Poles. Peter the Great imprisoned his sister Sophia within its walls, and executed many of the streltsi before her windows that their agony might awe her bold spirit. Some years after he made it a foundling hospital, and 250 infants were housed there before the Hospitalrie Dom was built; it was abolished in 1725. Napoleon visited it in 1812 and at first it suffered little; the King of Naples ordering divine service to be celebrated daily as usual, but later Davoust was billeted there, and after the disaster the French before quitting it did their utmost to blow up the belfry, the cathedral and stores. The nuns at considerable risk interrupted the fired train and, by their intrepidity and subsequent perseverance in combating the fire, saved the convent from destruction. Russian monasteries and convents are not rigorously closed to the public like those of the Roman church. Generally from sunrise to sunset the great gates stand open that all may enter who desire to do so; and the nuns, so far from being secluded from the world, are rather encouraged to go out into it, both on errands of charity and, at need, to supplement by their own handicraft a too scanty income. For the most part the cells are shared in common by three inmates who unite their daily rations of tea, salt, and black-bread, and whilst the infirm sisters busy themselves in copying ikons or producing lace, needle-work and the like, the more active go into the town to dispose of the produce. In convents as elsewhere the Russian rule holds good that one's room is inviolate: strictly private if the inmates wish, yet open to whomsoever it is their pleasure to entertain. CHAPTER XIII _Moscow of the English_ "O, how glad was I that the Tsar took notice of those few Englishmen."--HORSEY.