What else was there good? There was jam of many kinds, all good, though unfortunately served neat, and to be eaten in spoonfuls, without any bread, till at last we committed the _prosvolé_ of asking to have it brought back when there was bread on the table. There were also eggs in abundance, just imported to be ready for Easter, and therefore fresh, and served _au plat_. Nor had we anywhere to make the complaint so pathetic in Mr. Riley’s book, that the oil or butter used in cooking was rancid. This is the advantage of going in spring, or rather one of the many advantages, that both oil and butter (the latter is of course rare) were quite unobjectionable. When I say that butter was rare and eggs imported, I assume that the reader knows of the singularity of Athos, which consists in the absence of the greatest feature of human life—woman, and all inferior imitations of her in the animal world. Not a cow, not a goat, not a hen, not a cat, of that sex! And this for centuries! Three thousand monks, kept up by importation, three thousand laborers or servants, imported likewise, but no home production of animals—that is considered odious and impious. And when, in this remote nook of extreme conservatism, this one refuge from the snares and wiles of Eve, a Russian monk seriously proposed to us the propriety of admitting the other sex, we felt a shock as of an earthquake, and began to understand the current feeling that the Russians were pushing their influence at Athos, in order to transform the Holy Mountain into a den of political thieves. Nothing is more curious than to study the effects, upon a large society, of the total exclusion of the female sex. It is commonly thought that men by themselves must grow rude and savage; that it is to women we owe all the graces and refinements of social intercourse. Nothing can be further from the truth. I venture to say that in all the world there is not so perfectly polite and orderly a society as that of Athos. As regards hospitality and gracious manners, the monks and their servants put to shame the most polished Western people. Disorder, tumult, confusion, seem impossible in this land of peace. If they have differences, and squabble about rights of property, these things are referred to law courts, and determined by argument of advocates, not by disputing and high words among the claimants. While life and property is still unsafe on the mainland, and on the sister peninsulas of Cassandra and Longos, Athos has been for centuries as secure as any county in England. So far, then, all the evidence is in favor of the restriction. Many of the monks, being carried to the peninsula in early youth, have completely forgotten what a woman is like, except for the brown smoky pictures of the _Panagia_ with her infant in all the churches, which the strict iconography of the orthodox Church has made as unlovely and non-human as it is possible for a picture to be. So far, so well.