"Call him to you. Speak to him in the name of holy religion; strengthen him in the faith. Admonish him to preserve his life for the good of his country, which is beyond all other considerations. Thus will you preserve to the empire a servant of inestimable loyalty, and to me a faithful friend whom I sincerely honor and esteem." And this was the paper chosen as a cover for mouldy cheese and thrown upon a dust-heap! "Well, eat away, man," murmured Little Father Nahum, and, taking up the cheese which Araktseieff had let fall on the dust-heap, offered it him in the flat of his dirty hand. Thrusting his fellow-penitent aside, Araktseieff hastened to Photios. Photios was in the act of reading vespers. Araktseieff did not suffer him to come to an end. "Was this letter from the Czar addressed to you?" "To me." "And you threw it on the dust-heap?" "That you might find it there." "I have found it. My penance is over. I return to St. Petersburg." "Just what I wished to accomplish." "You have accomplished it. But you do not yet know what you were doing when you brought Alexis Araktseieff forth from the grave? You constrained him back to life and the world, once more to prove the stuff that is in him. Well may you tremble before a resuscitated Araktseieff!" "A blessing be upon all your actions!" stammered the Archimandrite, and continued his vespers. Araktseieff left the monastery that very hour. He left it with the same wild frenzy of destruction with which he had entered it, only that then his desire was for self-destruction; now had returned the old desire for the destruction of others. When Araktseieff, after those three weeks, was seen again in St. Petersburg, every one started back in terror at his appearance. His face was emaciated, his hair had turned quite white. It was plain to see that he had risen from the grave. CHAPTER XL DISCORDS Zeneida was strolling alone through the shady winding paths of her park in the twilight of evening. Nightingales were singing; from a pond close by came the sound of croaking frogs; ever and anon the song of a boatman on the Neva broke the stillness, or the distant sound of a violin or clarinet in an inn, or the howl of a chained-up dog. Again would come the tones of the passing-bell, announcing a death, or from the vicinity of Monplaisir a sharp "Who goes there?" "Halt!" sometimes followed by a shot. Why that shot? Then again the song of nightingales, the croak of frogs, sounds of clarinet and passing-bell. These discords found answering echo in her heart.