"Yes; you shall see. Come round this way," and the governor leads us to the deacon's door. Sealed; certainly sealed; the door being nailed by a piece of leather to the screen; and the leather itself attached by a fresh blotch of official wax. It looks as if the persecution were come again. "How can such things be done?" "Our Emperor does not know it," sighs the governor, who seems to be a thoroughly patriotic man; "it is the doing of our clerical police. We ask to have the use of our own altar, in our own church, according to the law. They say we shall have it, on one condition. They will give us our altar, if we accept their priest!" "And you refuse?" "What can we do? Their priests have not been properly ordained; they have lost their virtue; they can not give the blessing and absolve from sin. We have declined; our altars continue sealed; and our people have to sing and pray, as in the synagogues of Galilee, without a priest." "That was not always so?" "In other days we had our clergy, living with us openly in the light of day; but when our cemetery was restored to us by our good Emperor in 1856, some trouble came upon us from the Synod on the subject of consecration, and we have not yet lived that trouble down." "The prelates in St. Isaac's Square object to your priests receiving ordination at the hands of foreign bishops?" "Yes; they wish us to receive the Holy Spirit from them; from men who have it not to give! We can not live a lie; and we decline their offer to consecrate our priests." "You have no popular priests?" "No." "If you have no priests, how can you marry and baptize infants?" "According to the law of God." "Without a priest?" "No; with a priest. We have a priest for such things; though we can not suffer him to risk Siberia by performing a public office in our church. Father Anton lives in secret. In the bazar of Moscow he is known as a merchant, dealing in grain and stuffs. The world knows nothing else about him; even the police have never suspected _him_ of being a priest." "He is ordained?" "You know that some of our brethren live in Turkey and in Austria, where the Turks and Germans grant them asylums which they have not always found at home. A good many Old Believers dwell in a village, called Belia Krinitza, in the country lying at the feet of the Carpathians, just beyond the frontiers of Podolia and Bessarabia. One Ambrosius, a Greek prelate from Bulgaria, visited these refugees, and consecrated their Bishop Cyril, who is still alive. Cyril consecrated Father Anton, our Moscow priest." "Father Anton marries and christens the members of your church?" "He does, in secret. In his worldly name he buys and sells, like any other dealer in his shop." "You live in hope that the persecution will not come again?" "We live to suffer, and _not_ to yield."