stand much of what was said to me, and to express myself in a
vague, roundabout way. In the latter operation I was much assisted by
a peculiar faculty of divination which the Russians possess in a high
degree. If a foreigner succeeds in expressing about one-fourth of
an idea, the Russian peasant can generally fill up the remaining
three-fourths from his own intuition.

As my powers of comprehension increased, my long conversations with
the priest became more and more instructive. At first his remarks and
stories had for me simply a philological interest, but gradually
I perceived that his talk contained a great deal of solid,
curious information regarding himself and the class to which he
belonged--information of a kind not commonly found in grammatical
exercises. Some of this I now propose to communicate to the reader.

CHAPTER IV

THE VILLAGE PRIEST

Priests' Names--Clerical Marriages--The White and the Black Clergy--Why
the People do not Respect the Parish Priests--History of the White
Clergy--The Parish Priest and the Protestant Pastor--In What Sense
the Russian People are Religious--Icons--The Clergy and Popular
Education--Ecclesiastical Reform--Premonitory Symptoms of Change--Two
Typical Specimens of the Parochial Clergy of the Present Day.

In formal introductions it is customary to pronounce in a more or less
inaudible voice the names of the two persons introduced. Circumstances
compel me in the present case to depart from received custom. The truth
is, I do not know the names of the two people whom I wish to bring
together! The reader who knows his own name will readily pardon one-half
of my ignorance, but he may naturally expect that I should know the name
of a man with whom I profess to be acquainted, and with whom I daily
held long conversations during a period of several months. Strange as
it may seem, I do not. During all the time of my sojourn in Ivanofka I
never heard him addressed or spoken of otherwise than as "Batushka." Now
"Batushka" is not a name at all. It is simply the diminutive form of an
obsolete word meaning "father," and is usually applied to all village
priests. The ushka is a common diminutive termination, and the root Bat
is evidently the same as that which appears in the Latin pater.

Though I do not happen to know what Batushka's family name was, I can
communicate two curious facts concerning it: he had not possessed it in
his childhood, and it was not the same as his fath