He would come to me from time to time, perhaps twice in a month, and say that it was long since he had been happy—would my Excellency be pleased to name a day when it would be convenient for him to be absent—_anglice_, “get drunk.” I would look at my engagement book and see what I had to do. Monday, the French Embassy—Tuesday, a big ball—Wednesday, a ceremony at Court—should we say Thursday? “Slava Bogu” (“Glory be to God”), he would answer, “it shall be Thursday with your Excellency’s forgiveness.” On the Friday he would reappear with clockwork punctuality—a little pale and rather heavy-lidded, but perfectly cheerful. Without such an arrangement one was never safe. I had to dismiss four coachmen before I found this one, who was a treasure, and never played me false. The bargain was part of a system before which all foreigners, at any rate, had to bow lest worse befall them. To see the saturnalia of the week at their maddest one had to go to the great Admiralty Place, the huge area of which was entirely taken up by booths, circuses, giants and dwarfs, cheap pantomimes and ballets, boneless contortionists and the inevitable Hercules of the Fair, with his weights and clubs. There was one very droll and quite national exhibition consisting of a representation of the creation of the world from chaos to the fall of man, in which the marionettes, worked by springs into all sorts of comicalities, were the actors. Of course there were ice-mountains for tobogganing, but by far the most popular entertainments were the merry-go-rounds, which swarmed, filling every vacant place and making the days and nights hideous with the braying of discordant brass bands. But the noise and the riot were a pure delight to man, woman and child, whose shrieks of joy added pepper and salt to the great charivari. All the riff-raff of the town was gathered together, those happy ones who had a few kopecks rushing eagerly to spend them; the unfortunates who could not muster a copper quite as keen, some standing for hours knee-deep in the melting snow—for it was a dirty thaw—peering into the chinks between the boards of the theatres to try and get a peep at the glories within; others encouraging the patrons of the ice-mountains and wooden horses with approving shouts and wild applause. Making their way slowly, tortuously and with much splashing of icy slush through the seething crowd, were carriages full of middle-class folk who had come to see “all the fun of the fair,” while numbers of policemen, mounted and on foot, bawling and swearing at nothing, and for nothing, added to the din of the inferno.