The city has remained Saracen. Vaguely I notice that we pass an Oriental bazaar, where the stalls are occupied by merchants in turbans; in the shadow of the roofed streets there slowly passes a string of enormous camels, that obliges us to enter one of the doors. Now, we must get out of the way for a peculiar and long defile of Russian women, all sexagenarians at least, who walk rapidly leaning on walking-sticks; old faded dresses, old parasols, old _touloupes_ of fur, with faces of fatigue and suffering framed in black handkerchiefs; a black and sorrowful _ensemble_ in the midst of this Orient of colour. They walk rapidly with a movement at once excited and exhausted, all hustling along without seeing anything, like somnambulists, with anæstheticized eyes wide open in a celestial dream. And hundreds of moujiks, having the same look of ecstasy follow them; all of them old, sordid, with long grey beards and long grey hair escaping from their felt hats; on their breasts many medals, indicating that they are old soldiers. Having entered the holy city yesterday, they are returning from their first visit to that sacred spot where I am going in my turn; poor pilgrims who come here by the thousand, on foot, sleeping out of doors in the rain or the snow, suffering with hunger and dying on the way. In proportion as you approach, the Oriental objects in the stalls give place to objects of an obscure Christian piety: thousands of chaplets, crosses, religious lamps, and images or icons. And the crowd is denser, and other pilgrims, old moujiks and old matouchkas plant themselves to buy cheap little wooden rosaries and cheap little crucifixes for two sous, which they will carry from here as relics to be considered as sacred for ever. Finally, in an old and defaced wall resembling a rock, there opens a rude door, very low and narrow, and, by a series of descending steps, you arrive before a place jutting out from the high sombre walls, in front of the basilica of the Holy Sepulchre. At this spot, it is customary to take off your hat, the very moment the Holy Sepulchre appears; every one passes bareheaded even if he is only going by on his way about Jerusalem. It is thronged with poor people who beg by singing; pilgrims who pray; sellers of crosses and chaplets who have their little booths on the ground upon the old and venerable flag-stones. Upon the pavement and among the steps there rise the still uprooted socles of columns that formally supported the basilicas, and that were razed, like those of St. Stephen, from far back and doubtful periods; everything is a collection of rubbish in this city which has been subjected to twenty sieges and which every kind of fanaticism has sacked.