Page:Leo Tolstoy - Father Sergius and Other Stories and Plays - ed. Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright (1911).djvu/66

 60 "Cover up my feet. Not that way—how clumsy you are! Yes, like that. But you needn't squeeze them."

Thus they came to the forest where the cell was.

She stepped out of the sledge and bade them drive on. They tried to dissuade her, but she grew irritable and commanded them to go on.

Father Sergius was now forty-nine years old. His life in solitude was very hard: not because of fasting and prayers—he endured those easily—but it was the inner struggle which he had not anticipated. There were two reasons for this struggle: his religious doubts and the temptations of desire. He thought these were two different fiends; but they were one and the same. When his doubts were gone lust was gone. But thinking these were two different devils, he fought them separately. They, however, always attacked him together.

"O my God! my God!" he cried, "why dost Thou not give me faith? There is lust, of course; but even St. Anthony and the rest had to fight that. But faith—they had that! There are moments and hours and days when I do not possess it. Why does the world exist with all its charm if it is sinful and we must renounce it? Why hast Thou created this temptation? Temp-