particularly kind to him, the starets told him that he ought not to
decline it if he were offered an appointment to higher duties. Then
monastic ambition, the very thing he had found so repulsive in other
monks, arose within him. He was assigned to a monastery near the
metropolis. He wished to refuse but the starets ordered him to accept
the appointment. He did so, and took leave of the starets and moved to
the other monastery.

The exchange into the metropolitan monastery was an important event in
Sergius's life. There he encountered many temptations, and his whole
will-power was concentrated on meeting them.

In the first monastery, women had not been a temptation to him, but
here that temptation arose with terrible strength and even took definite
shape. There was a lady known for her frivolous behaviour who began to
seek his favour. She talked to him and asked him to visit her. Sergius
sternly declined, but was horrified by the definiteness of his desire.
He was so alarmed that he wrote about it to the starets. And in
addition, to keep himself in hand, he spoke to a young novice and,
conquering his sense of shame, confessed his weakness to him, asking him
to keep watch on him and not let him go anywhere except to service and
to fulfil his duties.

Besides this, a great pitfall for Sergius lay in the fact of his extreme
antipathy to his new Abbot, a cunning worldly man who was making a
career for himself in the Church. Struggle with himself as he might, he
could not master that feeling. He was submissive to the Abbot, but in
the depths of his soul he never ceased to condemn him. And in the second
year of his residence at the new monastery that ill-feeling broke out.