My gTiide, Sister Eudokia, was lively and witty, and allowed scarcely a monument or church vessel that she showed me to pass without a jest — every one more or less a hit at my incomprehensible curiosity. As we came out of the church the bell sounded for prayers. " There," said she, " they are ringing, we must pray. You can pray, I hope ?" " We do pray, certainly," said I, " but it Is in silence." " Yes," said another, " they do pray, for I was once in their chmch in the Niemitzkaya Sloboda (German suburb), and I saw them."
Is there also a Jesus Christ in your church ?" " Yes, we have him also." " Why can't you pray, then, in our way ? Shall I show you? See, you must do this ;" and thereupon she made the sign of the cross in the Russian fashion, and invited me to imitate her. " Yes, you must do so," repeated the others laughing, as they crossed themselves, bowed down, and offered up their prayers. " Now, do it after us." Half forced by these nuns, who were here doing what could scarcely have been done in a Catholic country, I endeavoured to make the cross as they showed me. The thumb, the forefinger, and the middle finger of the right-hand must be held together ; you then begin at the right-shoulder, passing over to the left, from that to the forehead, and thence down to the breast. I made a mistake of course at first, but tried over and over again till my teachers were satisfied. " There," said Sister Eudokia, " now, another time when you come into our church, make the cross properly, and pray like other people." As she talked to me without ceremony, I fell in love with her without ceremony — that is to say, for the time of my stay in the convent. As it was pretty evident that for the period of our union I should be under the lady's slipper, I did not venture to object when
To be under the slipper is a familiar German expression, corresponding with what in English is called petticoat government.
she said that we must mount the bell-tower, to look at the " Sparrow Mountains" and the meadows round the convent. The pleasure which this gave us both was of a very different character. She knew nothing either of the picturesque beauties that presented themselves as soon as we had ascended the first few steps of the tower, whence the whole landscape was divided into so many beautiful pictures, by the towers of the convent wall placed at regular distances, and affording between every two a separate view of rich meadows, with woods and buildings ; nor of the magnificent panorama of river, hill, and valley, visible from the summit. She looked at them only in a practical point of view ; told me how many men and how much cattle those fields and meadows could feed, what the convent had formerly possessed, what now remained to it, whom this and that field belonged to, and so forth.
The Russian convents are very tolerant ; the monks may receive women, and the nuns men, probably under certain restrictions, with which I am not acquainted. It is certain that I subsequently found no corner in a Russian convent which I might not enter with the permission of the Igumena ; and that in the male convents tea parties were sometimes given where women were present. I never heard that this freedom of intercourse led practically to a greater laxity of morals in Russian convents than iu Catholic ones, where the severity is greater.
ANDRONIEVSKOI MONASTIR (andronicds convent.)
I had heard that the church of Martin the Confessor (Martin Ispovednik) wasan elegant modern building, and that it might be compared to St. Paul's in London. Experience here again showed me how often low things are compared with high ones. There is no more comparison between them than between the Swiss Alps and the Waldavian swamp-hills ; and if Moscow has in the church of Martin Ispovednik a St. Paid's, then every Russian village has in like manner its Horace, its Thucydides, and all the other great things in the world, into the bargain.