In the salon stood a piano. My husband sat down at it and played some of the waltzes which he had himself composed, and the Caucasian society was full of admiration and danced to this music with perfect grace. But they were most pleasing in the _Lesginka_. This dance is usually executed by only one couple, while the rest sit in a circle and clap their hands in time to the music. The accompaniment is provided by a small native instrument which endlessly repeats a certain melody three bars long, and by tambourines adorned with little bells, on which skillful hands thump with an increasingly lively rhythm. The dance itself is a pantomime of the immemorial play of love: pursuit, flight, enticement. The men perform artistic _pas_; the women fairly float along the floor, the long, heavy silken garment concealing the feet so that they look as if they were rolling on invisible casters; the veil which is attached to their headdress flows behind them, and from the arms, stretched out in circling gestures, float the long double sleeves. As a conclusion to the festivity I treated the company to an Italian bravura aria and then to Auber’s Laughing-Song—Carlotta Patti’s show piece; the laughter in the song infected everybody, and the whole ended with a chorus of laughter. And now the next morning we started for the goal of our journey, for Gordi, situated on a high plateau among the mountains. Count Rosmorduc chartered a troika and escorted us. It was jolly riding behind that spike team; the more the springless vehicle shook us up, the more fun we had out of it. The way was splendid; all the hedges were abloom with cascades of wild roses. At the same time the heat was frightful. All the more delightful the prospect that we were going among the mountains, where, as Count Rosmorduc assured us, cool and almost raw winds blow all the time. After a journey of several hours across the plain we came to Pompey’s Bridge; this is that place where one must leave the carriage and ride horseback the rest of the way. We were now at the entrance of the defile, and the peaks of the mountains which we were to climb stood out steeply against the azure sky. The stream which roared and foamed under Pompey’s Bridge roared perhaps twice as loud in our ears because it had been described to us as the “Hippus” of the ancients; what classic craft—doubtless even Jason’s _Argo_ when he went to capture the Golden Fleece—must it not have rocked on its billows! This was the place, I remembered from the Dedopali’s letters, where the young princely couple on their home journey had dismounted from the carriage, where the bridge had been spread with a carpet, and a triumphal arch of flowers had marked the boundary line of Mingrelia.