The peasants have an infinite capacity for pity and remorse, and therefore the more violent their outbreaks of fury the more bitter is their remorse. A peasant has been known to worry himself almost to death, as if he had committed a terrible crime, because he had smoked a cigarette before receiving the Blessed Sacrament. If they can feel acute remorse for such things, much more acute will it be if they set houses on fire or commit similar outrages. If you talk to a peasant for two minutes you will notice that he has a fervent belief in a great, good, and inscrutable Providence. He never accuses man of the calamities to which flesh is heir. When the railway strike was at its height, and we were held up at a small side station, the train attendant repeated all day long that God had sent us a severe trial, which He had. Yesterday I had a talk with a man who had returned from the war; he had been a soldier and a surgeon’s assistant, and had received the Cross of St. George for rescuing a wounded officer under fire. I asked him if he had been wounded. He said, “No, my clothes were not even touched; men all around me were wounded. This was the ordinance of God. God had pity on the orphan’s tears. It was all prearranged thus that I was to come home. So it was to be.” I also had tea with a stonemason yesterday who said to me, “I and my whole family have prayed for you in your absence because these are times of trouble, and we did not know what bitter cup you might not have to drink.” Then he gave me three new-laid eggs with which to eat his very good health. _March 29th._ To-day I went out riding through the leafless woods and I saw one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen, a sight peculiarly characteristic of Russian landscape. We passed a small river that up to now has been frozen, but the thaw has come and with it the floods of spring. The whole valley as seen from the higher slopes of the woods was a sheet of shining water. Beyond it in the distance was a line of dark-brown woods. The water was grey, with gleaming layers in it reflecting the white clouds and the blue sky; and on it the bare trees seemed to float and rise like delicate ghosts, casting clearly defined brown reflections. The whole place had a look of magic and enchantment about it, as if out of the elements of the winter, out of the snow and the ice and the leafless boughs, the spring had devised and evoked a silvery pageant to celebrate its resurrection. MOSCOW, _April 6th_.