Page:Leo Tolstoy - Father Sergius and Other Stories and Plays - ed. Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright (1911).djvu/51

 Rh such an angel, were so poignant that they led him to despair. His despair led where? To God, to faith, to a childish faith which had never been destroyed.

On the feast of the Intercession of the Virgin, Kasatsky entered the monastery, to show his superiority over all those who fancied themselves above him.

The abbot was a nobleman by birth, a learned man, and a writer. He belonged to that monastic order which hails from Walachia, the members of which choose, and in their turn are chosen, leaders to be followed unswervingly and implicitly obeyed.

This abbot was the disciple of the famous Ambrosius, disciple of Makardix of the Leonidas, disciple of Païssy Velichkovsky.

To this abbot Kasatsky submitted himself as to the superior of his choice.

Besides the feeling of ascendancy over others which Kasatsky felt in the monastery as he had felt it in the world, he found here the joy of attaining perfection in the highest degree, inwardly as well as outwardly. As in the regiment he had rejoiced in being more than an irreproachable