War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [234]
Pierre already felt in himself that refreshing source of blessedness which now filled his soul with joy and tender feeling.
IV
Soon after that, it was not the rhetor who came into the dark temple for Pierre, but his sponsor Willarski, whom he recognized by his voice. To renewed questions about the firmness of his intentions, Pierre replied:
“Yes, yes, I agree,” and with a radiant, childish smile, with his fat chest bared, walking unevenly and timidly with one shod foot and the other unshod, he went ahead, with Willarski holding a sword to his bared chest. From the room he was led down corridors, turning back and forth, and was finally led to the doors of the lodge. Willarski coughed, the response was a Masonic rapping of hammers, and the door opened before him. Someone’s bass voice (Pierre was still blindfolded) asked him questions about who he was, where and when he was born, and so on. Then he was again led somewhere with his eyes still covered, and as he walked, they told him allegories about the labors of his journey, about sacred friendship, about the pre-eternal architect of the world, about the courage with which he must endure toils and dangers. During the journey, Pierre noticed that they referred to him now as the seeker, now as the sufferer, now as the postulant, and made various noises with hammers and swords. Just as he was brought to some sort of object, he noticed that there was perplexity and confusion among his guides. He heard the men around him arguing among themselves in whispers, and one of them insisting that he had to be led across some sort of rug. After that, they took his right hand, put it on something, and told him to hold a compass to his left breast with his left hand, and made him recite the oath of fidelity to the laws of the order, repeating words that someone else read. Then they put out the candles, lit a spirit lamp, as Pierre knew by the smell, and told him he would see the lesser light. The blindfold was removed from his eyes, and Pierre saw as in a dream, by the faint light of the spirit lamp, several men who stood facing him in the same aprons as the rhetor and holding swords pointed at his breast. Among them stood a man in a bloody white shirt. Seeing that, Pierre moved his chest towards the swords, wishing them to pierce him. But the swords withdrew, and his eyes were covered again.
“Now you have seen the lesser light,” someone’s voice said to him. Then candles were lit again, the voices said he must see the full light, and his eyes were uncovered again, and more than ten voices suddenly said: “Sic transit gloria mundi.”*292
Pierre gradually began to come to himself and look around at the room he was in and the men who were in it. Some twelve men were sitting around a long table covered in black, all in the same attire as he had already seen. Pierre knew some of them from Petersburg society. In the chairman’s place sat an unknown young man with a special cross on his neck. To his right sat the Italian abbé Pierre had seen two years before at Anna Pavlovna’s. There was a rather important dignitary, and a Swiss tutor who formerly lived with the Kuragins. They were all solemnly silent, listening to the words of the chairman, who was holding a hammer in his hand. The wall had a burning star embedded in it; on one side of the table was a small rug with various images, on the other something like an altar with a Gospel book and a skull. Around the table stood seven large candle stands, as in a church. Two of the brothers led Pierre to the altar, placed his feet at right angles, and ordered him to lie down, saying that he now prostrates himself at the gates of the temple.
“He should receive the trowel first,” one of the brothers said in a whisper.
“Ah, enough, I beg you!” said another.
Pierre looked around perplexedly with his nearsighted eyes, not obeying, and doubt suddenly came over him: “Where am I? What am I doing? Aren’t they laughing at me? Won’t I be ashamed to remember it?” But this doubt lasted