But now, in the evening of his life and the extremity of his anguish, the truth was made manifest.  A Revelation drew nigh.  It just came to him.

The fishes.

It was a dying gleam of intelligence, his last inspired thought, his swan-song.  How else could the fishes live save in the water?  All these long years he had remained ignorant of the truth.  Ah, if only his disciples were at hand, to jot it down into that golden book!

But why—­why must the fishes live in water?  And why so much water for so few fishes?  Why cannot fishes live on land?  Then everybody would be satisfied.  Inscrutable are the ways of God. . . .

And his glazed eye moved wearily from that disquieting expanse of blue along the wall of his chamber which had once been white and was now scrawled over with obscene jests and drawings, product of the leisure hours of generations of prisoners.  The writing, like all writing, was unintelligible to him.  But some of the artistic efforts left little to the imagination.  He was saddened, less by homely pictures than by the unfamiliar script.  He had always distrusted the written word.  Why all these strange letterings—­so unnecessary, so dangerous to the life of an orthodox Christian?  What one brother has to tell another—­why write it down?

He saw the straw pallet destined for his nocturnal repose.  It reminded him dimly of a similar resting-place during his monastic life.  Then, too, he had slept on a couch near the floor.  Flickering visions came to him of those days, so long ago, ere yet the First Revelation was given to the world.  A breath of old Russia was wafted into his nostrils.  He remembered the lusty, jovial country folk, the songs and dances at hay-making, the fragrance of the land, the sluggish rivers rolling their brown mud about the plains, the mild long-drawn evenings.  He felt again that all-pervading charm of sadness, of tender yearning, that hangs in the pale Russian sky and penetrates to the very soul of the endless country.

Gloomy autumn days—­wet leaves and lowering horizons.  The long winter within doors.  Faces appeared to him, faces of old, an endless procession of faces clear-cut as ever . . . his brother monks, bearded and unkempt . . . debauched acolytes . . . pilgrims from the Holy Land . . . glittering festal robes . . . vodka orgies, endless chants and litanies, holy lamps burning, somber eikons with staring eyes . . . the smell of greasy lukewarm cabbage soup, of unwashed bodies and boot leather and incense.  Holy Russia—­it all moved before his eyes in a kind of melodious twilight.  Then the First Revelation.  The Man-God.

Man-God.  The word filtered through his intelligence.  How strange it sounded.  The Man-God—­what could it mean.

A sudden change.  A life of glory and intrigue.  Food on platters of gold, sparkling wines and laughter.  A diamond cross, an imperial gift, the reward of faithful services.  Everybody cringing.  Showers of bribes.  Women—­always women.  A divine life!  Nothing but women. . . .