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Then he stood up and dragged e and with confusion

"Want some more?" he asked

"I don’t know," I said, throwing off his arm, which he alloith a little sreatest concern to you, and the next I’h tirieve and to weep," he said, "and to reevaluate all you’ve been given Now it’s back to work Go to the desk and prepare to write Or I’ll whip you sooing to be treated this way; there’s absolutely no necessity for this What should I write? I’ve written volumes in my soul You think you can force me into the dreary little mold of an obedient pupil, you think this is appropriate to the cataclyshts that I have to ponder, you think-"

He smacked me across the face I was dizzy As my eyes cleared, I looked into his

"I want your attention again I want you to come out of your meditation Go to the desk and write for me a summary of what your journey to Russia meant to you, and what you see now here that you could not see before Make it concise, use your finest similes and metaphors and write it cleanly and quickly for me"

"Such crude tactics," Ifroether different from the pain of a mortal body, but it was bad, and I hated it

I sat down at the desk I was going to write so really churlish such as "I’ve learned that I’m the slave of a tyrant" But when I looked up and saw hied my mind

He kneas the perfect moment to come to me and kiss me And he did this, and I realized I had lifted my face for his kiss before he bent his head This didn’t stop hi in to him I put o after a long sweet moment, and then I did write outwhat I’ve explained above I wrote about the battle in me between the fleshly and the ascetic; I wrote of hest level of exaltation In the painting of the ikon I had found it, but the ikon had satisfied the need for the sensual because the ikon was beautiful And as I wrote, I realized for the first time that the old Russian style, the antique Byzantine style, ele in itself between the sensual and the ascetic, the figures suppressed, flattened, disciplined, in the very ht to the eyes while representing denial

While I wrote, my Master went away I are of it, but it didn’t radually I slipped out of an to tell an old tale

In the old days, when the Russians didn’t know Jesus Christ, the great Prince Vladinificent city-sent his eions of the Lord: the Mosleion, which these ion of Papal Rolory; and finally the Christianity of Byzantium In the city of Constantinople, the Russians were led to see the nificent churches in which the Greek Catholics worshiped their God, and they found these buildings so beautiful that they didn’t knohether they were in Heaven or still on Earth Never had the Russians seen anything so splendid; they were certain then that God dwelt aion of Constantinople, and so it was this Christianity which Russia eave birth to our Russian Church

In Kiev once ht to recreate, but now that Kiev is a ruin and the Turks have taken Santa Sofia of Constantinople, one in who is the God-Bearer, and her Son when He becomes the Pantokrator, the Divine Creator of All In Venice, I have found in sparkling gold e the very ht of Christ Our Lord to the land where I was born, the Light of Christ Our Lord which burns still in the lamps of the Monastery of the Caves

I put down the pen I pushed the page aside, and I laid my head down on my arms and cried softly to myself in the quiet of the shadowy bedroonored

Finally, Marius came for me to take me to our crypt, and I realize now, centuries later, as I look back, that his forcing ht caused me to remember always the lessons of those tiht, after he’d read what I had written, he was contrite about having hit me, and he said that it was difficult for hi but a child, but that I was not a child Rather I was some spirit like unto a child-naive and maniacal in my pursuit of certain themes He had never expected to love me so much

I wanted to be aloof and distant, on account of the whipping, but I couldn’t be I marveled that his touch, his kisses, his embraces meant more to me than they had when I was human