credibility, however, is none of the best; he has been convicted over and over again of forcing the note in his diatribes against what he calls “retrogression into idolatry.”  There was certainly a good deal of unrest in the country during the period of the ex-monk’s ascendency; no less than 13,783 persons had been banished to Siberia, and 3,756 executed at his orders.  Yet nothing, it seemed, could shatter his position when, with appalling suddenness, a thunderbolt descended.  Nobody knows to this day what took place.  It was something Russian; some scandal in the Highest Spheres which may see the light of day, centuries hence, when the Imperial Archives are disclosed as musty court history to the eyes of students curious in such matters.  At this crisis, when 44,323 persons, mostly liberals, were awaiting trial in the prisons of the Capital, the ex-monk would doubtless have been quietly removed after the fashion of court favourites, not by his adherents, now numbering many hundred thousands, threatened a revolution.  A secret compromise was effected.  He was banished, with every outward mark of disgrace, to a monastery in the remote and inhospitable region of Viatka, there to meditate upon the instability of human affairs.  The illumined period was drawing nigh.  The Capital, on the whole, was glad to see the last of him—­particuarly the prisoners awaiting trial.

The diet and discipline nearly killed him at first.  He was consoled by knowing that his fame had spread far and wide.  The Court being unwilling to publish the true facts of his disgrace, he was regarded as a martyr, a victim of political intrigue, an injured saint.  Disciples multiplied.  The golden book was filled with priceless sayings—­wise and salutary maxims which echoed from end to end of the country.  The New Jerusalem took on a definite shape; the nucleus of the movement, the initiated among his followers, were retained as the “Sacred 63”; he called them his apostles and himself their Messiah, which some people thought rather presumptuous of him.  His reputation for sanctity became such that he was once more a power to be reckoned with; the Court, in fact, was on the verge of receiving him into favour again, when the Second Revelation was announced.  It ran to this effect:  Flesh and blood of warm-blooded beasts is Abomination to the Little White Cows.  Asked how he contrived to formulate so novel and tremendous a proposition, he answered that it just came to him.  His followers—­there were about three million of them now—­instantly refused to touch the Unclean Thing, and all would have gone well but for the fact that the Army was tinctured with the New Faith, and that the Grand Dukes had recently become involved in extensive and lucrative contracts for supplying the troops with mean.  The soldiery refusing to eat either beef or mutton or pork, percentages declined.  These leaders took up a firm patriotic attitude.  The health and morale of the entire