Of all that he collected during his long and fatiguing pilgrimage,
nothing was for himself; he did not even possess the key of the box,
which would only be opened on his return.
The monks came from the North of the Empire. Three months before
they had left the town of Archangel. They had visited the sacred
islands near the coast of Carelia, the convent of Solovetsk,
the convent of Troitsa, those of Saint Antony and Saint Theodosia,
at Kiev, that of Kazan, as well as the church of the Old Believers,
and they were now on their way to Irkutsk, wearing the robe,
the cowl, and the clothes of serge.
As to the papa, or priest, he was a plain village pastor, one of the six
hundred thousand popular pastors which the Russian Empire contains.
He was clothed as miserably as the moujiks, not being above
them in social position; in fact, laboring like a peasant
on his plot of ground; baptis-ing, marrying, burying. He had
been able to protect his wife and children from the brutality
of the Tartars by sending them away into the Northern provinces.
He himself had stayed in his parish up to the last moment;
then he was obliged to fly, and, the Irkutsk road being stopped,
had come to Lake Baikal.
These priests, grouped in the forward part of the raft,
prayed at regular intervals, raising their voices in the
silent night, and at the end of each sentence of their prayer,
the "Slava Bogu," Glory to God! issued from their lips.
No incident took place during the night.
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