He struck out "unknown heaven" from the works of a poet, because there is but one heaven where the saints dwell; consequently it is not unknown. From another he struck out the passage, "I despise the world!" It is a treasonable offence to despise the world in which Czar and Grand Dukes, foreign rulers and their ministers, delight to dwell. In the love sonnets of a third, beginning, "Worshipped being, creator of my bliss!" the solitary word "being" alone found grace in the eyes of the arbitrary Censor. We may only "worship" Divinity; there is but one Creator. "Bliss" is only to be known in eternity for such as have ended their lives as true Christians. Thus the adjuration "being" was accounted fully sufficient for the lady of the poet's thoughts. And this was the man to whose tender mercies Pushkin must perforce commit his poem! Knocking at his door, he courteously requested him to do him the favor of first reading through his poem, which request was as courteously conceded, a holy Friday being the day appointed for the next interview. Never yet had the youth looked forward to a meeting with his lady-love so ardently as he did to this appointment. He knew his man, and that he should have a hard fight for it--for there was no forgetting that though there were many censors there was no possibility of choice. Each had his special province: one the press, another religion, the third education, the fourth advertisements, the fifth theatrical programmes and announcements, and, lastly, the sixth, poetical effusions. Herr Sujukin, who represented the earthly providence of the poetical world, had exercised that function in Czar Paul's time. He was now an aged man, with perfectly bald head, and, his face being also clean-shaven, he looked for all the world like a death's-head, only that his skull was still provided with every imaginable expression of torture; his contemptuous grimaces could galvanize the luckless poet standing before him; and many a one felt a death sentence passed upon him as he encountered the glare of those little red eyes, fixed upon him from out their wrinkled sockets. "Well, dear son Pushkin!" Every poet was "son" to him. "I have read your papers through from beginning to end. I am truly sorry for you. What has induced you to mix with the lower orders and select a pack of gypsies for the subject of your poetical labors? Have you no higher associates? Are you desirous to bring shame on your noble father by this versifying of gypsydom?" Here Pushkin calmed him by informing him that his father was dead long ago--which, be it known, was not strictly in accordance with the truth; but it is not necessary to tell the truth to a censor.