He looked very woebegone. He showed me his Georgian cross given for bravery in the field, and then once more the ikon his mother had given him. "Seven years, and I haven't once been home," said he.
"Seven years," he repeated mechanically, and began stumbling out of the room.
He was a strange and touching witness of the power of the human eruption in Russia. As it were, a clod of earth had been lifted from the province of Tambof and flung as far as the Balkans. Another witness of another kind was the old Archbishop of Minsk whom I found in the monastery of Ravanitsa.
The Secretary of State for Religion very kindly facilitated my journey to the shrine of St. Lazar, where I saw Serbia's mediaeval prince lying headless before the altar. Strange to say, it seemed as if the body had a head. The shroud was raised to disclose his brown and wizened fingers and shrunken middle, and where the head should be were the contours of a head under a veil. At my desire the cloth was lifted, and I saw instead of a head a large jewelled mitre.
The monks showed me "bulls" and charters and proclamations and manuscripts, mostly eloquent now of the ill-faith of Serbia's neighbours. They were, however, humorous and vivacious and well-fed monks who bore no ill-will against Turk or Austrian or anyone; they were good fellows happily lodged by the Church, and without much care or sorrow of any kind; such a contrast to those outside the Church.
They gave me a room with a comfortable bed and white sheets, and they regaled Kostya Lukovic and myself and anyone else who happened to arrive, with old-fashioned generosity of wine and viands.
It was here we met the Archbishop of Minsk, once Rector of the Theological Academy at Petrograd. He had lost his diocese and lost his academy; a little old, stooping, grey-haired man, very witty, very sardonic and indulging in endless pleasantries at the expense of us all. He drank to England but not to Lloyd George. He drank to meeting me again—in Moscow. He drank to Serbia, and hoped they'd raise the standard of doctorate of divinity. He drank to France, without her ally Poland who had seized most of his diocese of Minsk and was making it Roman Catholic. He drank to Russia—and a change of heart. In fact, it is difficult to remember all the toasts he proposed. I responded in sips, he in half-glasses; the Archimandrite, who had only a second place at the table, in tumblerfuls; the deacon opposite me having a strong character, refused to go on, and it was certainly curious to see this little old archbishop taunt him and ask him if he were afraid and stir him on to drink more than was good for him. But he was a Russian first and then an archbishop, and he had lost all that he cared for. It may be asked, had he lost his faith, too? But do rectors of theological academies have faith? Seldom, surely.
"The teaching of theology has been abolished in Russia now," said he next morning, sitting out in the sun and feeding young calves with bread which he had saved from the breakfast table. "There are no young students now preparing to be priests. The next generation will be without clergy."
"But it is a people's Church," I observed. "If there are no priests, they will take the services themselves. The peasants have an extraordinary amount of church lore among themselves."
The prelate appeared to be scandalized. "That is of no use. A priest must first study and then be ordained. Without knowledge the Church would soon be lost."