"I shall enter a monastery with severe regulations. There I shall live alone in a solitary cell; will reflect and read books, and perhaps I shall in this loneliness become the master of my scattered soul."
A week later I found myself before the Abbot of the small monastery of Sabateieff. I liked the Abbot. He was a good-looking man, gray headed and bald, with red, firm cheeks and a promising look in his eyes.
"Why do you flee the world, my son?" he asked me.
I explained to him that the death of Olga disturbed the peace of my soul, but further I did not dare say anything. Something seemed to hold me back from speaking.
He pulled at his beard, looked at me searchingly and said:
"Give them to me. Now go into the guest room. To-morrow, after the noonday service, I will speak to you."
The care of strangers fell to the lot of Father Nifont, and him, too, I liked.
"Everything is very simple in our monastery," he said. "It is democratic. We all work equally in serving God, not as in other places. True, we have a gentleman here, but he does not mix with any one or bother us in any way. You can find peace and rest for your soul here and attain blessedness."
By the following day I had examined the monastery well. In former times it must have stood in the center of the wood, but now everything around it was hewn down. Only here and there in front of the gates a few tree trunks stood out from the ground. Toward the side the wood reached up to the very walls of the monastery and embraced, as with two black wings, the blue-domed church and the monastery. Nearby lay Blue Lake under its ice cover, formed like a half moon. It was nine versts from end to end and four versts wide. Behind it one could see the land on the other side, and the three churches of Kudejaroff, and the golden cupola of St. Nicholas of Tolokontzeff. On our side of the lake, not far from the monastery, was the hamlet of Kudejaroff, with its three and twenty little huts, and around it lay the mighty forests.
All was beautiful, and a quiet peace filled my soul. Here I would hold communion with the Lord; would unfold before Him my innermost soul, and would ask Him with humble insistence to show me the way to the knowledge of His holy laws.