This particular Raskolnik, or Old Believer, to whom Tolstoi took me, was a Muscovite merchant of great wealth, living in a superb villa on the outskirts of the city, with a large park about it; the apartments, for size and beauty of decoration, fit for a royal palace--the ceilings covered with beautiful frescos, and the rooms full of statues and pictures by eminent artists, mainly Russian and French. He was a man of some education, possessed a large library, loved to entertain scientific men and to aid scientific effort, and managed to keep on good terms with his more fanatical coreligionists on one side and with the government on the other, so that in emergencies he was an efficient peacemaker between them. We found him a kindly, gentle old man, with long, white hair and beard, and he showed us with evident pleasure the principal statues and pictures, several of the former being by Antokolski, the greatest contemporary Russian sculptor. In the sumptuous dining-room, in which perhaps a hundred persons could sit at table, he drew our attention to some fine pictures of Italian scenes by Smieradsky, and, after passing through the other rooms, took us into a cabinet furnished with the rarest things to be found in the Oriental bazaars. Finally, he conducted us into his private chapel, where, on the iconostas,--the screen which, in accordance with the Greek ritual, stands before the altar,--the sacred images of the Saviour and various saints were represented somewhat differently from those in the Russo-Greek Church, especially in that they extended two fingers instead of three. To this difference I called his attention, and he at once began explaining it. Soon he grew warm, and finally fervid. Said he: "Why do we make the sign of the cross? We do it to commemorate the crucifixion of our blessed Lord. What is commemorated at the crucifixion? The sacrifice of his two natures--the divine and the human. How do we make the sign? We make it with two fingers, thus"--accompanied by a gesture. "What does this represent? It represents what really occurred: the sacrifice of the divine and the human nature of our Lord. How do the Orthodox make it?" Here his voice began to rise. "They make it with three fingers"--and now his indignation burst all bounds, and with a tremendous gesture and almost a scream of wrath he declared: "and every time they make it they crucify afresh every one of the three persons of the holy and undivided Trinity." The old man's voice, so gentle at first, had steadily risen during this catechism of his, in which he propounded the questions and recited the answers, until this last utterance came with an outcry of horror. The beginning of this catechism was given much after the manner of a boy reciting mechanically the pons asinorum, but the end was like the testimony of an ancient prophet against the sins which doomed Israel.