The elder raised Alyosha by the hand and he rose from his knees.
"We are rejoicing," the little, thin old man went on."We are drinking the new wine, the wine of new, great gladness; do you see how many guests? Here are the bride and bridegroom, here is the wise governor of the feast, he is tasting the new wine.Why do you wonder at me? I gave an onion to a beggar, so I, too, am here.And many here have given only an onion each- only one little onion....What are all our deeds? And you, my gentle one, you, my kind boy, you too have known how to give a famished woman an onion to-day.Begin your work, dear one, begin it, gentle one! Do you see our Sun, do you see Him?""I am afraid...I dare not look," whispered Alyosha.
"Do not fear Him.He is terrible in His greatness, awful in His sublimity, but infinitely merciful.He has made Himself like unto us from love and rejoices with us.He is changing the water into wine that the gladness of the guests may not be cut short.He is expecting new guests, He is calling new ones unceasingly for ever and ever....There they are bringing new wine.Do you see they are bringing the vessels..."Something glowed in Alyosha's heart, something filled it till it ached, tears of rapture rose from his soul....He stretched out his hands, uttered a cry and waked up.
Again the coffin, the open window, and the soft, solemn, distinct reading of the Gospel.But Alyosha did not listen to the reading.It was strange, he had fallen asleep on his knees, but now he was on his feet, and suddenly, as though thrown forward, with three firm rapid steps he went right up to the coffin.His shoulder brushed against Father Paissy without his noticing it.Father Paissy raised his eyes for an instant from his book, but looked away again at once, seeing that something strange was happening to the boy.
Alyosha gazed for half a minute at the coffin, at the covered, motionless dead man that lay in the coffin, with the ikon on his breast and the peaked cap with the octangular cross on his head.He had only just been hearing his voice, and that voice was still ringing in his ears.He was listening, still expecting other words, but suddenly he turned sharply and went out of the cell.
He did not stop on the steps either, but went quickly down; his soul, overflowing with rapture, yearned for freedom, space, openness.The vault of heaven, full of soft, shining stars, stretched vast and fathomless above him.The Milky Way ran in two pale streams from the zenith to the horizon.The fresh, motionless, still night enfolded the earth.The white towers and golden domes of the cathedral gleamed out against the sapphire sky.The gorgeous autumn flowers, in the beds round the house, were slumbering till morning.
The silence of earth seemed to melt into the silence of the heavens.
The mystery of earth was one with the mystery of the stars....
Alyosha stood, gazed, and suddenly threw himself down on the earth.He did not know why he embraced it.He could not have told why he longed so irresistibly to kiss it, to kiss it all.But he kissed it weeping, sobbing, and watering it with his tears, and vowed passionately to love it, to love it for ever and ever."Water the earth with the tears of your joy and love those tears," echoed in his soul.
What was he weeping over?
Oh! in his rapture he was weeping even over those stars, which were shining to him from the abyss of space, and "he was not ashamed of that ecstasy." There seemed to be threads from all those innumerable worlds of God, linking his soul to them, and it was trembling all over "in contact with other worlds." He longed to forgive everyone and for everything, and to beg forgiveness.Oh, not for himself, but for all men, for all and for everything."And others are praying for me too," echoed again in his soul.But with every instant he felt clearly and, as it were, tangibly, that something firm and unshakable as that vault of heaven had entered into his soul.It was as though some idea had seized the sovereignty of his mind- and it was for all his life and for ever and ever.He had fallen on the earth a weak boy, but he rose up a resolute champion, and he knew and felt it suddenly at the very moment of his ecstasy.And never, never, his life long, could Alyosha forget that minute.
"Someone visited my soul in that hour," he used to say afterwards, with implicit faith in his words.
Within three days he left the monastery in accordance with the words of his elder, who had bidden him "sojourn in the world."
