So I began my teaching modestly, calling the people to a new service in the name of a new life, though I did not know how to name my new God. In Zlatout on a holiday I spoke in the square, and again the police interfered, and again the people hid me.
I met many splendid men and women. One whose name was Yashka Vladikine, a student in a theological seminary, is now a good friend of mine and will remain so for all my life. He does not believe in God, but he loves church music to tears. He plays psalms on the organ and weeps, the dear wonder-child.
I asked him laughing: "What are you howling at, you heretic, atheist?"
He cried out, tremblingly: "From joy at the knowledge of the great beauty which some day will be created. If already in this worldly and wretched life beauty has been created with the insignificant strength of individuals, what will be created on earth when the whole spiritual world shall be free and shall begin to express the order of its great spirit in psalms and music?"
He began to speak about the future, which stood out with blinding clearness to him, and he was himself surprised at his visions.
I have much to be grateful for to this friend of mine, as much as to Mikhail.
I have seen marvelous people by tens, for they send me to one another from city to city. I go as with fiery signals, and each one is kept burning by the same faith. It is impossible to enumerate the various people and to describe the joy at seeing the spiritual unity which lies in all. Great is the Russian people and indescribably beautiful is life.
[CHAPTER XXVI]
It was in the government of Kazan that my heart received the last blow, the blow which finished the construction of the temple. It was at the monastery of the Seven Seas, at a procession of the miracle-working ikon of the Holy Virgin. They were expecting the return of this ikon to the monastery from the city—the day was a holiday.