Araktseieff had been doing penance three weeks in the catacombs when, one evening, as he was returning with a bundle of leeks in his hand, he came upon Nahum feasting off his self-laid dinner-table, the dust-heap.
"Ah," said Little Father Nahum, accosting the new-comer, "I have found so much to eat here to-night I can share with a friend."
"What has Providence provided for you?"
"Mouldy cheese."
"All right. Give me some."
"Here it is. Take it all," returned Nahum. "He who hankers after a penitent's food should have it all given up to him."
And he handed him the mouldy cheese, with the paper in which it had been wrapped and thrown upon the dust-heap. Truly, loathsome food! But Araktseieff's attention was not so much arrested by the contents as by the paper in which the cheese was enclosed. It was a letter, and in it Araktseieff at once recognized the handwriting of the Czar. His blood surged within him. The Czar's writing a cover for stale cheese! And then the contents! It was a letter addressed to Photios.
"Call him to you. Speak to him in the name of holy religion; strengthen him in the faith. Admonish him to preserve his life for the good of his country, which is beyond all other considerations. Thus will you preserve to the empire a servant of inestimable loyalty, and to me a faithful friend whom I sincerely honor and esteem."
And this was the paper chosen as a cover for mouldy cheese and thrown upon a dust-heap!
"Well, eat away, man," murmured Little Father Nahum, and, taking up the cheese which Araktseieff had let fall on the dust-heap, offered it him in the flat of his dirty hand.