“When everybody was ready, dancing began. I must admit that during the preparations for the ball we drank somewhat freely of punch, with which Mellet, an old dragoon, took care to supply us, and which got into the heads of our _marquises_, and also affected the old _cantinière_. “Our band consisted of a flute, played by the sergeant-major, while the company drummer tapped the time. “They began with the tune ‘_On va leur percer le flanc... ran, ran, tan plan, tire lire, ran plan_.’ But when the band struck up and Mother Dubois was advancing towards her _vis-à-vis_, the quartermaster-sergeant, our _marquises_, evidently delighted by our stirring music, began to jump about in Tartar fashion, bounding from side to side, and cutting all sorts of capers, so that one might have thought them possessed. This would not have been remarkable had they been dressed in their national costume, but the sight of French _marquises_, usually so decorous, jumping about as if possessed, was so irresistibly comic that we were convulsed with laughter, and the flute-player was unable to continue. The drummer, however, stuck to his post, beating the advance, at the sound of which our _marquises_ began anew until they could hold out no longer, and fell down on the floor through sheer fatigue. We picked them up and applauded, and then continued dancing and drinking till four in the morning.” At the Kremlin, too, they were not without amusement. “At each gate of this fortress-palace,” says the author of the _Journal de la Guerre_, “were posted sentries of the Grenadiers of the Guard. They had wrapped themselves in Russian furs, fastened round the waist with cashmere shawls, and close to them were vases of opal crystal, two or three feet high, filled with preserved fruits of the most expensive kind, in which were stuck large wooden soup-ladles. Around these vases were piled enormous quantities of flagons and bottles, the necks of which were broken—to save time. Some of these men had donned Russian head-dresses in place of their shakos. They were all more or less drunk, had dropped their muskets, and literally did sentry with their wooden spoons.”