Scarcely had I reached Vytiégra than I was accosted on the quays by a peasant, who asked me where I was going.
‘I am a bohomolets; I replied. ‘I am returning from the monastery of Solovetsk, and I am on my way to “adore the sacred bones” at Novgorod and at Kiow.’
‘Then, I am your man,’ he said. ‘I will take you to St. Petersburg. My boat is small, but I have only my horse to take with me, and you can help me to row ... it is not heavy.’
‘I know that sort of work very well, and I know that it is not light; how much will you give me?’
We wrangled for a long time over the price, the sly villain having every mind to get the use of my arms, and not to pay for it; but at last we agreed that he should give me dressed victuals for the whole time of our voyage, and, so pleased was he with the bargain he had made, that he took me straight to a pothouse to drink a glass with him.
The project of going to St. Petersburg, into the very capital of Nicholas, was sufficiently strange, and, most certainly, it was not one which I had contemplated when I made sundry and manifold plans of evasion at Ekaterinski-Zavod; but, since leaving Archangel, I had been wandering pretty much on chance, with no other object than always to get near some sea or frontier, no matter which, and always to avoid remaining more than a few hours in any place where they were likely to ask me for my papers. Now the boat in question was to leave that very day; and there was something, even in the very strangeness of the enterprise, which seemed reassuring. Any capital appeared to me less dangerous than a small provincial town, and the event showed that I was not wrong in this calculation.
By evening the boat was slipped from her moorings, and the navigation began, which, by Vytiégra, the lake of Onega, the river Svir, the lake of Ladoga, and the Néva, was to conduct me to the very walls of St. Petersburg. We rowed day and night, or floated past innumerable canoes, boats and ships, with which the lakes and rivers were literally covered; but, above all, past rafts of wood, also intended to supply the wants of the metropolis, and which, in some places, completely, obstructed the passage. We made a party of three—myself, the master, and his son, a stout young man, who, whenever we neared the banks, would get the horse out and fasten him to the boat, so as to help to draw it along. In spite of the smallness of the boat, its owner could not prevail on himself to refuse an occasional passenger, whom he would take up or put down at spots agreed upon; for how could he be expected to resist turning a penny from time to time? But these freights caused me the greatest distress, for the passengers could not be said to be members of any Temperance league, and I had to watch over the tipsiest ones, and once had even to jump into the water to pull out a poor wretch who had rolled overboard. As I do not wish to make myself appear better than I am, I must state here that I had a strong personal interest in the safety of these troublesome guests; for, had any disaster really occurred, we should have been obliged to stop, and report ourselves at the nearest police station, when the negotiation thereupon ensuing would, to a certainty, have been opened by a request for our papers; thus my charity was hardly of a very evangelical sort.
As we approached by degrees the end of our voyage, I became more absorbed in thought, and, above all, more anxious to learn something of the usages of St. Petersburg. Happily, we picked up at one of the stations several women, who, after paying visits to their relations, were returning to the capital, where they seemed to have lived for many years as servants and housemaids. My condition as a bohomolets obliged me to preach to them a degree of morality in conduct, which seemed only to excite their risibility. However, I did not preach entirely in vain, especially when I took under my protection an old woman, of whom these chambermaids had made a butt in a way that was really disgusting. She was an old peasant of Korélia, on her way to St. Petersburg, which she had never seen before, to visit a daughter, who plied her trade as a laundress in the city. She was immensely grateful to me for my protection, called me her ‘batiouchka’ (little father), and soon offered me an assistance which can be called nothing less than providential.
After encountering a violent storm, during which our women screamed horribly, and after leaving behind us Nova-Ladoga and Schlusselbourg, where Alexis Orlov strangled the unhappy Peter III., by the orders of Catherine the Great, we reached the quays of the capital, at about eight o’clock in the morning, and drew towards the shore opposite the Perspective Nevski. The servant girls jumped gaily from the boat, giving me a rendezvous to preach to them, and I was preparing to step on shore, feeling, I must confess, much at a loss what to do with myself, when the poor Korélian woman came up to me, and said, ‘Just stay with me; I have sent to tell my daughter, and she will soon be down to fetch me, and will show you where you can get a cheap lodging.’ It may be imagined with what eagerness I embraced her proposition; and oh, ineffable joy! while we waited a long time in the boat, no one came to ask for our papers. At last the laundress appeared; she kissed her mother affectionately, and took up her trunk, which she and I then carried between us, on a stick across our shoulders. Thus we set off, preceded by the good old soul herself, who carried on her head the earthen jar which had contained her food. And in this strange trim I entered the city of the Tzar!
We had to go through an endless number of streets, bridges, and lanes before we reached the place where the laundress lived; it was in a lodging-house of one story in height (dom postoïaly), where the poorest of the working-classes dwell, and where they came at night to sleep on a flock-bed (if they can get it), or if not, to lie, as the Russian phrase is, ‘on the floor, with their fists for a pillow.’ The swelled faces and the red noses of some who frequented this miserable abode, showed that many shapes of sin and distress harboured there. There were, however, regular lodgers, who let out to passengers rooms that they had furnished on this speculation, and my laundress was one of these. Unfortunately, her room was already occupied; but she recommended me to a neighbour, and a bargain was soon made at the rate of eight kopeks a-day. In order to avoid the critical moment, I asked my landlady immediately to show me the way to the Prefecture of Police, where passports were given and examined.