The monk scrutinized me, and as though he had convinced himself
that he could trust me with a secret, he laughed good-humouredly.

"He had a gift for writing hymns of praise," he said. "It was a
marvel, sir; you couldn't call it anything else! You would be amazed
if I tell you about it. Our Father Archimandrite comes from Moscow,
the Father Sub-Prior studied at the Kazan academy, we have wise
monks and elders, but, would you believe it, no one could write
them; while Nikolay, a simple monk, a deacon, had not studied
anywhere, and had not even any outer appearance of it, but he wrote
them! A marvel! A real marvel!" Ieronim clasped his hands and,
completely forgetting the rope, went on eagerly:

"The Father Sub-Prior has great difficulty in composing sermons;
when he wrote the history of the monastery he worried all the
brotherhood and drove a dozen times to town, while Nikolay wrote
canticles! Hymns of praise! That's a very different thing from a
sermon or a history!"

"Is it difficult to write them?" I asked.

"There's great difficulty!" Ieronim wagged his head. "You can do
nothing by wisdom and holiness if God has not given you the gift.
The monks who don't understand argue that you only need to know the
life of the saint for whom you are writing the hymn, and to make
it harmonize with the other hymns of praise. But that's a mistake,
sir. Of course, anyone who writes canticles must know the life of
the saint to perfection, to the least trivial detail. To be sure,
one must make them harmonize with the other canticles and know where
to begin and what to write about. To give you an instance, the first