A Russian forest is assuredly one of the most impressive of all sights, especially in winter when the world has put on its ermine mantle. Soundless in its depths as the deeps of the sea--hushed in its silence like the great Sahara--save when an overloaded branch succumbs to its weight of snow and breaks with the dry crack of a gun, it seems utterly untenanted by beast or bird. The latter always congregate on the fringes of the villages, where grain is always to be found, owing to the gracious custom which causes every inhabitant at harvest-time to hang a sheaf beneath the eaves; while the bears have withdrawn into the comfortable quarters they have prudently arranged for themselves at the first serious hint of real cold. Wolves there are, on the prowl in the sly, shambling fashion which is peculiarly their own, but after sundown only--at least until emboldened by starvation. Now and then a ptarmigan, as white as the bitter season itself, flits heavily above the underlying thicket, though his appearance is as rare almost as when a capercailzie (_kurópatkà_) starts up to break the stillness with a tumult of wings and a sifting of powdery snow. In the “wealthy” forests belonging to great territorial nobles, broad paths--or narrow roads--are cut and numbered, like the _allées_ of some colossal park, and there, sleighs as also saddle-horses, become the easy means of pleasure to the owners or their guests. For there are few sensations more exhilarating and buoyant than to gallop upon those clear, smooth avenues between the serried trunks of trees, upbearing like the pillars of some Gothic cathedral the roof of a silent world. Such a forest was that skirting the estate of the Duchesse de Salvières, _née_ Palitzin, and in the dark before a bitter November dawn--bitter even for that glacial region--this charming person herself, masked to the eyes in fur, was driving her tröika furiously in the direction of Tverna. To drive a tröika, whether on earth or on snow, is an accomplishment seldom acquired by women, but Tatiana-Vassilièvna de Salvières--who never lost an occasion of declaring that she was _not_ a woman--knew the art as thoroughly as the foremost _yèmshik_ in Muscovy.