Next morning, according to arrangement, we were to visit, in company with our host, Alexei Zupkoff, the venerable starshina, or head of the village, the residence and garden of the queen. The brother of the queen joined our party--Michael Vasilievich Ghubanoff, the same of whom Count Tolstoy speaks. We passed down the long, straight street of the village, the spacious intervals between the white houses opening to the breezy downs. Entering an enclosure, we found ourselves in a delightful flower-garden, among trees and thick rose-bushes, allowed to spread in freedom, and only saved from rankness and riot by the loving hand of man. How strange, after our wanderings among peoples whose material standards hover on the extreme margin where life is just possible and no more, appeared to us the sight of these garden flowers and the scent of the double rose. A low one-storeyed building faces the garden on two sides; the one wing contains the chapel and reception room, the other the private apartments in which the queen used to live. Passing within the doorway, we stood in a little hall from which rooms opened, one on either side. Both apartments are spacious, and their size was enhanced by the complete absence of furniture. Large stone stoves are built into the rooms, and form the most prominent feature in them; these stoves are usual in all the houses, but in this house they are decorated with a scroll of stone carving, which is not the case elsewhere. The ceilings are low, and the walls are so thick that the windows have the appearance of fortress embrasures, with their deep cavernous sills. The two large rooms on either side of the hall were formerly devoted, the one to prayer meetings and the other to social gatherings; but it was evident that they were not in use at the time of my visit, and I was told that assemblies in this house had been interdicted by Government, on account of the fresh outbreak of fanaticism which was apprehended should the people come together beneath the roof of their former queen.