The choir of our Russian Slavic sang. At that time, he traveled with his songs to the Slavic lands and on the name day of the king decided to sing the liturgy. Soon after that, Slavyansky died. I had not heard how the Slavyansky Choir sang songs at their concerts, but I did not like their singing of the Liturgy at all. In general, it seems that artists are not up to liturgical singing. For this singing, you need to have special qualities. In operas and concerts, after all, they sing about various earthly feelings and attachments. These things are well known to artists, and they can sing about them with sincere feeling. For liturgical singing, a pious heart is needed, which knows repentance, prayer and tenderness. And without this, what remains? What remains is the musical technique, the various pianos and pianissimos. Well, how can an artist sing, for example, "Open to me the doors of repentance," if for him there is neither fasting nor repentance, and if tomorrow he will sing the most passionate aria on the public stage? The most illustrious choirs - I will not name them to You, You know them yourself - only upset me with their artificial singing. And the fact that many people like such artistic singing in church, including, it seems, You, my Friend, this fact grieves me exceedingly. The artificial singing of the Slavic choir, with various pauses and freezes, I did not like in Belgrade either.

And yet I noticed a certain pleasant simplicity in the cathedral. I was standing on the left kliros. There were Serbs here, candidates of our theological academies, who were teachers of gymnasiums in their homeland. And so they participated in the divine service by reading and singing as, so to speak, amateurs. In our country, perhaps, among such amateurs there is no gymnasium teacher. And in Serbia, it's somehow simple. Yes, we are not supposed to have any amateurs in such a solemn occasion. In our country, the more solemn, the more formal, that is, soulless, boring.

Meanwhile, representatives of the Serbian state world - secular and military officials - came to the cathedral. On the right side, the ministers stood in a row in front. Now I often remember the imposing figure and intelligent face of Pašić. Behind the left kliros, the diplomatic corps gathered. What a mixture of tribes, costumes! From the entire diplomatic corps, the high Austro-Hungarian envoy Forgacz stood out. He is wearing some kind of medieval Hungarian uniform with a fur edge. And it was hot outside. Who, you think, makes people suffer, put on warm clothes in the summer, and even the most ridiculous look! In the former years of my youth, I loved to read travels. Once I came across memories of life under the African tropics in Zanzibar. A dinner at the English consul's was described. The heat was the most tropical, unbearable. Alas! Guests had to dress in tightly starched linen and warm cloth tailcoats. You will remember the words of the poet: "Custom is a despot among people." Custom is custom, and it seems that the evil seven-thousand-year-old elder of worldly people is not without participation here. Sometimes it seems to me that the evil one, torturing people with ridiculous decorums, clothes, and the like, simply laughs at his faithful slaves.

Even then, the Serbs looked unfriendly at the Austrian envoy. The next day the newspapers wrote: yesterday, as we were leaving the cathedral, we saw the proud figure of Mr. Forgač, who looked haughtily at the assembled Serbian people. A few barbs followed him. Suddenly I saw something incredible: a whole bunch of Turks were walking through the cathedral. As many as six officials of the Turkish embassy in their fezzes walked through the cathedral and took their places among the other diplomats. This is not the case - to let non-Christians into the church! The Liturgy of the Faithful begins, and heretics and infidels enter the cathedral! So in their fezzes the Turks stood like idols.

Soon we heard music and military cries in the street near the cathedral. Petar, the king of Srbije, drove up. The king, like everyone else, venerated the icon and went to his place on the right side of the cathedral in front. Ministers and diplomats bowed their heads. The King arrived with the heir George and with our present Princess Elena Petrovna. The king looked no longer young and as if tired. A rather strange impression was made by the former Serbian heir. He stood at a distance from the king, as if rooted to the ground, in a military manner, and never even crossed himself. It seemed to me that he should leave the stage of Serbian history.

At the end of Liturgy, Metropolitan Demetrius greeted the king with a speech with which I – alas! - I did not understand, since it was said in Serbian. A moleben was performed and a solemn departure from the cathedral followed.

I told You, Friend, that Belgrade bears little resemblance to the capital. But in the cathedral it was felt that it was still the capital, albeit of a small state. There are ministers, there are envoys - nothing like that is supposed to happen in a provincial city. And how, in fact, any official world is monotonous! Everywhere one European template dominates, which depersonalizes everything original, historical, national. After all, you must agree, my friend, that Muscovite Rus of the XVII century was more interesting, more original than the current official one. Now people have some stereotyped faces, equally shaved, with the same hairstyle, in uniform clothes according to rank. Sometimes, when I come to the Moscow Assumption Cathedral, I like to dream... about the past, how the boyars gathered there, how Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich came and stood at the left pillar, how at the right pillar in his place stood the hero - Patriarch Nikon, the "great sovereign" and "friend" of the tsar, his "father and worshiper". Everything there was original, created by the people's spirit. Of course, Turks in fezzes would not have been allowed there. At that time, the Germans were not allowed to enter Moscow, but they were settled outside Moscow, in the German Quarter. Peter became friends with them, invited them to the Kremlin, and they remade Russian life in a common European way. It's hardly all for the best!

People's life, my friend, has always seemed to me more interesting, original, more free, less subject to general patterns.

On the same day I was able to observe the Serbian people to some extent. On the day of the royal name day, there is a folk festival in the area of Topcider, near Belgrade. Topcider is a park that turns into a forest in places. Urban residents also gather in this park, and mainly "villagers" and "villagers". Serbian folk festivities are very different from Russian folk festivities. A lot of people gather, the whole park is filled. The first thing that caught my eye was that there were no drunks among the people. At that time, [as] Russian folk festivities, of course, were still unthinkable without drunks and outrageous. People were having fun in separate groups. A group of revelers hired "musicians", of which there were many, usually three or four people, who began to play somewhere under a tree, in a clearing, and those who hired danced and danced. Then they went to the side where the tables stood, sat down at them and drank a glass of beer. Of course, it is not a Slavic drink, but a German one, but it has conquered all of Europe. The Germans themselves drink beer from morning to evening. I have seen how even four- or five-year-old children were given beer. For all their hostility to the Germans, the Serbs borrowed beer from them and are destroying it zealously. In the Serbian folk festival, my friend, I was struck by amazing modesty, general decency, even silence. In fact, there are no "disorderly cries", no ugly drunken songs. Only unpretentious music is heard. Most of the people were modestly walking in the park. Our people, in fact, never walk in the sense that we do in order to "breathe fresh air", to admire the "beauties of nature". Even the word "walk" has received a reprehensible connotation in its meaning. From the word "gulyat" we had derivatives - "zagulal", "walking", "reveler", etc. But among the Serbs, at least on the name day of the Serbian king, I saw people walking around.

It was also impossible not to notice the predominance of national costumes, especially among women. In our country, the national costume is already beginning to be artificially invented not by the people, but by the intelligentsia. And the villagers, especially the villagers, at any festivities, hurry first of all to throw off their village clothes and dress in the city clothes, to resemble if not the masters, then at least the master's maids. Among the Serbs, "srpska narodna noshna" turns out to be highly respected by the people themselves: the inhabitants of the surrounding villages came to the solemn folk festivities in their national costumes. I will not describe to You, my Friend, Serbian costumes. I'm not an expert in this business, I don't know what to call and how to describe. In this respect, my soul is completely devoid of all femininity. I will only mention that Serbian women wear special jewelry made of gold and silver coins. Sometimes there are a lot of these coins. They hang from head to shoulders, connected to each other. The Serbs told me that these ornaments are, so to speak, generic: they are passed down from generation to generation, and therefore among the coins there are very ancient ones that already have a positive numismatic value.

Before evening, the king arrived in Topcider. He was dressed simply in a white jacket and rode in an open carriage. [For a while] the king rode through the park among his walking and celebrating people. It turned out to be a very simple unity of the king with the people.

I really liked this Serbian folk festival. The Slavic soul of the people was felt, meek, modest, serious and chaste. The Serbian people live as if in the midst of two hostile worlds. On the one hand, there is the Teutonic world, which does not tolerate Slavic independence; On the other hand, there is the fanatical Muslim Turkish world. One should be surprised at how, in the centuries-old struggle with the Turk and the Teuton, the Serb not only retained his originality, his nationality, but was also ready to die rather than lose all this. Before the present war, many of us were as if embarrassed by the fact that they had the misfortune to be born of a Russian father and mother. The Serbs were not ashamed of their nationality before, and for their identity they entered into an unequal struggle with the age-old enemy, the Germans, in order either to die or to remain Serbs. In our country, the national idea seems to grow out of war. With the Serbs, on the contrary, war itself is a direct consequence of their always living national idea. Remember, Friend, the anthem of the Serbian people militant for their nationality!

Who loves his Fatherland And who is a Serb at heart, Let him hurry with a sword in his hands For an open battle! Fight!

Now the Turkish and Serbian borders do not touch each other. The enemy, about whom the Serbs sang, was driven away: