Ivan Velikopolsky

A twenty-two-year-old student at the theological academy and a sexton's son who, walking home cold and hungry on the eve of Good Friday, retells the widows Vasilisa and Lukerya the Gospel account of Peter's denial and is overtaken, on their emotional response to it, by a sudden sense that past and present are joined in an unbroken chain, and by an inexpressible feeling of youth and happiness.