We arrived at Havre the next morning at sunrise. The fog was so thick that we could not see two paces ahead of us, and had to signal our approach by shrill sounds of the fog-horn. We took the express train at Havre and arrived the same evening at Paris, where we made a three days’ halt, and then started back to Russia. CHAPTER XL MOSCOW We are home at last! No more horrid hotels, no more travelling! We remained a few days in town and removed to the camp on the Khodinka Field, where a large barrack, consisting of a score of rooms, was assigned to us. I fully enjoyed our camp life. The trumpet exercises and the singing in chorus of the soldiers resounded from early morning until night. One day we made an expedition to New Jerusalem, a large monastery standing in the neighbourhood of Moscow. It is a vast stone building surrounded by a high wall, one mile in circumference. There are forty-two altars in the church, which can hold up about ten thousand people. Every Sunday the Bishop, surrounded by a group of priests dressed in white sacerdotal vestments, performs the Easter mass before the Holy Sepulchre, the exact copy of the Sepulchre in Jerusalem. There is an hospice near the church where pilgrims find shelter and board for three days at the expense of the monastery. Another day we drove to the Cloister of Simeon, where men and women possessed by the devil assemble for the expulsion of the Evil Spirit. When we entered the church we saw about a dozen women stretched flat on the floor before the Altar, in a fit of epilepsy. All at once they jumped up and began to shout: “There he is, there he is, he is entering into me, go away, go away, Demon!” But as soon as the priest called up the women by their names, they grew calm at once and began to drink a spoonful of oil taken from an image-lamp. The rainy season coming on earlier than usual, we returned to town in the beginning of September. Moscow was very gay this winter; many celebrated artists visited our city. The appearance of Maria Van-Zandt, a lovely American Opera singer, was the great attraction of the season. I went to see her in “Lakme,” Delibe’s latest opera, and she gave me exquisite pleasure, being delightful to look upon and to be listened to. She was bewitchingly pretty, just like a dainty bit of Dresden china; her voice was clear as silver and she trilled like a bird.