there became a monk.

His mother wrote to try to dissuade him from this decisive step, but
he replied that he felt God's call which transcended all other
considerations. Only his sister, who was as proud and ambitious as he,
understood him.

She understood that he had become a monk in order to be above those who
considered themselves his superiors. And she understood him correctly.
By becoming a monk he showed contempt for all that seemed most important
to others and had seemed so to him while he was in the service, and
he now ascended a height from which he could look down on those he had
formerly envied. . . . But it was not this alone, as his sister Varvara
supposed, that influenced him. There was also in him something else--a
sincere religious feeling which Varvara did not know, which intertwined
itself with the feeling of pride and the desire for pre-eminence,
and guided him. His disillusionment with Mary, whom he had thought
of angelic purity, and his sense of injury, were so strong that they
brought him to despair, and the despair led him--to what? To God, to his
childhood's faith which had never been destroyed in him.



II

Kasatsky entered the monastery on the feast of the Intercession of the
Blessed Virgin. The Abbot of that monastery was a gentleman by birth, a
learned writer and a starets, that is, he belonged to that succession
of monks originating in Walachia who each choose a director and teacher
whom they implicitly obey. This Superior had been a disciple of the