Page:John Feoktist Dudikoff - Beasts in Cassocks (1924).djvu/81

 remain Patriarch just thes [sic] same. … Had I not heard that very day Platon’s sermon after the thanksgiving mass, I would have said, perhaps, that all this was the product of my relatives' imagination, but Platon's speech made such an indelible impression on my mind, that, as a Russian of the Orthodox Faith, I could not possibly forget it.

My relatives' misgivings soon materialized. I began to be followed and, in spite of the fact that I changed my quarters prac-

tically every other day, I was trailed, and one night the Hetman's Gendarmes broke into my house … I hardly had time to put my wife out of the window. This almost cost her her life, because she fell from th [sic] second story and soon afterwards gave birth to a still child … and then … then … my heart throbs with such pain that I cannot think of what happened without weeping bitterly,