Besides this, he must arrange the matter before the young man takes orders, because, by the rules of the Church, the marriage cannot take place after the ceremony of ordination.

When the affair is arranged before the charge becomes vacant, the old priest can die with the pleasant consciousness that his family is provided for." "Well, Batushka, you certainly put the matter in a very plausible way, but there seem to be two flaws in the analogy.

The novelist can make two people fall in love with each other, and make them live happily together with the mother-in-law, but that--with all due respect to his Reverence, be it said--is beyond the power of a Bishop." "I am not sure," said Batushka, avoiding the point of the objection, "that love-marriages are always the happiest ones; and as to the mother-in-law, there are--or at least there were until the emancipation of the serfs--a mother-in-law and several daughters-in-law in almost every peasant household." "And does harmony generally reign in peasant households ?" "That depends upon the head of the house.

If he is a man of the right sort, he can keep the women-folks in order." This remark was made in an energetic tone, with the evident intention of assuring me that the speaker was himself "a man of the right sort"; but I did not attribute much importance to it, for I have occasionally heard henpecked husbands talk in this grandiloquent way when their wives were out of hearing.
Altogether I was by no means convinced that the system of providing for the widows and orphans of the clergy by means of mariages de convenance was a good one, but I determined to suspend my judgment until I should obtain fuller information.
An additional bit of evidence came to me a week or two later.

One morning, on going into the priest's house, I found that he had a friend with him--the priest of a village some fifteen miles off.