Father Sergius, and Other Stories (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Father Sergius: And Other Stories

At eighteen Kasatsky left with the rank of lieu tenant and entered an aristocratic Guard regiment. The Emperor Nicholas had known him while he was in the cadet corps, and had shown him favour while in the regiment. It was on this account that people prophesied that he would become an aide-de-camp. Kasatsky desired it greatly, al though less from ambition than from passionate love for the emperor whom he had cherished since his cadet days. Each time the emperor Visited the school - and he Visited it very often - as Kasatsky saw the tall figure, the broad chest, the aquiline nose above the moustache, and the close cropped side whiskers, the military uniform, and the brisk, firm step, and heard him greeting the cadets in his strident voice, he experienced the mo mentary ecstasy of one who sees his well-beloved. But his passionate adoration of the emperor was even more intense. He desired to give up some thing, everything, even himself, to show his in finite devotion. The Emperor Nicholas knew that he inspired such admiration, and deliberately provoked it. He played with the cadets, made them surround him, and treated them sometimes with childish simplicity, sometimes as a friend, and then again with an air of solemn grandeur.

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There happened in St. Petersburg during the forties an event which startled society. A handsome youth, a prince, an officer in the Cuirassiers for whom every one had predicted the rank of aide-de-camp and a brilliant career attached to the person of Emperor Nicholas I., quitted the service. He broke with his beautiful fiancee, a lady-I n-waiting, and a favourite of the empress, just a fortnight before the wedding-day, and giving his small estate to his sister, retired to a monastery to become a monk. To those who were Ignorant of the hidden motives, this was an extraordinary and unaccountable step; but as regards Prince Stephen Kasatsky himself, it was such a natural move that he could not conceive an alternative. His father, a retired colonel of the Guards, died when the son was twelve.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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