CHAPTER XL
MOSCOW
We are home at last! No more horrid hotels, no more travelling! We remained a few days in town and removed to the camp on the Khodinka Field, where a large barrack, consisting of a score of rooms, was assigned to us. I fully enjoyed our camp life. The trumpet exercises and the singing in chorus of the soldiers resounded from early morning until night.
One day we made an expedition to New Jerusalem, a large monastery standing in the neighbourhood of Moscow. It is a vast stone building surrounded by a high wall, one mile in circumference. There are forty-two altars in the church, which can hold up about ten thousand people. Every Sunday the Bishop, surrounded by a group of priests dressed in white sacerdotal vestments, performs the Easter mass before the Holy Sepulchre, the exact copy of the Sepulchre in Jerusalem. There is an hospice near the church where pilgrims find shelter and board for three days at the expense of the monastery.
Another day we drove to the Cloister of Simeon, where men and women possessed by the devil assemble for the expulsion of the Evil Spirit. When we entered the church we saw about a dozen women stretched flat on the floor before the Altar, in a fit of epilepsy. All at once they jumped up and began to shout: “There he is, there he is, he is entering into me, go away, go away, Demon!” But as soon as the priest called up the women by their names, they grew calm at once and began to drink a spoonful of oil taken from an image-lamp.
The rainy season coming on earlier than usual, we returned to town in the beginning of September. Moscow was very gay this winter; many celebrated artists visited our city. The appearance of Maria Van-Zandt, a lovely American Opera singer, was the great attraction of the season. I went to see her in “Lakme,” Delibe’s latest opera, and she gave me exquisite pleasure, being delightful to look upon and to be listened to. She was bewitchingly pretty, just like a dainty bit of Dresden china; her voice was clear as silver and she trilled like a bird.
Prince Dolgorouki, the governor-general of Moscow, arranged theatricals in his palace, in the presence of the Emperor and Empress, who visited in January our old capital. After a French one act comedy, came a tableau representing a banquet of Russian boyards in the ninth century; the Prince invited me to take part in the tableau. My costume, pink and gold, was very pretty; Sylvain the coiffeur of the Imperial Theatres, came to arrange my hair and make me up. At nine o’clock I set off to the Prince’s Palace. The performers in the tableau had to wait till midnight in a close dressing-room before appearing. The temperature in our little dungeon became unbearable; my head-gear was awfully heavy and I was beside myself from heat and fatigue. Our tableau was a great success, and the curtain fell amidst a thunder of applause. When the performance was over, we came into the reception rooms, where we were presented to the Empress. We had supper afterwards, served on small separate tables.
In the first fine days of May we removed to the camp, where we remained until September, when my husband was to go to Brest, to take part in the grand manœuvres. It was settled that I was to join him in a few days, in order to proceed further on together to Biarritz, to take sea-baths. During Sergy’s absence a telegram was received addressed to “General Lieutenant Doukhovskoi,” and I hastened to be the first to congratulate my husband, by wire, on his new promotion.