On Palm Sunday, in early April, Bishop Peter serves the all-night service. The bishop has been unwell for three days, he feels heaviness and fatigue. Like in a dream or in delirium, it seems to him that his mother, whom he had not seen for nine years, approached him in the crowd. And for some reason, tears flowed down his face. Near him, someone else cried, then more and more, and little by little the church is filled with a general silent cry. After the service, he returns home to the Pankratievsky monastery. A quiet, brooding moon, a beautiful bell ringing, the breath of spring in the soft, cold air. And I wanted to think that it will always be so.

At home, he finds out that his mother really came, and laughed with joy. Prayers for the future dream interfere with his thoughts about his mother, memories of his childhood, when he (then his name was Pavlushi), the son of a deacon in a poor village, went to the procession without a hat, barefoot, with a naive faith, with a naive smile, happy forever .

He has a fever. He talks with his father Sisoy, hieromonk, always unhappy with something: “I will not like it!” - the usual words of Sisoy.

The next day, after the services, he receives dear guests, mother and niece Katya, a girl of about eight. The bishop is noticeable that his mother, in spite of affection, is embarrassed by him, speaks respectfully and timidly. In the evening he lies in bed, hiding warmly. Now he recalls how he lived abroad for eight years, served in a church on the shores of the warm sea. A blind beggar under his window sang about love, and he yearned for his homeland.

His Grace Peter receives petitioners. And now, when he is unwell, he is struck by the emptiness, the pettiness of everything that was requested, he is angry underdeveloped, shy. Abroad, he must have lost the habit of Russian life; it is not easy for him. For all the time while he was here, not a single person spoke to him sincerely, simply, humanly, even the old mother, it seems, is not the same, not the same!

In the evening, the monks sang harmoniously, with inspiration. The bishop was sitting at the altar during the service, tears flowed down his face. He thought that he had achieved everything that was accessible to man in his position, he believed, but still not everything was clear, something was missing, he did not want to die; and still it seemed that he didn’t have something of the most importance, which he had vaguely dreamed of once, and in the present he was still worried about the same hope for the future that existed both in childhood, and in the academy, and abroad.

Thursday - Mass at the Cathedral, returning home on a warm sunny day. Mother is still timid and respectful. Only through unusually kind eyes, a timid, preoccupied look could one guess that this was a mother. In the evening, the cathedral read the twelve gospels, and during the service, the bishop, as always, feels active, cheerful, happy, but at the end of the service his legs were completely numb and he was worried about the fear that he was about to fall. At home, he quietly admits to Siso: “What kind of bishop am I? It’s crushing me ... crushing it. ”

The next morning, he began bleeding from the intestines: typhoid fever. The old woman’s mother no longer remembered that he was a bishop, and kissed him, haggard, losing weight like a child, and for the first time called Pavlush, son. And he could no longer utter a word, and it seemed to him that he, already a simple, ordinary person, was walking in the field, now free, like a bird, he could go anywhere!

The bishop died on Saturday morning, and the next day was Easter - with joyful ringing, general merriment - as always, as will be, in all likelihood, in the future.

A month later a new bishop was appointed, no one remembered the former, and then they completely forgot. And only the old woman, the mother of the deceased, when she went out to her pasture in her deaf little town in the evening to meet a cow, told other women that she had a son, a bishop, and spoke timidly, fearing that they would not believe her ...

And in fact, not everyone believed her.