“Petrograd is behaving very badly, but it matters little. She is really of small consequence. Some day I may come to the limit of my patience, and then-- Well, we shall see!” Poor Mother Moscow! How little she knew of that which was seething within her own ancient walls. Old Ivan Valiki, high up in the heavens, faithfully thundered the hours above the citadel of church and state, and the music of the lesser bells, sometimes a mad, barbaric revel, sometimes a faint, wistful obbligato, accompanied him. On the wide paths of the summer gardens the blind beggars chanted their prayers, as usual. Old Marya sat in the shade of the Sokolniki, crossing herself, and the little one beside her rattled a tin can for kopecks with one hand and made mounds in the sand with the other. In the Thieves’ Market, on Sunday mornings, the Muscovites bartered for boots and baby-carriages, and women from the country sold pickled cucumbers and home-made sausage. Under the trellised arbors in the parks, family parties gathered around the brass samovars, and drank tea in the Moscow fashion, with a bit of sugar between their teeth. Their laughter and their song lacked neither merriment nor music, and Mother Moscow was satisfied with both. Before the sacred shrine on the Iberian Gate a tiny lamp burned brightly, and an occasional soldier, strolling by, stopped to cross himself, and slowly to decipher the inscription that told how, by special provision of the Almighty, the ikon had been preserved from destruction throughout the raid of Napoleon. Inside the Kremlin the conquered cannons of the Frenchmen, _Liberté, Egalité, and Fraternité_ still mottoed on their iron sides, jostled the newly packed boxes of ammunition awaiting shipment to the front. From Sparrow Hills at sunset the bulbous domes of star-spangled green and blue, the fluted golden cupolas, and gleaming crosses shone as they must have done on that day, so long ago, when Napoleon looked down upon the mystic city and demanded that the keys be brought. To Mother Moscow all was as it had been--all was well. Mother Moscow’s eyes were full of the past, dimmed to the present, and blind to the future. She could not dream of that scarred city soon to lie beneath the snows of winter. As I wandered around the Kremlin, and its mystery and barbaric beauty laid a spell upon me, battle and bloodshed and the wild ways of revolution seemed as remote as the days of the Boyars. But there were other hours--hours outside the Kremlin--when I saw a different picture and felt another impulse stirring beneath the ancient city’s calm.