Then for the first time Petrovitch knew himself indeed alone. To darkness he was accustomed now, but the strange unwonted stillness “ached round him like a strong disease and new.” No kindred voice would break the silence ever again upon earth. Such had been his deliberate choice, and he must bear it. But his strong heart sank lower and lower yet, even to the very depths--those deepest depths of all, which only strong hearts know how to sound. “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee,” said one of old, uttering the experience of ten thousand tried and sorrowful hearts. Very earnest was the cry that went up that bitter hour from the soul of Petrovitch. It was not his first cry to God; for the hand that had drawn a veil over the eyes of his body had been gradually and gently opening the eye of his soul to another and holier light. What though, at the best, that light was dim and clouded? It was enough for his needs; and in this hour of lonely anguish it shone out with greater clearness than ever before. “I am a sinful man,” thought Feodor Petrovitch; “and now the last hour of my long day of life has struck. I am going into the presence of God. But there is the dear Bog Sūn,[27] and the cross, of which Pope Yefim talks. I hope to be forgiven for the sake of what He suffered there, and to see His face with joy in the resurrection.” Then thoughts of the past chased each other quickly across his mind, like clouds across a summer sky. All the events of his life seemed to crowd upon him, and to pass in review before him “like a tale that is told.” First came visions of his early years,--his village home, his boyhood’s friends, his dear lord, Prince Pojarsky, with the face of Ivan grown older; then his own struggles as a man,--his efforts to secure an honourable place in the world, to gain wealth, character, and the esteem of all. But these things flitted lightly by, and did not stay. What came and stayed, fresh and vivid as though he saw them even now, were the faces that he loved--faces over which the grave had closed long ago. “Yesterday they seemed so far; to-day they are close at hand. I shall see them before another sun has set,” he thought. The wife of his youth came back, young and fair as on her bridal day. Scarce younger and not less fair, so like that they seemed to mingle into one sweet all-pervading presence, was that child of his heart, so tenderly loved, so deeply mourned. As the Hebrew patriarch, casting a retrospective glance over his long and weary pilgrimage, rested the wistful gaze of his dying eye upon one chief unforgotten sorrow--“_As for me_, when I came from Padan, Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan”--so it was with Feodor Petrovitch. A passionate yearning swept over him to see his daughter’s face, to hear her voice again.