The place of assembly for these great festive or charitable demonstrations (the only kind of "demonstration," except such as are military, which can be seen in Russia) is not unworthy of its purposes. It is probably the finest of its kind in Europe or in the world, and is called the "Hall of Nobility"--_Salle de Noblesse_--a vast edifice, capable of receiving seven thousand guests, supported inside by splendid scagliola columns, richly decorated, skillfully laid out, distributed into a vast pit for dancing, with circumambient galleries and balconies, with retiring or withdrawing apartments for the emperor and his court, and with general refreshment-rooms in the outer circuit. This scene is lit up by clusters of wax-lights the beams of which are multiplied by crystal pendants; while the wax-lights themselves are many thousands in number, more numerous, in fact, than the stars visible to the naked eye on a bright frosty night. A great masquerade ball for the benefit of the invalids, in such a place, with the additional attraction of the promised presence of the Emperor Nicholas, was irresistible. I determined to go, and my determination was the more natural inasmuch as I happened to possess a free ticket. On entering, I was struck by the novel and somewhat grotesque feature imparted to the scene by the lottery prizes, which had lain there "on view" for some days previously. I found a crowd which was afterward estimated at seven thousand; but, I dare say, it numbered five or six only. Perfectly lost in the vastness of the place, the multitude assembled, and the grotesque horror of beautiful forms without human faces, I sat down for awhile, near the orchestra. The benches, on one of which I was, rose here in successive tiers, from the vast, pit-like saloon to the surrounding gallery, which was overhung by another gallery, and abutted upon several splendid refreshment-rooms. Before and below, the crowd was particularly dense around a little rostrum, on which a glass wheel and several officials who plied it, stood together. The press, the throng, the hustling, the jostling, the redness of faces where they could be seen, and the activity of elbows where they could be insidiously inserted, were raging around. A similar apparatus, besieged by similar votaries, stood at the other three corners of the saloon. In the ancillary apartments there were more of these shrines of gambling; a gambling in which only one class was sure to win, a class unvexed by the excitement of the game, the invalided veterans, the brave old disabled soldiers of the empire. For their sakes was all this gorgeous commotion; for their sakes this splendid mob bustled about the "_Ailetpii Allegri_;" that is, the wheels of fortune, the lottery stands, the stalls of fate. All round these, and between them, circulated the pervading immensity of the masquerade.