Page:John Feoktist Dudikoff - Beasts in Cassocks (1924).djvu/137

 morbid imagination. I tried to drive away these apparitions and tried to imagine that nothing special happened. Unfortunately, however, the truth stood before my eyes. God knows how I was anxious that all this should not be true, but to my great sorrow these were pictures of life which I personally saw.

After all what I saw with my own eyes my faith not only in the Lords of the Church was shaken, but my deep faith in the purity and justice of the Russian Orthodox Church lost all its meaning and significance. And since then I began more seriously to look up everything that surrounded me and especially to the circle in which I mingled.

Evidently the moneys which I gave did not let the Lords of the Church to rest and especially it was Alexander Nemolovsky who tried and succeeded under one or another pretext to obtain from me sums of money. When all my funds, so hardly earned, gave out and I could not be milked as a cow any more, Alexander Nemolovsky, in order to remain friendly with me and not to give me cause to be resentful at them, has organized specially for me a few sittings on which I was violated in a most brutal manner by the above mentioned Alexander Nemolovsky and other Lords of the Church. For each sitting I was being paid a few dollars. But the money thus earned was finally taken back in a most shameful way. When I was complaining of not having money for a living I was given a few dollars like alms which I sent to my poor wife and my crippled son. Thus is continued until I could not and did not have the strength to go on with such life in an atmosphere of falsehood and filth.

Being afraid that I might disclose much of the doings of the Lords of the Church, Alexander Nemolovsky promised to make of me a priest. I argued against such elevation, pointing out that I was not literate enough and am not fit tor the place after what I have performed together with the dignitaries of the Church.

"Your Eminence," said I, "I will offend the pure faith of the people in the Orthodox Church." To this Bishop Nemolovsky answered: "Nothing matters, darling, you just fit for the office and you will make a good priest; the herd and the most egregious fools," so he called the faithful Russians, "anyway don't understanr anything and you wil be for them a real parson." And so by the order of Nemolovsky I was given a packet with which I went to Bishop Stephan Dztubat at 233 East 17th Street. I gave him the packet and