The pleasantest _salon_ of St. Petersburg in my day was that of Princess Kotchoubey. Her palace, the Dom Belaselski, had what I should think must be the finest staircase of any private house in the world. The guest-rooms were furnished with a magnificence which made one open one’s eyes very wide indeed. In one of the smaller and more intimate rooms the Princess used to sit every evening, dispensing tea to a small _coterie_ of friends, essentially a political assemblage, hardly ever more than a dozen. Prince Gortchakoff was almost always there; Lord Napier and one or two of the ambassadors very often. Admission to this very choice gathering was a privilege much coveted and rarely attained; I gained it by the grace and favour of Countess Apponyi, the Austrian Ambassadress in London, who was Princess Kotchoubey’s sister, and gave me a letter for her, to which I have already alluded, and which stood me in good stead, for it turned out to be a passport to all that was most distinguished in Russian society. One evening Prince Gortchakoff brought Khalil Bey (afterwards Khalil Pasha), the Turkish Ambassador, to present him to the Princess. A great lady present, who could be very haughty and, indeed, insolent when she chose, put on her most Lady Disdain air, and said in her pretty sing-song French: “Je suppose, Monsieur l’Ambassadeur, que vous avez été bien frappé de tout ce que vous avez vu ici.” “Mais de quoi donc, Madame?” “De notre belle ville, de nos quais, de nos palais, de toute notre civilisation, enfin.” “Mais non, Madame,” answered the witty Turk, who was Tutcheff’s rival in repartee. “Vous savez qu’en Turquie nous sommes aussi excessivement arriérés,” with the sweetest smile he sat down and drank a triumphant cup of tea. But the lady was not so happy; she had attacked the wrong man. Khalil Bey was always amusing, but sometimes his wit was apt to be a little cruel. There was a certain Madame R. K., known as La Vénus Tartare, an extraordinarily beautiful woman of the Kalmuck type, with the figure of a Juno. She had brought out a book called “Un Hiver à Paris,” which she had persuaded Théophile Gautier, Madame Georges Sand and one other French man of letters (I think my old friend Octave Feuillet) to write for her in collaboration, she publishing it as her own, though she had not penned a word of it. Everybody knew this, but that did not raise a blush in her, and it came out with, as a frontispiece, a photograph of Madame R. K.’s back, _décolleté_ almost down to the waist. She was good enough to send me a copy of it, and I went to thank her. As we were sitting discussing the book, who should be announced but the Turkish Ambassador. “Ah,” said Madame R. K., “nous parlions justement de mon livre. L’avez-vous lu?”