The dirty, sinister figure of the monk with his magnetic
eyes, his greasy beard, his robe, his girdle, and all his other
properties, brooded gigantic over all of us. He was brought into
immediate personal relationship with the humblest, most insignificant
creature in the city, and with him incredible shadows and shapes, from
Dostoeffsky, from Gogol, from Lermontov, from Nekrasov--from whom you
please--all the shadows of whom one is eternally subconsciously aware
in Russia--faced us and reminded us that they were not shadows but
realities.
The details of his murder were not accurately known--it was only sure
that, at last, after so many false rumours of attempted assassination,
he was truly gone, and this world would be bothered by his evil presence
no longer.
Pictures formed in one's mind as one listened. The day was fiercely
cold, and this seemed to add to the horror of it all--to the
Hoffmannesque fantasy of the party, the lights, the supper, and the
women, the murder with its mixture of religion and superstition and
melodrama, the body flung out at last so easily and swiftly, on to the
frozen river.
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