the sermon, but which to me plainly means
that she hates me, and that she does not
believe a word I say. She wants to know
what the world is coming to, when men can
puff their filthy tobacco under the noses of
ladies accustomed to the best society? and
when I plead that the deck is the place for
smoking, and that all the other gentlemen
passengers are doing as I do, she retorts,
"More shame for them!" She alludes to
the pretty stewardess by the appellation of
"hussy," at which I feel vastly moved to
strangle her; and she has an abominable
air-cushion with a hole in it, which is always
choking up hatchways, or tripping up one's
legs, or tumbling over cabin-boys' heads like
the Chinese cange. As a culmination of
injury, she publicly accuses me at dinner of
detaining the mustard designedly and of
malice aforethought at my end of the table.
I am covered with confusion, and endeavour
to excuse myself; but she overpowers me
with her voice, and Captain Steffens looks
severely at me. I have an inward struggle
after dinner, as to whether I shall give her
a piece of my mind, and so shut her up for
ever, or make her an offer of marriage; but
I take a middle course, and subside into
the French language, which she cannot
speak, and in which, therefore, she cannot
contradict me. After this, she makes common
cause against me with Captain Smith
(why didn't she go down in the Schön
Jungfrau?); and as they walk the deck together
I don't think I am in error in concluding
that she is continuing to denounce me as a
Jesuit and a spy, and that the captain has
imparted to her his opinion that I am "not
worth a tam!"

We have another lady passenger in the
chief cabin; she is a French lady, and (she
makes no disguise at all about the matter)
an actress. She is going to Moscow for the
coronation, when there are to be grand
dramatic doings; but she is coming out thus
early to stay with her mamma, also an
actress, who has been fifteen years in St.
Petersburg. "Imaginez vous," she says,
"dans ce trou!" She is very pretty, very
coquettish, very good-natured, very witty,
and comically ignorant of the commonest
things. Captain Steffens loves her like a
father already, I can see. Even the grim
Captain Smith regards her with the affection
of a Dutch uncle. She dresses every morning
for the deck, and every afternoon for
dinner, with as much care as though she
were still on her beloved Boulevard de Gand.
Her hair is always smooth, her eyes always
bright, her little foot always bien chaussée,
her dress always in apple-pie order, her
temper always lively, cheerful, amiable. She
eats little wings of birds in a delightfully
cat-like manner, and chirps, after a glass of
champagne, in a manner ravishing to behold.
She is all lithe movement, and silver laughter,
and roguish sayings. Enfin: she is a
Parisienne! What need I say more? She has a
dozen of the gentlemen passengers at her feet
as soon as she boards the Preussischer
Adler, but she bestows her arm for the
voyage on Monsieur Alexandre, a fat Frenchman
with a beard and a wide-awake hat;
who is, I suspect, a traveller for some
champagne house at Rheims. He follows her
about like a corpulent poodle; he takes care
of her baskets, shawls, and furs; he toils up
ladders with camp-stools for her; he holds
an umbrella over her to shield her from the
sun; he cuts the leaves of books for her; he
produces for her benefit private stores of
chocolate and bon-bons; he sits next to her
at dinner, and carves tit-bits for her; he
pays for the champagne; he walks the deck
with her by moonlight, shielding her from
the midnight air with ample pelisses, and
rolling his little eyes in his fat face. She
is all smiles and amiability to him (as,
indeed, to every one else); she allows him to
sit at her feet; she gives him to snuff from
her vinegarette; she pats his broad back and
calls him "Mon bon gros;" she is as familiar
with him as if she had known him a
quarter of a century; she orders him about
like a dog or a black man; but is never
cross, never pettish. She will probably
give him the tips of her little fingers to kiss
when she leaves him at Cronstadt; and, when
some day perhaps she meets him by chance
on the Nevskoï, she won't know him from
Adam.

'Twas ever thus from childhood's hour—I
mean, this is always my fate. Somebody
else gets the pleasant travelling companions;
I get the Miss Wappses. I never fall in love
with a pretty girl, but I find she has a
sweetheart already, or has been engaged
for ten years to her cousin Charles in India,
who is coming home by the next ship to
marry her. Am I not as good as a
wine-merchant's bagman? Never mind; let me
console myself with the Russian.

The Russian is a gentleman whose two
years' term of travel has expired, and who,
not being able to obtain an extension of
his leave of absence, and not very desirous of
having his estates sequestered, which would
be the penalty of disobedience, is returning,
distressingly against his own inclination, to
Russia, is an individual who looks young
enough to be two or three and twenty, and
old enough to be two or three and forty.
How are you to tell in a gentleman whose
hair, without a speck of grey, is always
faultlessly brushed, oiled, perfumed, and arranged;
whose moustache is lustrous, firm, and black;
whose teeth are sound and white; whose
face is perfectly smooth, and clear, and clean
shaven; who is always perfectly easy, graceful,
and self-possessed? The Russian speaks
English and French—the first language as
you and I, my dear Bob, speak it; the second
as our friend, Monsieur Adolphe, from Paris,
would speak his native tongue; by which I