This is the story of a French priest who, originally it would seem from reading the Russian novelists, became inspires with a passionate missionary zeal for the union of the Russian Orthodox Church with Rome. It could be also entitled A Priest Trying to Get into Russia, for half the book deals with the twelve years during which he waited on the threshold of the unknown country which had filled his imagination; the second half reveals the bitter disappointment which attended his brief sojourn when he at last got there.