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They had met with scanty
success. The soil was of the most sterile, intractable rock; those few
wind-blown olives were dreadfully diaphanous, and Peter's blouse
visible from afar--even from the market-place. Everything got about on
Nepenthe. People began to twit her about the progress of those "Russian
lessons." It became quite a scandal. Signor Malipizzo was more annoyed
than any one else. He hated the whole brood of Russians, and had formed
various projects for uprooting the association from the island. His
friend the Commissioner thoroughly endorsed these views. Often he
declared that something must be done about it.
The Master, despite his seclusion, had heard of the affair. He was
grieved, but not unduly so; he had other disciples to choose from.
Every new arrival from Holy Russia, regardless of sex or age, spent
some hours or days, as the case might be, alone with the Master in his
apartment, in order to be initiated into the Law and impregnated with
its full signification: such was the way of the New Jerusalem.


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