l soon be swallowed up,
with all its inhabitants, by a tremendous inundation."

When word of this seeming miracle and of the consternation which it had
produced was brought to the czar, he hastened with his usual impetuosity
to the spot, bent on exposing the dangerous fraud which his enemies were
perpetrating. He found the weeping image surrounded by a multitude of
superstitious citizens, who gazed with open-eyed wonder and reverence on
the miraculous feat.

Their horror was intense when Peter boldly approached and examined the
image. Petrified with terror, they looked to see him stricken dead by a
bolt from heaven. But their feelings changed when the czar, breaking
open the head of the image, explained to them the ingenious trick which
the priests had devised. The head was found to contain a reservoir of
congealed oil, which, as it was melted by the heat of lighted tapers
beneath, flowed out drop by drop through artfully provided holes, and
ran from the eyes like tears. On seeing this the dismay of the people
turned to anger against the priests, and the building of the city went
on.

The court fool was an institution born in barbarism, though it survived
long into the age of civilization, having its latest survival in Russia,
the last European state to emerge from barbarism. In the days of Peter
the Great the fool was a fixed institution in Russia, though this
element of court life had long vanished from Western Europe. In truth,
the buffoon flourished in Russia like a green bay-tree. Peter was never
satisfied with less than a dozen of these fun-making worthies, and a
private family which could not afford at least one hired fool was
thought to be in very straitened circumstances.

In the reign of the empress Anne the number of court buffoons was
reduced to six, but three of the six were men of the highest birth. They
had been degraded to this office for some fault, and if they refused to
perform such fooleries as the queen and her courtiers desired they were
whipped with rods.

Among those who suffered this indignity was no less a grandee than
Prince Galitzin. He had changed his religion, and for this offence he
was made court page, though he was over forty years of age, and buffoon,
though his son was a lieutenant in the army, and his family one of the
first in the realm. His name is here given in particular as he was made
the subject of a cruel jest, which could have been perpetrated nowhere
but in the Russian