the midst of the nineteenth century the incidents of Peter’s career, whether insignificant or important—­his vices not less than his glory—­are used as proofs of his infernal mission.  The remarkable victories with which he recovered from terrible disasters were miracles wrought by the help of the devil and the Freemasons.  The extension of his power beyond that of all previous Russian monarchs and of all the ancient bogatyrs was effected by the determination of Satan that his offspring should receive divine honors.  The same interpretation is applied to the simplest events.  Thus, Peter’s celebration with allegorical figures and festivals of the beginning of the year on the first of January was due to his desire to restore the worship of false deities and “the old Roman idol Janus.”  These silly fables, and this incapacity of understanding how a pagan name or emblem can be used without falling back into paganism, betray one of the peculiar features of the Raskol—­namely, the realistic nature, of its symbolism, and its matter-of-fact determination to fill images, allegories and words with occult meaning.

When once the presence of Antichrist was clearly made out, there was nothing to hinder the application to Russia of the gloomy descriptions of the prophets.  Their disposition to hunt out mysterious enigmas in names and numbers made it easy for the fanatics to find the whole Apocalypse in modern Russia; and the number of the Beast was sought in the names of Peter and of his successors.  Each letter of the Slavonic alphabet, as of the Greek, has a numerical value, and the problem is thus to add up the total of the letters of a name, and so obtain the Apocalyptic number 666 (Rev. xiii. 18).  By inserting, reduplicating or omitting certain letters, and not insisting too strongly on an exact result, the sectaries have discovered the infernal number in the names of most of the Russian sovereigns from Peter the Great to Nicholas.  Such alterations are defended on the ground that to throw investigators off the scent the Beast changes the number which is meant to designate him, so that he should be recognized under the number 662 or 664 as clearly as under 666.  Turning from the particular sovereign to the imperial title, the Raskolniks have unearthed the number of the Beast in the letters composing it.  Singularly enough, it happens that all which is needed to obtain the Apocalyptic number from the word imperator is the omission of the second letter; whence they say that Antichrist hides his accursed name behind the letter M. By an equally odd and embarrassing coincidence the Council of Moscow—­which, after deposing Nikon, definitively excommunicated the schismatics—­met in 1666.  Here, plainly enough was the fatal number, and when the reform of the calendar attracted the attention of the Old Believers to the point, they considered it a weapon thrust into their hands by their opponents.  The year in question, accordingly, was fixed as the date