the peasants, persuaded his parishioners, during an epidemic of cholera, that "the disease was cast into the river" by the local doctor (who was a Socialist), teacher, and veterinary surgeon, in order to destroy the village population. He did this because these men protested against the demoralising conduct of the pope, who usually celebrated Mass in a state of complete intoxication, and preached impossible sermons. A crowd of raving peasants dragged them out from their homes and literally tore them to pieces.
Not much better were the Metropolitans of Petersburg and Kiev, and the higher Court clergy, if for their personal comfort and earthly honours they felt happy in the presence of the "sacred" scoundrel, Rasputin, or agreed humbly with the opinions of the sinister Pobedonoscev, and the charlatan Prince Putiatin, when these two worthies invented new saints, arranged miracles on their graves, and intended even to consecrate as a saint during her lifetime the widow of the Grand Duke Sergius—the Empress's sister Elisabeth—who became the prioress of a Moscow convent.
After the Bolshevik revolution, Elisabeth, together with other nuns, was murdered, and her corpse disappeared. Some years afterwards, in 1921, when I was in Japan, I learned that a monk had concealed the coffin containing her body, transported it secretly across Russia and Siberia to Japan, from here to Jerusalem, where, it is alleged, the coffin was to be buried.
The most honourable and remunerative work of the
