that these roads when he travelled them were
vaunted as they now are, but then certainly
with less justice; and that they were
formed of logs laid over the unprepared
soil, which was often boggy, and the slipping
of a log sent fountains of mud playing from
time to time over the horses, and
sometimes over the travellers too. At the post
houses there was no civility for any one who
was not in authority. It was a common
thing for travellers to be detained for three
days at a single stage; dirty beds, and
what seemed to be then the only food
procurable by travellers in the interior of Russia,
coffee and eggs, being freely at the service of
impatient men, but not a horse, though there
might be a dozen horses idle in the stables.
The excuse was that they were commanded
by some great man who in any moment
might appear. At the government stations,
whenever a passport had to be examined, it
was kept for hours unless relieved by a bribe.
Out of the high roads nothing was to be
found indicative of life or civilisation but villages
of log huts, that were in fact villages of
tents, these huts being removable tenements,
bought complete at fairs and markets, and
conveyed on carts by their purchasers to
the spots on which they were to be pitched.
A man might sell his house if he pleased, and
often did so; in which case the purchaser
would come with a cart to carry it away.

M. Robertson returned to St. Petersburgh
at Christmas, and was in time to see the
benediction of the Neva. Few things attracted
more of his attention than the extravagance
of the dress worn by the ladies, when they
rode abroad to showthemselves on the Newsky
Perspective. One lady's dress would sometimes
be worth eight hundred pounds— how many
serfs? There was also the utmost rivalry for
the display of wealth in carriages and harness.

On New Year's day M. Robertson and his
wife went to the imperial ball. Three
or four thousand persons were invited to
this annual entertainment— no person of any
account in the town being overlooked. The
crush of ladies in the direction of the young
czar— a rather profligate married Adonis of
the age of twenty-five— was a most noticeable
feature in the evening's festival. The next
thing noticed was the splendour of the imperial
table, laid with covers for three hundred
guests. It recalled to his memory a
feast still more gorgeous and profuse in its
display, at which a table spread with rich
crystal and costly porcelain for four hundred
guests of the director Barras proved upon
comparison with the czar's table, that a
republican can dine more splendidly than
the most absolute of autocrats. Another
thing to be noticed, and discovered to the cost
of their life by not few Europeans, was the
heat and closeness of the unventilated rooms,
and the fearful contrast of temperature out of
doors. M. Robertson had friends who were
killed by it.

For, it should be understood, that to secure
warmth in-doors the Russian nobles, knowing
nothing about what is wholesome or
unwholesome, indulged in double windows,
double doors, closed chimneys, and the
stoppage, with sand, of every crack that
could admit the air. There was a French
comedian, M. Frogere, in great favour with
the emperor, who amused him off the stage
with mimicries and buffooneries; for, says
M. Robertson, a man with a puppet in
his hand had only to pull the string and
earn more money and applause than was
to be got at St. Petersburgh from any
benefaction to the human race. One day
M. Frogere was dining with a party at a
country house near St. Petersburgh, when his
presence suggested the idea of getting up, at
once, a little comedy. The only difficulty
was that the season was severe, and that it
would take two or three hours to heat the
room in which the comedy would have to be
performed. So much delay would spoil the
entire plan, and it was about to be abandoned
when the host suddenly declared that
he had solved the difficulty. He would
guarantee them a warm room in half-an-hour.
Accordingly, he caused all the
serfs, labourers, and mechanics in the
neighbourhood to be hurried into the cold saloon,
and, when it was quite full, shut all the
doors, and left the poor men to establish
a black hole for half-an-hour— in his own
phrase, to communicate their heat to the
atmosphere. The doors were then thrown open,
the serfs were ordered to make a precipitate
retreat; the smell they left was disguised with
a profusion of choice perfumes, and the guests
entered, clapping their hands with delight at
feeling the warm air and smelling the sweet
incense. So, they shut themselves up
comfortably in the warm, poisonous air, and
played their little comedy.

On one occasion Robertson was ordered to
display his phantasmagoria before the emperor
and empress in the imperial library. After he
had done so, and been well rewarded, while he
was packing up his apparatus, helped by his
wife and his assistant, he observed two ends of
a cap projecting from behind a pillar. Moving
from his own place suddenly, he saw that it was
the emperor himself, who was there playing
the eavesdropper upon him. Without seeming
to have noticed, he quietly warned his
wife of his discovery; but in another minute
or two, the august spy was gone.

M. Robertson had a coachman named Timaphe,
a serf. He asked leave of absence to go
and pay his annual tribute to his mistress.
Next day his eyes were very red. " My mistress",
he explained, with a great lump in his
throat choking his voice, "said that I did
not take her enough money, and ordered me
to be flogged." He had been sent to the
stable to be flogged with hard thongs, and
the pitiless old woman had gone down herself
afterwards, and had put on her spectacles to