“Non, Madame!—et vous?” was Khalil Bey’s biting answer, uttered with the demurest face of innocence; but the so-called Bulgarian atrocities of his countrymen in later years were not more barbarously searching. I felt so sorry for the poor beautiful Vénus Tartare. CHAPTER XI THE WINTER OF 1863-4 There is an old saying and a true one, that in Russia you see the winter and in Italy you feel it. In the one case the houses are so beautifully warmed and so many precautions are taken, that men can laugh at the climate; in Italy, on the other hand, the equipment is all for summer, and winter may torture as it pleases. In St. Petersburg the year 1863 died a glorious death. The month of December was brilliant and we “saw the winter” in all its beauty. Two or three blizzards had brought the roads into ideal condition. Smoothly and noiselessly the sledges flew over the white velvet of the yet undefiled virgin snow; the crisp air was full of energy generously dispensed; the cheery cries of the fat coachmen, made still fatter by the padding under their heavy furs, their beards frozen stiff and stark; the tinkling bell-music of the Orloff trotters; the monotonous chants of the _mujiks_ sitting in their sleigh-carts; the sparkling city hung with festoons of ice-opals flashing back the glory of the short-lived winter sun; great ladies dashing past in their _troikas_, nothing to be seen of any one of them but just a little pink nose peeping out of the muffling sea-otter furs and sables; the glittering shops full of customers choosing _étrennes_—everybody busy and eager, making ready to speed the parting, welcome the coming year. Far away in the ice-bound morasses of Lithuania, in the gloomy forests of Poland, there might still be here and there the crack of a rifle, some desultory fighting, some hunting of rebels and murderers instead of wolves and bears; but the capital of Peter the Great was deaf and blind to all tragedy. There could be no gayer city in the world; certainly none where the foreign diplomatists were so hospitably treated; our lives were a round of festivities in the very home of joyous revelry. In the daytime, on those rare occasions when we were not busy at the Embassy, there were skating parties, picnics to the Islands, and the chance of breaking our necks on the Montagnes Russes. The gardens of the Tauride, which were reserved for the Imperial Family and a few—very few—grandees, were open to us. In the evening we dined and danced and supped and danced again. The opera and the French Théâtre Michel were a perfect blaze of jewels, smart dresses, the masterpieces of Paris, brilliant uniforms and decorations; the black coats of Ambassadors and civilian Ministers sprinkled here and there the only sad notes.