Russia. From all the ends of
Russia, out of Siberia, from the shores of the Frozen Ocean, from the
extreme south--the Black and Caspian Seas--countless pilgrims had
gathered for the worship of the local sanctities: the abbey's saints,
reposing deep underground in calcareous caverns. Suffice it to say,
that the monastery gave shelter, and food of a sort, to forty thousand
people daily; while those for whom there was not enough room lay, at
night, side by side, like logs, in the extensive yards and lanes of the
abbey.

This was a summer out of some fairy-tale. The population of the city
increased well-nigh fourfold through every sort of newly-come people.
Stone-masons, carpenters, painters, engineers, technicians, foreigners,
agriculturists, brokers, shady business men, river navigators,
unoccupied knaves, tourists, thieves, card sharpers--they all
overflowed the city, and not in a single hotel, the most dirty and
dubious one, was there a vacant room. Insane prices were paid for
quarters. The stock exchange gambled on a grand scale, as never before
or since that summer. Money in millions simply flowed from hands to
hands, and thence to a third pair. In one hour colossal riches were
created, but then many former firms burst, and yesterday's men of
wealth turned into beggars. The commonest of labourers bathed and
warmed themselves in this golden flood. Stevedores, draymen, street
porters, roustabouts, hod carriers and ditch diggers still remember to
this day what money they earned by the day during this mad summer. Any
tramp received no less than four of five roubles a day at the unloading
of barges laden with watermelons. And all this noisy, foreign band,
locoed by the easy money, intoxicated with the sensual beauty of the
ancient, seductive city, enchanted by the delightful warmth of the
southern nights, made drunk by the insidious fragrance of the white
acacias--these hundreds of thousands of insatiable, dissolute beasts in
the image of men, with all their massed will clamoured: "Give us woman!"

In a single month new amusement enterprises--chic Tivolis, CHATEAUX DES
FLEURES, Olympias, Alcazars, etc., with a chorus and an operetta; many
restaurants and beerhouses, with little summer gardens, and common
little taverns--sprang up by the score in the city, in the vicinity of
the building port. On every crossing new "violet-wine" houses were
opened every day--little booths of boards, in each of which, under the
pretext of