the Grand Opera season, on any stage in the
empire, save those of the two great theatres
in Petersburg and Moscow, where the prices
are high, the audience aristocratically cold,
aristocratically blasé and ennuyé, and
aristocratically broken-in to the laws of Western
aristocratic etiquette. For, were the
Bagdanoff to dance at a native Russian theatre,
the audience would infallibly encore her at
least eight times after every pas ; and the
poor child would be danced off her legs. The
Russians affect to sneer at Cerito and Rosati,
and Fanny Ellsler ; they only condescend to
admit Taglioni to have been incomparable
because she has retired from the stage, and
has married a Russian prince. Plunket,
Fleury, Fusco, Guy-Stephan, they will not
have at any price. The Bagdanoff is their
Alpha and Omega as a dancer. Last spring
she was more the rage than ever. Her
portrait, lithographed, was in all the
print-sellers' windows, with a sprawling autograph
at the base, and a German epigraph at the
summit: "In lebe immer die selbe," "In
love always the same." I don't know why :
but this motto always gave me an idea of an
implied defiance or implied guarantee. It
seemed to say : " Advance, ye Crimean
field-marshals, ye Caucasian generals, ye
aids-de-camp of the Emperor, ye members of the
directing senate, ye attachés of foreign
legations. Don't be afraid ! Approach and place
your diamond bracelets, your bouquets with
a bank-note for a thousand roubles twisted
round the stem, your elegant coupés with
coal-black horses, your five-hundred-rouble
sable pelisses, at the feet of Nadiejda
Bagdanoff. Walk up. There is no deception. In love
she is always the same." I saw Mademoiselle
Bagdanoff, and didn't like her. Have I not seen
Her (with a large H) dance ? She flung her
limbs about a great deal ; and in dancing, as
in love, she was immer die selbe — always the
same. It afterwards fell out that from the
fumes of that great witch's cauldron of
Russian gossip, the Samovar, I distilled a
somewhat curious reason for the immense
popularity of the Bagdanoff.

The imperial government granted her a
ticket of leave, or passport for foreign travel,
just before the war with the allied powers
broke out. Nadiejda went abroad, remained
two years, and came back at last, radiant, as
Mademoiselle Bagdanoff, of the Académie
Impériale de Musique at Paris. She had
stormed the Rue Lepelletier; she had
subdued the Parisians ; she had vanquished the
stubborn hearts and claque-compelling
white-gloved palms of those formidable three
first rows of fauteuils d'orchestre, courted
and dreaded by all cantatrice, by all
ballerine. In a word she had triumphed ;
but it was never exactly ascertained in what
ballet she made her début. It was certain,
however, that she had been engaged at the
Académie, and that her engagement had been
rescinded during the war time ; the manager
having, with fiendish ingenuity, endeavoured
to seduce her into dancing in a ballet whose
plot was inimical to Russian interests. But,
the fair Nadiejda, patriotic as fearless,
indignantly refused to betray her country and
her Czar. She tore her engagement into
pieces ; she stamped upon it ; she gave the
directors of the Académie Impériale a piece
of her mind : she demanded her passports,
and danced back to St. Petersburg — there to be
fêted and caressed, and braceleted, and
ear-ringed, and bouqueted, and re-engaged at the
Balschoï Teatr' at a higher salary ; and by
Jupiter ! were she not lucky enough to be
a crown serf, instead of a slave at obrok,
to be sent back to her proprietor's
village whenever he was so minded, there
to be made to dance her best pas seuls
for her noble proprietor's amusement, when
he and his guests were drunk with wine ;
there, if she offended him, to be sent to hew
wood and draw water, to go clad in grey
sacking, instead of gauze, and silk, and
spangles ; to have those tresses shorn away,
whereon the diamond sprays glitter so bravely
now ; to be beaten with rods when her
master was in a bad temper, and compelled
unmurmuringly to pick up the handkerchief he
deigned to throw her when amiably disposed.

If the Bagdanoff deserved the gold medal,
which I believe was awarded to her by the
government for the Spartan fortitude with
which she had withstood the insidious promptings
of the malevolent Fransoutz, she was
certainly entitled to the medal of St. Anne of
the first class, set in brilliants of the finest
water, for the heroism she displayed in
coming back to Russia at all. The return of
Regulus to Carthage was nothing to it.
Shiningly, indeed, does her self-denying
conduct contrast with that of the other (vocal)
operatic star, M. IVANHOFF, who, being a slave,
and a pupil of the Imperial Vocal Academy,
and possessing a remarkably fine voice, was
commanded by the Czar to repair to Italy,
there to perfect himself in the art of singing,
and then to return to Petersburg, to delight
the habitués of the Balschoï-Teatr' with his
dulcet strains. The faithless Ivanhoff went
and saw, and conquered, all the difficulties of
his art; BUT HE NEVER CAME BACK AGAIN;
withstanding with an inflexible pertinacity
the instances of ambassadors, and the
commands of ministers. " Well out of it,"
thought M. Ivanhoff; and betook himself
to making money for himself with
admirable sprightliness and energy. He made
a fortune; retired from the stage; bought an
estate; and was ungrateful enough to live
and enjoy himself thereupon, utterly unmindful
of his kind friends in Russia, who were
anxious that he should return, and to
assure him that the past should be forgotten,
that his wishes should be fully met, and that
the warmest of receptions awaited him.

I cannot tell the title of the ballet whose
subject the Bagdanoff considered inimical to