"Where are the Godlike?" I asked. "People sit on each other's backs, suck each other's blood, and everywhere there is the brutal struggle for a piece of bread. Where is there room for the Godlike? Where is there room for goodness and love, strength and beauty? Although I am young, I was not born blind. Who is Christ, the God-child? Who has trampled the flowers which His pure heart has sown? Who has stolen the wisdom of His love?"
I told her of the archbishop and how he had threatened me with his black God and how he, to protect his God, wanted to call in the police to help him.
Tatiana laughed. I, too, found the archbishop quite laughable now. He looked to me like a green grasshopper who chirps and jumps about as if he were doing something, heaven knows how important, but when one examines more closely, then one sees that he himself does not believe in the truth of his work.
She laughed at my words. Then the brow of the good girl became clouded.
"I did not understand everything," she said. "Still, some of the things you said were terrible. You think so boldly about God."
"One cannot live without seeing God," I said.
"True," she answered. "But you seem to be having a hand-to-hand fight with Him. Is that allowed? That the life of man is difficult is true enough. I myself have thought at times, 'Why should it be?' But listen to what I am going to tell you. Right here in the neighborhood is a nunnery where a hermitess, a very wise old woman, lives. She speaks beautifully about God. You ought to visit her."
"Why not?" I asked. "I will go to her. I am going everywhere--to all righteous people, to seek peace."
"And I will go to sleep," she said, giving me her hand. "You, too, go to bed."
I pressed her hand, shook it warmly, and said to her from the fulness of my heart:
"I thank you; what you have given me I do not yet know how to value, still I feel that you are a good girl, and I thank you."
"For heaven's sake, what are you saying?" she asked. She became embarrassed and blushed all over. "I am so glad," she went on, "that you feel better."
I saw that she was truly pleased. What was I to her? And yet, she was happy for having made a stranger feel better.
I put out the lamp, lay down on the bed, and said to myself: