass under the open sky. . . .  As I fell asleep I imagined how amazed and perhaps even overjoyed all these people would have been if reasoning and words could be found to prove to them that their life was as little in need of justification as any other.  In my sleep I heard a bell ring outside as plaintively as though shedding bitter tears, and the lay brother calling out several times: 

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us!  Come to mass!”

When I woke up my companion was not in the room.  It was sunny and there was a murmur of the crowds through the window.  Going out, I learned that mass was over and that the procession had set off for the Hermitage some time before.  The people were wandering in crowds upon the river bank and, feeling at liberty, did not know what to do with themselves:  they could not eat or drink, as the late mass was not yet over at the Hermitage; the Monastery shops where pilgrims are so fond of crowding and asking prices were still shut.  In spite of their exhaustion, many of them from sheer boredom were trudging to the Hermitage.  The path from the Monastery to the Hermitage, towards which I directed my steps, twined like a snake along the high steep bank, going up and down and threading in and out among the oaks and pines.  Below, the Donets gleamed, reflecting the sun; above, the rugged chalk cliff stood up white with bright green on the top from the young foliage of oaks and pines, which, hanging one above another, managed somehow to grow on the vertical cliff without falling.  The pilgrims trailed along the path in single file, one behind another.  The majority of them were Little Russians from the neighbouring districts, but there were many from a distance, too, who had come on foot from the provinces of Kursk and Orel; in the long string of varied colours there were Greek settlers, too, from Mariupol, strongly built, sedate and friendly people, utterly unlike their weakly and degenerate compatriots who fill our southern seaside towns.  There were men from the Donets, too, with red stripes on their breeches, and emigrants from the Tavritchesky province.  There were a good many pilgrims of a nondescript class, like my Alexandr Ivanitch; what sort of people they were and where they came from it was impossible to tell from their faces, from their clothes, or from their speech.  The path ended at the little landing-stage, from which a narrow road went to the left to the Hermitage, cutting its way through the mountain.  At the landing-stage stood