cuirassier, and Cossack of the Guard uniforms,
lounge upon ottomans and hang over
pianofortes, and peg at the polished flooring
with their spurs, and twirl their moustaches,
and pervade the salons of the kindest lady
in the world with a guard-room and mess-room
flavour, generally. The bond of union between
all these dissimilar elements — ladies,
schoolboys, and dragoons is the gentle Turki-krepki-Tabak,
or Turkish tobacco, which,
rolled into little paper cigarettes (called
papiros) by the fair hands of ladies, is being
complacently exhaled by nearly every one
present. The little school-girls, it is true,
refrain from the weed; but the officers and
the cadets, and — I blush to write it — the
majority of the grown-up young ladies — yea,
even the Queen of Sheba — are all puffing
away, consistently and complacently, at their
papiros. As to the old ladies, there is no
exaggeration in saying they are smoking like
lime-kilns; and tobacco-ash is abundant on
the furniture, and the floor, and the keys of
the pianoforte. I am not great at the papiros
myself, ordinarily regarding it as a weak
figment — a tiny kickshaw or side-dish, unworthy
the attention of a steady and serious
smoker, and am, besides, afraid that I shall
some day swallow the flimsy roll by a too
vigorous inhalation. For this reason perhaps
it is, or may be because I am naturally
modest, not to say awkward, clumsy, and
born with two left hands and two left feet, I
do not mingle much with the gay throng,
but retire within myself and a powerful
Havannah cigar behind the window curtain.
I miss nothing, however, either of the conversation
or of the music: I have my full
and proper allowance of tumblers of tea;
nay, the kindest lady in the world is good
enough, from time to time, to convey me
almond cakes in the smoky seclusion I have
chosen for myself.

We go on chatting, pianoforte-tinkling,
French romance telling, smoking, and samovarising,
till past one in the morning. There
is an apology for illumination in the shape of
a moderator lamp on a guédiron in one corner;
but nobody minds it: nobody has need
of it. The night-daylight in the sky is quite
sufficient for us to smoke and chat — and, shall
I say it?— make love by.

It is quite time I think that I should explain
to you why there should be high jinks
at Christoffsky to night (the height of those
jinks is the cause of our samovarising, this
twenty-first of June, so late or early), where
Christoffsky itself is, and what the jinks I
have entitled high, are like.

Christoffsky is one of the many beautiful
islands that jewel the bosom of the Neva;
and every year, on the Eve of Saint John,
the whole German population of St. Petersburg,
rich and poor, men, women, and
children, emigrate in steamers, and gondolas,
and cockboats to Christoffsky, and there picnic,
or bivouac, for three days and nights.
They snatch odd instalments of forty winks
during this time, but the vast majority of
it is devoted to the congenial task of
"keeping it up," and this they do with a
vigour of conviviality approaching the ferocious.
To tell the honest truth, the German
bivouac at Christoffsky is an unmitigated
saturnalia, and my pen will require a great
amount of reining up and toning down while
I attempt to describe its Teutonic eccentricities.

The noble Russians, who despise the German
nation and hate the German language
(whose acquirement to perfect fluency is
compulsory to all candidates for the military
service, even to nous autres), and loathe the
Russo-German nobility, condescend on this
twenty-first of June to cross in gondolas
to Christoffsky, and there to watch the
bacchanalian orgies of the Germans, with
the same sort of sneering contempt that
might have moved an educated Lacedemonian
of the old time at the sight of a drunken
Helot; but with the same half-pleased,
half-scornful interest that flickers on Mephistopheles's
visage when he sees the
piggish revelries of the students in Auerbach's
cellar.

We have made up a party (of gentlemen,
be it understood) to go see the high jinks at
Christoffsky. We are about eight for one
gondola load; among them there are but
two civilians: myself — if a member of the
press militant can be called a civilian— and
a distinguished young and closely-shaven
Tchinovnik, who has a startling resemblance
to the mind-picture I had formed of what
Ignatius Loyola, formerly a soldier, and
afterwards a Jesuit, was like in his youth.
This Tchinovnik — I will call him Fedor
Escobarovitch — though barely twenty-three,
is high up in the department of foreign
affairs; in the secret department, where the
archives are, and the pretty little notes are
concocted, and the fat is extracted from the
otherwise dry bones of diplomacy, which
afterwards falls into the political fire, and
sets all Europe in a blaze.

We bid the ladies good night, and setting
forth, well wrapped up in coats and capotes,
you may be sure, gain the Troïtza-most, or
Great Timber Bridge of the Trinity. I ought
to have mentioned that cadets have been
rigorously — with but one exception — excluded
from our party, on the motion of
an exceedingly impertinent cornet of light
cavalry, with a cherry-coloured cap, a braided
surtout — like that of M. Perrot in the Varsoviana
—a very sunburnt face and a very
white forehead (he has been down to his
terres or estates lately). This young Tartar,
who has not possessed a commission three
months yet, says that it will compromise his
uniform to be seen, publicly, in company with
a cadet. To samovarise, or play cards with
him — bon! but to be seen with him in a gondola,
or at the High Christoffian Jinks — that