But the more curious feature of the scene was to follow. Seraphim, the old prelate, invited the emperor to his cell, where, when they were alone, he said, “I know your Majesty feels a particular interest in the _Schimnik_.” (These are monks who live in the interior of the convents in the deepest solitude, following strictly all the austerities prescribed to their order, and are venerated as saints.) “We for some time have had a Schimnik within the walls of the Holy Lavra. Would it be the pleasure of your majesty that he should be summoned?”—“Be it so,” was the reply, and a venerable man, with an emaciated face and figure, entered. Alexander received his blessing, and the monk asked him to visit his cell. Black cloth covered the floor, the walls were painted black, a colossal crucifix occupied a considerable portion of the cell. Benches painted black were ranged around, and the only light was given by the glimmer of a lamp, which burned night and day before the pictures of saints! When the emperor entered, the monk prostrated himself before the crucifix, and said, “Let us pray.” The three then knelt and engaged in silent prayer. The emperor whispered to the bishop, “Is this his only cell? where is his bed?” The answer was, “He sleeps upon this floor, stretched before the crucifix.”—“No, sire,” said the monk, “I have the same bed with every other man; approach, and you shall see.” He then led the emperor into a small recess, screened off from the cell, where, placed upon a table, was a black coffin, half open, containing a shroud, and surrounded by tapers. “Here is _my_ bed,” said the monk, “a bed common to man; there, sire, we shall all rest in our last long sleep.” The emperor gazed upon the coffin, and the monk gave him an exhortation on the crimes of the people, which, he said, had been restrained by the pestilence, and the war of 1812, but when those two plagues had passed by, had grown worse than ever. But we must abridge this pious pantomime, which seems evidently to have been _got up_ for the occasion, and which would have been enough to dispirit any one who had left his bed at four in the morning in the chill of a Russian September. The emperor at length left the convent, evidently dejected and depressed by this sort of theatrical anticipation of death and burial, and drove off with his eyes filled with tears. On his journey he was unattended. He took with him but two aides-de-camp, and his physician, Sir James Wylie, a clever Scotsman, who had been thirty years in the imperial service. The journey was rapid, and without accident, but his mind was still full of omens. A comet had appeared. “It presages misfortune,” said the emperor; “but the will of Heaven be done.”