214 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 



exported ; whereupon Ivan Ivanovitsch spoke badly of the 

 Czar. I. P. 



Another paper seemed to be a description of our 

 own case, since it spoke of a " Russian and a foreigner 

 traveling together ;" but before anything further could 

 be secured we were interrupted. Under the circum- 

 stances, expecting some one to appear on the scene at 

 any moment, it was impossible to copy the reports 

 verbatim, so that the names in them will not be identi- 

 cal ; but for all practical purposes these are authentic 

 copies. 



Comment on them is almost superfluous. Two 

 hours later we were once more riding over the free 

 steppe, and it seemed to me that our horses were 

 carrying us away from purgatory. 



All along the route from Moscow I had been im- 

 pressed by the loyalty of the moujiks to the Czar. The 

 village priests, though a thoroughly drunken and dis- 

 solute set, I had regarded chiefly as " small rogues," 

 bent on making as much as they could out of the igno- 

 rance and credulity of the peasants, and cutting, on 

 the whole, a comical rather than a harshly disreputable 

 figure in the country. To come suddenly and unex- 

 pectedly on one seriously plotting with the secret 

 police, inviting one of them to come to his house and 

 pose as a relative of his wife on a visit, in order to play 

 the spy on the parishioner who was coming to have a 

 talk with him about religion, was like stumbling on a 

 ghastly corpse. 



As for the wretched moujiks, their fatal delusion, 

 based on their impenetrable ignorance, can only be 

 called pitiable. 



