Nikolai Leskov

“ I wandered in the wood all the night, not knowing how far I went, and I thought to myself after what manner doth he pray, with what icon and with what books? Then I remembered that I had seen no icon in his hut, only a cross made of twigs and bound with bast. I did not even see any large books. ‘O Lord, how can I dare to judge this man; if only there are even two such men in the Orthodox Church then the Old Believers are doomed, because this man is all love.’ I pondered over all this, and suddenly towards morning I began to yearn for one moment's sight of him before my departure. ”

“ Why, he said to himself, should there be such an obstacle; but in fact it sometimes happens that in digging a well you may discover a treasure, but if you go to market you may meet a mad dog; and he answered, ‘In case that should happen, sir, I will place a man who, if I come to grief, will take all the blame on himself, and will endure death without betraying you.’ ‘And who is the man you are thinking of?’ ‘The blacksmith, Maroe,’ answered Luke. ”

“ I am a sacrilegious man, order me to be put in chains and send me to prison. But the Bishop, as befitted his reputation, listened to the whole story and answered: ‘Now it has been made clear to you where the true Faith really is; you,’ said he, ‘by a deceitful trick took the seal off your Angel, but our Angel took the seal off himself, and brought you hither.’ Uncle Luke said: ‘I see, Reverend Father, and I tremble; send me quickly to prison.’ But the Bishop answered, as it behoved his authority, ‘By the power given me of God, I forgive and absolve thee, my son. ”

“ All went well with us, and it was astonishing how successful we were in all our undertakings; all our labours prospered, harmony reigned amongst us and good news reached us from home, and all this time the Angel that went before us blessed us, and it seemed that it would be harder to part with this wonderful icon than with life.
“Indeed you may well imagine that nothing would induce us to part with this sacred picture. In the meanwhile such a sorrow awaited us! and was prepared for us, as we afterwards understood, not by the subtlety of man, but by our Guardian Angel himself. ”

“ And besides the want of accuracy in drawing, the artists, though so inferior, pride themselves on their own work, and cry down all the others. Or what is still worse, they join together in cliques to defraud the public; they meet at restaurants to drink and praise their own work with proud presumption, while they sacrilegiously call the work of another ‘hell-painted.’ Round them gather always, like crows and old owls, the sellers of counterfeit ancient pictures, which pass from hand to hand, and are made up with old boards, rotten here, worm-eaten there. ”

“ And while we were lamenting dark night came upon us, and in the midst of our grief for the loss of our sealed Angel, here in the darkness and silence the thought struck us—we will follow wheresoever our Guardian Angel is taken, and we swear to steal him, even risking our lives in order to unseal him, and for this purpose we chose out a young man called Levontia. ”

“ Luke answered, ‘We are not the sort of folk to betray our benefactors; I will take the icon and bring you both back, the real one and the copy.’ ‘But suppose something hindered you?’ Luke said, ‘What could hinder me?’ ‘Well, you might die suddenly or be drowned.’ Luke was thoughtful. ”

“ But God gave us another bridge, and the Englishman crossed the Dnieper on the ice to inquire about our icon, and when he returned he told me and Luke, ‘To-morrow, children, be on the look-out, I will bring you your treasure,’ Sirs, you cannot imagine what we felt then! At first we thought we would keep it secret and only tell the artist, but we found it quite impossible to refrain from letting the others know. Instead therefore of making it a mystery we ran about spreading the news to all our people. ”

“ We were ashamed to confess it to each other, but we both saw that the true Old Believers had no place here, but would daily be scandalised. This shameful fact, however, we at first kept each in his own breast.
“Of course we found many skilful artists in Moscow, but this did not profit us when the inspiration was wanting which breathed in the works of the old masters. In former days when an artist devoted himself to painting sacred pictures, he fasted and prayed and then toiled in solitude with the same zeal, whether it were for much money or for little, as the dignity of this work requires. ”

“ The design of the artist in Matera is a bit heavy about the head, and his colouring is muddy, and the artist in Palekov paints everything blue.’ ‘How, then, shall we manage?’ said he. I answered, I really do not know; there is still an excellent artist in Moscow. He is known all over Russia, but he paints more in the style of Novgorod and of holy Moscow; but our icon is painted in the Stroganov manner in the brightest and purest tints, and this only one artist can reproduce, Sebastian, from the low country. ”

“ I wish,’ she said, ‘that you would kindly order your Old Believer to pray for me that God would give me a daughter. I have two sons, but I do so wish to have a daughter. Is it possible?’ ‘Why not? It is possible,’ answered Pemen; ‘quite possible, only on such occasions it is always necessary that you should give holy oil for the lamps.’ The lady with great pleasure gave him ten roubles for the oil, and he put the money in his pocket and said, ‘That is well, be of good hope and I will arrange it.’
“Of course Pemen said nothing to us of all this, but the lady bore a daughter. ”

“ You look at these wings and awe overpowers you; you pray ‘Overshadow me,’ and at once you grow calm, peace dwells in your soul. What a wonderful icon this was. These two pictures were to us what the Holy of Holies was to the Jews.
“All those icons of which I told you before we carried in a special case on a horse, but these two we did not even put on a horse, but we carried them ourselves. The wife of Luke, Michaela, used to carry the icon of the Virgin, but the picture of the Angel, Luke bore himself on his breast. ”

“ We prospered in everything, and success poured down on us as it were from the horn of plenty, when suddenly we perceived that we had amongst us two vessels chosen by God for our punishment. One of these was the blacksmith Maroe, and the other the accountant Pemen Ivanoff. Maroe was quite a simple fellow and uneducated, which is rare amongst the Old Believers, but he was a singular man; awkward to look at, something like a camel, with a chest like a boar, one shoulder higher than the other. ”

“ The landlord now broke in. “Listen, and don't you chatter idle words. Is it likely that the Enemy would send anyone here where there are such holy pictures? Do you not see that we have here an icon of the Saviour and one of the Mother of God?”
The red-haired man added his testimony. “That's true. No saved soul would be brought here by the devil, but his guardian angel would lead him.”
“Well, I never understood that, and as I am very uncomfortable here I can't believe that my guardian angel brought me,” answered the garrulous bearskin. ”

“ But I have asked you here, and trust you, because the Old Believers are clever and rich people, and I believe firmly that God helps you in everything, and I trust that you will kindly give me twenty-five thousand roubles; and I, for my part, will tell all the ladies of your wonder-working icon, and you will be surprised to see how much money you will receive for wax and oil.’
“You can easily imagine, my dear sirs, what our rogue thought of this change of affairs. ”

“ I am, as you may easily see, quite a plain man, nothing more than a peasant, and I have been brought up and educated in a village. I don't belong here, but come from far away, and by trade I am a stone-mason, and brought up in the old Russian Orthodox Church. As I was an orphan I went from my youth up with other masons from the village to distant work in various places, but always in the same guild under a peasant from our own place, Luke, son of Cyril. This Luke is alive to this day, and is our best contractor. ”

“ And what he would paint, dear sirs, we could not imagine. As it was to be about children we thought that he would depict the Roman wonder-worker, to whom mothers prayed for offspring; or the massacre of the Innocents in Jerusalem, which is always pleasing to mothers who have lost their children, for there Rachel weeps with them for her children, and will not be comforted. But this wise painter realised that the Englishwoman had children and would not ask for offspring, but rather pray that they might grow up with all good moral qualities. ”

“ But I can do nothing more for them. The Bishop will not give up the picture. Paint the picture quickly; we will put it in the setting and take it back, and my secretary will substitute yours for the real icon.’
But Sebastian, like a wise man, calmed him with gentle speech and answered: ‘No,’ said he, ‘your honour, our peasants know what they are about, and we do indeed want the original icon. This is only done to annoy us; they say that we stencil our icon. There has been a certain type in the original which we are bound to follow, but the carrying out of the details is left to the artist. ”

“ Well, Luke at last got something out of him by questioning him, but of course he did not reveal everything, but only showed what a miserable creature he was. At last he said, ‘The lady wants me to get you to lend her five thousand roubles.’ Then Luke of course came down upon him for this: ‘Oh, you rogue, why did you get acquainted with these people, why did you bring them here? Are we rich? Are we likely to have so much money? ”

“ We answered, ‘Because before we get the icon we must have another ready as like it as two drops of water, but we cannot find such a work of art either here or in this neighbourhood’ ‘Nonsense,’ said he; ‘I will send for an artist from the town who can not only copy well, but is able to take portraits admirably.’ ‘No,’ said we, ‘we cannot let you do that—first, because if you sent for an artist, a rumour of it would spread at once; secondly, because such an artist could not do the work required. ”

“ The drawing, too, is different, for the modern artist is taught to follow the type of man he sees. But the old painter of icons imagined such types as belonged to the dwellers in heaven. A worldly-minded artist could never portray such celestial beings. He was interested in my account, and asked ‘Where, then, can we now find such imaginative artists?’ ‘They are very rare now’ (for at that date they were carefully hidden away by the Old Believers) . ‘There is an artist in the town of Matera, Koklov by name, but he is very old, and could not take a long journey ”

“ And when everything was ready and they all began to leave the room, the soldiers began to put the rods on their shoulders and bore them to the boat. But Michaela, who had followed the crowd into the chamber, had recently stolen the Guardian Angel from the reading-desk and was dragging it under her shawl into the adjoining storeroom. But her trembling hands let it drop. Oh, dear sir, how the official did rave then and call us thieves and rascals. ”

“ But while we were all dumbfounded and in the dark, the Englishwoman, who was alone in the hut with Michaela, and knew what was troubling us, seized the icon, and in about a minute she returned to the steps with a lantern and called to us, ‘Take it; it is ready. We looked; there was a seal on the new Angel's face! Luke at once seized the icon and cried out, ‘A boat!’ I explained that there was no boat; it had been carried away. I must tell you that the ice was struggling like a troop of wild horses ”

“ There were eight figures and the new-born child in a chamber. In the second division was the birth of the holy Virgin Mary, six figures and the new-born child in a chamber. In the third the birth of the Saviour, and the stable and the manger, and the Virgin and Joseph standing by, and the Magi bringing offerings, and the woman Salome and herds of various beasts: oxen, sheep, goats, and asses, and a land bird forbidden to the Jews, which was painted to show that Christ was sent into the world for all mankind, not to the Jews, but by God, who created all things. ”

“ For instance, we must paint St. Zossima or Jerome with a lion, but the artist is allowed to exercise his fancy as to how the lion is to be represented. He must paint St. Neophyte with a dove, Timothy with a goblet, Gregory and Stralelata with lances; but every painter is free to portray these as his imagination suggests, and therefore I must know how this Angel was painted in order to be able to substitute my painting for the original.’
“The Englishman listened to all this, but drove away Sebastian as he had driven us, and there was no further help to be got from him. ”

“ We have a Russian idea of what a woman's figure should be, and it does not answer to the present flighty, fashionable type. But still we do not admire a clod; we do not admire the long-legged maypoles, and we like a woman to stand not on long legs but on strong legs, so that she may not stumble but roll about everywhere like a ball, and the willowy one will run and get her legs entangled. We do not like a serpent-like slimness, but we like something solid and plump ”

“ The next day Luke Cyrilov and Uncle Maroe returned and said: ‘Fathers and Brothers, we have seen the glory of the Angel of the State Church, and her divine aspect in the benevolence of the Bishop, and have ourselves been anointed with her holy oil, and have this day at Mass received the Body and Blood of Christ. As I myself, ever since I was the guest of the hermit Pamba, had felt inclined to join in the prayers of all Russia, I called out for them all: ‘We agree with you, Uncle Luke, and so we shall all be gathered under one shepherd like lambs ”

“ If we can only get him into our possession our Guardian Angel will take care of himself. This icon does not come out of a shop, but is the real work of an artist. The oil is so prepared that it preserves the picture, which will not fear the brand of fire nor the touch of pitch.’
“‘You are sure of this?’ ‘Quite sure; the oil is as strong as the old Russian faith.’ Then he began to abuse the persons who did not know how to take care of valuable treasures ”