‘Qu’est-ce qu’il dit? Il ne repond pas.’
‘Il dit qu’il est un serviteur de Dieu. Cela doit etre un fils de preetre. Il a de la race. Avez-vous de la petite monnaie?’
The Frenchman found some small change and gave twenty kopeks to each of the pilgrims.
‘Mais dites-leur que ce n’est pas pour les cierges que je leur donne, mais pour qu’ils se regalent de the. Chay, chay pour vous, mon vieux!’ he said with a smile. And he patted Kasatsky on the shoulder with his gloved hand.
‘May Christ bless you,’ replied Kasatsky without replacing his cap and bowing his bald head.
He rejoiced particularly at this meeting, because he had disregarded the opinion of men and had done the simplest, easiest thing—humbly accepted twenty kopeks and given them to his comrade, a blind beggar. The less importance he attached to the opinion of men the more did he feel the presence of God within him.
For eight months Kasatsky tramped on in this manner, and in the ninth month he was arrested for not having a passport. This happened at a night-refuge in a provincial town where he had passed the night with some pilgrims. He was taken to the police-station, and when asked who he was and where was his passport, he replied that he had no passport and that he was a servant of God. He was classed as a tramp, sentenced, and sent to live in Siberia.
In Siberia he has settled down as the hired man of a well-to-do peasant, in which capacity he works in the kitchen-garden, teaches children, and attends to the sick.