“Then it does not interest me in the least, and if you would label it to that effect, no one would care to disturb it,” I said.

Very soon afterwards we were joined by one of the powerful officials of the Kremlin.  He had made an appointment to show us about, but was detained for a few moments, and we had come on alone and were waiting for him.  As we went about with him the attendants hovered respectfully in the rear, evidently much impressed with the friendly, unofficial tone of the conversation.  When we had made the round with much deliberation, we excused our official friend to his duties, saying that we wished to take another look at several objects.

No sooner was he gone than the guardian of the autograph album pounced upon us again, and invited us to add our “illustrious” names to the list.  I refused; he entreated and argued.  It ended in his fairly dragging us to the table and standing guard over us while we signed the sacred book.  I did not condescend to examine the book, though I should have been permitted then; but—­I know which three royal princes immediately preceded us.

As I am very much attached to the Russian Church, anything connected with it always interested me deeply.  One of the prominent features of Moscow is the number of monasteries and convents.  The Russian idea of monastic life is prayer and contemplation, not activity in good works.  The ideal of devout secular life is much the same.  To meet the wants in that direction of people who do not care to join the community, many of the convents have small houses within their inclosures, which they let out to applicants, of whom there is always an abundance.  The occupants of these houses are under no restrictions whatever, except as to observing the hours of entry and exit fixed by the opening and closing of the convent gates; but, naturally, it is rather expected of them that they will attend more church services than the busy people of “the world.”  The sight of these little houses always oppressed me with a sense of my inferiority in the matter of devoutness.  I could not imagine myself living in one of them, until I came across a group of their occupants engaged in discussing some racy gossip with the nuns on one of the doorsteps.  Gossip is not my besetting weakness, but I felt relieved.  Convents are not aristocratic institutions in Russia as they are in Roman Catholic countries, and very few ladies by birth and education enter them.  Those who do are apt to rise to the post of abbess, influential connections not being superfluous in any calling in Russia any more than in other countries.