There exists a legend of the brilliance and gaiety of
the society of St. Petersburg during those nine years between the Russo-Japanese and the First German War. I am myself averse from large parties or late hours, and my view may be prejudiced. But to me St. Petersburg society as I saw it was florid and inane. The Tsar and his shy Empress remained at Tsarskoe in domestic retirement surrounded by court func- _ tionaries and their own unhappy suspicions. The Dowag Empress was at Gatchina. At the summit of St. Petersb society stood the Grand Duke Wiadimir and his authoritati wife. Few of the- younger Grand-Dukes (since I am sp of the time before Dimitri Pavlovitch and Sumarakoff Elst broke upon an astonished world) frequented the beau mo There was Princess Orloff, whose dresses flowed in an uninter rupted stream from Paris, and there was Princess Bieloselsb an American girl of beauty and high spirits. There was political salon maintained with some difficulty and grimness Countess Kleinmichel. There was a small, a very s sprinkling of literary ladies, who read Paul Bourget in th,, boudoirs and still went to Baden-Baden in the summer. there was the diplomatic body, that strange cosmopoli family, the leading members of which have been bored In each other for thirty years. To this day I recall these partii and receptions with thankfulness that they have ceased. would have supper at Ernest's, we would go out to Krestovsh we would hang about the ball-rooms of Embassies, we wo drive in sleighs. The walls of all the drawing-rooms and bat rooms were hung in pink or orange or scarlet damask ; let inoi their silken sides were little brass orifices through which sub, terranean furnaces pumped blasts of heated air; the cloak windows were stopped with rubber and padded with cotter wool; outside the coachmen in their quilted coats waited dawn while the icicles gathered on their beards.
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