helmets, and serfs, in a long procession of
carriages, which, beginning at the rock on which
Peter the Great's statue stands, reached to the
base of the great granite column of Alexander,
facing the enormous pile of the Winter Palace.

Tired at last of the procession, I turned aside
to one of the largest of the wooden theatres.
A clash of music from within announced the
commencement of a new performance; joining
the torrent of people, old and young, rich and
poor, who were jostling for admittance, I at last
made my way to the pay-place, where a mob of
clamorous moujiks were thrusting out their hands
with the admittance-money, in childish
impatience.

I drew back to make way for a respectable old
grey-bearded merchant and his pretty daughter,
who, muffled up in a cloak trimmed with the fur
of the silver fox, clung to his arm, and shrank
back from the rough gesticulating crowd.  I
thought I had never seen so charming a girl,
so tender in manner, so gentle and spring-like
in beauty.  The merchant and his daughter
bowed and thanked me in broken English for
my politeness, paid their money, and passed in.

I followed rapidly, but a crowd of peasants
thrust themselves in before me, so that when I
took my seat I could obtain no glimpse of the
merchant or his pretty daughter.

The wooden theatre of the Katsheli was an
enormous building, built, as a peasant next
me said, to hold five thousand persons.  It
had large galleries, balconies, and Corinthian
pillars, hung with cheap drapery, and gay with
red and blue paint.  A vast chandelier lighted
up the tent-like interior.

The theatre was already full when I entered,
so that I had to content myself with a back
seat in an upper box, not far from the head of
one of the staircases—as I soon found by the
keen-edged iced draught.  I amused myself,
while the overture was playing, with the motley
view before me.  The Tartar faces, only
partially reclaimed from barbarism, were worth
studying, now that they beamed with fun.
The little oblique eyes glistened with enjoyment,
the great bearded tangled heads rolled
about in ecstasy. Here and there, the eye fell
on a Polish or Circassian face, with large fine
eyes, and almost a Greek contour.  Every now
and then, a group of grave portly merchants in
furred caftans and boots, mingled with the
serfs, but with an obtrusive reserve that showed
they did so under protest.  Their children, also
dressed in caftans and boots, were exactly like
themselves all but the beards.  Nor was there
any lack of women of the lower orders: rough,
honest, Irish-looking women, few of them in
bonnets, most of them with their heads bound
round with coloured handkerchiefs.

I did not listen much to the music; it was
that brazen mechanical sort of music, without
colour or life, that no one listens to.  By-and-by,
it ended with a jolting crash.  There was a
moment's pause, and the curtain drew up.  A deep
hush passed over the troubled waves of the pit.
The children clutched their fathers' hands, the
soldiers ceased their practical jokes, the country-
women paused in their gossip, the boys stopped
eating, every eye turned to the stage.

An honest old woman just before me—a
housekeeper, as I judged by her dress—amused
me especially by her child-like eagerness.  She
put on her spectacles, and leaned forward with
both hands on her knees, to drink in every word.

The play was a little operetta, half French,
half Italian.  I think they called it "Rose and
Lubin."  It was a gay, trifling thing.  The hero
and heroine were villagers, and an old cross
father, and a malicious fool, were the constant
interrupters of their stolen meetings.  Rose was
dressed in a little tucked up gown of white silk
striped with pink, and wore a gipsy hat; Lubin
wore a nondescript sort of blue silk coat and
flapped waistcoat, while the Zany tumbled into
a thousand scrapes in a sort of miller's dress all
white, and a blue broad-brimmed hat.  There
was a good deal of hiding and searching about
with soldiers, until the true lover enlists, and
finally returns a General, to marry Rose.  It
was a flimsy pretty bit of nonsense, mixed up
with dances and songs, and now and then a
chorus; and it was all over in half an hour.

Silly as it was, it pleased the audience, who
shouted, laughed, and encored everything.  A
display of fireworks was to follow, and then a
short farce.

Between the acts, I tried the little Russian I
knew, and asked the old woman, who had turned
round and offered me some honey-cakes, "How
she liked it?"

"My little father," she said, quite seriously,
"it is the most wonderful thing I have ever
beheld since I saw those accursed French act at
Moscow, in Napoleon's time."

Suddenly all the clatter and laughter died
away.  The curtain had not risen, but a faint
crimson light was shining behind it.  It was the
commencement of the pyrotechnic display, and
I was curious to see what the Russians could
do in these matters.  The first scene was to be
the illumination of the Kremlin at the coronation
of the Emperor Alexander the First.  Probably
that was only the preparation, for, though
the red light widened and glowed, the curtain,
strangely enough, did not rise.

The people stamped and shouted.  All at once
the bajozzo (the clown), in his white dress, ran
forward, pale as death, his eyes staring, his hands
tossing about like those of a madman.  "We
are on fire!" he shouted.  "Save yourselves, you
who can."

"Bravo, Ferrari!"  cried the peasants, with
roars of laughter.  "Excellent! Viva Ferrari!
Bravo, Ferrari!"

The clown fled from the stage, as it seemed,
in an agony of feigned fear.  The laughter
redoubled.  A man in evening dress rushed
forward, whispered to the orchestra, and waved
his hand to some men who were not visible to
the audience.

The curtain rose swiftly at that ominous
signal, and disclosed, to my horror, a rolling
mass of fire and crimsoned smoke.  Already the