Mark André ’s Reviews > Father Sergius > Status Update

Can it be true, as I have read in the Lives of the Saints, that the devil takes on the form of a woman?

Why does the whole world, with all its delights, exist if it is sinful and must be renounced?

His life in solitude was hard . . . an inner conflict he had not at all anticipated. The sources of that conflict were two: doubts, and the lust of the flesh. And these two enemies always appeared together. It seemed to him that they were two foes, but in reality they were one and the same. As soon as doubt was gone so was the lustful desire. But thinking them to be two different fiends he fought them separately.

At Carnival time,... a merry company of rich people, men and women from a neighbouring town, made up a troyka-party..., The company consisted of two lawyers, a wealthy landowner, an officer, and four ladies. One lady was the officer’s wife, another the wife of the landowner, the third his sister—a young girl—and the fourth a divorcee, beautiful, rich, and eccentric, who amazed and shocked the town by her escapades.

And so Sergius became a hermit.

Then he took to reading, . . .