by the light of truth; is this not so? How will you reply to the innocent child who asks you, 'Papasha, who made all that delights me on the earth,—the water, the sunshine, the flowers, the plants?' Will you answer, 'I know nothing about it'? Can you ignore what the Lord God in His infinite goodness has revealed to you? And if the child asks you, 'What awaits me beyond the tomb?' what will you say to him if you know nothing? How will you answer him? Will you give him up to the seductions of the world and the devil? That is not right!" said he, stopping, and turning his head on one side, looked at Levin out of his kindly, gentle eyes.
Levin was silent, not because he was afraid this time to enter into a discussion with the priest, but because nobody had ever put such questions to him before, and because he thought there was plenty of time to consider them before his children should be in a state to question him.
"You are about to enter upon a phase of life," continued the priest, "where one must choose his path and keep to it. Pray God in His mercy to keep and sustain you; and in conclusion: May our Lord God, Jesus Christ, pardon you, my son, in His goodness and loving-kindness to all mankind." And the priest, ending the formulas of absolution, took leave of him, after giving him his blessing.
Levin, returning home that day, felt happy enough at the thought of being free from a false situation without having been obliged to lie. Besides, there remained with him a vague idea that what that good and gentle little old man said to him was not altogether so stupid as he at first had thought it was going to be, and that he really had something worth clearing up sometime.
"Not now, of course," he thought, "but later on."
Levin felt more than ever at this time that there were troubled and obscure places in his soul, and that, concerning his religion, he was in exactly the same position which he so clearly saw others occupying, and disliked, and which he blamed his friend Sviazhsky for.
