"But I have no need of all that," he said. "Passports, laws, names--all those are yours. Children, family, property, class, marriage--so many of your cursed inventions. You can give me only one single thing--quietness." The Siberian prisons swarmed with these mysterious beings. Poor souls! Their one desire was to quit as soon as possible this vale of injustice and of tears! CHAPTER II THE WHITE-ROBED BELIEVERS Sometimes this longing for a better world, where suffering would be caused neither by hunger nor by laws, took touching and poetic forms. About the month of April, 1895, all eyes in the town of Simbirsk were turned upon a sect founded by a peasant named Pistzoff. These poor countryfolk protested against the injustices of the world by robing themselves in white, "like celestial angels." "We do not live as we should," taught Pistzoff, an aged, white-haired man. "We do not live as our fathers lived. We should act with simplicity, and follow the truth, conquering our bodily passions. The life that we lead now cannot continue long. This world will perish, and from its ruins will arise another, a better world, wherein all will be robed in white, as we are." The believers lived very frugally. They were strict vegetarians, and ate neither meat nor fish. They did not smoke or drink alcohol, and abstained from tea, milk and eggs. They took only two meals daily--at ten in the morning, and six in the evening. Everything that they wore or used they made with their own hands--boots, hats, underclothing, even stoves and cooking utensils. The story of Pistzoff's conversion inevitably recalls that of Tolstoi. He was a very rich merchant when, feeling himself inspired by heavenly truth, he called his employes to him and gave them all that he had, including furniture and works of art, retaining nothing but white garments for himself and his family. His wife protested vehemently, especially when Pistzoff forbade her to touch meat, on account of the suffering endured by animals when their lives are taken from them. The old lady did not share his tastes, and firmly upheld a contrary opinion, declaring that animals went gladly to their death! Pistzoff then fetched a fowl, ordered his wife to hold it, and procured a hatchet with which to kill it. While threatening the poor creature he made his wife observe its anguish and terror, and the fowl was saved at the same time as the soul of Madame Pistzoff, who admitted that fowls, at any rate, do not go gladly into the cooking-pot. The number of Pistzoff's followers increased daily, and the sect of the "White-robed Believers" was formed. Their main tenet being _loving-kindness_, they lived peacefully and harmed none, while awaiting the supreme moment when "the whole world should become white."