Chapter 6

CONFESSION

With these and other disjointed impressions in my mind, I returned
to the divannaia. As soon as every one had reassembled, the
priest rose and prepared to read the prayer before confession.
The instant that the silence was broken by the stern, expressive
voice of the monk as he recited the prayer--and more especially
when he addressed to us the words: "Reveal thou all thy sins
without shame, concealment, or extenuation, and let thy soul be
cleansed before God: for if thou concealest aught, then great
will be thy sin"--the same sensation of reverent awe came over me
as I had felt during the morning. I even took a certain pleasure
in recognising this condition of mine, and strove to preserve it,
not only by restraining all other thoughts from entering my
brain, but also by consciously exerting myself to feel no other
sensation than this same one of reverence.

Papa was the first to go to confession. He remained a long, long
time in the room which had belonged to our grandmother, and
during that time the rest of us kept silence in the divannaia, or
only whispered to one another on the subject of who should
precede whom. At length, the voice of the priest again reading the
prayer sounded from the doorway, and then Papa's footsteps. The
door creaked as he came out, coughing and holding one shoulder
higher than the other, in his usual way, and for the moment he
did not look at any of us.

"YOU go now, Luba," he said presently, as he gave her cheek a
mischievous pinch. "Mind you tell him everything. You are my
greatest sinner, you know."

Lubotshka went red and pale by turns, took her memorandum paper
out of her apron, replaced it, and finally moved away towards the
doorway with her head sunk between her shoulders as though she
expected to receive a blow upon it from above. She was not long
gone, and when she returned her shoulders were shaking with sobs.

At length--next after the excellent Katenka (who came out of the
doorway with a smile on her face)--my turn arrived. I entered the
dimly-lighted room with the same vague feeling of awe, the same
conscious eagerness to arouse that feeling more and more in my
soul, that had possessed me up to the present moment. The priest,
standing in front of a reading-desk, slowly turned his face to
me.

I was not more than five minutes in the room, but came out from
it happy and (so I persuaded myself) entirely cleansed--a new, a
morally reborn individual. Despite the fact that the old
surroundings of my life now struck me as unfamiliar (even though
the rooms, the furniture, and my own figure--would to heavens
that I could have changed my outer man for the better in the same
way that I