to their work while the priest and the parents, Yanishev and I, went to the church. Beside the mother stood her nine children. Each year she had borne a child and, ranged according to age, they formed a flight of steps with here and there a gap. That year the child had died. And now this year's child was dead. It was a tiny thing, no larger than the lily beside it, so small and fragile in its little blue coffin, with the massive walls and pillars of the church rising around it.
This village of Spasskoye was fortunate in its priest. He was a kind and sympathetic man, liked and trusted by the people. Tho called so often to say the children's mass, he was trying not to make it a thing of routine. Gently he lit the candles on the coffin, laid the cross on the baby's breast, and began the mass, filling the church with his resonant voice. Priest and deacon chanted the service, while father, mother and children crossed themselves and knelt and touched their foreheads to the floor. Opposite the priest Yanishev stood stolidly with half-bowed head.
They faced each other with the mystery of life and death between them; the one a priest of the Holy Orthodox church, the other a prophet of the Social Revolution; the one consecrating himself to making children happy and secure in the paradise beyond, the other devoting his life to making the earth secure and happy for living children.
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