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“Father Zossima lives in the hermitage, apart, four hundred paces from the monastery, the other side of the copse.” “I know it’s the other side of the copse,” observed Fyodor Pavlovitch, “but we don’t remember the way. It is a long time since we’ve been here.” “This way, by this gate, and straight across the copse ... the copse. Come with me, won’t you? I’ll show you.
“Father Zossima has talked of that more than once,” observed Alyosha; “he, too, said that the face of a man often hinders many people not practiced in love, from loving him. But yet there’s a great deal of love in mankind, and almost Christ-like love. I know that myself, Ivan.” “Well, I know nothing of it so far, and can’t understand it, and the innumerable mass of mankind are with me there.
He had a high opinion of his own insight, a weakness excusable in him as he was fifty, an age at which a clever man of the world of established position can hardly help taking himself rather seriously. At the first moment he did not like Zossima. There was, indeed, something in the elder’s face which many people besides Miüsov might not have liked.
Rakitin whose pamphlet, The Life of the Deceased Elder, Father Zossima, published by the diocesan authorities, full of profound and religious reflections and preceded by an excellent and devout dedication to the bishop, I have just read with such pleasure?”
It was only then apparent how unquestionably every one in our town had accepted Father Zossima during his lifetime as a great saint. And those who came were far from being all of the humbler classes. This intense expectation on the part of believers displayed with such haste, such openness, even with impatience and almost insistence, impressed Father Païssy as unseemly.
I am like a mother to you.... No, no; quite the contrary. I speak to you now as though you were my father—mother’s quite out of place. Well, it’s as though I were confessing to Father Zossima, that’s just it. I called you a monk just now. I can’t be angry with him. I only noticed it later.
He too sought the elder’s blessing. But Father Zossima, on entering the portico, went first straight to the peasants who were crowded at the foot of the three steps that led up into the portico. Father Zossima stood on the top step, put on his stole, and began blessing the women who thronged about him. One crazy woman was led up to him.
The body of Father Zossima was prepared for burial according to the established ritual. As is well known, the bodies of dead monks and hermits are not washed. On his head he put a hood with an eight-cornered cross. The hood was left open and the dead man’s face was covered with black gauze. In his hands was put an ikon of the Saviour.
He sometimes astounded and almost alarmed his visitors by his knowledge of their secrets before they had spoken a word. Alyosha noticed that many, almost all, went in to the elder for the first time with apprehension and uneasiness, but came out with bright and happy faces. Alyosha was particularly struck by the fact that Father Zossima was not at all stern.
One of the monks was haunted in his dreams and, later on, in waking moments, by visions of evil spirits. When in the utmost terror he confided this to Father Zossima, the elder had advised continual prayer and rigid fasting. But when that was of no use, he advised him, while persisting in prayer and fasting, to take a special medicine.
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