In Search of the Miraculous

recently returned, in the court of one of the Cairo mosques, in one of the

ruined cities of Ceylon, or in one of the South Indian temples—Tanjore,

Trichinopoly, or Madura.

"Well, how do you like the story?" asked G. after a short silence when the

reading had ended.

I told him I had found it interesting to listen to, but that, from my point of

view, it had the defect of not making clear what exactly it was all about. The

story spoke of a very strong impression produced upon the author by a

doctrine he had met with, but it gave no adequate idea of the doctrine itself.

Those who were present began to argue with me, pointing out that I had

missed the most important part of it. G. himself said nothing.

When I asked what was the system they were studying and what were its

distinguishing features, I was answered very indefinitely. Then they spoke of

"work on oneself," but in what this work consisted they failed to explain. On

the whole my conversation with G.'s pupils did not go very well and I felt

something calculated and artificial in them as though they were playing a

part learned beforehand. Besides, the pupils did not

match with the teacher. They all belonged to that particular layer of Moscow

rather poor "intelligentsia" which I knew very well and from which I could

not expect anything interesting. I even thought that it was very strange to

meet them on the way to the miraculous. At the same time they all seemed to

me quite nice and decent people. The stories I had heard from M. obviously

did not come from them and did not refer to them.

"There is one thing I wanted to ask you," said G. after a pause. "Could this article be published in a paper? We thought that we could acquaint the

public in this way with our ideas."

"It is quite impossible," I said. "This is not an article, that is, not anything having a beginning and an end; it is the beginning of a story and it is too

long for a newspaper. You see we count material by lines. The reading

occupied two hours—it is about three thousand lines. You know what we

call a feuilleton in a paper—an ordinary feuilleton is about three hundred

lines. So this part of the story will take ten feuilletons. In Moscow papers a

feuilleton with continuation is never printed more than once a week, so it

will take ten weeks—and it is a conversation of one night. If it can be

published it is only in a monthly magazine, but I don't know any one suitable

for this now. And in this case they will ask for the whole story, before they

say anything."

G. did not say anything and the conversation stopped at that.

But in G. himself I at once felt something uncommon; and in the course of

the evening this impression only strengthened. When I was taking leave of

him the thought Hashed into my mind that I must at once, without delay,

arrange to meet him again, and that if I did not do so I might lose all

connection with him. I asked him if I could not see him once more before

my departure to Petersburg. He told me that he would be at the same café the

following day, at the same time.

I came out with one of the young men. I felt myself very strange—a long

reading which I very little understood, people who did not answer my

questions, G. himself with his unusual manners and his influence on his

people, which I all the time felt produced in me an unexpected desire to

laugh, to shout, to sing, as though I had escaped from school or from some

strange detention.

I wanted to tell my impressions to this young man, make some jokes about

G., and about the rather tedious and pretentious story. I at once imagined

myself telling all this to some of my friends. Happily I stopped myself in

time. —"But he will go and telephone them at once. They are all friends."

So I tried to keep myself in hand, and quite silently we came to the tram

and rode towards the center of Moscow. After rather a long journey we

arrived at Okhotny Nad, near which place I stayed, and silently said good-by

to one another, and parted.

I was at the same café where I had met G. the next day, and the day

following, and every day afterwards. During the week I spent in Moscow I

saw G. every day. It very soon became clear to me that he knew very much

of what I wanted to know. Among other things he explained to me certain

phenomena I had come across in India which no one had been able to

explain to me either there, on the spot, or afterwards. In his explanations I

felt the assurance of a specialist, a very fine analysis of facts, and a system

which I could not grasp, but the presence of which I already felt because

G.'s explanations made me think not only of the facts under discussion, but

also of many other things I had observed or conjectured.

I did not meet G.'s group again. About himself G. spoke but little. Once or

twice he mentioned his travels in the East. I was interested to know where

he had been but this I was unable to make out exactly.

In regard to his work in Moscow G. said that he had two groups

unconnected with one another and occupied in different work, "according to