"Who are these readers and singers?"
"Citizens of Moscow," says the governor; "bankers, farmers, men of every trade and class."
We stand aside until the service ends—a most impressive service, with louder prayers and livelier bendings than you hear and see in Orthodox cathedrals. Then we move about. "What is the service just concluded?" Kruchinin bends his eyes to the ground, and answers, "Only a layman's service; one that can be said without a priest. You noticed, perhaps, that neither the royal gates nor the deacon's doors were opened?"
"Yes; how is that?"
"Our altars have been sealed."
"Your altars sealed?"
"Yes; you shall see. Come round this way," and the governor leads us to the deacon's door. Sealed; certainly sealed; the door being nailed by a piece of leather to the screen; and the leather itself attached by a fresh blotch of official wax. It looks as if the persecution were come again.
"How can such things be done?"
"Our Emperor does not know it," sighs the governor, who seems to be a thoroughly patriotic man; "it is the doing of our clerical police. We ask to have the use of our own altar, in our own church, according to the law. They say we shall have it, on one condition. They will give us our altar, if we accept their priest!"
"And you refuse?"