“It was in Rome, the city, Prince Euphemius there lived once upon a time….” This singer of this folk song titled “Alexei the Man of God” was a blind old man sitting by the gate of the post station and surrounded by a crowd mostly of children and youths. His hoary head, closed eyes, the look of calm visible on his face compelled those looking at the bard to stand before him in awe. While his tune was artless, its accompanying tenderness of elocution penetrated the hearts of his listeners. They were better attuned to take in nature than the ears of inhabitants of Moscow and Petersburg, trained in harmony, take in the ornate chant of Gabrielli, Marchesi, or Todi. None of those present remained unaffected by a deep shiver when the singer of Klin, as he reached the departure of his hero, barely recited his narrative, his voice breaking moment by moment. The place where his eyes used to be filled with tears emanating from a soul made sensitive by misfortunes, and streams of these poured down his cheeks. O Nature, how powerful you are! Looking at the old man cry, women began to weep; from the lips of youth flew off its habitual companion, the smile; on the face of adolescence appeared diffidence, a true sign of a painful if unknown feeling. Even a manly age, so habituated to cruelty, acquired а solemn appearance. “O Nature!,” I cried out again.
How sweet is a benign feeling of grief! How it renews the heart and its sensitivity. I wept after the gathering at the post station, and my tears were as sweet to me as tears wrenched from my heart by Werther…. O my friend, my friend! Why did not you too see this picture? You would shed tears with me, and the deliciousness of shared feeling would have been far sweeter.
At the end of the recital, everyone present gave the old man something, as it were, in reward for his labor. He received rather indifferently all the half- and quarter-kopecks, all the pieces and chunks of bread, each time augmenting his thanks with a bow, crossing himself, and saying to the giver: “May God grant you health.” I did not want to leave without being sent on my way with a prayer by this elder who was, of course, agreeable to heaven. I wanted his blessing for the fulfillment of my journey and my aspiration. It seemed to me—and I always have this wish—that the benediction of sensitive souls facilitates the path of progress and removes the thorn of doubt. Drawing near him, I placed a ruble in his trembling hand, my hand also trembling from the doubt whether I was acting from vanity. Crossing himself, he did not have a chance to utter his usual blessing to the donor, distracted as he was by the unusual sensation produced by what was in his palm. And this wounded my heart. “How much more a quarter-kopeck given to him pleases him!” I told myself. “He feels in it an ordinary human sympathy for sorrows; in my ruble he perhaps senses my arrogance. He does not offer his blessing to it.” Oh, how petty I then seemed to myself, how I envied those who gave the old man after his singing a quarter-kopeck and a chunk of bread! “Is not this a five-kopeck coin?” he said, directing his speech vaguely, just like his every word. “No, grandfather, this here is a ruble,” a boy standing close to him said.—“Why such alms?” the old man said, lowering the hollow spots of his eyes and seemingly trying to imagine in his head what was lying in his palm. “What good is it to a man who cannot use it. If I were not deprived of sight, how great would be my gratitude. If I had no need, I could provide it to an indigent. Ah, if I had had it after a fire that took place here, the wail of my neighbor’s hungry chicks would have ceased if only for one day. But what’s it to me now? I can’t even see where to put it. It might even provide the occasion for a crime. There is not much gain in stealing a quarter-kopeck, but many people would willingly pocket a ruble. Take it back, kind sir: with your ruble you and I might create a thief.” O truth! when you are a rebuke how harsh you are to a feeling heart. “Take it back, I really do not need it, and I am not worth it now, since I did not serve the sovereign portrayed on it. It pleased the Creator to deprive me of my bearings when I was still vigorous. I patiently abide His chastisement. He visited me for my sins…. I was a soldier, took part in many battles with the enemies of my fatherland, and I always fought boldly. But one should be a warrior only out of necessity. Rage always filled my heart at the beginning of a battle. I never spared an enemy lying at my feet and did not grant mercy to the disarmed when he asked for it. Exalted by the victory of our arms, as I aimed for punishment and spoils, I fell, deprived of sight and feeling by the cannonball that flew past my eyes while still in all its force. O ye who come after me, be manly but remember humanity!”—He returned my ruble and calmly resumed his place.
“Take your holiday pie, grandfather,” a woman of about fifty said to the blind man when coming up.—How rapturously he took it with both hands. “Here is true benefaction, here true alms. For thirty years in a row I have been eating this pie on holidays and Sundays. You have not forgotten the promise you made in your childhood. Does what I did for your late father deserve your remembering me until my death? I, my friends, saved her father from the beating that itinerant soldiers often give to peasants. The soldiers wanted to confiscate something from him; he began to argue with them. The affair took place behind the threshing areas. Soldiers began to beat up the peasant. I was the sergeant in the same company as these soldiers and happened to be there. I came running when I heard the peasant’s cry and saved him from the beatings; perhaps even from something worse, not that one can guess beforehand. This is what my present benefactress remembered when she saw me here in my beggarly state. This is what she remembers every day and every holiday. My deed was not large, but it was kind. And a kind deed pleases God; He never allows it to go for naught.”
“Will you really insult me so in front of everyone, dear old man, and will you reject my alms alone?” I said to him. “Are my alms the alms of a sinner? Even so, they can be of use to him if they serve to soften his cruel heart.” “You distress a heart already distressed long ago by the punishment of nature,” the elder said. “I was unaware that I could offend you by not accepting a handout that could cause harm. Forgive me my sin, but give me, if you want to give me something, give me what can be useful to me…. We had a cold spring, my throat was sore; I did not have a smallest scarf to tie around my neck. God had mercy, the illness passed…. Do you not have a little old scarf? When my throat gets sore, I will tie it around; it will warm my neck, and my throat will stop hurting. I will remember you, if you need the recollection of a beggar.” I took the scarf from my neck and put it around the blind man’s neck…. And I took my leave.
When I was returning through Klin, I did not come across the blind singer again. He died three days before my return. But my scarf, as the woman who brought him pies on holidays recounted, he put around his neck after he fell suddenly ill shortly before his death, and they laid him in his coffin with it. Oh! should anyone feel the value of this scarf, he will also feel what passed in me when I heard this.