"Father, Saviour,
Hope of all men . . .
Thou gavest us the spark,
The spark of faith.
But to-day, little father,
Thou hidest the light,
Thou hidest the light. . . .
Our life is changed.
We weep for thy faith,
Lost and deranged,
We weep for thy holy life.
Upon the Mount Sion
There grew a vine of God. . . ."
Grigorieff appeared to be touched, and replied with a psalm which explained, in rhymed couplets, how the Holy Ghost (that is to say, Grigorieff) was walking in a garden when brigands appeared, and tried to carry him off—an allusion to some of his followers who had caused dissension by proclaiming themselves to be "Holy Ghosts." But the sun descended upon the Garden of Paradise, the celestial garden . . . and so on.
One day, however, "Anti-Christ," in the person of a travelling magistrate, descended upon Gai-Orlov and carried off Grigorieff. He was sent to prison, where he died of poison administered by one of his "spiritual wives," who was jealous of her rivals. But his teachings did not die with him. His work was continued by the peasant Verestchagin, with the help of twelve venerable "apostles."
CHAPTER XVII
THE NAPOLEONITES
Imagination can scarcely conceive of some of the strange forms under which the thirst for religious truth in Southern Russia was revealed. In this great laboratory of sects, all the dreams of humanity had their more or less "inspired" representatives. Even the smallest town was in the same case as, for example, the prison of Solovetzk, which was usually inhabited by large numbers of sectarian leaders. A Mr. Sitzoff, who spent some time there, has published a description of this modern Tower of Babel.
It harboured, among others, a douchoboretz; a "god" of the Sava persuasion, with his wife, representing the "Holy Ghost"; a chlyst, who rotated indefatigably round a tub of water; a captain who claimed the honour of brotherhood with Jesus Christ; a man named Pouchkin, who supposed himself to be the Saviour reincarnated; a skopetz who had brought a number of people from Moscow to be initiated into the sect of the Russian eunuchs; and the staretz Israïl, a famous seer, who desired to found a "Church Triumphant" among the inhabitants of the prison.
These ardent reformers of religion made a terrible uproar during the hours for exercise, each one wishing to convert the rest, and frequently the warders had to intervene, to save the terrified "Holy Ghost," for example, from the "brother of Christ" or the prophet Elijah.
Before taking leave of these and other equally bizarre products of the "great laboratory," we must mention the sect of the Napoleonites, some few members of which were still to be found recently in Southern Russia. William Hepworth Dixon, who visited the country in 1870, claims to have met some in Moscow, and according to him they were then rapidly increasing in numbers.