Countess Anna Krzywosad—Naslawska's youngest son had decided to take Holy Orders. From boyhood he had shown an unusual fondness for prayer, had been silent and obedient, and worn an earnest, pious expression. He had been educated in Rome under the eye of a distant cousin—a Cardinal—and completed his course at the seminary there with distinction, when barely twenty. Having not yet attained the proper age to hold any spiritual office, he went back to his own country for the first time for many years, and stayed at his mother's house.

He occupied a corner room in the mansion, as cold and damp as any monastic cell; he slept on the ground, fasted unceasingly, read Latin books, very probably scourged himself at nights, and wore a hair shirt under his shabby cassock. He was unspeakably good and gentle, forgave injuries, and was over-modest.

When he sat down, it was on the very edge of the chair, as if anxious that when he rose quickly his cassock should hinder him and make him move like a priest; he walked on tiptoe as if a mystic heel protected him from the dust of the earth; he shunned society, he murmured a prayer at the sight of a village girl.

Every day at dawn he left the house, and went into the fields. He felt that there he could be in closest communication with his Creator, there ecstatic visions came to him most clearly. He followed the beaten track through numberless rye-fields to the upland, where a half-ruined little chapel lay hidden in the shade of the pine forest.

One morning he went there as usual. The landscape was still buried in the night-mist, but a violet streak of daybreak had begun to spread on the horizon. The bearded rye brushed against his knees and scattered large dewdrops, yet the pathway was not damp, being sheltered by the full drooping ears. The corn, feebly illumined by the early morning light, rose in great waves along the hill, where the undulating line of the fields showed against the wood. The scent of earth and ripening corn hung on the breeze, bringing a sense of health, strength, and youth. From the dark gloom of the huge trees, whose tops were beginning to break up the expanse of dawning blue, came the keen, damp breath of the forest. The seminarist walked along slowly and lazily, passing his hand over the surface of the rye. Sky larks and crested larks rose at his feet, and dropped again like stones into the thickly-growing corn.

The dawn was now tinging the horizon with a rosy light; it burst forth like a wide flash of lightning, illuminating the rifts and curves in the dark clouds which lay idly over the wood. Unexpectedly hundreds of red firs, crowning the summit of the hill, emerged tall and grand from the night, their boughs standing out prominently against the transparent background of blue, as if stretching out their arms to the approaching sun.

Suddenly a thrill passed through the earth. The next moment a puff of wind, the forerunner of daybreak, stirred the boughs of the firs, and announced alike to plant, to grass, and corn—the coming of the sun.

It seemed as if the earth were quivering, as if her heart began to beat. Then the wind spread its wings, and hovered over the scented trunks, over the osiers and corn in the distance. A long, soothing moment of death-like silence followed, and then that mysterious moment of early dawn, when each living plant glows in its every part as if on fire.

The student walked with his face turned eastwards. Words of prayer rose from his heart to his lips as the sap rises to the bark of the pines when Spring comes. He went up to the little chapel, opened the grey wooden door, studded with nails, and fell on his face with outstretched hands before the picture of Christ, clumsily drawn by a rustic hand.

He felt as if his soul had fled from earth to the very Throne of God. The scales had fallen from his eyes in a moment: he was gazing on the face of the Eternal.

All at once a rough, coarse peasant's song was heard:

This was answered by a woman's voice, approaching from a distance:

The young man rose from the ground, and stood at the door of the chapel. He saw a sturdy farmer's lad in shirt sleeves, bare-foot, in a straw hat, and loaded like a horse, with juniper wood. This strapping fellow was taking up a kilo of roots—digging out bushes with the clods, and moistening his hands in the branches. A girl was going along the path, carrying a load of weeds on her back. The corners of her petticoat were turned up and tucked into her belt, her broad shoulders were bent together under the heavy burden, only her head, tied round with a red handkerchief, was raised towards the hill where the lad was working. When she reached the turn of the path, he stopped her, pulled down the hem of her skirt from her waist, and laid her bundle on the ground. She pushed him away with her hands, laughing.

The student shaded his eyes with his hand, but dropped it again the next minute, as the sound of the two singing a fresh song echoed through the glade. It was strange music. The wood, like a tuned string, seemed to quiver in harmony with the sound of those two voices:

They went down into the hollow through the corn, which reached up to their heads, bent towards one another. Those two heads stood out in sharp relief against the dark rye, while the giant, brazen shield of the sun was rising over the ridge. They walked thus for a long time, never completely hidden by the corn.

Tears flowed from under the young man's closed eyes, and he clenched his hands convulsively. Words unknown to him, words known as longing and the desire for love, forced themselves unnoticed to his lips.

In a vision he saw moist eyes and a girl's long braided hair rising and sinking in some sea cavern. An unknown force, inexpressibly sweet, a force which could be neither expelled nor conquered, rose within him, carrying him far away into space. His soul threw off its fetters, and rushed forth in its wild freedom, as a colt starts for a mad gallop....