Chapter 45: Chapter 45

IV Cana of Galilee It was very late, according to the monastery ideas, when Alyosha returned to the hermitage; the doorkeeper let him in by a special entrance. It had struck nine o’clock—the hour of rest and repose after a day of such agitation for all. Alyosha timidly opened the door and went into the elder’s cell where his coffin was now standing. There was no one in the cell but Father Païssy, reading the Gospel in solitude over the coffin, and the young novice Porfiry, who, exhausted…