In due time came the answer to Andrei’s letter. The Patriarch praised the zeal of the prince in planting truth in new places, approved of his bringing order to lands hitherto without it, but while revering that for which Andrei was toiling so earnestly, his Humility the Patriarch could not grant the prayer of Prince Andrei, because the Kief metropolitan already had jurisdiction in those northern lands. If the prince had won new lands, in regions apart and divided geographically, the question would have been different, but the regions under discussion could not be taken from their present right relations without violating ancient rules and destroying Christian truth as existent. Andrei had asked in the name of religion and truth, concealing his chief, if not his only object. The Patriarch answered in the same way,—the inevitable and ever recurrent method of masking the main point. Andrei was obliged to abandon the project. During his father’s life, Andrei had married the daughter of Kutchka, a boyar who had been put to death by Yuri. In family life Andrei knew little, if any happiness. All his children died earlier than he, except one, the youngest son, Yuri, who married Queen Tamara of Georgia and died in the Trans-Caucasus, prematurely, after painful adventures. Neither from his wife nor her relatives had Andrei witnessed good-feeling. No matter how he strove to draw near the Kutchkas, no matter what he spent in lavish kindness toward them and their friends, they ever cherished for him a hatred which nothing could extinguish. The same might be said of the men near Andrei. He had removed his drujina and the boyars, and chosen new people. He treated those people with such kindness and so liberally that he might hope to see them grateful. “Father,” “Giver of good,” “Bestower of pleasant things,” “Nourisher” were the only words which they might with honesty have said of him. These were the terms used in satire by those men who witnessed but did not receive this attention. It was with the following words that all described Andrei,—all save the circle which opposed him. “The beloved father, the nourisher of orphans, kind and gentle, simple and strong, putting his arms round the poor, loving those who are abandoned, giving them to eat and drink, like his great ancestor Monomach.” He was holy also, though men did not know it. He had commanded that at any time of the day or night, if there were a really needy man or woman, that man or woman should be nourished. He had also built houses where the sick and the unprotected might be received and cared for.