rted from him, to whom we were indebted for such
interesting guidance and explanations.

"I am _otetz kaznatchei_," he replied, with a smile, as he not only
offered his hand, but grasped mine and shook it, with an expression of
his cordial good wishes, instead of bestowing upon me a mechanical cross
in the air, and permitting me to kiss his plump little fingers in
return, as he would undoubtedly have done had I been a Russian. I
understood the respect paid, and our reflected importance, when I
discovered that the "Father Treasurer" occupies the highest rank next to
the permanent head of the monastery officially, and the most important
post of all practically.

Shortly after, the question fever having attacked me again, I accosted
another monk, equal in stateliness of aspect to the Father Treasurer. He
informed me that from seven hundred to one thousand persons lived in the
monastery. Not all of them were monks, some being only lay brethren.
Each monk, however, had his own apartments, with a little garden
attached, and the beautiful rugs which I had seen formed part of the
furnishings of their cells. A man cannot enter the monastery without
money, but fifty rubles (about twenty-five dollars) are sufficient to
gain him admittance. Some men leave the monastery after a brief trial,
without receiving the habit. "In such a throng one comes to know many
faces," he said, "but not all persons."

I inquired whether it were not a monotonous, tiresome life.

"It seems so to you!" he replied, when he had recovered from his
amazement; and when I mentioned the liturgy which is peculiar to the
monastery cathedral, and famed throughout Russia as "the Kieff-Catacombs
singing," all he found to say was, "It is very long."

He took advantage of the chance presented by a trip to his cell to get
us some water, to remove his tall _klobuk_. He must have read in our
glances admiration of his beauty mingled with a doubt as to whether it
were not partly due to this becoming cowl and veil, and determined to
convince us that it was nature, not adventitious circumstances, in his
case. I think he must have been content with the expression of our
faces, as he showed us the way to the most ancient of all the churches
in Kieff,--in Russia, in fact,--built by Prince-Saint Vladimir
immediately after his return from the crusade in search of baptism.

The church door was locked. The wife of the deacon in charge was
paddling about barefooted, in pursuit