It was also in this department of Olonets that I saw another symptom of the moral state of Russia, which was in itself not less curious. I had gone into a cottage to ask my way; it was on the road from Kargopol to Vytiégra. I found in the hut an old man with a long white beard, and of respectable appearance, who, as soon as he began to talk to me, expressed such a hatred of the Tzar, the government, and the priests, that I had no difficulty in recognising in him a _starovier_, or old believer. Finding me to be a man well disposed to share his religious views, he ran on at great length, and finally shed tears over the persecution of the true faith. In order to prove to me that the manner of making the sign of the cross adopted ever since the reformation of Nicon (that is, the ordinary Russian fashion) was wholly heretical, he looked all round the outside of his house, locked the door, and, having taken an oath of secrecy from me, he drew from a hiding-place a little figure in copper, evidently a rough piece of old Byzantine workmanship, which certainly represented our Lord as giving the benediction with the two fore fingers of the right hand extended, as in the manner of the _staroviertsi_. ‘They force us,’ he continued, ‘to go to the _tserkiev_ of the heretics, where the _popes_ oblige us to make the sign of the cross in their own way; but when we come back from the _tserkiev_, we pray to the true God, and we ask Him to forgive the great sin.’ He afterwards drew from the same repository an old paper book, setting forth ‘The History of the Patriarch Joseph, as betrayed and sold by his Brethren.’ The good man proceeded to instruct me in these novelties, and shed some tears of emotion at the virtue of Joseph when tempted by the wife of Potiphar. Scarcely had I reached Vytiégra than I was accosted on the quays by a peasant, who asked me where I was going. ‘I am a _bohomolets_; I replied. ‘I am returning from the monastery of Solovetsk, and I am on my way to “_adore the sacred bones_” at Novgorod and at Kiow.’ ‘Then, I am your man,’ he said. ‘I will take you to St. Petersburg. My boat is small, but I have only my horse to take with me, and you can help me to row ... it is not heavy.’ ‘I know that sort of work very well, and I know that it is not light; how much will you give me?’ We wrangled for a long time over the price, the sly villain having every mind to get the use of my arms, and not to pay for it; but at last we agreed that he should give me dressed victuals for the whole time of our voyage, and, so pleased was he with the bargain he had made, that he took me straight to a pothouse to drink a glass with him.