had it three times repeated, it growing more gross and
shameless on each successive occasion; and during the last conclave
Peter indulged in such excesses that his death was hastened by their
effects.

As for the national church of Russia, Peter treated it with contemptuous
indifference. The office of patriarch becoming vacant, he left it
unfilled for twenty-one years, and finally, on being implored by a
delegation from the clergy to appoint a patriarch, he started up in a
furious passion, struck his breast with his fist and the table with his
cutlass, and roared out, "Here, here is your patriarch!" He then stamped
angrily from the room, leaving the prelates in a state of utter dismay.

Soon after he took occasion to make the church the subject of a second
coarse jest. Another buffoon of the court, Buturlin by name, was
appointed Kniaz Papa, and a marriage arranged between him and the widow
of Sotof, his predecessor. The bridegroom was eighty-four years of age,
the bride nearly as old. Some decrepit old men were chosen to play the
part of bridesmaids, four stutterers invited the wedding guests, while
four of the most corpulent fellows who could be found attended the
procession as running footmen. A sledge drawn by bears held the
orchestra, their music being accompanied with roars from the animals,
which were goaded with iron spikes. The nuptial benediction was given in
the cathedral by a blind and deaf priest, who wore huge spectacles. The
marriage, the wedding feast, and the remaining ceremonies were all
conducted in the same spirit of broad burlesque, in which one of the
sacred ceremonies of the Russian Church was grossly paraphrased.

Peter did not confine himself to coarse jests in his efforts to
discredit the clergy. He took every occasion to unmask the trickery of
the priests. Petersburg, the new city he was building, was an object of
abhorrence to these superstitious worthies, who denounced it as one of
the gates of hell, prophesying that it would be overthrown by the wrath
of heaven, and fixing the date on which this was to occur. So great was
the fear inspired by their prophecies that work was suspended in spite
of the orders of the terrible czar.

To impress the people with the imminency of the peril, the priests
displayed a sacred image from whose eyes flowed miraculous tears. It
seemed to weep over the coming fate of the dwellers within the doomed
city.

"Its hour is at hand," said the priests; "it wil