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Updated: June 16, 2025
While Rasputin, having thrown off his cloak of piety, was leading a dissolute life in far-off Pokrovsky, and refusing to obey the Empress's repeated invitations, the guns of Peter and Paul one day boomed forth salvo after salvo, announcing to the world that the prayer uttered by the Starets before our Lady of Kazan had been granted. An heir had been born to the Romanoffs!
Then leaving me the Starets crossed to a small house which he entered to give its inmates his blessing blessing forsooth from such an unholy, unwashed scoundrel!
At the moment Theophanus was in ignorance of the deeply laid plot to draw the Empress beneath the spell of the Starets whom the inferior classes all over Russia as well as the well-to-do believed was leading such a saint-like, ascetic life in imitation of Christ. Truly, Grichka dressed the part well, and gave himself the outward appearance of saintliness and godliness.
But the room itself was a beautiful one, like all the apartments in Peterhof, semicircular in shape, with a great bay window looking out upon the wonderful fountains, all of which were throwing up their jets, with a great vista of greenery beyond. The Tsar bowed as the Starets, crossing himself, bestowed his blessing upon him.
The house, the remaining rooms of which were unoccupied, was a dark forbidding-looking one, with a heavy door beneath a portico, and containing deep cellars into which nobody ever penetrated save the Starets himself. On the morning of my first visit there, I was, from the beginning, much mystified.
The Starets left the palace full of extreme satisfaction, and indeed, when an hour later we were alone together in the train returning to Petrograd, he grinned evilly across at me, and said meaningly: "Alexandra Feodorovna did not forget our meeting at Kazan, though she did not allude to it. Ere long, though she is Empress, I intend that she shall sit at my feet and do my bidding!"
He wished to refuse but the starets ordered him to accept the appointment. He did so, and took leave of the starets and moved to the other monastery. The exchange into the metropolitan monastery was an important event in Sergius's life. There he encountered many temptations, and his whole will-power was concentrated on meeting them.
"I have a very urgent despatch for the Father," he said when he was ushered in to me, and he handed me a letter upon strong but flimsy paper, so that it could be the more easily concealed in transit. At once I took him up to the monk, who was washing his hands in his bedroom. "Ah, dear friend Hardt!" exclaimed the Starets, greeting him warmly. "And you are straight from Berlin!
If many of the demands of life in the monastery, which was near the capital and much frequented, did not please him and were temptations to him, they were all nullified by obedience: 'It is not for me to reason; my business is to do the task set me, whether it be standing beside the relics, singing in the choir, or making up accounts in the monastery guest-house. All possibility of doubt about anything was silenced by obedience to the starets.
He was so alarmed that he wrote about it to the starets. And in addition, to keep himself in hand, he spoke to a young novice and, conquering his sense of shame, confessed his weakness to him, asking him to keep watch on him and not let him go anywhere except to service and to fulfil his duties.
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