Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/180

156 that lay on the floor, and threw himself on it, settling on his back. After sucking his cold pipe for a few minutes, he put it into his pocket, and, having reflected a little, fell fast asleep.

By and by, gusts of wind began rushing into the empty window-holes, through the building, and out through the door. Dull peals of thunder began to rumble at a distance. Semyon woke up. The wind was now quite strong; its gusts were rushing, uninterruptedly, through rows of feverishly fluttering stalks of rye and oats. The light of the moon was now duller still. Semyon walked out of the house and into the field of fluttering oat-stalks, that stood as pale as ghosts. He looked up at the cloud. There it stretched, black and threatening, covering half the sky. He was standing directly against the wind, which was dishevelling his hair, and forcing him to close his eyes. And the lightning, too, flashing ever more brightly and threateningly, blinded him. Making the sign of the cross, Semyon knelt down. Suddenly he saw a small crowd of people, with bare heads and new, white clothes, appear at the other end of the field, plainly visible against the dark wall of the cloud. The crowd was moving towards Semyon, bearing an enormous ancient image. The bearers were airy, vague, almost transparent, but the image was perfectly clear and distinct; the awful, stern face shone red upon the black field, burnt by candle-flames, besplattered with wax, and framed in ancient, bluish silver.

The wind blew the image away from Semyon's face, and Semyon, in joy and trepidation, bowed to the ground before the image. And when he raised his head, he saw that the crowd was quite close to him, holding in front of him the magnificent image, while upon the cloud, as in the great church painting, the whitebearded Elijah himself appeared. Like God, Lord of the Sabaoth, Elijah was clad in fiery chitons. He was sitting upon the lower edges of the cloud, which had a dead-blue color, while above him burned two orange-green rainbows. And, his eyes flashing like lightning, Elijah spoke to Semyon, his voice mingling with the distant rumble of thunder.

"Stand there, Semyon Novikov! And hear me, ye princely Christian peasants! For I am going to bring to judgment Semyon Novikov, a peasant of the Yeletzk Ouyezd, Predtechevskaya Volost, the hamlet of Ovsiany Brod."

And the whole field, shining there as if covered with white sand, and all its stalks of grain seemed to rush forward and bow before Elijah, and in the midst of their fluttering the Prophet's voice rose again.