The era of the Russians began with the creation of the world; they reckoned up 7,207 years at the beginning of the last century, without being able to give any reason why they did so. The first day of the year corresponded to our 13th of September. The reason they gave for this was that it was probable that God created the world in autumn, in a season when the fruits of the earth are in full maturity! Thus the only traces of knowledge found among them were founded on gross mistakes; not one of them suspected that autumn in Russia might be spring in another country in the antipodes. Not long before, the people were for burning the secretary of the Persian ambassador, because he had foretold an eclipse of the sun. They did not even know the use of figures, but in all their calculations made use of little beads strung on wire; and this was their method of reckoning in all their counting-houses, and even in the treasury of the Czar. Their religion was, and still is, that of the Greek Church, but intermingled with superstitions, to which they firmly adhered in proportion to their absurdity and their exacting nature. Few Russians dare eat a pigeon, because the Holy Ghost is portrayed in form of a dove. They regularly kept four Lents a year, and during that time might eat neither eggs nor milk. God and St. Nicholas were the objects of their worship, and next to them the Czar and the Patriarch. The authority of the latter was as boundless as the people’s ignorance. He had power of life and death, and inflicted the cruelest punishments, from which there was no appeal. Twice a year he rode in solemn procession, ceremoniously attended by all the clergy; and the people prostrated themselves in the streets before him, like the Tartars before their Grand Lama. They practised confession, but only in the case of the greatest crimes; and then absolution was held necessary, but not repentance; they believed themselves purified in God’s sight as soon as they received the priest’s benediction. Thus they passed without remorse straight from confession to theft or murder; so that a practice which, in the case of other Christians, acts as a deterrent, was, in their case, only an incentive to crime. They scrupled to drink milk on a fast-day, but on festivals fathers of families, priests, matrons and maids got inebriated with brandy. As in other countries they had religious differences among themselves, but the most important cause of dispute was whether laymen should make the sign of the cross with two fingers or with three, and a certain Jacob Nursoff had, during a previous reign, raised a rebellion on this question.