I had hardly admired the grey
interior, the bare walls growing into the roof in unbroken curves, the
massive stone rood-screen, the sorrowful faces in the holy pictures,
when a little procession filed into the church; four girls carrying a
flower-bedecked coffin, half a dozen elders, and a pack of children
carrying candles--a sight at once terrible and diurnal, a child's
funeral.
Russian churches, having no chairs, have the appearance of being
almost empty. In the centre of this emptiness at Gagri church two
trestles were put up, and the open coffin placed upon them; in the
coffin, lying in a bed of fresh flowers and dressed in delicate white
garments, was a little dead child. The coffin was perfectly and even
marvellously arranged; it would be difficult to imagine anything more
beautiful, and at the same time more terrible.
A girl of about four years, she lay in the coffin as in bed, with her
head somewhat raised, and the face looking directly at the altar and
at the sorrowful pictures; on her head was a cream silk embroidered
bonnet, on her forehead, from ear to ear, a paper _riza_ with delicate
line drawings of the story of the girl's angel, St. Olga. A high
lighted candle stood at her head, two little ones at each side, and
two at her feet. The bonnet and the dress were tied with little bits
of pink ribbon; the child's hands, small, white, all lovely, lay one
upon another, and in one of them was a little white cross.
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