Page:The Praises of Amida, 1907.djvu/117

 place. He rose from his seat, opened his window and looked out at the moonlit sky. "How beautiful it all is!" were the words which came involuntarily to his lips, as he beheld the peaceful scene. It was not the beauty of the outer world only which brought this exclamation to his lips. There was, as we have seen, an inward reason prompting him to acknowledge the beauty which he beheld and understood, and there is for us, too, a great lesson to be learned from his words. 10. Nehrodoff was now fully set in his own mind, and he set out manfully to walk on the path of duty. His anticipations were fully realized. The world jeered at him. His friends and relatives said that the man who would exert himself on behalf of an out-cast prostitute must be a doubtful character himself: and when, in the prosecution of the task he had set before him, he left Moscow and travelled to St. Petersburg, his aristocratic friends in the metropolis made desperate efforts to tempt him back to his old ways of life.