“What an idea!” Laurence reflected. “What extravagant barbarism and outlandishness! How they would laugh at home if they saw this.” Laugh she did not, however. She was impressed, in spite of her silent disapproval, and a little frightened, too. This masterful woman in claret-hued velvet, who led her people with something like a field-marshal’s bâton, and managed, however, to inspire them with a curious mixture of passionate devotion and abject terror, remained a mysterious and awesome power to her. Also Countess Chouróff was by no means dazzled by her, Laurence’s, high rank and fortune, for she was absurdly wealthy herself, and a very great lady, notwithstanding her oddities and extravagances of speech; a personage of weight and power in the land such as Laurence could never hope to be, and one with whom the new-comer could not, as she had done with almost everybody elsewhere, pose and posture, which, of course, vexed the bride not a little. “You can never realize,” Madame Chouróff was saying now, “what a trip to Petersburg meant then, Princess! Oh, it was a voyage indeed! We looked like a veritable Noah’s ark procession, let me tell you, setting off from here after the snow began to bear. _Berlines_ swung on runners, and _kibitkas_ and _fourgons_--preceded by couriers on horseback or in light wagons--_tèlégas_--and what not? A noise, a clamor, when getting under way, of which you can have no conception! Of course we had to carry with us half of the _batterie de cuisine_--how else would we have fared on the road?--and the _chef_ with his scullions, his silver saucepans! How he would swear over the portable stoves to be used _en route_, at the miserable post-houses!” She laughed heartily, creating thereby a veritable pyrotechnic commotion with her jewels.