In the course of a week I saw all the sights of Moscow—­the manufacturers, the churches, the remains of the old days, the museums, the libraries, (of no interest to my mind), not forgetting the famous bell.  I noticed that their bells are not allowed to swing like ours, but are motionless, being rung by a rope attached to the clapper.

I thought the Moscow women more handsome than those of St. Petersburg, and I attribute this to the great superiority of the air.  They are gentle and accessible by nature; and to obtain the favour of a kiss on the lips, one need only make a show of kissing their hands.

There was good fare in plenty, but no delicacy in its composition or arrangement.  Their table is always open to friends and acquaintances, and a friend may bring to five or six persons to dinner, and even at the end of the meals you will never hear a Russian say, “We have had dinner; you have come too late.”  Their souls are not black enough for them to pronounce such words as this.  Notice is given to the cook, and the dinner begins over again.  They have a delicious drink, the name of which I do 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.