ich were swarming with the devout of both sexes,
although it was not the busiest season for shrine-visiting. That comes
in the spring, before the harvest, at all monasteries, and, in this
particular monastery, on the feast of the Assumption, August 15 (Russian
style), 27 (European style). But there was a sufficient contingent of
the annual one million pilgrims present to give us a very fair idea of
the reverence in which this, the chief of all Russian monasteries, is
held, and of the throngs which it attracts. But, as usual in Russia,
sight alone convinced us of their existence; they were chatting quietly,
sitting and lying about with enviable calmness, or eating the sour black
bread and boiled buckwheat groats provided by the monastery. I talked
with several of them, and found them quite unconscious that they were
not comfortably, even luxuriously, housed and fed.

The inn for travelers of means was a large, plain, airy building, with
no lodgers, apparently. The monks seemed frightened at the sight of us.
That was a novelty. But they escorted us over the house in procession.
We looked at a very clean, very plain room, containing four beds. It
appeared, from their explanations, that pilgrims have gregarious tastes,
and that this was their nearest approach to a single room. I inquired
the price. "According to your zeal," was the reply. How much more
effective than "What you please" in luring the silver from lukewarm
pockets! The good monks never found out how warm our zeal was, after
all, for the reason that their table was never furnished with anything
but fish and "fasting food," they said, though there was no fast in
progress. The reason why, I could not discover; but we knew our own
minds thoroughly on the subject of "fasting food," from mushroom soup,
fish fried in sunflower oil, and coffee without milk to that most
insipid of dessert dishes, _kisel_, made of potato flour, sweetened, and
slightly soured with fruit juice. They told us that we might have meat
sent out from town, if we wished; but as the town lay several versts
distant, that did not seem a very practical way of coquetting with the
Evil One under their roof. Accordingly, we withdrew; to their relief, I
am sure. As we had already lived in a monastery inn, it had not occurred
to us that there could be any impropriety in doing so, but that must
have been the cause of their looks of alarm. I believe that one can
remain for a fortnight at this inn without pay