The great State apartments, the Onyx Hall, and the _Salle des Palmiers_ were empty, dark, and silent, hiding their wonderful treasures in the gloom and shadows: their priceless tables of malachite and lapis-lazuli; their jewel-encrusted frames to pictures rarer and more valuable than the gems that surrounded them. From out the dark corners started a thousand and one memories of bygone kings and dynasties--of that great and licentious Catherine II., to whose energy Petersburg owes so much, and the Winter Palace its existence; of Peter, also called the Great, who first raised his nation from out of its barbarism; of Napoleon, and his restless ambition; of Nicholas, who died broken-hearted when Sevastopol fell; of Alexander, the wise and beneficent, father of the Tsar who now occupies the Imperial throne, and who strove in vain to stem the current of mad republicanism that spread disaffection broadcast from the Baltic to the Caspian, and which gathering strength year by year and month by month, rolled on like some gigantic wave far out at sea, tossing high above the surrounding breakers, riding fearlessly to its doom, and breaking with devastating effect against the ill-protected breakwaters of monarchical institutions and traditions. When the Court was alone, so to speak, and free from the onerous duties of perfunctory ceremonial, the Tsarina--whose nature was as gentle and loving and peaceful as that of her sister, the beloved Princess of England's hopes--shunned the vast State chambers, and held her _petites réunions_ in a smaller suite of apartments, within which were gathered every luxury of modern civilisation, and where, when the heavy plush _portières_ were drawn, the great stoves emitting the heat of a furnace, and the logs piled high on the low fire-dogs, it was possible to forget the ice and snow without, even as in looking upon the various spoils and souvenirs of every clime and country, from the rich silks and perfumed woods of the Orient, to the more homely comforts of Great Britain, it was possible to forget that this was Petersburg, and become oblivious to those frowning walls and cruel dungeons, mocked by the names of the two Apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul. Nevertheless, there they stood, grim, real, dauntless, and within them languished the poor "prisoners of hope," wrapped, at least let us pray, in that merciful and dreamless sleep, which the dark hours bring even to the most miserable.