h a special kind of gingerbread. Another,
Chaidaroff, nicknamed "Money-bags," bought a forest and built a house
wherein dwelt fifteen aged "holy men," who attracted the whole
neighbourhood. Many men in the prime of life followed the example of
the aged ones, and retired to live in the forest, while women went in
even greater numbers and for longer periods. Husbands grew uneasy, and
bitter disputes took place, in which one side upheld the moral
superiority of the holy men, while the other went so far as to forbid
the women to go and confess to them. One peasant claimed to be
inspired by the "Holy Ghost," and promenaded the village, summer and
winter, in a long blouse without boots or trousers, riding astride a
great stick on which he had hung a bell and a flag, and announcing
publicly the reign of Anti-Christ. In addition the village was visited
by orthodox missionaries, but, as the Reverend Father Schalkinsky
naively confesses, "the inhabitants fled them like the plague." They
interviewed, however, the so-called chiefs of the new religions, who
listened to them with gravity and made some pretence of being convinced
by the purveyors of official truth.

CHAPTER X

THE DOUCHOBORTZI

The religious ferment of South Russia was due to some special causes,
its provinces having served since the seventeenth century as lands of
exile for revolutionaries of all kinds, religious, political and
social. Dangerous criminals were also sent there, and a population of
this nature naturally received with open arms all who preached
rebellion against established principles and doctrines.

About the year 1750, a Prussian non-commissioned officer, expatriated
on account of his revolutionary ideas, appeared in the neighbourhood of
Kharkov. He taught the equality of man and the uselessness of public
authority, and was the real founder of the _douchobortzi_, who believed
in direct communion with the divinity by aid of the spirit which dwells
in all men. The sparks scattered by this unknown vagabond flared up
some time later into a conflagration which swept away artisans,
peasants and priests, and embraced whole towns and villages.

The beliefs of the sect were that the material world is merely a prison
for our souls, and that our passions carry in themselves the germs of
our punishments. Nothing is more to be decried than the desire for
worldly honour and glory. Did not Our Lord Himself say that He was not
of this world? E