Analyze myself, reproach myself, doubt my own sanity how I may, one thing is clear. From the bottom of my heart I long, I yearn, I burn to return to the religion of my childhood. I long to say and to sing the Hebrew words that come scantily and with effort to my lips. I long to join my brethren at prayer, to sit with them in the synagogue, in the study, at the table; to join them in their worship and at their meals; to share with them their joys and sorrows, their wrongs and their inner delights. Laugh at myself how I will, I long to bind my arm and brow with the phylacteries of old and to wrap myself in my fringed shawl, and to abase myself in the dust before the God of Israel; nay, to don the greasy gabardine at which I have mocked, and to let my hair grow even as theirs. As yet this is all but a troubled aspiration, but it is irresistible and must work itself out in deeds. It cannot be argued with. The wind bloweth as it listeth; who shall say why I am tempest-tossed? _Monday Night._--Paul has retired to rest to rise early to-morrow for the journey to Moscow. For something has happened to alter his plans, and he goes thither instead of to the capital. He is sleeping the sleep of the young, the hopeful, and the joyous. _Ach_, that what gives him joy should be to me--; but let me write down all. This morning at breakfast Paul received a letter, which he read with a cry of astonishment and joy. "Look, little father, look," he exclaimed, handing it to me. I read, trying to disguise my own feelings and to sympathize with his gladness. It was a letter from a firm of well-known publishers in Moscow, offering to publish a work on the Greek Church, the MS. of which he had submitted to them. "_Nu vot, batiushka_," said he, "I will tell you that this book _donnera à penser_ to the theologians of the bastard forms of Christianity." The ribald remark that rose to my lips did not pass them. "But why did you not tell me of this before?" I asked instead, endeavouring to infuse a note of reproach into my indifference. "Ah, father, I did not want you to distress yourself. I knew your affection for me was so great that you might want to stint yourself, and put yourself to trouble to help me to pay the expenses of publication myself. You would have shared my disappointments. I wanted you to share my triumph--as now. It is two years that I have been trying to get it published. I wrote it in the year before mother, whose soul is with the saints, left us. But, _eka!_ I am recompensed at last." And his pale face beamed and his dark eyes flashed with excitement.