ace of Danof, or Satan. On gaining
possession of the throne, continues the legend, the false czar
immured the czarina in a convent, slew the czarovitch, espoused a
German adventuress and filled Russia with foreigners. Such is the
Old Believers' explanation of the portentous phenomenon of a Russian
czar engaged in destroying the institutions of Holy Russia. In the
midst of the nineteenth century the incidents of Peter's career,
whether insignificant or important--his vices not less than his
glory--are used as proofs of his infernal mission. The remarkable
victories with which he recovered from terrible disasters were
miracles wrought by the help of the devil and the Freemasons. The
extension of his power beyond that of all previous Russian monarchs
and of all the ancient _bogatyrs_ was effected by the determination
of Satan that his offspring should receive divine honors. The same
interpretation is applied to the simplest events. Thus, Peter's
celebration with allegorical figures and festivals of the beginning
of the year on the first of January was due to his desire to restore
the worship of false deities and "the old Roman idol Janus." These
silly fables, and this incapacity of understanding how a pagan name
or emblem can be used without falling back into paganism, betray one
of the peculiar features of the Raskol--namely, the realistic
nature, of its symbolism, and its matter-of-fact determination to
fill images, allegories and words with occult meaning.

When once the presence of Antichrist was clearly made out, there was
nothing to hinder the application to Russia of the gloomy
descriptions of the prophets. Their disposition to hunt out
mysterious enigmas in names and numbers made it easy for the
fanatics to find the whole Apocalypse in modern Russia; and the
number of the Beast was sought in the names of Peter and of his
successors. Each letter of the Slavonic alphabet, as of the Greek,
has a numerical value, and the problem is thus to add up the total
of the letters of a name, and so obtain the Apocalyptic number 666
(Rev. xiii. 18). By inserting, reduplicating or omitting certain
letters, and not insisting too strongly on an exact result, the
sectaries have discovered the infernal number in the names of most
of the Russian sovereigns from Peter the Great to Nicholas. Such
alterations are defended on the ground that to throw investigators
off the scent the Beast changes the number which is meant to
designate him