not remember; but it is much superior to the sherbet of Constantinople.  The numerous servants are not given water, but a light, nourishing, and agreeable fluid, which may be purchased very cheaply.  They all hold St. Nicholas in the greatest reverence, only praying to God through the mediation of this saint, whose picture is always suspended in the principal room of the house.  A person coming in makes first a bow to the image and then a bow to the master, and if perchance the image is absent, the Russian, after gazing all round, stands confused and motionless, not knowing what to do.  As a general rule the Muscovites are the most superstitious Christians in the world.  Their liturgy is in Greek, of which the people understand nothing, and the clergy, themselves extremely ignorant, gladly leave them completely in the dark on all matters connected with religion.  I could never make them understand that the only reason for the Roman Christians making the sign of the Cross from left to right, while the Greeks make it from right to left, is that we say ‘spiritus sancti’, while they say ‘agion pneuma’.

“If you said pneuma agion,” I used to say, “then you would cross yourself like us, and if we said sancti spiritus we should cross ourselves like you.”

“The adjective,” replied my interlocutor, “should always precede the substantive, for we should never utter the name of God without first giving Him some honourable epithet.”

Such are nearly all the differences which divide the two churches, without reckoning the numerous idle tales which they have as well as ourselves, and which are by no means the least cherished articles of their faith.

We returned to St. Petersburg by the way we had come, but Zaira would have liked me never to leave Moscow.  She had become so much in love with me by force of constant association that I could not think without a pang of the moment of separation.  The day after our arrival in the capital I took her to her home, where she shewed her father all the little presents I had given her, and told him of the honour she had received as my daughter, which made the good man laugh heartily.

The first piece of news I heard was that a ukase had been issued, ordering the erection of a temple dedicated to God in the Moscoi opposite to the house where I resided.  The empress had entrusted Rinaldi, the architect, with the erection.  He asked her what emblem he should put above the portal, and she replied,—­

“No emblem at all, only the name of God in large letters.”

“I will put a triangle.”

“No triangle at all; but only the name of God in whatever language you like, and nothing more.”