Administration, all belong to the Black Clergy—­that is to say, they are all monks—­and consequently cannot understand our wants.  How can they, on whom celibacy is imposed by the rules of the Church, understand the position of a parish priest who has to bring up a family and to struggle with domestic cares of every kind?  What they do is to take all the comfortable places for themselves, and leave us all the hard work.  The monasteries are rich enough, and you see how poor we are.  Perhaps you have heard that the parish priests extort money from the peasants—­refusing to perform the rites of baptism or burial until a considerable sum has been paid.  It is only too true, but who is to blame?  The priest must live and bring up his family, and you cannot imagine the humiliations to which he has to submit in order to gain a scanty pittance.  I know it by experience.  When I make the periodical visitation I can see that the peasants grudge every handful of rye and every egg that they give me.  I can overbear their sneers as I go away, and I know they have many sayings such as—­’The priest takes from the living and from the dead.’  Many of them fasten their doors, pretending to be away from home, and do not even take the precaution of keeping silent till I am out of hearing.”

“You surprise me,” I said, in reply to the last part of this long tirade; “I have always heard that the Russians are a very religious people—­at least the lower classes.”

“So they are; but the peasantry are poor and heavily taxed.  They set great importance on the sacraments, and observe rigorously the fasts, which comprise nearly a half of the year; but they show very little respect for their priests, who are almost as poor as themselves.”

“But I do not see clearly how you propose to remedy this state of things.”

“By freedom and publicity, as I said before.”  The worthy man seemed to have learned this formula by rote.  “First of all, our wants must be made known.  In some provinces there have been attempts to do this by means of provincial assemblies of the clergy, but these efforts have always been strenuously opposed by the Consistories, whose members fear publicity above all things.  But in order to have publicity we must have more freedom.”

Here followed a long discourse on freedom and publicity, which seemed to me very confused.  So far as I could understand the argument, there was a good deal of reasoning in a circle.  Freedom was necessary in order to get publicity, and publicity was necessary in order to get freedom; and the practical result would be that the clergy would enjoy bigger salaries and more popular respect.  We had only got thus far in the investigation of the subject when our conversation was interrupted by the rumbling of a peasant’s cart.  In a few seconds our friend Batushka appeared, and the conversation took a different turn.