Page:Leskov - The Sentry and other Stories.djvu/231

 Rh "I have been in Her bosom from my infancy," he answered, "and will remain there till I die."

He then related to me the very simple and strange story of his life. His father had been a priest, who had early become a widower and was deprived of his post for having married a couple in an illegal manner, so that during the whole of his remaining life he was unable to find another, but became the chaplain of an old lady of high position, who passed her life in travelling from place to place and fearing to die without receiving the sacrament of penitence, kept this priest always with her. Whenever she drove out he sat on the back seat of her carriage; if she entered a house to pay a visit he had to wait for her in the antechamber with the lackeys. Can you imagine a man having to pass his whole life in that way? At the same time, as he had no church of his own, he was entirely dependent on the pyx, which he carried about with him in his breast pocket, and he was even able to beg some crumbs from this lady so as to send his boy to school. In this way they arrived in Siberia. The lady came to visit her daughter, who was the wife of the governor of some place in Siberia, and the priest with the pyx in his pocket travelled with her sitting on the front seat of her carriage. But as the way was long and the lady intended to remain some time