As the horses raced onwards, higher and ever higher out of the illimitable sea of white, there rose to view a curious and, to an occidental eye, fantastic mingling of palaces and minarets, of cupolas and crosses, each gradually becoming more clearly defined against the pale lilac of the Arctic sky. Now, more than ever, did Wilfrid realise the madness of his enterprise. He was hastening to a city that held two at least of his enemies, namely, Count Baranoff and the recently alienated Ouvaroff; to whom must probably be added a third, in the shape of the Czar Paul—which was tantamount to saying that he had a whole empire against him. Now with the aid of friends, a man has often succeeded, despite police and spies, in eluding the vigilance of the Government; but no such hope sustained Wilfrid, seeing that in all the wide city there was not one man to whom he could look for refuge. “I am entering St. Petersburg,” he mused. “Shall I ever leave it? ’Tis doubtful. I feel, for all the world, like a prisoner riding to the guillotine. No matter! Honour forbids me to go back. That my princess is to be found here is a sufficient reason for going forward. If her life is threatened, let them take mine as well.” And he consoled himself with that aphorism of the desperate, “What is to be, will be.” They were now leaving the silence and monotony of the steppe. Wooden cabins, with blue smoke rising from them, began to appear by the roadside, few at first, but by-and-by increasing in number, till they formed a continuous line. Soon the appearance of stone houses and handsome shops, of vehicles and pedestrians, told Wilfrid that he had entered upon the suburbs of the city. “Hôtel d’Angleterre,” was his reply to the yamchik’s question as to whither the gospodin would be driven. The hotel in question, a palatial structure, was kept by an Englishman, who bore the homely name of John Smith, a rosy-cheeked, rotund little personage, but having at this time a most lugubrious air, due to the bad state of business. His hotel, he remarked to Wilfrid, was mainly patronised by English visitors, all of whom had taken to flight on the declaration of war, leaving the vast building almost empty. It was doubtless a very fine thing for patriotic Britons at home to read of their victories by sea and land, but the war fell hard on the English resident in St. Petersburg. All this, and much more, was detailed by John Smith, whose gloomy prospects Wilfrid tried to brighten with the assurance that it was simply a game of bluff on the part of Paul, who, as soon as he should learn that the tall sails of Nelson’s fleet were coming up the Gulf of Finland, would quickly make peace. Having paid and dismissed the yamchik, Wilfrid asked for a file of daily newspapers that should cover the period of the previous three weeks. He had found it impossible to procure a newspaper at any of the post-inns on the way; and hence he was in a state of ignorance as to how the world had wagged.