The fare was excellent. A _zakuska_ of raw salted salmon and the greyest of caviare—such caviare as you cannot procure even at St. Petersburg, for it loses quality with every hour’s journey from the Volga—a baby radish or two and a glass of liqueur—that much for an _apéritif_; then the serious business of luncheon. First little patties of fish, jelly and eggs, chopped very fine, served with water in which the fish had been boiled for a sauce; then a stew of sturgeon, crayfish, olives, cucumbers and red toadstools, quite delicious; and for the last a very fine sterlet _à la Russe_, as dainty a dish as could be laid before a king. Our drink was _lompopo_, a cup made of beer, lemon, spices and a huge toast of black bread, burned almost to charcoal, lying at the bottom of the tankard. A glass of Château Yquem and a cup of the finest yellow tea (caravan tea) to top up with. That was an excellent luncheon, and moreover, honestly Muscovite, quite in the picture. Rested and refreshed, we betook ourselves once more to the Kremlin, to feast our eyes upon all those marvels which have been so well catalogued by Murray and by Baedeker that the mere wanderer may look without feeling compelled to undergo the torments of description. One thing struck me. Of Napoleon there are many memories, none more significant, none more poignant, here or elsewhere than the placing by the Emperor Nicholas of the statue of the beaten Emperor opposite to that of his conqueror, Alexander the First. Gladly would I have spent many days in the old city—days, aye, and weeks—for it has a singular fascination; moreover, I would have given much to have had some dealings with its society, a society, by all accounts, quite different from that of Peter’s capital, which, charming, kindly and hospitable as it is, must always be, from its official position, more or less cosmopolitan. Moscow, on the other hand, is, or was at that time, an atmosphere—absolutely itself, untinged by any modern desecration of conventional foreign manners and customs. I know not whether it be so still, but in the days of which I am writing one felt that one was seeing the Russian _boyarin_ in his own home, just as in Scotland sixty years ago, before the invasion of Americans and stockbrokers, it was a joy to visit a Highland chieftain in his unimproved ancestral castle. There, again, was an atmosphere. But my stay in Moscow—indeed, in Russia—was drawing to a close; the hours of one of the holidays of my life were numbered; but before going back to the workaday world I, too, must make a pilgrimage. Should I take scrip and staff and bottle, sew cockle-shells on my coat—which would be very un-Russian—and start off on my sandalled feet? The train leaving Moscow at 6.30 a.m. would be better; commonplace and modern, but convenient. * * * * *